bankers, who are to take the foreign, home, and financial departments respectively.  How they are to conduct the government and remain bankers, does not clearly appear; but it must be intended that they should combine both offices, for they are to receive no pecuniary remuneration for the political one.  Their power is to amount to a dictatorship (M.  Comte’s own word):  and he is hardly justified in saying that he gives political power to the rich, since he gives it over the rich and every one else, to three individuals of the number, not even chosen by the rest, but named by their predecessors.  As a check on the dictators, there is to be complete freedom of speech, writing, printing, and voluntary association; and all important acts of the government, except in cases of emergency, are to be announced sufficiently long beforehand to ensure ample discussion.  This, and the influences of the Spiritual Power, are the only guarantees provided against misgovernment.  When we consider that the complete dominion of every nation of mankind is thus handed over to only four men—­for the Spiritual Power is to be under the absolute and undivided control of a single Pontiff for the whole human race—­one is appalled at the picture of entire subjugation and slavery, which is recommended to us as the last and highest result of the evolution of Humanity.  But the conception rises to the terrific, when we are told the mode in which the single High Priest of Humanity is intended to use his authority.  It is the most warning example we know, into what frightful aberrations a powerful and comprehensive mind may be led by the exclusive following out of a single idea.

The single idea of M. Comte, on this subject, is that the intellect should be wholly subordinated to the feelings; or, to translate the meaning out of sentimental into logical language, that the exercise of the intellect, as of all our other faculties, should have for its sole object the general good.  Every other employment of it should be accounted not only idle and frivolous, but morally culpable.  Being indebted wholly to Humanity for the cultivation to which we owe our mental powers, we are bound in return to consecrate them wholly to her service.  Having made up his mind that this ought to be, there is with M. Comte but one step to concluding that the Grand Pontiff of Humanity must take care that it shall be; and on this foundation he organizes an elaborate system for the total suppression of all independent thought.  He does not, indeed, invoke the arm of the law, or call for any prohibitions.  The clergy are to have no monopoly.  Any one else may cultivate science if he can, may write and publish if he can find readers, may give private instruction if anybody consents to receive it.  But since the sacerdotal body will absorb into itself all but those whom it deems either intellectually or morally unequal to the vocation, all rival teachers will, as he calculates, be so discredited beforehand, that