after which mankind should go on to another, to be pursued with similar exclusiveness.  The selection of this problem of course rests with the sacerdotal order, or in other words, with the High Priest.  We should then see the whole speculative intellect of the human race simultaneously at work on one question, by orders from above, as a French minister of public instruction once boasted that a million of boys were saying the same lesson during the same half-hour in every town and village of France.  The reader will be anxious to know, how much better and more wisely the human intellect will be applied under this absolute monarchy, and to what degree this system of government will be preferable to the present anarchy, in which every theorist does what is intellectually right in his own eyes.  M. Comte has not left us in ignorance on this point.  He gives us ample means of judging.  The Pontiff of Positivism informs us what problem, in his opinion, should be selected before all others for this united pursuit.

What this problem is, we must leave those who are curious on the subject to learn from the treatise itself.  When they have done so, they will be qualified to form their own opinion of the amount of advantage which the general good of mankind would be likely to derive, from exchanging the present “dispersive speciality” and “intellectual anarchy” for the subordination of the intellect to the coeur, personified in a High Priest, prescribing a single problem for the undivided study of the theoretic mind.

We have given a sufficient general idea of M. Comte’s plan for the regeneration of human society, by putting an end to anarchy, and “systematizing” human thought and conduct under the direction of feeling.  But an adequate conception will not have been formed of the height of his self-confidence, until something more has been told.  Be it known, then, that M. Comte by no means proposes this new constitution of society for realization in the remote future.  A complete plan of measures of transition is ready prepared, and he determines the year, before the end of the present century, in which the new spiritual and temporal powers will be installed, and the regime of our maturity will begin.  He did not indeed calculate on converting to Positivism, within that time, more than a thousandth part of all the heads of families in Western Europe and its offshoots beyond the Atlantic.  But he fixes the time necessary for the complete political establishment of Positivism at thirty-three years, divided into three periods, of seven, five, and twenty-one years respectively.  At the expiration of seven, the direction of public education in France would be placed in M. Comte’s hands.  In five years more, the Emperor Napoleon, or his successor, will resign his power to a provisional triumvirate, composed of three eminent proletaires of the positivist faith; for proletaires, though not fit for permanent rule, are the best agents of the