The fons errorum in M. Comte’s later speculations is this inordinate demand for “unity” and “systematization.”  This is the reason why it does not suffice to him that all should be ready, in case of need, to postpone their personal interests and inclinations to the requirements of the general good:  he demands that each should regard as vicious any care at all for his personal interests, except as a means to the good of others—­should be ashamed of it, should strive to cure himself of it, because his existence is not “systematized,” is not in “complete unity,” as long as he cares for more than one thing.  The strangest part of the matter is, that this doctrine seems to M. Comte to be axiomatic.  That all perfection consists in unity, he apparently considers to be a maxim which no sane man thinks of questioning.  It never seems to enter into his conceptions that any one could object ab initio, and ask, why this universal systematizing, systematizing, systematizing?  Why is it necessary that all human life should point but to one object, and be cultivated into a system of means to a single end?  May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest his only subject, and allows himself no personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of his faculties?  The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted to when high purposes require it, but is it the ideal perfection of human existence?  M. Comte sees none of these difficulties.  The only true happiness, he affirms, is in the exercise of the affections.  He had found it so for a whole year, which was enough to enable him to get to the bottom of the question, and to judge whether he could do without everything else.  Of course the supposition was not to be heard of that any other person could require, or be the better for, what M. Comte did not value.  “Unity” and “systematization” absolutely demanded that all other people should model themselves after M. Comte.  It would never do to suppose that there could be more than one road to human happiness, or more than one ingredient in it.

The most prejudiced must admit that this religion without theology is not chargeable with relaxation of moral restraints.  On the contrary, it prodigiously exaggerates them.  It makes the same ethical mistake as the theory of Calvinism, that every act in life should be done for the glory of God, and that whatever is not a duty is a sin.  It does not perceive that between the region of duty and that of sin there is an intermediate space, the region of positive worthiness.  It is not good that persons should be bound, by other people’s opinion, to do everything that they would deserve praise for doing.  There is a standard of altruism to which all should be required to come up, and a degree beyond it which is not obligatory,