I have already compared the science of sociology to that of medicine; and the comparison will again be a very instructive one.  The aim of both sciences is to produce health; and the relation of health to happiness is in both cases the same.  It is an important condition of the full enjoyment of anything:  but it will by no means of itself give or guide us to the best thing.  A man may be in excellent health, and yet, if he be prudent, be leading a degrading life.  So, too, may a society.  The Cities of the Plain may, for all we know to the contrary, have been in excellent social health; indeed, there is every reason to believe they were.  They were, apparently, to a high degree strong and prosperous; and the sort of happiness that their citizens set most store by was only too generally attainable.  There were not ten men to be found in them by whom the highest good had not been realised.

There are, however, two suppositions, on which the general good, or the health of the social organism, can be given a more definite meaning, and made in some sense an adequate test of conduct.  And one or other of these suppositions is apparently always lurking in the positivist mind.  But though, when unexpressed, and only barely assented to, they may seem to be true, their entire falsehood will appear the moment they are distinctly stated.

One of these suppositions is, that for human happiness health is alone requisite—­health in the social organism including sufficient wealth and freedom; and that man’s life, whenever it is not interfered with, will be moral, dignified, and delightful naturally, no matter how he lives it.  But this supposition, from a moralist, is of course nonsense.  For, were it true, as we have just seen, Sodom might have been as moral as the tents of Abraham; and in a perfect state there would be a fitting place for both.  The social organism indeed, in its highest state of perfection, would manifest the richest variety in the development of such various parts.  It might consist of a number of motley communes[10] of monogamists and of free-lovers, of ascetics and sybarites, of saints and [Greek:  paiderastai]—­each of them being stones in this true Civitas Dei, this holy city of God.  Of course it may be contended that this state of things would be desirable; that, however, is quite a different question.  But whatever else it was, it would certainly not be moral, in any sense in which the word has yet been used.

The second supposition I spoke of, though less openly absurd than this one, is really quite as false.  It consists of a vague idea that, for some reason or other, happiness can never be distributed in an equal measure to all, unless it be not only equal in degree but also the same in kind; and that the one kind that can be thus distributed is a kind that is in harmony with our conceptions of moral excellence.  Now this is indeed so far true, that there are doubtless certain kinds of happiness which, if enjoyed at all,