Could it be shown that these splendid anticipations were well founded, they might perhaps kindle some new and active enthusiasm; though it is very doubtful, even then, if the desire would be ardent enough to bring about its own accomplishment.  This, however, it is quite useless to consider, the anticipations in question being simply an empty dream.  A certain kind of improvement, as I have said, we are no doubt right in looking for, not only with confidence, but with complacency.  But positivism, so far from brightening this prospect, makes it indefinitely duller than it would be otherwise.  The practical results therefore to be looked for from a faith in progress may be seen at their utmost already in the world around us; and the positivists may make the sobering reflection that their system can only change these from what they already see them, not by strengthening, but by weakening them.  Take the world then as it is at present, and the sense, on the individual’s part, that he personally is promoting its progress, can belong to, and can stimulate, exceptional men only, who are doing some public work; and it will be found even in these cases that the pleasure which this sense gives them is largely fortified (as is said of wine) by the entirely alien sense of fame and power.  On the generality of men it neither has, nor can have, any effect whatever, or even if it gives a glow to their inclinations in some cases, it will at any rate never curb them in any.  The fact indeed that things in general do tend to get better in certain ways, must produce in most men not effort but acquiescence.  It may, when the imagination brings it home to them, shed a pleasing light occasionally over the surface of their private lives:  but it would be as irrational to count on this as a stimulus to farther action, as to expect that the summer sunshine would work a steam-engine.

If we consider, then, that even the present condition of things is far more calculated to produce the enthusiasm of humanity than the condition that the positivists are preparing for themselves, we shall see how utterly chimerical is their entire practical system.  It is like a drawing of a cathedral, which looks magnificent at the first glance, but which a second glance shows to be composed of structural impossibilities—­blocks of masonry resting on no foundations, columns hanging from the roofs, instead of supporting them, and doors and windows with inverted arches.  The positive system could only work practically were human nature to suffer a complete change—­a change which it has no spontaneous tendency to make, which no known power could ever tend to force on it, and which, in short, there is no ground of any kind for expecting.