But Catholic monotheism could not escape dissolution.  The metaphysical spirit began to operate powerfully on the notions of moral philosophy, as soon as the Catholic organisation was complete; and Catholicism, because it could not assimilate this intellectual movement, lost its progressive character and stagnated.

The decay began in the fourteenth century, where Comte dates the beginning of the Metaphysical period—­a period of revolution and disorder.  In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the movement is spontaneous and unconscious; from the sixteenth till to-day it has proceeded under the direction of a philosophical spirit which is negative and not constructive.  This critical philosophy has only accelerated a decomposition which began spontaneously.  For as theology progresses it becomes less consistent and less durable, and as its conceptions become less irrational, the intensity of the emotions which they excite decreases.  Fetishism had deeper roots than polytheism and lasted longer; and polytheism surpassed monotheism in vigour and vitality.

Yet the critical philosophy was necessary to exhibit the growing need of solid reorganisation and to prove that the decaying system was incapable of directing the world any longer.  Logically it was very imperfect, but it was justified by its success.  The destructive work was mainly done in the seventeenth century by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle, of whom Hobbes was the most effective.  In the eighteenth all prominent thinkers participated in developing this negative movement, and Rousseau gave it the practical stimulus which saved it from degenerating into an unfruitful agitation.  Of particular importance was the great fallacy, which Helvetius propagated, that human intellects are equal.  This error was required for the full development of the critical doctrine.  For it supported the dogmas of popular sovranty and social equality, and justified the principle of the right of private judgement.

These three principles—­popular sovranty, equality, and what he calls the right of free examination—­are in Comte’s eyes vicious and anarchical.[Footnote #1 Op. cit. iv. 36-38.] But it was necessary that they should be promulgated, because the transition from one organised social system to another cannot be direct; it requires an anarchical interregnum.  Popular sovranty is opposed to orderly institutions and condemns all superior persons to dependence on the multitude of their inferiors.  Equality, obviously anarchical in its tendency, and obviously untrue (for, as men are not equal or even equivalent to one another, their rights cannot be identical), was similarly necessary to break down the old institutions.  The universal claim to the right of free judgement merely consecrates the transitional state of unlimited liberty in the interim between the decline of theology and the arrival of positive philosophy.  Comte further remarks that the fall of the spiritual power had led to anarchy in international relations, and if the spirit of nationality were to prevail too far, the result would be a state of things inferior to that of the Middle Ages.