of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side
of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of
their reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the
apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume
it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of
the very same kind, and even still more hopeless. A multitude once
taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a
submission of their reason to political teachers--teachers who have no
sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated
authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very
reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine. But this is a
difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true
Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.

We are afraid, notwithstanding all his protestations, M. Comte will be
simply classed amongst the _Destructives_, so little applicable to the
generality of minds is that mode of thought, to establish which (and it
is for this we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely, for so great
sacrifices.

The fifth volume--the most remarkable, we think, of the whole--contains
that historical survey which has been more than once alluded to in the
foregoing extracts. This volume alone would make the fortune of any
expert Parisian scribe who knew how to select from its rich store of
original materials, who had skill to arrange and expound, and, above
all, had the dexterity to adopt somewhat more ingeniously than M. Comte
has done, his abstract statements to our reminiscences of historical
facts. Full of his own generalities, he is apt to forget the concrete
matter of the annalist. Indeed, it is a peculiarity running through the
volume, that generalizations, in themselves of a valuable character, are