and not in his human character. In his last years, M. Comte (as we learn
from Dr Robinet's volume) indulged in the wildest speculations on
medical science, declaring all maladies to be one and the same disease,
the disturbance or destruction of "l'unité cérébrale." The other
functions of the clergy are moral, much more than intellectual. They are
the spiritual directors, and venerated advisers, of the active or
practical classes, including the political. They are the mediators in
all social differences; between the labourers, for instance, and their
employers. They are to advise and admonish on all important violations
of the moral law. Especially, it devolves on them to keep the rich and
powerful to the performance of their moral duties towards their
inferiors. If private remonstrance fails, public denunciation is to
follow: in extreme cases they may proceed to the length of
excommunication, which, though it only operates through opinion, yet if
it carries opinion with it, may, as M. Comte complacently observes, be
of such powerful efficacy, that the richest man may be driven to produce
his subsistence by his own manual labour, through the impossibility of
inducing any other person to work for him. In this as in all other
cases, the priesthood depends for its authority on carrying with it the
mass of the people--those who, possessing no accumulations, live on the
wages of daily labour; popularly but incorrectly termed the working
classes, and by French writers, in their Roman law phraseology,
proletaires. These, therefore, who are not allowed the smallest
political rights, are incorporated into the Spiritual Power, of which
they form, after women and the clergy, the third element.

It remains to give an account of the Temporal Power, composed of the
rich and the employers of labour, two classes who in M. Comte's system
are reduced to one, for he allows of no idle rich. A life made up of
mere amusement and self-indulgence, though not interdicted by law, is to