systematically rooted out. As if any one could presume to assert that
the smallest weed may not, as knowledge advances, be found to have some
property serviceable to man. When we consider that the united power of
the whole human race cannot reproduce a species once eradicated--that
what is once done, in the extirpation of races, can never be repaired;
one can only be thankful that amidst all which the past rulers of
mankind have to answer for, they have never come up to the measure of
the great regenerator of Humanity; mankind have not yet been under the
rule of one who assumes that he knows all there is to be known, and that
when he has put himself at the head of humanity, the book of human
knowledge may be closed.

Of course M. Comte does not make this assumption consistently. He does
not imagine that he actually possesses all knowledge, but only that he
is an infallible judge what knowledge is worth possessing. He does not
believe that mankind have reached in all directions the extreme limits
of useful and laudable scientific inquiry. He thinks there is a large
scope for it still, in adding to our power over the external world, but
chiefly in perfecting our own physical, intellectual, and moral nature.
He holds that all our mental strength should be economized, for the
pursuit of this object in the mode leading most directly to the end.
With this view, some one problem should always be selected, the solution
of which would be more important than any other to the interests of
humanity, and upon this the entire intellectual resources of the
theoretic mind should be concentrated, until it is either resolved, or
has to be given up as insoluble: after which mankind should go on to
another, to be pursued with similar exclusiveness. The selection of this
problem of course rests with the sacerdotal order, or in other words,
with the High Priest. We should then see the whole speculative intellect
of the human race simultaneously at work on one question, by orders from