character, the generalizations of political economy.

There is one more point in the general philosophy of sociology requiring
notice. Social phaenomena, like all others, present two aspects, the
statical, and the dynamical; the phaenomena of equilibrium, and those of
motion. The statical aspect is that of the laws of social existence,
considered abstractedly from progress, and confined to what is common to
the progressive and the stationary state. The dynamical aspect is that
of social progress. The statics of society is the study of the
conditions of existence and permanence of the social state. The dynamics
studies the laws of its evolution. The first is the theory of the
_consensus,_ or interdependence of social phaenomena. The second is the
theory of their filiation.

The first division M. Comte, in his great work, treats in a much more
summary manner than the second; and it forms, to our thinking, the
weakest part of the treatise. He can hardly have seemed even to himself
to have originated, in the statics of society, anything new,[15] unless
his revival of the Catholic idea of a Spiritual Power may be so
considered. The remainder, with the exception of detached thoughts, in
which even his feeblest productions are always rich, is trite, while in
our judgment far from being always true.

He begins by a statement of the general properties of human nature which
make social existence possible. Man has a spontaneous propensity to the
society of his fellow-beings, and seeks it instinctively, for its own
sake, and not out of regard to the advantages it procures for him,
which, in many conditions of humanity, must appear to him very
problematical. Man has also a certain, though moderate, amount of
natural benevolence. On the other hand, these social propensities are by