receiving instead the entire conduct of education.

This is the leading feature in M. Comte's conception of a regenerated
society; and however much this ideal differs from that which is implied
more or less confusedly in the negative philosophy of the last three
centuries, we hold the amount of truth in the two to be about the same.
M. Comte has got hold of half the truth, and the so-called liberal or
revolutionary school possesses the other half; each sees what the other
does not see, and seeing it exclusively, draws consequences from it
which to the other appear mischievously absurd. It is, without doubt,
the necessary condition of mankind to receive most of their opinions on
the authority of those who have specially studied the matters to which
they relate. The wisest can act on no other rule, on subjects with which
they are not themselves thoroughly conversant; and the mass of mankind
have always done the like on all the great subjects of thought and
conduct, acting with implicit confidence on opinions of which they did
not know, and were often incapable of understanding, the grounds, but on
which as long as their natural guides were unanimous they fully relied,
growing uncertain and sceptical only when these became divided, and
teachers who as far as they could judge were equally competent,
professed contradictory opinions. Any doctrines which come recommended
by the nearly universal verdict of instructed minds will no doubt
continue to be, as they have hitherto been, accepted without misgiving
by the rest. The difference is, that with the wide diffusion of
scientific education among the whole people, demanded by M. Comte, their
faith, however implicit, would not be that of ignorance: it would not be
the blind submission of dunces to men of knowledge, but the intelligent
deference of those who know much, to those who know still more. It is
those who have some knowledge of astronomy, not those who have none at
all, who best appreciate how prodigiously more Lagrange or Laplace knew