That education should be practically directed by the philosophic class,
when there is a philosophic class who have made good their claim to the
place in opinion hitherto filled by the clergy, would be natural and
indispensable. But that all education should be in the hands of a
centralized authority, whether composed of clergy or of philosophers,
and be consequently all framed on the same model, and directed to the
perpetuation of the same type, is a state of things which instead of
becoming more acceptable, will assuredly be more repugnant to mankind,
with every step of their progress in the unfettered exercise of their
highest faculties. We shall see, in the Second Part, the evils with
which the conception of the new Spiritual Power is pregnant, coming out
into full bloom in the more complete development which M. Comte gave to
the idea in his later years.

After this unsatisfactory attempt to trace the outline of Social
Statics, M. Comte passes to a topic on which he is much more at
home--the subject of his most eminent speculations; Social Dynamics, or
the laws of the evolution of human society.

Two questions meet us at the outset: Is there a natural evolution in
human affairs? and is that evolution an improvement? M. Comte resolves
them both in the affirmative by the same answer. The natural progress of
society consists in the growth of our human attributes, comparatively to
our animal and our purely organic ones: the progress of our humanity
towards an ascendancy over our animality, ever more nearly approached
though incapable of being completely realized. This is the character and
tendency of human development, or of what is called civilization; and
the obligation of seconding this movement--of working in the direction
of it--is the nearest approach which M. Comte makes in this treatise to
a general principle or standard of morality.