acceptance ends. Hence, though advanced ideas, when once
established, act upon society and aid its further advance, yet the
establishment of such ideas depends on the fitness of society for
receiving them. Practically, the popular character and the social
state determine what ideas shall be current; instead of the current
ideas determining the social state and the character. The
modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous
discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to
social relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social
progress."[17]
#/

A great part of these statements would have been acknowledged as true by
M. Comte, and belong as much to his theory as to Mr Spencer's. The
re-action of all other mental and social elements upon the intellectual
not only is fully recognized by him, but his philosophy of history makes
great use of it, pointing out that the principal intellectual changes
could not have taken place unless changes in other elements of society
had preceded; but also showing that these were themselves consequences
of prior intellectual changes. It will not be found, on a fair
examination of what M. Comte has written, that he has overlooked any of
the truth that there is in Mr Spencer's theory. He would not indeed have
said (what Mr Spencer apparently wishes us to say) that the effects
which can be historically traced, for example to religion, were not
produced by the belief in God, but by reverence and fear of him. He
would have said that the reverence and fear presuppose the belief: that
a God must be believed in before he can be feared or reverenced. The
whole influence of the belief in a God upon society and civilization,
depends on the powerful human sentiments which are ready to attach
themselves to the belief; and yet the sentiments are only a social force