solely to the fact, that the perfection of aesthetic creation requires
as its condition a consentaneousness in the feelings of mankind, which
depends for its existence on a fixed and settled state of opinions:
while the last five centuries have been a period not of settling, but of
unsettling and decomposing, the most general beliefs and sentiments of
mankind. The numerous monuments of poetic and artistic genius which the
modern mind has produced even under this great disadvantage, are (he
maintains) sufficient proof what great productions it will be capable
of, when one harmonious vein of sentiment shall once more thrill through
the whole of society, as in the days of Homer, of Aeschylus, of Phidias,
and even of Dante.

After so profound and comprehensive a view of the progress of human
society in the past, of which the future can only be a prolongation, it
is natural to ask, to what use does he put this survey as a basis of
practical recommendations? Such recommendations he certainly makes,
though, in the present Treatise, they are of a much less definite
character than in his later writings. But we miss a necessary link;
there is a break in the otherwise close concatenation of his
speculations. We fail to see any scientific connexion between his
theoretical explanation of the past progress of society, and his
proposals for future improvement. The proposals are not, as we might
expect, recommended as that towards which human society has been tending
and working through the whole of history. It is thus that thinkers have
usually proceeded, who formed theories for the future, grounded on
historical analysis of the past. Tocqueville, for example, and others,
finding, as they thought, through all history, a steady progress in the
direction of social and political equality, argued that to smooth this
transition, and make the best of what is certainly coming, is the proper
employment of political foresight. We do not find M. Comte supporting