authorities should fulfil the office assigned to it, little is said in
this treatise: but the general idea is, while regulating as little as
possible by law, to make the pressure of opinion, directed by the
Spiritual Power, so heavy on every individual, from the humblest to the
most powerful, as to render legal obligation, in as many cases as
possible, needless. Liberty and spontaneity on the part of individuals
form no part of the scheme. M. Comte looks on them with as great
jealousy as any scholastic pedagogue, or ecclesiastical director of
consciences. Every particular of conduct, public or private, is to be
open to the public eye, and to be kept, by the power of opinion, in the
course which the Spiritual corporation shall judge to be the most right.

This is not a sufficiently tempting picture to have much chance of
making converts rapidly, and the objections to the scheme are too
obvious to need stating. Indeed, it is only thoughtful persons to whom
it will be credible, that speculations leading to this result can
deserve the attention necessary for understanding them. We propose in
the next Essay to examine them as part of the elaborate and coherent
system of doctrine, which M. Comte afterwards put together for the
reconstruction of society. Meanwhile the reader will gather, from what
has been said, that M. Comte has not, in our opinion, created Sociology.
Except his analysis of history, to which there is much to be added, but
which we do not think likely to be ever, in its general features,
superseded, he has done nothing in Sociology which does not require to
be done over again, and better. Nevertheless, he has greatly advanced
the study. Besides the great stores of thought, of various and often of
eminent merit, with which he has enriched the subject, his conception of
its method is so much truer and more profound than that of any one who
preceded him, as to constitute an era in its cultivation. If it cannot
be said of him that he has created a science, it may be said truly that