muscular cells. How is it possible not to admit so very beautiful a
theory, in order that one may be able, ever after, to pocket one's
conscience, and have a perfectly unbridled animal existence, feeling
beneath one's self that support of science which is not to be shaken
nowadays!

And it is on this new doctrine that the justification for men's
idleness and cruelty is now founded.



CHAPTER II.



This doctrine had its rise not so very long--fifty years--ago. Its
principal founder was the French savant Comte. There occurred to
Comte,--a systematist, and a religious man to boot,--under the
influence of the then novel physiological investigations of Biche,
the old idea already set forth by Menenius Agrippa,--the idea that
human society, all humanity even, might be regarded as one whole, as
an organism; and men as living parts of the separate organs, having
each his own definite appointment to serve the entire organism.

This idea so pleased Comte, that upon it he began to erect a
philosophical theory; and this theory so carried him away, that he
utterly forgot that the point of departure for his theory was
nothing more than a very pretty comparison, which was suitable for a
fable, but which could by no means serve as the foundation for
science. He, as frequently happens, mistook his pet hypothesis for