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peculiar Sunday services seem to be almost all that remain. It would be a great mistake to estimate the influence of Comte in contemporary England by these little circles of religiosity. His elevation of the idea of humanity, his philosophy of order and progress, his inspiration of some of the noblest workers and sociological thinkers of the last half century have been incal- culable boons to social progress. Socialism has been helped by positivists partly by their tolerance, partly by their conceding it to be one of the preliminary stages in the progress toward positivism, partly by the exaggerated emphasis of the social organism.
Comte must be allowed to speak just a few words for himself. "The ideas of order and progress are, in social physics, as rigor- ously inseparable as the ideas of organization and life in biology, .... The misfortune of our actual state is that the two ideas are set up in radical opposition to each other the retrograde spirit having directed all efforts in favor of order, and an anar- chical doctrine having arrogated to itself the charge of social progress." The truth of this doctrine is illustrated by the fact that the positivists have lost ground ever since the collectivist movement came forward with the assurance of a reconciliation of order and progress. 1
John Stuart Mill contributed to the progressive movement, despite his individualism, by developing the doctrine of utilitari- anism, by writing a transitional political economy (between Manchesterism on one side and the historical school on the other), by laying down principles of liberty which his own phi- losophy could not realize, by championing the cause of woman, by his political position as an advanced radical belonging to the group which has evolved into semi-collectivists today. His
1 References. COMTE, General View of Positivism, 2d ed., London, 1880. MAR- TINEAU, H., The Positive Philosophy of A. Comte, 3 vols., London, 1896. MILL, Auguste Comte, London, 1877. COMTE, Lettres a des positivistes anglais, Lon- don, 1889. CAIRD, Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte, 1885. WATSON, Comte, Mill and Spencer, 1895. SOMMER, H., Die positive Philosophie A. Comtes, Berlin, 1866; FOUILLEE, A., Le mouvement positivist et la conception sociologique du monde, Paris, 1896. SCHULZE-GAEVERNITZ, Zum socialen Frieden, II, 3-77, Leipzig, 1890.
