Of mental activities and the representations of reflection he gave a physiological explanation, and classified them thus: (1) recognition, (2) association of ideas, (3) reflection, (4) dreams, (5) visual hallucinations, (6) pathological phenomena and individual differences, (7) habit.
This article discusses, first, Comte's view of Society as a concrete unity, in which feeling furnishes the only bond, intelligence being used merely for the ascertainment of means for the satisfaction of feeling. This leads to Comte's absolute separation between the egoistic and altruistic impulses, and to his view that the social ideals mean the supremacy of the latter and the annihilation of the former. Secondly, the writer discusses Comte's corresponding limitation of reason in the sphere of theoretical knowledge, which deals simply with certain relations among phenomena. In this connection, the article treats of the attitude Positivism assumes towards metaphysics. The conclusion is reached that the root of the errors in Comte's system lies in his wrong view of the nature and laws of intelligence. It is this which makes him say that the bond between man and man is only one of feeling, that nature is only an orderly succession of phenomena; it is this which leads him to separate nature from man and treat it as a foreign power.
Three factors may be named which were influential in changing the individualistic and eudæmonistic ethics, which Kant held about 1779, to the ethics of the categorical imperative: (1) analogy with his epistemology, (2) studies on the development of society, (3) direct analysis of the moral consciousness. The second of these is the most important. The main thesis of two essays which appeared in 1784 and 1786—the year before, and the year after, the Grundlegung—is that history is only intelligible when viewed from the standpoint of the race and not of the individual. Translating this into ethics, the categorical imperative becomes the expression of an instinct, natural to man, which is only explicable when we view him as a member of the race. This was hidden from Kant on account of his rejection of a psychological basis for ethics. Looked at genetically, Pure Practical Reason is disguised social psychology. This is corroborated by the fact that, later, Kant admits a connection between legality and morality, although he always opposes them. It is a duty, he says, to work for a certain order in the state. Thus law rests on morality, and the moral consciousness is an anticipation of the end of historical development. It is also probable that Rousseau influenced the form of Kant's ethics. According to the contrat social
