We have stated thus fully M. Comte's opinion on the most fundamental
doctrine of liberalism, because it is the clue to much of his general
conception of politics. If his object had only been to exemplify by that
doctrine the purely negative character of the principal liberal and
revolutionary schools of thought, he need not have gone so far: it would
have been enough to say, that the mere liberty to hold and express any
creed, cannot itself _be_ that creed. Every one is free to believe and
publish that two and two make ten, but the important thing is to know
that they make four. M. Comte has no difficulty in making out an equally
strong case against the other principal tenets of what he calls the
revolutionary school; since all that they generally amount to is, that
something ought not to be: which cannot possibly be the whole truth, and
which M. Comte, in general, will not admit to be even part of it. Take
for instance the doctrine which denies to governments any initiative in
social progress, restricting them to the function of preserving order,
or in other words keeping the peace: an opinion which, so far as
grounded on so-called rights of the individual, he justly regards as
purely metaphysical; but does not recognise that it is also widely held
as an inference from the laws of human nature and human affairs, and
therefore, whether true or false, as a Positive doctrine.
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