This is the character and
tendency of human development, or of what is called civilization; and
the obligation of seconding this movement--of working in the direction
of it--is the nearest approach which M. Comte makes in this treatise to
a general principle or standard of morality.
But as our more eminent, and peculiarly human, faculties are of various
orders, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic, the question presents
itself, is there any one of these whose development is the predominant
agency in the evolution of our species? According to M. Comte, the main
agent in the progress of mankind is their intellectual development.
Not because the intellectual is the most powerful part of our nature,
for, limited to its inherent strength, it is one of the weakest: but
because it is the guiding part, and acts not with its own strength
alone, but with the united force of all parts of our nature which it can
draw after it. In a social state the feelings and propensities cannot
act with their full power, in a determinate direction, unless the
speculative intellect places itself at their head. The passions are,
in the individual man, a more energetic power than a mere intellectual
conviction; but the passions tend to divide, not to unite, mankind: it
is only by a common belief that passions are brought to work together,
and become a collective force instead of forces neutralizing one
another.
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