Mr Buckle also fell into another mistake which
M. Comte avoided, that of regarding the intellectual as the only
progressive element in man, and the moral as too much the same at all
times to affect even the annual average of crime. M. Comte shows, on the
contrary, a most acute sense of the causes which elevate or lower the
general level of moral excellence; and deems intellectual progress in no
other way so beneficial as by creating a standard to guide the moral
sentiments of mankind, and a mode of bringing those sentiments
effectively to bear on conduct.
M. Comte is equally free from the error of considering any practical
rule or doctrine that can be laid down in politics as universal and
absolute. All political truth he deems strictly relative, implying as
its correlative a given state or situation of society. This conviction
is now common to him with all thinkers who are on a level with the age,
and comes so naturally to any intelligent reader of history, that the
only wonder is how men could have been prevented from reaching it
sooner. It marks one of the principal differences between the political
philosophy of the present time and that of the past; but M.
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