It is therefore, out
of all proportion, more uncertain than in any other science, whether two
inquirers equally competent and equally disinterested will take the same
view of the evidence, or arrive at the same conclusion. When to this
intrinsic difficulty is added the infinitely greater extent to which
personal or class interests and predilections interfere with impartial
judgment, the hope of such accordance of opinion among sociological
inquirers as would obtain, in mere deference to their authority, the
universal assent which M. Comte's scheme of society requires, must be
adjourned to an indefinite distance.
M. Comte's own theory is an apt illustration of these difficulties,
since, though prepared for these speculations as no one had ever been
prepared before, his views of social regeneration even in the
rudimentary form in which they appear above-ground in this treatise (not
to speak of the singular system into which he afterwards enlarged them)
are such as perhaps no other person of equal knowledge and capacity
would agree in. Were those views as true as they are questionable, they
could not take effect until the unanimity among positive thinkers, to
which he looked forward, shall have been attained; since the mainspring
of his system is a Spiritual Power composed of positive philosophers,
which only the previous attainment of the unanimity in question could
call into existence.
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