This M. Comte deems necessary to the complete
disinterestedness of their counsel. To have the confidence of the
masses, they must, like the masses, be poor. Their exclusion from
political and from all other practical occupations is indispensable for
the same reason, and for others equally peremptory. Those occupations
are, he contends, incompatible with the habits of mind necessary to
philosophers. A practical position, either private or public, chains the
mind to specialities and details, while a philosopher's business is with
general truths and connected views (vues d'ensemble). These, again,
require an habitual abstraction from details, which unfits the mind for
judging well and rapidly of individual cases. The same person cannot be
both a good theorist and a good practitioner or ruler, though
practitioners and rulers ought to have a solid theoretic education. The
two kinds of function must be absolutely exclusive of one another: to
attempt them both, is inconsistent with fitness for either. But as men
may mistake their vocation, up to the age of thirty-five they are
allowed to change their career.
To the clergy is entrusted the theoretic or scientific instruction of
youth.
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