Comte complacently observes, be
of such powerful efficacy, that the richest man may be driven to produce
his subsistence by his own manual labour, through the impossibility of
inducing any other person to work for him. In this as in all other
cases, the priesthood depends for its authority on carrying with it the
mass of the people--those who, possessing no accumulations, live on the
wages of daily labour; popularly but incorrectly termed the working
classes, and by French writers, in their Roman law phraseology,
proletaires. These, therefore, who are not allowed the smallest
political rights, are incorporated into the Spiritual Power, of which
they form, after women and the clergy, the third element.
It remains to give an account of the Temporal Power, composed of the
rich and the employers of labour, two classes who in M. Comte's system
are reduced to one, for he allows of no idle rich. A life made up of
mere amusement and self-indulgence, though not interdicted by law, is to
be deemed so disgraceful, that nobody with the smallest sense of shame
would choose to be guilty of it. Here, we think, M. Comte has lighted on
a true principle, towards which the tone of opinion in modern Europe is
more and more tending, and which is destined to be one of the
constitutive principles of regenerated society.
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