a lucky man. If he fell into the hands of the enemy, he was not to be exchanged or 'paroled,' but more frequently to be despatched on the spot. If his city was taken, he would probably be turned over to the executioner, and his wife and children to the slave-dealer."

Now, men are no more citizens because their offices or warehouses are in the city, and their names figure on the election registers, than men with muskets are soldiers. The feeling of citizenship, supposing one to have it, is lost in our great, over-grown, and amorphous cities and towns. What solidarity is expressed in the phrase, "A citizen of London," or of Glasgow, or Birmingham? It merely means that the utterer of the phrase may be one of a mass or a crowd, and that he has as much influence upon that crowd as a straw has upon a current which bears it onward.

Citizenship in a true sense is impossible in the enormous aggregates of London and similar places. A citizen is one who finds his true place in the city or State of which he is a member, and fills that place becomingly, realising that he is a member of a commonwealth, having duties in connection with it which he would not, if he could, neglect. When the aggregates are broken up, a lost sense will be restoredthe sense of being a citizen. With the restoration will come also self-respect and much else very unfamiliar to us now.

Still, imperfect as is the sense of citizenship, a man is compelled to recognise the fact that, if he does not form one of the State, at least he lives in it, and has, if not an integral, at least a minute, fractional, or infinitesimal, interest in its well-being. And in so far as he encourages himself to think and act as a statesman, using the word in its old sense, he is discharging a duty he owes to others and himself, and is the better for its discharge.

The State, where men feel any real interest in it, is too often regarded as if there were no larger whole outside itHumanity. The family may become, under certain conditions, a centre of selfishness-what the French call egoisme à deux; the state, too, may become such a family extended, so as to represent the ignorance and selfishness of its constituents of some of the more pushing and odious of its constituents, that is, as we have already heard. What is to preserve man from such individual and collective selfishness? What but the reverence and worship of Humanity! Surely, when he reflects upon who and what her organs were and are-how unselfishly, not to say self-sacrificingly,

they lived; how by their means, and theirs alone, it is that the general good and happiness have been and are increased and promoted; that the continued existence of human society implies the predominance of sociality over individuality, the regular subordination of our lower instincts to the higher, of egoism to altruism; and that, if the world is ever to grow better than it is, disinterestedness and worth must become commoner than they now are;-surely, we say, when he reflects upon these things, he will regard the great Human Providence-which has cared for man throughout the mighty past, and given to him whatever of good he has to enjoy with feelings of gratitude, love, and admiration! Surely he will ardently desire that he may grow into like ness with Humanity, and finally be proved worthy of incorporation with her!

"What a long tale of patience, courage, sacrifice, and martyrdom is the history of human progress! Should it not affect us as if we were reading in the diary of a parent the record of his struggles for his children? For us they toiled, endured, bled, and died, that we by their labour might have rest, by their thought might know, by their death might live happily." (F. Harrison.)

"Humanity," says Comte, "is impelled by feeling, guided by intelligence, and supported by action. At once you -have the three essential elements of society-the sex in which affection prevails (women); the contemplative class -that is, the priesthood; and the active class (proletaries). I have arranged them according to their decrease in dignity, but also according to their increase in independence. The last, then, is the necessary basis of the whole economy of the Great Being, in obedience to the fundamental law, with which you are familiar, that the noblest attributes are in all cases subordinate to the lowest. In reality, the unintermitting wants, which are the result of our bodily constitution, enforce on Humanity an amount of action which constitutes the most marked feature of her existence. For developing this activity, the need of co-operation becomes constantly greater. So action, while it is the most powerful stimulant of our intelligence, supplies the strongest excitement to our sociability. In reference to this last, it makes solidarity more completely subordinate to continuity, for it is in continuity that resides the most characteristic, as well as the noblest, attribute of the Great Being. The material results of human co-operation depend more on the combined

action of a succession of generations than on that of the families who at any one time co-exist. It follows that, far from being absolutely unfavourable to the free play of the intellect and morality, this continuous preponderance of active life ought to furnish the best security for our unity by providing the intellect and the heart with a definite direction and a progressive object. Without this all-pervading impulse our best mental, and even our best moral, dispositions would soon degenerate, and become mere vague and incoherent tendencies, resulting in no progress either for the individual or the community."

"Progress," as Comte shows, "is simply the development of order" the due growth and expansion of those fundamental bonds which unite men into groups, whether large or small. The social unit is the family, and the State is simply a collection of families united by civic ties more or less binding. It is generally recognised as a fact-it should be seen to be a law-that, where the peace of the family or State is not assured, there progress is at a standstill. The phenomena are to be seen everywhere at the present time. Urgent social reforms are being postponed by the great European States because their internal and international relations are so unsatisfactory. The maintenance of order is felt to be the one thing needed, and rightly. There can be, as we well know, order without progress, but there can be no progress without order. If, therefore, order be imperilled, à fortiori, progress must be still more so. Political science must be organic, or it ceases to be science. It must build upon the bases supplied by the past, or its structures will not stand. It must respect those relations which are permanent with men, or it will in no way satisfy human needs or help on human progress. This can hardly be too strongly insisted upon, as modern revolutionary theories tend to disturb the bases of society itself, and to destroy those relations between men which have hitherto subsisted tending to their permanent advantage.

It has been said that the Social Organism, like the Biological, must function by organs, and these organs are women, priests, or philosophic class, and proletaries. The first function in feeling, the second in thinking, and the third in acting. With the third must be included capitalists, who are members of the active class, and inherit the wealth of the past, which proletaries use and increase. The Patriciate, as Comte calls the leaders and captains of Industry, are

"Nutritive Reservoirs," and their function is to store up that wealth for the use of the present, and especially of succeeding, generations. They are not absolute owners of the money they use, it having been made and handed down to them by preceding generations, and they should not act as if they were not responsible nor amenable to public opinion for its use or abuse. "All wealth," to quote Comte's luminous axiom," was social in its origin, and should be social in its destination." When this is forgotten, as it too often is, wealth is misused, and becomes a curse. That wealth was social in its origin all inquiries into laws and customs affecting property constantly prove. The fact itself would be better known than it is, and its consequent deduction insisted upon, if Theologism were friendly to Industry, which it is not. The important truth is asserted by those who are anti-theological-by those who do not care for other-world possessions, but wish this world's put to a right use, the claims of others to a share of it being duly considered. "This institution of property, the primary basis of the material providence, must rest on the land; otherwise, it will not have the requisite degree of stability, for the land is naturally the seat, as it necessarily is the source, of all actual production."

The Material Providence of Humanity has two factorswealth represented by capitalists, and numbers represented by proletaries. Wealth and numbers also represent continuity and solidarity. Wealth is a product of a hoarded past for the benefit of the present and the future-hence continuity. Numbers represent the fellow-feeling of successive generations-a fellow-feeling more or less varied, intense, or diffuse, hence solidarity. "Morality is the nature of things;" and numbers, which represent solidarity, are more moral than wealth. Wealth has always proved less amenable to moral considerations in the past, is so now, and always will be so.

Again. Women may be looked upon as the Moral Providence of the race. In them affection predominates. They are incomparably more disinterested and unselfish than men, and their functions as wives and mothers are to ameliorate adults and to train the young in all that is noble and good. Their retired life is favourable to the development of tenderness and goodness, which man's public life is not. To him, some hardness and energy are necessary to enable him to battle with the world and win for his family their daily

sustenance. In the sanctuary of his home his moral balance must be restored; and this is the work of woman. Comte deprecates again and again the tendency to employ women as Industrial agents, and points out the inevitable degradation of their character it must effect. It is a fundamental axiom in the Positivist régime that man must support

woman.

The Philosophic class-who, as they discharge all religious functions for the community, are called Priests-form the Theoretical Providence of Humanity. The Priests' duties are arduous and manifold. Not only have they to master the sciences, with the arts, their applications, but they have also to guard the intellectual and moral treasures of the past, to teach the young of both sexes just verging on adolescence the philosophy of all the sciences, commencing with mathematics and ending with morals. Not only have they to minister the rites and ceremonies of the Church of Humanity and these are both many and important-but they have, by contact with the gentler sex, to keep their hearts pure and tender (to give predominance to feeling over thinking and acting); to depend upon the Patriciate mainly, if not entirely, for their support; to plead the cause of oppressed or injured proletaries with Patricians, and recall them to a sense of their moral and material duties to them and women; and, not to name other duties, it is highly probable also that they will have sometimes to recall recalcitrant workmen to a sense of their duties and obligations to the Patriciate and society at large. Not only have the Priests to do all these things, but they will have also to be the future poets, philosophers, painters, musicians, preachers, physicians, and statesmen. These are some of their functions. If it be urged, Who is sufficient for these things? the answer is ready: Duly-prepared men, whose culture of heart and brain has been of the best-men who, under the guidance of the precepts of the Master, will as wisely ignore as they wisely chuse the objects of study which best fit them for their high duties as the chief organs of Humanity.

Comte thus summarises the functions of the Priesthood and Patriciate: "To get a better idea of this constitution of society, we must consider separately its two most special elements, the only classes properly so-called-the Priesthood which counsels, the Patriciate which commands. These two classes respectively are to preserve and increase the spiritual and material treasures of Humanity. They

also preside over the proper distribution of these treasures among her servants, in obedience to the laws which govern each of the two."

We have already dwelt upon the separate provinces of the Priesthood and Patriciate. Comte's wages - theory differs so hugely from that of the Political Economists that we must quote it here. He says: "Wages, rightly viewed, . have no other function whatever to the class which receives them" than that "of restoring to each man the materials which he is constantly consuming in the service of society, either as provisions for his sustenance, or as the instruments by which he discharges his functions. The labour of man -that is to say, the successful efforts of man-to modify his destiny is really never otherwise than gratuitous. It does not admit of does not require any payment in the strict sense. The term 'equivalent' is appropriate when we are dealing with the materials of labour, when we are considering the relation of the labourer to his work.........The inherently gratuitous character of labour is disputed only in the case of the proletariate—in the case of those, that is, who receive the least. The contradiction such a result involves clearly indicates the source, historically, of this anomaly. It is due, essentially, not to any inferiority in the labour of the class in question, but to the long servitude of its members. Positive religion alone can on this point overcome modern anarchy. It does so by enforcing on all a sense that individual services never admit of any other reward than the satisfaction of rendering them and the grateful feelings they excite."

Of the three forms of human association, Comte remarks: "The only one where the natural foundation is love, the Family, is the closest in point of union, the narrowest in extent, and is the necessary element of the two others. Man's action next leads to the formation of the City. The bond in this case results from an habitual co-operation, the sense of which would be too weak if this political association were to include too large a number of families. Lastly comes the Church. Here the essential bond is faith. The Church alone can be really universal, and its universality will be a necessary consequence of Positive Religion. These three forms of human society have, as their respective centres, the Woman, the Patriciate, and the Priesthood."