CONCLUDING LECTURE.

MAN AS A MORAL BEING.

WE showed in a previous lecture that man could not enter into relations with his fellow man without those relations becoming moral ones. There could be no society between man and woman without its developing dependence on the one side, and protection on the other; and we know, or at least have good reason for believing, that man and wife, the units of society, existed long before the simplest societies were formed between man and his fellow man. The sexual impulse, as the coarser, demanded satisfaction, and had it, long before the need was felt for the more social, and therefore more moral, ties and relationships man subsequently contracted. The life of nutrition in this case, as in that of the individual, came before the life of relation. As soon as man entered into society he had to forego some of his more selfish gratifications, otherwise society was unattainable. Societies cannot be formed upon theories of either unenlightened or enlightened selfishness; they can exist only upon a tacit or expressed understanding that individuals subordinate their unsociable impulses and passions. This subordination, once secured, made society not only a protection, but a providence. This twofold function was not perceived all at once, only slowly did it develop; it met with many checks from man's egoism and individualism, the merits of which are so much vaunted in our days. Had individualism been possible then, society would never have existed; and if individualism had its way now, society

would cease to exist. There is, as every common sense person must be aware, no entering society without sacrificing some individual "rights," as they are absurdly called, and the more civilised the society, the more complex it is, and the more it advances towards civilisation, and is aware of its tendencies in this direction, the more numerous are the "rights" which individuals gladly yield. In no society, however complex, does man cease to be a responsible being, individually responsible for his feelings and actions; but as he grows in sociality his egoism declines, and all notions of individual rights and privileges gradually die out. Such rights and privileges must be maintained by the laws, by the executive that is; but then that executive is in force only so long as egoistic and recalcitrant persons forget, or do not apprehend, that they are members of a social organism, and live, not for their own, but for its benefit, their benefit being secured in the general well-being and well doing. It is obvious that, as man becomes ever more and more religious, or, what is the same thing, more civilised, he ceases to be under the domination of force. "The law," said St. Paul," was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." The value of morality, even in its crudest and most contracted forms, must have been early perceived by manindeed, he must have perceived the value of moral truths before physical, from their practical necessity. How largely they must have helped him we can barely imagine; but the moral basis of humanity, once laid, no matter how imperfectly, was a possession for ever. It would soon be perceived how essential morality was to human society; how, in fact, as Mme. de Stacl observed, Morality is the Nature of Things.

Of the principal characteristics of Moral Science, Comte states: "Moral science is more synthetical than any other; its direct connection with practice gives strength to this its natural attribute. In moral science alone do all the abstract points of view meet spontaneously to take the general guidance of concrete reason. From Thales to Pascal every genuine thinker has cultivated simultaneously geometry and morals, from a secret presentiment of the great hierarchy in which they should finally be combined. The term microcosm, or lesser world, applied by the ancients to man, was even then an indication of the feeling that in the study of man all others might be condensed. Morals are naturally the only science susceptible of real completenesss.

No essential point need be put out of view, as must be the case in each of the sciences which serve as their basis. For when we look on these sciences as each in its proper sphere deciding what are the laws which man obeys, they only attain this end by purposely neglecting all the higher properties which their respective provinces might embrace, while they incorporate only the inferior ones. By this course of decreasing abstraction, the intellect is finally prepared to enter on the only study in which it is no longer compelled to abstract any essential property from the common object of all our various branches of human speculations. In no other way can meditation, the characteristic of the masculine intellect, be irrevocably united with contemplation, the distinctive feature of woman's intelligence -a union which constitutes the final condition of the human reason.

"We begin with cosmology, which lays down the laws of mere matter. Then, on the basis thus laid, biology constructs the theory of life. Lastly, sociology brings forward the study of the collective or social existence of man in subordination to the twofold foundation laid. The last of the preliminary sciences is more complete than its predecessors. Still, it does not yet embrace the whole of human nature, for our most important attributes find but an inadequate appreciation in sociology. By its nature sociology considers in man his intelligence and his activity, in combination with all our lower properties, but not in direct subordination to the feelings which are highest of all. The development of society places in the strongest light our theoretical and practical progress. Even in the statics of sociology our feelings are only considered in reference to the social impulses derived from them, or to the modifications society introduces. Their peculiar laws, to be properly studied, must be studied in moral science. There they require the preponderance due to their higher rank in the system of human nature. This it is which leads minds of an unsystematic order to under-rate the fulness of the synthetical character, which distinguishes this final science. They limit it too closely to this its most important sphere, whereas that sphere is but the centre around which the rest must be finally grouped."

The object of scientific theory is, Comte says, "the generalisation and co-ordination of the empirical results of human reason, with a view of securing for those results

the consistency and development otherwise unattainable. Such a connection is more peculiarly appropriate in the study of morals. They could not, it is true, owing to their higher degree of complication, be systematised till the last; but, at the same time, by the force of their preponderant importance, they always supplied the main food for our From ordinary meditations, especially those of women. this empirical culture we soon gained some notions, which, in spite of their incoherence, were very valuable. They have hitherto, it is true, been despised by minds of systematic tendencies, but only because such minds could find no place for them in their theological or metaphysical theories. Positivism alone is capable of taking in the social point of view; therefore on it devolves the task of generalising and co-ordinating these empirical notions, after founding the last of the preliminary sciences. Its ability to systematise them enabled it to appreciate their value, in spite of philosophical prejudices; and so it could turn them to immediate account in the construction of sociology. If you examine closely the way in which we habitually avail ourselves, in sociology, of the knowledge of human nature, you will soon see that all that we really use are these spontaneous notions, which have far more reality in them than all the moral speculations of earlier philosophers. This empirical sketch is sufficient for our conceptions, so far as they concern the collective existence of man, before it has been reduced to the systematic shape which the final science alone can determine."

.

"Morals, as in all other branches of real science, are occupied in the main with determining the general laws of the commonest phenomena; as, for instance, chemistry mainly studies the laws of combustion and fermentation. Although moral science was a subject which theology could not adequately handle, we must not pass over without its due notice the attempt made at the beginning of Catholicism by its real founder. The object was to meet the want of a system created by the new religious teaching. The great St. Paul, in his general doctrine of the permanent struggle between nature and grace, stated, though in an imperfect form, and solved in his own way, the whole moral problem, not merely as regards its practical difficulty, but also as a theoretic question. The value of the solution he invented lay in its offering provisionally a compensation for a radical defect in Monotheism. Monotheism is irre