tical, the other analytical, gives the hierarchy of Sociocracy a solidity which nothing can shake. Further, we have a general verification of the two in the agreement which, by the nature of the case, exists between the constitution of society and the nature of the individual.

From the moral point of view, society as constituted by Positivism is the objective presentation of the Great Being. It follows that its constituent elements take rank by their aptness to represent Humanity; that is to say, by the degree in which their nature is sympathetic. From the intellectual point of view, society, or the hierarchy of man, is the highest term of the ascending series formed by the aggregate of known existences. Thus regarded, the elements of society must, equally with the other terms of the series, be classified by their degree of generality, the standard by which throughout we measure the approach to unity. We may coordinate them, by taking as the principle of comparison either sympathy or synthesis. Now the two modes are, in fact, equivalent, sympathy being the source of any true synthesis. We find in language a presentiment of this fundamental agreement; language always offering us a connection of generality with generosity, the fruitfulness in results, common to both, being the ground of the connection.

Both principles of classification point to the distinction of the sexes as the primary basis of the constitution of Sociocracy. For women, the representatives of Humanity, are both more sympathetic and more synthetic than her servants. They are, then, the higher in dignity; in power we cannot but reverse the order. Thus woman occupies the first rank in Sociocracy, as the best personification of the Great Being. Though her intellectual claims have hitherto been less acknowledged than her moral advantages, the Positive religion will secure them the recognition which is their due, by distinguishing what have hitherto been confounded without enquiry, capacity and cultivation. If in the disposition to unity we have the best measure of intellectual power, evidently woman is superior; we have only to take into account her instinctive tendency to consider morality in all cases as paramount, morality being the point to which all our conceptions converge. But this natural superiority of woman does not admit, generally, of any systematic assertion, from her being shut out from collective action, which is adapted only to the active sex.

(i) Women sympathy.

superior in

The distinc

tion of the sexes answers to

private and public life.

In fact, we must consider this first division of Sociocracy as answering to the distinction between private and public life. that between Properly speaking, women do not form a class, since they are never to be considered collectively. Each one of them, the soul of her own family, whilst taking no immediate part in the service of the Great Being, naturally represents that Being for those who serve it directly, and her function is to breathe into them the dispositions most in harmony with their public duties. Whilst the advancement of science or of industry is the result of collective efforts, feeling, the source of unity, is evolved only in the individual. Woman, if she is to attain her full intellectual, still more her full moral, value, must be concentrated on private life, whilst man's developement is imperfect unless he look to public life as his true sphere. The pre-eminence accorded to woman in Sociocracy offers no opening consequently for abuse, as, with here and there a well-grounded exception, woman inevitably sinks her claims if she step beyond the sanctuary of her home. She must restrict herself to the direction of private life, as the normal basis of public life, the latter alone, with the sex which administers it, being set apart for the direct service of Humanity.

Distinction of practicians and theoricians.

Consequences of the previous

divisions.

This is the fundamental division, but beyond this the sociocratic order requires the division of the servants of Humanity into her theoretical and practical servants, whilst no distinction is admissible for her representatives. Although the theoretic class may never be more than an extremely small fraction of the whole body, it has been satisfactorily shown in the two preceding volumes that the separate existence of this class, under proper conditions, is the most distinct note of maturity in the Great Being. Eliminate this constituent, and human society remains national and incapable of coextension with the race. The superiority of the theoretic servants of Humanity, in sympathy as in synthesis, to her practical servants, is as indisputable as the inferiority of both to the affective sex. their normal conception, its theoretic servants are the indispensable interpreters of the Great Being, for they alone possess the requisite knowledge of its nature and its destinies.

By these two divisions, the constitution of society is found to develope and to secure at once, the consensus in the individual of feeling, thought, and action. The actual generation is, on

this view, bound to the two subjective portions of Humanity, its past and its future-woman impelling us towards the future, the priesthood subordinating us to the past, the active mass having the present as its province. The statical relation thus indicated finds dynamical confirmation in the course of education through which all are to pass in the normal state, with its three stages, the education of the affections, the education of the intellect, and the education of our powers of action.

of the patri

proletariate.

But the constitution above given would be incomplete Distinction without one general distinction, a consequence of the natural cinte and subdivision of action into direction and execution. This last falls in naturally with the two other divisions, since by the law of sympathy and generality those who form the plans for the Great Being stand higher than the agents who carry them into effect. Looking upon the whole sociocratic organisation as the seat, objectively, of the true providence, it is vested, for the material order, specially in the patriciate, as for the intellectual it is vested in the priesthood, and for the moral primarily in woman. Love and knowledge, these are the attributes respectively of the two higher elements, whilst provision, or the satisfaction of our material wants, is a function which for its right discharge must be analysed in its two real elements of will and power. In the patriciate is the chief seat of the will, the will condensing in itself as it were our whole objective life, as societies and as individuals. On this ground it is that capital should be concentrated in the patriciate, as the directing class on which devolves the provisioning of the other classes, each in its appropriate way. As for the abuses inherent in such vast power, the Positive religion is adapted to check them by its possession of a common ideal, furnished by the Great Being. Composite and subjective-Humanity is alien to will, and recognises only the sway of demonstrable laws.

Direction being the special function of the patriciate we are warranted in assigning the complementary function to the proletariate, as the immediate agent of the power of Humanity. Its service, involving merely the responsibility of carrying out instructions, leaves the proletariate free both in mind and heart to apply the common doctrine and make it felt as a check on the abuses attendant on the undue absorption in science or industry. The general superintendence of the social system, vested

Function of

the prole

tariate.

The auxilia

ries of Humanity.

The character of the Sociocratic elements.

in the class which suffers the most from its disorder, extends even to the temporary aberrations to which in private life an exaggeration of feeling might easily give rise.

This then is the ideal constitution of the Sociocracy: the representatives of Humanity preside over the family; under them as supreme, she ranks, first the interpreters of her laws, next the ministers of her designs, lastly the agents of her power. Love, knowledge, will, and power are the attributes respectively of the four indispensable branches of her service, the separation of which, and the coordination of which, mark the full maturity of the Great Being. To complete, however, this fundamental outline, we must combine with the human population the voluntary assistance furnished by the animal races it can associate, which bring a moral or intellectual or material contribution to the common task of directing the aid involuntarily rendered by purely physical forces.

This statement introduces, as the conclusion of the chapter, an examination of the peculiar character of each of the constituents of Sociocracy, the lower being, in obedience to the law of every objective hierarchy, the more independent. To simplify their comparison, we may reduce the constituents to three, for we may regard the service of women as the basis for the individual of his service to society. Subject to this influence in private life, public life aims above all at such a transformation of action, in whatever form it be predominant, as may strip it of its egoistic character, and make it support and expand the altruistic synthesis. The three sociocratic forces contribute by their own natural action to this general result, each in accordance with its peculiar constitution. It is, however, on the patriciate in particular that this transformation depends, as the patriciate alone is competent to give a collective character to individual activity by virtue of the capital it administers. The supremacy, however, of the patriciate, necessary as it is, would continue to have a purely empirical character and would be a source of abuse, were it not for the moderating power vested in the priesthood, which, as the special depositary of our intellectual capital, gives a systematic direction to ordinary life by connecting it with our subjective existence. Lastly, the great body of the industrial workers, connected, though by a different tie, with each of the above classes, is the spontaneous regulator of the disputes which arise in the course of events from the

patrician desire of power, and the sacerdotal craving for influence.

Before characterising each of the three indispensable elements of society, it is desirable to examine into the moral stimulus constantly imparted to all the servants of Humanity by her representative in the family.

Her inde

In some degree, greater or less, the affective sex has at all Woman. times accomplished this holy mission; but, to put out its full pendence. power, woman needs, within proper limits, independence, a condition for which the initiation of mankind has gradually prepared the way, though its full realisation is reserved for the adult age of the Great Being. The condition is so absolutely necessary, that its attainment will be a simple consequence of a sound estimate of woman's nature and function, as an intermediate being between men and Humanity. But the change does not merely involve the placing her moral higher than her physical function, hitherto coarsely held paramount. It implies in addition the previous correction of the existing opinions as to this physical function, originally held to be essentially a masculine attribute. On this point the permanent direction of the current of human opinion may be inferred from a comparison of the theory, on which Apollo in Eschylus justifies Orestes before Minerva, with the doctrine enunciated by Harvey.

Admitting, however, this growing disposition to look on man as the offspring mainly of woman, it is still a point on which opinion has by no means reached the normal conclusion. Yet in the antecedent movement we have an indication that the conviction will soon become general, that in the reproduction of the species the larger share by far is the woman's. Even already, and amid the actual confusion of biological conceptions, the share of the man is allowed to be much smaller than might be expected from the activity of his generative system. In the third chapter I shall clear up this difficulty by assigning the system in question another purpose as its main one. In the second place, the conclusive observation of Franklin, that if we go back but a few generations we necessarily come to common ancestors, is but an expression of the truth that, even physically, men are more the children of Humanity than of their several families. Over and above this community of origin, the distinct act of reproduction must also take a col

Change of the function

view as to

of Reproduc

tion.