Lenzer, G. (ed.) (1975) Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings, New York: Harper.
Book VI, Social Physics, Chapter 1: Necessity and Opportuneness of this New Science

• All that can be rationally proposed in our day is to recognize the character of positivity in social as in all other science, and to ascertain the chief bases on which it is founded; but this is not enough, as I hope to show, to satisfy our most urgent intellectual necessities, and even the most imperative needs of immediate social practice. 195
• The ancients used to suppose order and progress to be irreconcilable; but both are indispensable conditions in a state of modern civilization, and their combination is at once the grand difficulty and the main resource of every genuine political system. No real order can be established, and still less can it last, if it is not fully compatible with progress, and no great progress can be accomplished if it does not tend to the consolidation of order. 197
• in positive social science, the chief feature must be the union of these conditions, which will be two aspects, constant and inseparable, of the same principle. 197
• The misfortune of our actual state is that the two sides are set up in radical opposition to each other--the retrograde spirit having directed all efforts in favor of order, and anarchic doctrine having arrogated to itself the charge of social progress… 197
• What his doctrine [metaphysical] had to do was to break up a system that, having directed the early growth of the human mind and society, tended to protract that infantile period; and thus, the political triumph of the metaphysical school was a necessary preparation for the advent of the positive school, for which the task is exclusively reserved of terminating the revolutionary period of the formation of a system uniting order with progress. 200
• without that destruction [of the old system] no adequate conception can be formed of what must be done. Short as is our life, and feeble as is our reason, we cannot emancipate ourselves from the influences of our environment. Even the wildest dreamers reflect in their dreams the contemporary social state: and much more impossible is it to form a conception of a true political system, radically different from that amidst which we live. 201
• The strongest head of all antiquity is an example of this. Aristotle could not conceive of a state of society that was not founded on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which took place some centuries after him. 201
• For the first time in the history of the world, the revolutionary action is attached to a complete doctrine of methodical negation of all regular government. 201
• When, in the natural course of events, any doctrine has become hostile to the purposes it was destined to serve, it is evidently done with; and its end, or the close of it activity, is near. We have seen that the retrograde of theological polity has become as disturbing as the metaphysical or revolutionary; if we find also that the latter, whose office was to aid progress, has become obstructive, it is clear that both doctrines are worn out, and must soon be replaced by a new philosophy. 202
• No association whatever, even of the smallest number of individuals, and for the most temporary objects, can subsist without a certain degree of reciprocal confidence, intellectual and moral, among its members, each one of whom has incessantly to act upon views that he must admit of the faith of someone else. 205
• In brief, the revolutionary school alone has understood that the increasing anarchy of the time, intellectual and moral, requires to prevent a complete dislocation of society, a growing concentration of political action, properly so called…208
• The theological and metaphysical philosophies have failed to secure permanent social welfare, while the positive philosophy has uniformly succeeded, and conspicuously for three centuries past, in reorganizing, to the unanimous satisfaction of the intellectual world, all the anterior orders of human conceptions, which had been till then in the same chaotic state that we now deplore, in regard to social science. 210
• Advancing from the less complex categories of ideas to the more complex and final one, and comparing with this experience the picture just given of our present social condition, we cannot but see that the political analysis and the scientific concur in demonstrating that the positive philosophy, carried on to its completion, is the only possible agent in the reorganization of modern society…210
• The ascendancy of a positive social doctrine is secured by its perfect logical coherence in its entire application--a characteristic property that enables us at once to connect the political with the scientific point of view. 211
• It [positive polity] will impart a homogenous and rational character to the desultory politics of our day, and it will be the same act connect this coordinated present with the whole past, so as to establish a general harmony in the entire system of social idea, by exhibiting the fundamental uniformity of the collective life of humanity; for this conception cannot, by its nature, be applied to the actual social state till it has undergone the test of explaining, from the same point of view, the continuous series of the chief former transformations of society. 211
• [the positive principle] extend[s] to social phenomena the spirit that governs the treatment of all other natural phenomena. 211
• It alone [positive philosophy], embracing in its survey the whole of the social question, can render exact justice to the conflicting schools by estimating their past and present services. It alone can exhibit to each party its highest destination, prescribing order in the name of progress, and progress in the name of order, so that each, instead of annulling, may strengthen, the other. Bringing stains from the past, this new polity is subject to no imputation of retrograde tyranny, or of revolutionary anarchy. The only charge that can be brought against it is that of novelty; and the answer is furnished by the evident insufficiency of all existing theories, and by the fact that for two centuries past its success has been uniform and complete, wherever it has been applied. 212
• the deepest want in modern society is, in its nature, eminently theoretical, and that consequently, as intellectual, and then a moral, reorganization must precede and direct the political. 216

Chapter 3: Characteristics of the Positive Method in Its Application to Social Phenomena

• In every science conceptions that relate to method are inseparable from those that relate to the doctrine under consideration. 218
• In the formation of a new science its general spirit must be seized before its particular parts can be investigated: that is, we must have some notion of the doctrine before examining the method, and then the method cannot be estimated in any other way than by its use. 218
• The scientific spirit is radically distinguished from the theological and the metaphysical by the steady subordination of the imagination to observation; and though the positive philosophy offers the vastest and richest field to human imagination, it restricts it to discovering and perfecting the coordination of observed facts and the means of effecting new researches. 220
• Men were long in learning that man's power of modifying phenomena can result only from his knowledge of their natural laws;… 222
• It is easy to see that true political science would be unacceptable, because it must impose limits on political action, by dissipating forever the pretension of governing at will this class of phenomena and withdrawing them from human or superhuman caprice. 222
• [three characteristics of political science] first, that we have abandoned the region of metaphysical idealities, to observe the ground of observed realities by a systematic subordination of imagination to observation; secondly, that political conceptions have ceased to be absolute, and have become relative to the variable state of civilization, so that theories, following the natural course of facts, may admit of our foreseeing them; and, thirdly, that permanent political action is limited by determinate laws, since, if social events were always exposed to disturbance by the accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine, no scientific prevision of them would be possible. 223
• The scientific principle of the relation between the political and the social condition is simply this: that there must always be a spontaneous harmony between the whole and the parts of the social system, the elements of which must inevitably be, sooner or later, combined in a mode entirely comfortable to their nature. It is evident that not only political institutions and social manners, and the one hand, and manners and ideas on the other, must be always mutually connected but, further, that this consolidated whole must be connected, by its nature, with the corresponding state of the integral development of humanity, considered in all its aspects, of intellectual, moral, and physical activity; and the only object of any political system whatever, temporal or spiritual, is to regulate the spontaneous expansion so as to best direct it towards the determinate end. 226
• It is, in fact, true that wherever there is any system whatever, a certain interconnection must exist. 227
• it is in organic systems that we must look for the fullest mutual connection. 228
• there can be no scientific study of society, either in its conditions or its movements, if it is separated into portions, and its divisions are studied apart….Materials may be furnished by the observation of different departments, and such observation may be necessary for that, object; but it cannot be called science. The methodical division of science that takes place in the simple inorganic sciences is thoroughly irrational in the recent and complex science of society, and can produce no results. The day may come when some sort of subdivision may be practical and desirable; but it is impossible for us now to anticipate what the principle of distribution may be, for the principle itself must arise from the development of the science, and that development can take place no other way than by our formation of the science as a whole. The complete body will indicate for itself, at the right season, the particular points that need investigation, and then will be the time for such special study as may be required. 228
• in the organic sciences, the elements are much better known to us than the whole that they constitute, so that in that case we must proceed from the simple to the compound. But the reverse method is necessary in the study of man and of society, man and society as a whole being better known to us, and more accessible subjects of study, than the parts that constitute them. In exploring the universe, it is a whole that is inaccessible to us, whereas, in investigating man or society, our difficulty is in penetrating the details. 229
• it is clear that the social evolution must be more inevitable subject to natural laws the more compound are the phenomena, and the less perceptible therefore the irregularities that arise from individual influences. 232
• the harmony and the movement are the result of invariable natural laws that produce all phenomena whatever, and are more obscure in social science merely on account of the greater complexity of the phenomena concerned. 234
• There is no disturbing influence, exterior or human, that can make incompatible elements coexist in the political system, or change in any way the natural laws of the development of humanity. 236
• men of genius have been guided in all great and profound action upon humanity in any way whatever; and it is only thus that they have been able to rectify, in any rough way, the illusory suggestions of the irrational doctrines in which they were educated. Everywhere, so I have so often said, foresight is the true source of action. 238
• the principle of rational limits to political action [social physics] establishes, in the most exact and unquestionable manner, the true point of contact between social theory and practice. It is by this principle only that political art can assume a systematic character, by its release from arbitrary principles mingled with empirical notions. 238
• it is absolutely necessary to understand the natural laws of harmony and succession that determine, in every period, and under every social aspect, what the human evolution is prepared to produce, pointing out, at the same time, the chief obstacles that may be got rid of. 238
• As social physics assumes a place in the hierarchy of sciences after all the rest, and therefore dependent on them, its means of investigation must be of two kinds: those that are peculiar to itself, and that may be called direct, and those that arise from the connection of sociology with the other sciences; and these last, though indirect, are as indispensable as the first. 240
• all the sciences, up to the most simple, require proofs of testimony: that is, in the elaboration of the most positive theories, we have to admit observations that could not be directly made, or even repeated, by those who use them, and the reality of which rests only on the faithful testimony of the original investigators…240
• No social fact can have any scientific meaning till it is connected with some other social fact--without which connection it remains a mere anecdote, involving no rational utility. This condition so far increases the immediate difficulty that good observers will be rare at first, though more abundant than ever as the science expands. 243
• It might be exposed beforehand that the second method of investigation, experiment, must be wholly inapplicable in social science; but we shall find that the science is not entirely deprived of this resource, though it must be one of inferior value. 243
• Whether the case be natural or factitious, experimentation takes place whenever the regular course of the phenomenon is interfered with in any determinate manner. The spontaneous nature of the alteration has no effect on the scientific value of the case, if the elements are known. 243
• Any artificial disturbance of any social element must affect all the rest, according to the laws of both coexistence and succession; and the experiment would therefore, if it could be instituted at all, be deprived of all scientific value, through the impossibility of isolating either the conditions or the results of the phenomena. 244
• What we can now comprehend is that the historical method verifies and applies, in the largest way, that chief quality of sociological science--its proceeding from the whole to the parts.
• The prevailing tendency to specialty in study would reduce history to a mere accumulation of unconnected delineations, in which all idea of the true filiation of events would be lost amidst the mass of confused descriptions. If the historical comparisons of the different periods of civilization are to have any scientific character, they must be referred to the general social evolution, and it is only thus that we can obtain the guiding ideas by which the special studies themselves must be directed. 248
• In every science we must have learned to predict the past, so to speak, before we can predict the future, because the first use of the observed relations among unfulfilled facts is to teach us by the anterior succession what the future succession will be. No examination of facts can explain our existing state to us if we have not ascertained, by historical study, the value of the elements at work; and thus it is in vain that statesmen insist of the necessity of political observation, while they look no further than the present or a very recent past. The present is, by itself, purely misleading, because it is impossible to avoid confounding principal with secondary facts, exalting conspicuous transient manifestations over fundamental tendencies, which are generally very quiet, and above all those powers, institutions, and doctrines to be in the ascendant that are, in fact, in their decline. It is clear that the only adequate corrective of all this is a philosophical understanding of the past, that the comparison cannot be decisive unless it embraces the whole of the past, and that the sooner we stop, in traveling up the vista of time, the more serious will be the mistakes we fall into. 250
• The social phenomena exhibit…the complexity, specialty, and personality the distinguish the higher phenomena of the individual life. In order to see how this establishes the connection in question, we must remember that in the social as in the biological case, which constitutes the phenomenon, and that of the medium or environment, which influences this partial and secondary development of one of the animal races. 253
• sociology is subordinated to the whole of the organic philosophy, which discloses to us the laws of human nature; and…it is connected with whole system of inorganic philosophy, which reveals to us the exterior conditions of human existence. 254
• We see that it [sociology] is not an appendix to biology but a science by itself, founded upon a distinct basis, while closely connected, from first to last with biology. Such is the scientific view of it. As to the method, the logical analogy of the two sciences is so clear as to leave no doubt that social philosophers must prepare their understandings for their work by due discipline in biological methods. This is necessary to not only put them is possession of the general spirit of investigation proper to organic science but yet more to familiarize them with the comparative method, which is the grand resource of investigation in both sciences. 256
• Social phenomena can no more be understood apart from their environment than those of individual life. All exterior disturbances that could affect the life of individual man must change his social existence; and, conversely, his social existence could not be seriously disturbed by any modifications of the medium which could not derange his separate condition… 257
• we must study simpler phenomena before proceeding to the more complex; and that we should acquaint ourselves with the agent of any phenomena, and with the medium of circumstances, before we proceed to analyze it. 259

Chapter 5: Social Statics, or Theory of the Spontaneous Order of Human Society

• Our social organism is, then, what it ought to be, accept as to degree; and we must observe and remember that it is within our power, within certain narrow limits, to rectify this degree of difference; or rather, that the rectification takes place in proportion to the steady development of civilization, which tends to subordinate our propensities to our reason…265
• All notions of public good must be based upon those of private advantage, because the former can be nothing else than that which is common to all cases of the latter, and under no ideal refinement of our nature could we ever habitually desire for others anything else but what we wish for ourselves. 265
• the personal instinct is the guide and measure of the social… 266
• As every system must be composed of elements of the same nature with itself, the scientific spirit forbids us to regard society as composed on individuals. The true social unit is certainly the family--reduced, if necessary, to the elementary couple that forms its basis. This consideration implies more than the physiological truth that families become tribes and tribes become nations, so that the whole human race might be conceived of as the gradual development of a single family, if local diversities did not forbid such a supposition.
• No doubt marriage, like every other human concern, undergoes modifications as human development proceeds….Meantime the absolute spirit of the existing political philosophy mistakes such modifications for an overthrow of the institution. 268
• What the ultimate conditions of marriage will be, we cannot know as yet; and if we could this is not the place to treat of them. It is enough for our purposes to be assured that they will be consonant with the fundamental principle of the institution: the natural subordination of the woman, which has reappeared under all forms of marriage, in all ages, and which the new philosophy will place on its right basis--a knowledge of the individual organism first, and then of the social organism…Sociology will prove that equality of the sexes, of which so much is said, is incompatible with all social existence, by showing that each sex has special and permanent functions that it must fulfill in the natural economy of the human family, and that concur in a common end in different ways, the welfare that results being in no degree injured by the necessary subordination, since the happiness of every being depends of the wise development of its proper nature. 269
• It is indisputable that women are, in general, as superior to men in a spontaneous expansion of sympathy and sociality as they are inferior to men in understanding and reason. Their function in the economy of the family, and consequently of society, must therefore be to modify by the excitement of the social instinct the general direction necessarily originated by the cold and rough reason that is distinctive of man…269
• But family life will, nevertheless, be eternally the school of social life, both for obedience and for command. 270
• The main cause of the superiority of the social to the individual organism is, according to an established law, the more marked specialty of the various functions fulfilled by organs more and more distinct but interconnected, so that unity of aim is more and more combined with diversity of means. We cannot of course fully appreciate a phenomenon that is forever proceeding before our eyes and in which we bear a part; but if we withdraw ourselves in thought from the social system, and contemplate it as from afar, can we conceive of a more marvelous spectacle, in the whole range of natural phenomena, than the regular and constant convergence of an innumerable multitude of human beings, each possessing a distinct and, in a certain degree, independent existence, and yet incessantly disposed, amidst all their discordance of talent and character, to concur in many ways with the same general development, without concert, and even consciousness on the part of most of them, who believe that they are merely following their personal impulses? 270
• If men were as rebellious as they are at present represented, it would be difficult to understand how they could ever be disciplined, and it is certain that they are all or more or less disposed to respect any superiority, especially any intellectual or moral elevation, in our neighbors, independently of any view to our own advantage--and this instinct of submission is, in truth, only too often lavished on deceptive appearances. 277

Chapter 6: Social Dynamics, or Theory of the Natural Progress of Human Society

• Man, like other animals, cannot be happy without a sufficient exercise of all his faculties, intense and persistent in proportion to the intrinsic activity of each faculty. 281
• since the birth of philosophy, the history of society has been regarded as governed by the history of the human mind. 284
• it is the study of the fundamental system of human opinions with regard to the whole of the phenomena--in short, the history of philosophy, whatever may be its character, theological, metaphysical, or positive--that must regulate our historical analysis. 284
• we must perceive that the formation of any society, worthy to be so called, supposes a system of common opinions, such as may restrain individual eccentricity…288
• When two powers, equally energetic, rise, increase, and decline together, notwithstanding the difference of their natures, we may be assured that they belong to the same regime, whatever may be their habitual conflicts. Conflict indicates radical incompatibility only when it takes place between two elements employed in analogous functions, and when the gradual growth of the one coincides with the continuous decline of the other. 295
• It is plain that no military system could arise and endure without the countenance of the theological spirit, which must secure for it the complete and permanent subordination essential to its existence. 296

Chapter 15: Estimate of the Final Action of the Positive Philosophy

• No preceding revolutions could modify human existence to anything like the degree that will be experienced under the full establishment of the positive philosophy… 298
• Besides the light that will thus be cast on the elementary laws of all kinds of action, and the valuable practical suggestions hat must be thus obtained, there will be another result that I ought to point out, that could not be otherwise obtained, and that relates especially to the highest and most complex phenomena. I mean the fixing--not yet possible, but then certainly practicable--of the general duration assigned by the whole economy to each of the chief kinds of existence and, among others, to the rising condition of the human race. 299
• the positive philosophy will lead us on to a social condition the most comfortable to human nature, in which our characteristic qualities will find their most perfect respective confirmation, their completest mutual harmony, and the freest expansion for each and all. 306

Volume I: A General View of Positivism

• The primary object, then, of positivism is twofold: to generalize our scientific conceptions, and to systematize the art of social life. These are two aspects of one and the same problem… 318

Chapter I: The Intellectual Character of Positivism

• The Importance we attach to theories that teach the laws of phenomena, and give us the power of prevision, is chiefly due to the fact that they alone can regulate our otherwise blind action upon the external world. 321
• We are powerless to create: all that we can do in bettering our condition is to modify an order in which we can produce no radical change. 326-7
• The true path of human progress lies…in diminishing the vacillation, inconsistency, and discordance of our designs by furnishing external motives for those operations of our intellectual, moral, and practical powers, of which the original source was purely internal…327
• The only phenomena, indeed, that we are wholly unable to modify are the simplest of all, the phenomena of the solar system that we inhabit. It is true that now that we know its laws we can easily conceive them improved in certain respects; but to whatever degree our power over nature may extend, we shall never be able to produce the slightest change in them. 327
• The universe is to be studied not for its own sake, but for the sake of man, or rather, of humanity. To study it in any other spirit would be not only immoral, but also highly irrational. For, as statements of pure objective truth, our scientific theories can never be really satisfactory. They can satisfy us only from the subjective point of view--that is, by limiting themselves to the treatment of such questions as have some direct or indirect influence over human life. 330
• The construction of the objective basis for the positive synthesis imposes two conditions that seem, at first sight, incompatible. On the one hand we must allow the intellect to be free, or else we shall not have the full benefit of its services, and, on the other, we must control, its natural tendency to unlimited digressions. 330

Chapter 2: The Social Aspect of Positivism, as Shown by Its Connection with the General Revolutionary Movement of Western Europe

• No one knows so well as the Positivist that the principle source of real morality lies in direct exercise of our social sympathies, whether systematic or spontaneous. He will spare no efforts to develop these sympathies from the earliest years by every method which sound philosophy can indicate. 340
• I may observe that history presents cases where exactly the opposite course is called for, and which should be held up not for approbation but for infamy. Blame, it is true, should not be carried to the same extent as praise, because it stimulates the destructive instincts to a degree which is always painful and sometimes injurious. Yet strong condemnation is occasionally desirable. 341
• all the characteristics of positivism are summed up in its motto, Order and Progress, a motto which has a philosophical as well as political bearing…
• The rational view of human affairs is to look on all their changes, not as new creations, but as new evolutions. 342
• Progress, then, is in its essence identical with order, and made be looked upon as order made manifest. 342
• we may say that the one great object of life, personal or social, is to become more perfect in every way--in our external conditions first, but also and more especially in our own nature. 342
• It is true that positivism has just supplied us with a philosophical basis for political reconstruction. 343

Chapter 3: The Action of Positivism upon the Working Classes

• The classes to which it [positivism] must appeal are those who have been left untrained in the present worthless methods of instruction by words and entities, who are animated with strong social instincts, and who consequently have the largest stock of good feeling. In a word it is among the working classes that the new philosophers will find their most energetic allies. 348
• besides having more time for thinking [the working class] they will have a moral advantage in the absence of any responsibility when their work is over. 349
• The working class, then, is better qualified than any other for understanding, and still more for sympathizing with, the highest truths of morality, though it may not be able to give them a systematic form. 351
• The workmen connected with the communist utopia, caring but very little for the metaphysical principles, do not attach nearly the same importance to these theories as is done by men of literary education. As soon as they see a better way of bringing forward the points on which they have such legitimate claims, they will very soon adopt the clear and practical conceptions of positivism, which can be carried out peaceably and permanently, in preference to these vague and confused chimeras, that, as they will instinctively feel, lead only to anarchy…The people will gradually find that the solution of the great social problem which positivism offers is better than the communist solution. 357
• There is another point in which communism is equally inconsistent with the laws of sociology. Acting under false views of the constitution of our modern industrial system, it proposes to remove its directors, who form so essential a part of it. An army can no more exist without officers than without soldiers, and this elementary truth holds good for industry as well as for war. The organization of modern industry has not been found practicable as yet, but the germ of such organization lies unquestionably in the division that has arisen spontaneously between capitalist and workman. No great works could be undertaken if each worker were also to be a director, or if the management, instead of being fixed, were entrusted to a passive and irresponsible body. 360
• communists are, without knowing it, preparing the way for the ascendancy of positivism. They are forcing upon men's notice in the strongest possible way a problem to which no peaceable and satisfactory solution can be given, except by the new philosophy. 361
• By converting private property into a public function, we should subject it to no tyrannical interference, for this, by the destruction of free impulse and responsibility, would prove most deeply degrading to man's character. 362
• Positivism, being more pacific and efficacious that communism, because more true, it is also broader and more complete in its solution of great social problems. The superficial view of property, springing too often from envious motives, that condemns inheritance because it admits of possession without labor, is not subversive merely, but narrow.362-3
• another feature which the positivist solution surpasses the communist is the remarkable completeness of its application. Communism takes no account of anything but wealth, as if wealth were the only power in modern society badly distributed and administered. In reality there are greater abuses connected with almost every other power that man possesses, and especially with the powers of intellect; yet these our visionaries make not the smallest attempt to rectify. Positivism, being the only doctrine that recognizes the whole sphere of human existence, is therefore the only doctrine that can elevate social feeling to its proper place, by extending it to all departments of human activity without exception. 363
• trade unions is, in fact, in the industrial world what the power of insurrection is with regard to the higher social function…365

Chapter 4: The Influence of Positivism upon Women

• The moral constitution of man consists of something more than intellect and activity. These are represented in the constitution of society by the philosophic body and the proletariat. But besides these there is feeling, which…was shown to be the predominating principle, the motive power of our being, the only basis on which the various parts of our nature can be brought into unity. 372
• If there were nothing else to do but to love, as in the Christian utopia of a future life in which there are no material wants, women would be supreme. Bu we have above everything else to think and to act, in order to carry on the struggle against a rigorous destiny; therefore, man takes the command, not withstanding his inferiority and goodness. Success upon all great undertaking depends more upon energy and talent than upon goodwill, although this last condition reacts strongly upon others. 374
• It is in vain for intellect to attempt to command; it never can do more than modify. 375
• Intellect may do much to amend the natural order of things, but only on the condition of not attempting to subvert it. What it can do is by its power of systematic arrangement to effect the union of all the classes who are likely to exert a beneficial influence on material power. 375
• Our material necessities are so urgent that those who have the means of providing for them will always be the possessors of power. 376
• however important the public duties that women will be called upon to perform, the family is after all there highest and most distinctive sphere of work. 376
• marriage is the most elementary and yet the most perfect mode of social life. It is the only association in which entire identity of interests is possible. In this union, to the moral completeness of which the language of all civilized nations bears testimony, the noblest aim of human life is realized, as far as it can ever be. 377
• It is essential in the first place to the high purposes for which marriage has been instituted that the union shall be both exclusive and indissoluble. So essential indeed are both conditions that we frequently find them even when the connection is illegal. That anyone should have ventured to propound the doctrine that human happiness is to be secured by levity and inconstancy in love is a fact that nothing but the utter deficiency of social and moral principles can explain. Love cannot be deep unless it remains constant to a fixed object, for the very possibility of change is a temptation to it…Sexual love may become a powerful engine for good, but only on the condition of placing it under rigorous and permanent discipline. 377
• the theory of marriage, as set forth by the positivist, becomes totally independent of any physical motive. It is regarded by him as the most powerful instrument of moral education, and therefore as the basis of public or individual welfare. It is no overstrained enthusiasm that leads us to elevate the moral purity of marriage. We do so from rigorous examination of the facts of human nature. All the best results, whether personal or social, of marriage may follow when the union, though more impassioned, is as chaste as that of brother and sister. 379
• maternity, while it extends her sphere of moral influence, does not alter its nature. 379
• it is a fundamental principle that education, in the normal condition of society, must be entrusted to the spiritual power, and in the family the spiritual power is represented by woman. 379

Chapter 6: Conclusion: The Religion of Humanity

• Love, then, is our principle; order our basis; and progress our end. 381
• positivism offers for the definite acceptance of society, a system that regulates the whole course of our private and public existence by bringing feeling, reason, and activity into permanent harmony. 381
• the chief object of its [humanity's] practical life is to satisfy the wants of our physical nature, wants that necessitate continual production of materials in sufficient quantities. This production soon comes to depend more on the cooperation of successive generations than on that of contemporaries. Even in these lower but indispensable functions, we work principally for our successors, and the results that we enjoy are in great part due to those that have gone before us. 385
• When the sense of duty is substituted for the sense of right, it matters little who may be the possessor of any given power, provided it is well used…There is no guarantee that, if other guardians of capital were appointed, the public would be better served. 387