System of Positive Polity Author:Auguste Comte Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: affect the intimate relation which these two Functions of Religion bear to each other. The conception of their thorough agreement is the first general notion req... more »uired by the Positive theory of Religion, which never could be reduced to system at all, if these two great ends of human existence did not coincide in fact. In truth the natural convergence between them springs in Man. the from the radical identity of the various elements of these two and tiieUso- forms of life. The personal and the social life of man can only nnniii?TMo- j.ff i , . . ., , - mogeneoua. diner seriously, in extent or duration, or it may be, in rate of speed: never in principle, nor in object, and consequently not in means. This would be far from being the case with a race inherently unsocial in nature; in which the unity of the individual life and the harmony of collective life might require conditions very distinct and even opposed. Such is the case in fact with many of the carnivorous species, where the unity of the personal powers depends upon an habitual state of mere selfishness, as we had occasion to explain in the former volume. Man on the other hand, more than any other of the social animals, tends more and more to realise a unity strictly unselfish, one moreover which is not so easy to attain as the unity of selfishness, but which is superior in completeness and also in permanence. In his instance, for we need now consider no other, to regulate and to combine invariably require conditions essentially the same. With respect to the intellect, this natural coincidence be- inteiiectu- tween the individual and the social form of unity shows itself which can regulate the especially when we consider, that the differences amongst indi- phascsofone viduals are not greater than those betwee...« less