"The great Aristotle himself," says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of his age--"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of ancient times, (_la plus forte tête de toute l'antiquité_,) could not conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."--Vol. iv. p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a fundamental law.
There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte's work, (we cannot now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the comparative _happiness_ of the savage and the civilized man. He will not entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and contents himself with asserting the fuller _development_ of his nature displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind--of the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are, for the most part, practically decided by those who have to _feel_; but to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to establish a _standard measure_ for human felicity.
We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science. A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the moralist, the jurist, and the politician--though it is worthy of observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author, for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and obeyed.