Social Physics; From the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte baixar o livro de graça

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ...retrograde, than to the revolutionary philosophy, which is commonly made to bear all the blame. It is, indeed, but too evident that the three doctrines are almost equally powerless to restrain the development of individual selfishness, which grows bolder, from day to day, in clamoring for the license of the least social passions, in the name of universal intellectual anarchy. TO PUBLIC MORALITY. 425 The second characteristic of our condition follows Politica corrap. from the first. It is the systematic corruption which tion-is set up as an indispensable instrument of government. The three doctrines bear their share, though it may be an unequal one, in this disgraceful result, because all exclude, as we have seen, true political convictions. Amidst the absence, or the discredit, of general ideas, which have now no power to command genuine acts, there is no other daily resource for the maintenance of even a rough and precarious order than an appeal, more or less immediate, to personal interests. Such an influence is scarcely ever needed with men of deep convictions. Even in the lower order of characters, human nature is rarely so debased as to allow a course of political conduct in opposition to any strong convictions; and such contrariety, if persevered in, would soon paralyze the faculties. In the scientific class, in which philosophical convictions are at present most common and best marked, active corruption is scarcely practicable, though minds are there much of the same quality as they are elsewhere. Thus, exceptional cases apart, the rapid spread of-a corruption which avails itself of the half-convictions that are prevalent in the political world must be attributed mainly to the undecided and fluctuating state in which social ideas are kept...