The essential principles and the social purpose of the only philosophy by which the revolution can be brought to a close, are now before us. We have seen too that energetic support from the People and cordial sympathy from Women are necessary to bring this philosophic movement to a practical result. One further condition yet remains. The view here taken of human life as regenerated by this combination of efforts, would be incomplete if it did not include an additional element, with which Positivism, as I have now to show, is no less competent to deal. We have spoken already of the place which Reason occupies in our nature; its function being to subordinate itself to Feeling for the better guidance of the Active powers. But in the normal state of our nature it has also another function; that of regulating and stimulating Imagination, without yielding passive obedience to it. The esthetic faculties are far too important to be disregarded in the normal state of Humanity; therefore they must not be omitted from the system which aims to introduce that state. There is a strong but groundless prejudice that in this respect at least Positivism will be found wanting. Yet it furnishes, as may readily be shown, the only true foundation of modern Art, which, since the Middle Ages, has been cultivated without fixed principles or lofty purpose.
The reproach that Positivism is incompatible with Art arises simply from the fact that almost every one is in the habit of confounding the philosophy itself with the scientific studies on which it is based. The charge only applies to the positive spirit in its preliminary phase of disconnected specialities, a phase which scientific men of the present day are making such mischievous efforts to prolong. Nothing can be more fatal to the fine arts than the narrow views, the overstraining of analysis, the abuse of the reasoning faculty, which characterize the scientific investigation of the present day; to say nothing of their injurious effects upon moral progress, the first condition of esthetic development. But all these defects necessarily disappear when the Positive spirit becomes more comprehensive and systematic; which is the case as soon as it embraces the higher subjects in the encyclopædic scale of sciences. When it reaches the study of Society, which is its true and ultimate sphere, it has to deal with the conceptions of Poetry, as well as with the operations of Feeling: since its object must then be to give a faithful and complete representation of human nature under its individual, and still more under its social, aspects.