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Updated: April 30, 2025
To make sociology positive is the mission of the second half of Comte's work, and to this goal his philosophical activity had been directed from the beginning. Comte rates the efforts of political economy very low, with the exception of the work of Adam Smith, and will not let them pass as a preparation for scientific sociology, holding that they are based on false abstractions.
A virtuous education and solitary studies had given to her all that culture can add to an excellent nature. In her, sentiment was perfect, but her thought was often confused and vague; instead of clearing her ideas, meditation disturbed them; in exaggerating them, she believed to enlarge them; in order to extend them, she wandered off into abstractions and hyperboles.
Over against this is the practical, matter-of-fact, analytical intellect the intellect which demands facts and demands them quickly; the intellect which is quick in its operations, impatient, keen, penetrating, intolerant of mere theories and abstractions, not particularly strong in reason and logic, but exceedingly keen and discriminating in regard to the facts.
I admit that, after this sort, you have the stultified abstractions of the New School Presbyterian Church, while I have its common sense; you have its Delphic words, I have its actions; you have the traditions of the elders making void the word of God, I have the providence of God restraining the church from destroying itself and our social organization under folly, fanaticism, and infidelity.
Such was the character of Hamilton's bartering up to the time I elected myself his first lieutenant; but as his abstractions became almost trance-like, I think the superstition of the Indians was touched. To them, a maniac is a messenger of the Great Spirit; and Hamilton's strange ways must have impressed them, for they no longer put exorbitant values on their peltries.
This divinization of a drink was no doubt mainly priestly it is a striking illustration of the power of the association of ideas, and belongs in the same general category with the deification of abstractions spoken of above.
In short, I was not long in perceiving that if man is to be intellectually convinced of his own immortality, he will never be so convinced by the mere abstractions which have been so long the fashion of the moralists of England, of France, and of Germany. Abstractions may amuse and exercise, but take no hold on the mind.
He has not to speak to abstractions; not to speak to sinners merely, nor to saints as he knows them through descriptions whereof the subjects were simply types, but he has to preach to men and women, men and women who all have their individual and peculiar tastes, tendencies, likes and dislikes, desires and passions; men and women looking at things in ways of their own, influenced by such and such prejudices, such and such hopes and fears.
Lady Fareham had not ceased to believe in her dear, plain, witty Scudery, and was delighted to secure a governess of her choosing, whereby Papillon, who loved freedom and idleness, and hated lessons of all kinds, was set down to write themes upon chivalry, politeness, benevolence, pride, war, and other abstractions; or to fill in bouts-rimes, by way of enlarging her acquaintance with the French language, which she had chattered freely all her life.
His bitterness used to be, if I may say so, in the abstract, and leveled against abstractions; now it seems to have a painfully concrete character and aim. His estrangement from the scheme of things, or from his kind at least, was purely intellectual, leaving his heart no more affected than the heart usually is by brain-disorders; now it is moral.
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