The regulations required should be moral, not political in their source; general, not special, in their application. Those who accept them will do so of their own free will, under the influence of their education. Thus their obedience, while steadily maintained, will have, as Aristotle long ago observed, the merit of voluntary action. By converting private property into a public function, we would subject it to no tyrannical interference; for this, by the destruction of free impulse and responsibility, would prove most deeply degrading to man’s character. Indeed, the comparison of proprietors with public functionaries will frequently be applied in the inverse sense; with the view, that is, of strengthening the latter rather than of weakening the former. The true principle of republicanism is, that all forces shall work together for the common good. With this view we have on the one hand, to determine precisely what it is that the common good requires; and on the other, to develop the temper of mind most likely to satisfy the requirement. The conditions requisite for these two objects are, a recognized Code of principles, an adequate Education, and a healthy direction of Public Opinion. For such conditions we must look principally to the philosophic body which Positivism proposes to establish at the apex of modern society. Doubtless this purely moral influence would not be sufficient of itself. Human frailty is such that Government, in the ordinary sense of the word, will have as before to repress by force the more palpable and more dangerous class of delinquencies. But this additional control, though necessary, will not fill so important a place as it did in the Middle Ages under the sway of Catholicism. Spiritual rewards and punishments will preponderate over temporal, in proportion as human development evokes a stronger sense of the ties which unite each with all, by the threefold bond of Feeling, Thought, and Action. [Inheritance favourable to its right employment]