As being the only rallying point now possible for fixed convictions, without which life can have no definite or permanent character, Positivism is on this ground alone indispensable to all further development of modern Art. If the poet and his readers are alike devoid of such convictions, no idealization of life, whether personal, domestic, or social, is in any true sense possible. No emotions are fit subjects for Art unless they are felt deeply, and unless they come spontaneously to all. When society has no marked intellectual or moral feature, Art, which is its mirror, can have none either. And although the esthetic faculty is so innate in us that it never can remain inactive, yet its culture becomes in this case vague and objectless. The fact therefore that Positivism terminates the Revolution by initiating the movement of organic growth is of itself enough to prove its beneficial influence upon Art. Art, indeed, would profit by any method of reorganization, whatever its nature. But the principle on which Positivism proposes to reconstruct is peculiarly favourable to its growth. The opinions and the modes of life to which that principle conducts are precisely those which are most essential to esthetic development. A more esthetic system cannot be imagined than one which teaches that Feeling is the basis on which the unity of human nature rests; and which assigns as the grand object of man’s existence, progress in every direction, but especially moral progress. It may seem at first as if the tendency of the new philosophy was merely to make us more systematic. And systematization is assuredly indispensable; but the sole object of it is to increase our sympathy and our synergic activity by supplying that fixity of principle which alone can lead to energetic practice. By teaching that the highest happiness is to aid in the happiness of others, Positivism invites the poet to his noblest function, the culture of generous sympathies, a subject far more poetic than the passions of hatred and oppression which hitherto have been his ordinary theme. A system which regards such culture as the highest object cannot fail to incorporate Poetry as one of its essential elements, and to give to it a far higher position than it has ever held before. Science, although it be the source from which the Positive system emanates, will be restricted to its proper function of supplying the objective basis for human prevision; thus giving to Art and Industry, which must always be the principal objects of our attention, the foundation they require. Positivism, substituting in every subject the relative point of view for the absolute, regarding, that is, every subject in its relation to Humanity, would not prosecute the study of the True beyond what is required for the development of the Good and the Beautiful. Beyond this point, scientific culture is a useless expenditure of time, and a diversion from the great end for which Man and Society exist.