Subordinate as the ideal must ever be to the real, Art will yet exercise a most salutary influence upon Science, as soon as we cease to study Science in an absolute spirit. In the very simplest phenomena, after reaching the degree of exactness which our wants require, there is always a certain margin of liberty for the imagination; and advantage may very well be taken of this to make our conceptions more beautiful and so far more useful. Still more available is this influence of the Beautiful on the True in the highest subjects, those which directly concern Humanity. Minute accuracy being here more difficult and at the same time less important, more room is left for esthetic considerations. In representing the great historical types, for instance, Art has its place as well as Science. A society which devotes all its powers to making every aspect of life as perfect as possible, will naturally give preference to that kind of intellectual culture which is of all others the best calculated to heighten our sense of perfection. [Predisposing influence of Education] The tendency of Positivism to favour these the most energetic of our intellectual faculties and the most closely related to our moral nature, is apparent throughout its educational system. The reader will have seen in the third chapter that in Positive education more importance is attached to Art than to Science, as the true theory of human development requires. Science intervenes only to put into systematic shape what Art, operating under the direct influence of affection, has spontaneously begun. As in the history of mankind esthetic development preceded scientific development, so it will be with the individual, whose education on the Positive method is but a reproduction of the education of the race. The only rational principle of our absurd classical system is its supposed tendency to encourage poetical training. The futility, however, of this profession is but too evident: the usual result of the system being to implant erroneous notions of all the fine arts, if not utter distaste for them. A striking illustration of its worthlessness is the idolatry with which for a whole century our French pedants regarded Boileau; a most skilful versifier, but of all our poets perhaps the least gifted with true poetic feeling. Positivist education will effect what classical education has attempted so imperfectly. It will familiarize the humblest working man or woman from childhood with all the beauties of the best poets; not those of his own nation merely, but of all the West. To secure the genuineness and efficiency of esthetic development, attention must first be given to the poets who depict our own modern society. Afterwards, as I have said, the young Positivist will be advised to complete his poetical course, by studying the poets who have idealized antiquity. But his education will not be limited to poetry, it will embrace the special arts of sound and form, by which