Comte makes the family the social unit. Man cannot live in isolation, but the family can survive by itself.[XIII-21] The striking characteristic of domestic organization is its establishment of the elementary idea of social perpetuity, by directly and irresistibly connecting the future with the past.[XIII-22] Family life will always be the school of social life, both for obedience and for command.[XIII-23] Comte failed to escape the logic of the patriarchal family life. He did credit women, however, with being superior to men in the spontaneous expansion of sympathy and sociality, although inferior in understanding and reason. The direction of social evolution is toward further development of the noblest dispositions and the most generous feelings, and away from the expression of the animal appetites and the material desires.[XIII-24] The trend is from the satisfaction of the selfish impulses to the habitual exercise of the social impulses. Happiness depends on the presence of new stimuli in one’s form of activity. A life of labor that is full of constructive stimuli is after all the fittest to develop personality. Comte was the friend of popular education.[XIII-25] He based his contention on the invariable homogeneity of the human mind. The minds of people of all races are potentially similar. All members of the race are capable of development to a common plane. In his _Positive Polity_, Comte made important changes in his thinking. This work was the product of his later years, and shows the effects of deprivation and struggle. It is inferior in quality to his earlier treatise on _Positive Philosophy_. It is a question, therefore, how far his later ideas should be permitted to supersede his thinking when he was in his prime. In his later thought-life he receded from his emphasis upon the intellectual nature and stressed the importance of the affections. He made affection the central point of life and developed the concept of love. We tire of thinking and even of acting, he asserted, but we never tire of loving.[XIII-26] The Comtean ideal became a disinterested love of mankind. Comte developed a religion of humanity. His contact with Christianity gave him the belief that it is chiefly ecclesiastical. He did not see in Christianity a social keynote. Hence, he attempted to create a purely social religion. He made mankind an end in itself; he failed to see that human society is probably an outcropping of universal purpose.