virtue given by Paley; it is "doing good to man, in obedience to the will of God, with a view to eternal happiness." It is the pursuit of a selfish end by means in themselves unselfish, with the pleasures and pains of another world introduced as the link of connection; and it must therefore leave bare selfishness in its place, so soon as doubt is cast upon these supernatural rewards and punishments. Hence Comte is just neither to Catholicism nor to Protestantism; considering that the former was only _indirectly_ social, and that the latter is merely the first step in a scepticism which, taking away the fears and hopes of another world, must at the same time take away the last limit upon selfishness. And, just because he is unable to understand either the negative tendencies of the former, or the positive tendencies of the latter, phase of modern life, he has an imperfect appreciation of that social ideal to which both are leading, and which must combine in itself the true elements of both. As, however, it is the temptation of writers on social subjects to be least just to the tendencies of the time which preceded their own, and against whose errors they have immediately to contend, so we find that Comte is fairer towards Catholicism than he is towards Protestantism, or towards that individualism which grew out of Protestantism, and which he is pleased to call Metaphysics. The latter he sees solely on their destructive side, as successive stages in the modern movement of revolt, without appreciating the constructive elements involved in them. Hence also he is led, in his attitude towards this great movement, to all but identify himself with Catholic writers like De Maistre; and his own scheme of the future is essentially reactionary. The restoration of the spiritual power to its mediæval position was a natural proposal for one who saw in the Protestant revolt nothing more than an insurrectionary movement, which might clear the way for a new social construction, but which in itself was the negation of all government whatever.