intellectual and moral life of mankind, is the essential basis of modern life. "Henceforth, I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends," is a word of Christ which scarcely began to be verified till the Reformation. And while its verification cannot mean the negation of that division of labour upon which society rests,--cannot mean that each one should _know_ and _judge_, any more than that each one should _do_, everything for himself,--it at least means that every power and authority should henceforth be, in the true sense of the word, spiritual, and rest for its main support upon the opinion of those who obey it. It is because he has not appreciated this truth that Comte so decidedly breaks with the democratic spirit of modern times, and seeks to set up an aristocracy in the State and a monarchy in the Church. Yet the spirit of the age is, after all, too strong for him, and while he refuses to the governed any regular and legitimate way of reacting upon the powers that govern them, he recognizes that the _ultima ratio_, the final remedy for misgovernment, lies in their irregular and illegitimate action. As regards the State, he declares that "the right of insurrection is the ultimate resource with which no society should allow itself to dispense."[40] And as regards the Church he says that if "the High Priest of Humanity, supported by the body of the clergy, should go wrong, then the only remedy left would be the refusal of co-operation, a remedy which can never fail, as the priesthood rests solely on conscience and opinion, and succumbs, therefore, to their adverse sentence." The civil government, in fact, can bring the spiritual power to a dead-lock, by "suspending its stipend, for in cases of serious error, popular subscriptions would not replace it, unless on the supposition of a fanaticism scarcely compatible with the Positive faith, where there is enthusiasm for the doctrines, rather than for the teachers."[41] Comte also desiderates among the proletariate a strong reactive influence of public opinion, by which the officers, both of Church and State, are to be kept to their work. But if this is desirable, why should the proletariate have no regular means of making their will felt? An "organic" theory of the constitution of society must surely provide every real force with a legitimate form of expression; if a social theory embodies the idea of revolution in it, it is self-condemned.