[2] The importance which Auguste Comte attributed to sociology is well known, but in his horror of metaphysics the founder of positivism excluded from his science everything really universal and cosmic that it contained, in order to reduce it to limits exclusively human. Messrs. Spencer and Lilienfeld, Schaeffle and Espinas, improving on the sociology of Comte, have extended social laws and have shown that every living organism is an embryonic society, and, _vice versa_, that every society is an organism. A contemporary philosopher goes still further and attributes to sociology a certain metaphysical significance. M. Alfred Fouillée says: “Since biology and sociology are so closely related, may not the laws that are common to them be expected to suggest still more universal laws of nature and thought? Is the entire universe anything more than a vast society in process of formation, a vast system of conscious and consciously striving atoms which is working itself out, and little by little falling into shape? The laws which govern the grouping of individual atoms in the body are, no doubt, at bottom the same as those that govern the grouping of individuals in society; and the very atoms themselves, which are supposed to be indivisible, are, it may be, diminutive societies. If so, social science, the crown of human sciences, may some day give us, in its ultimate formula, the secret of universal life.... It is conceivable that the universal type of existence of the world may be found in sociology—that the universe may come to be conceived as a society in process of formation; miscarrying here and succeeding there, in its effort to transmute the reign of mechanics into a reign of justice, and to substitute fraternity for antagonism. If so, the essential and immanent power at the heart of beings, always ready to manifest itself as soon as circumstances give it access to the light of consciousness, might be expressed by the single word, sociability.” (Alfred Fouillée, _La Science sociale contemporaine_, 2d edition, introduction and conclusion.) M. Fouillée has not applied this theory to religion; he has noted its suggestiveness in the domain of metaphysics and of ethics simply; we believe, and we shall endeavour to show, that it is not less suggestive in the domain of religion. This book was finished, and in part printed, when there appeared in the _Revue philosophique_ M. Lesbazeilles’ interesting article on _Les bases psychologiques de la religion_.