The facility with which we manipulate signs hides this truth from us: it is none the less certain that these signs are united to our thoughts in a far less intimate and less spontaneous manner than the feelings and even the images. The positive theory further allows us, not indeed to solve, but to adjourn the question of a universal language. Indeed are we concerned with a purely scientific language? Mathematical analysis in part fulfils this _desideratum_. It allows us to express the laws of the simplest phenomena by symbols which are at everyone’s disposal. But if it is a question of a complete language, destined to be in common use among all men, who does not see that this conception is incompatible with the present state of humanity? How could we establish a universal language, while allowing the prevalence of “divergent beliefs and of hostile customs.”[225] The unification of tongues will arise from the unification of peoples. When the latter has been realised, under the action of positive philosophy, the other will follow as a necessary consequence. Moreover, from the present time, a universal language exists! It is Art, “the only form of language which is universally understood at once in the whole of our species.”[226] Truly this universal language has its dialects. Comte’s remark is none the less strikingly accurate. The masterpieces of Greek sculpture, Rembrandt’s paintings, Beethoven’s symphonies are accessible to millions of human beings who have never known a word of Greek, of Dutch, or of German. To teach all children music and drawing, as Comte requires in his positivist plan of education, is not to make them participate in the luxury of “accomplishments.” It is placing within their reach works which appeal to the whole of humanity; it is giving them a stronger sense of the solidarity which is the essential characteristic of human society; finally it is teaching them the universal language of which they possess the instinctive rudiments, and whence have sprung the very languages which to-day appear as frigid systems of symbols and graphic representations. Is it not fair to allow them the enjoyment of a patrimony as ancient perhaps as humanity herself? Somewhere, Comte compares language to property.[227] Like it, language has facilitated acquisitions and preserved social wealth. But it has an advantage over property, that of admitting of equal possession by all at the same time. Art presents this advantage no less than language. Works of art are the common property of the whole of humanity and no one should be deprived of that inheritance. FOOTNOTES: [204] Cours, III. 661. [205] Pol. pos., I, 602. [206] Pol. Pos., I. 638-9. [207] Cours, I. 81. [208] Cours, IV, 498-500. [209] Cours, III, 624-5. [210] Pol. pos. II, 229-30. [211] Pol. pos. I, 613-4. [212] Cours, V. 30. [213] Pol. pos. II, 348-9. [214] Cours, V, 100-1. [215] Cours, III, 563. [216] Pol. Pos. II, 248-52. [217] Pol. Pos. I, 722-3.