If the idea of the division of labour is not to be understood in a purely material and economical sense, the principle of _social cohesion_, which Comte calls government, cannot any more be founded upon a single conformity of interests. This would not suffice to maintain a human society. For such a society to subsist, there must be a certain “communion” of beliefs, and feelings of sympathy, which themselves depend in a certain measure upon these beliefs. Undoubtedly, society could not resist a deep and durable divergence of interests. But it would still less resist incompatibility of feelings, and especially of beliefs among its members. In a word, the basis of human society is intellectual before all things. And, as the first object of the mind of man is the interpretation of the world which surrounds him, the constitutive basis of human society is religion. The groups which are united in the same general conception of the universe are part of the same society. Hence, in the past, we see endless conflicts between the societies whose religions were different; hence, in the future, the unity of the human species will finally become entirely rallied around positive religion. If this is the case, government, which is by definition the highest and most general social function which represents the “spirit of the whole,” cannot be confined to temporal action. Its object is not only to assure the security of property and of persons. It must at the same time strengthen and preserve that “communion” of beliefs which is the basis of human society. It must guarantee the union of intellects, by establishing and teaching universally accepted principles. It must, in a word, be a “spiritual power.” In this capacity, in positive society, it will exercise an action at least equal to that enjoyed by the catholic clergy in the Christendom of the Middle Ages, as long as the Popes preserved its supreme direction. These consequences are legitimately drawn from Comte’s principles. His philosophy made social reorganisation dependent upon the reorganisation of morals, and the reorganisation of morals upon that of ideas. He was, therefore, in social statics, to seek for the foundation of society in the harmony of intellects and to define government by its spiritual as much as by its temporal function. III.