Unfortunately this pure and lofty morality has linked its destinies with those of Catholicism. Now, Catholicism has been unable to keep pace with the progress of the intellect and of the positive method. At first it gave proof of “admirable liberality.” Later it became indifferent, and then hostile, to scientific progress. Finally it showed itself to be “retrograde,” when it had to struggle for its own existence. Catholic dogmas underwent a decomposition the necessary stages of which have been already described[324] as it was bound to happen, and as a matter of fact did happen, the morality itself came to be affected by the attacks which were loosening the foundations of dogma. The work of criticism, after having successively ruined all the foundations of the old intellectual system, was subsequently to attack those of ethics. So we see the family, marriage, heredity, “assailed by senseless sects.”[325] To be sure, private morality depends upon other conditions than those of unanimous opinions immovably established. Natural feeling speaks in it. Nevertheless it is not beyond the reach of “corrosive discussion,” when opinions of this kind are lacking, but public morality is all the more threatened. Here, without naming them, but clearly pointing them out, Comte attacks the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. “While dreaming about reorganisation of society they only developed the most dangerous anarchy.” Saint-Simonism endeavoured to ruin the family which the revolutionary storm, “with a few exceptions,” had respected. Fourierism denies the most general and the commonest principle of individual morality: the subordination of the passion to reason. Must we then go back, as the retrograde school would have us do, and in order to save morality base it once again upon revealed religion? But the remedy, if it be not worse than the disease, is at least powerless to cure it. How could the religious dogmas be used as a support for morality when they cannot sustain themselves? What, in the future, can we expect from beliefs which have not withstood the progress of reason? Far from being able to furnish a solid basis for morality to-day, religious beliefs tend more and more to become doubly detrimental to it. On the one hand they are opposed to the human mind placing it on a more solid foundation; and, on the other hand, they are not active enough, even among those who believe in them, to exert a marked influence upon conduct. The clearest result of these dogmas is to inspire the greater number of men who are still imbued with them, with an instinctive and insurmountable hatred of those who have shaken them off. II.