As the distinction between the true and the false subsists, although good is no longer conceived as absolute and immutable, so the distinction between good and evil subsists, although good is no longer conceived as a supreme theological or metaphysical reality, but as a “progress” towards an end indefinitely approached but never reached. The evolution of morality corresponds to that of knowledge. Both go through successive phases, of which each one implies the preceding ones, and preserves while modifying them. There are then “goods” as there are “truths,” provisional and temporary. Positive philosophy can thus give a reason for moral ideas, sometimes so poor and even so horrible, upon which humanity formerly lived. It does not judge the ethics of the past as compared with the ideals of to-day. It gives full justice to the theological and philosophical ethics which it replaces, and of which it proclaims itself the legitimate heir. Finally it claims neither to be moral nor original in morality. Already positive science is “a prolongation of public reason.” In its nature it does not differ from simple commonsense, to which it owes its essential ideas: only in science these ideas assume a more systematic definition, and an abstract character which allows us to make the most thorough use of them. In the same way systematic morality is a prolongation of spontaneous morality.[326] It simply disengages the principles which, as a matter of fact, have directed the moral development of humanity. Does it follow from this that it only has, so to speak, an interest for curiosity, and that moral progress takes place of itself as rapidly and as completely as possible, even if philosophical reflection is not applied to it? But Comte has already replied to this form of inept sophism. What is true of the evolution of humanity in general is true of the moral evolution included in it. This evolution allows of crises, of diseases, of stoppages in development, etc. It is then not at all a matter of indifference that systematic morality should bring out strongly the end towards which man’s efforts must tend, according to his nature and to the whole of the conditions in which he is placed. By throwing light upon its advance it helps progress as effectually as it is in man’s power to help it. III. In its positive form the enunciation of the moral problem is as much as possible to make the sympathetic instincts predominate over the selfish impulses, “sociability over personality.”[327]