Add to this that the benevolent affections find in themselves their own satisfaction, and that this satisfaction is inexhaustible. We tire of acting, said Comte, we even tire of thinking; we never tire of loving. The affections which it is sweetest to experience have also a tendency to occupy a larger and larger place in the heart of man. Moreover the question for them is not to take the place of egoism but to hold it more and more in check. If human nature evolves it is, as we know, without any essential transformation. The preponderance of selfishness in us is connected with organic reasons which are beyond our power and which will never change. To wish to uproot egoism is folly; _qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête_. Whatever efforts we make, we cannot permanently change the relations between our altruistic and egoistic instincts. The latter will always be the strongest. But we can regard this change as an ideal which we shall approach always without ever actually reaching it.[328] Finally, it is rare that our selfish instincts do not awaken some altruistic feeling as a counter-result. For example, the sexual instinct determines the development of maternal love. The desire to impose one’s will generates devotion to the common weal. Once the benevolent affection has arisen it persists and grows, and, after the selfish instinct has ceased to operate, it is sometimes sought after for its own sake. This fact, says Comte, greatly facilitates the “solution of the great human problem.”[329] This solution would however remain exceedingly uncertain and very precarious if its only guarantee were the whole of the subjective conditions which have just been analysed. For, in order that it may become established and last, this group of conditions itself requires what Comte calls an “objective basis.” The moral order within us must be united to the order of the world outside ourselves. It is true that, including the altruistic ones, our inclinations tend to become spontaneously developed. But it is also true that the external world tends constantly to modify them, through the medium of the impressions which it makes upon us. For the development of these inclinations is necessarily affected by the direction of our conceptions and by the success of our undertakings. Now both are ever becoming more subordinated to external order, since the end of science is to know this order, and that of the useful arts is to modify it. In this way, independently of ourselves, order tends in a twofold manner to regulate our instincts, “either by the excitement resulting from the notions which it procures, or by exercise corresponding to the efforts which it demands.”[330] In a word, the laws of the “_milieu_” in which we live act like a regulation upon our inclinations. Although an indirect one, the influence of these laws upon them becomes in the long run irresistible.