The idea of right has gone through an analogous transformation. In the same way as the idea of cause, it was theological for a long time, and then metaphysical. In antiquity it was closely allied to religion. In modern times the rights of peoples, and even the rights of individuals, are conceived according to the ancient standard of the rights of princes and masters. But, having become established by triumphing over the rights of princes, the rights of peoples and individuals ultimately rest, as they did, upon a supernatural and mystical basis. The rights which every citizen claims are the change in small coin of the absolute right formerly possessed by the sovereign who represented the whole nation. Having become metaphysical in the XVIII. century, the idea of absolute, intangible, indefeasible right, which attaches to the human person, has been most useful for the decomposition of the old _régime_. But, once this work has been accomplished, it cannot be made use of in the work of reorganisation any more than the other metaphysical principles. Positive philosophy admits nothing absolute. Everything in society is at once subject to conditions, and places conditions upon all things. Nothing is unconditional; and sociology teaches that we must go not from the individual to society, but from society to the individual. In consequence, here again we must give up endeavouring to transform a critical principle into an organic one. Undoubtedly rights will remain, as the constant connections between phenomena subsist. But we shall cease to base these rights upon a metaphysical conception of human nature, in the same way as we have ceased to refer the connections between phenomena to metaphysical entities called causes. Instead of making individual duties consist in the respect of universal rights, we shall conceive inversely the rights of each one as the result of the duties of others towards him. In a word, duty is established before right. This principle is of the highest importance in Comte’s eyes. In it he sees an expression and a proof of the predominance of the positive over the metaphysical spirit, and of the subordination of politics to ethics. He likes to say that “the consideration of duty is bound up with the spirit of the whole.” On the contrary, the consideration of right, if it be conceived as absolute, leads to a denial of all government and of all social organisation.