If, therefore, a society be a prey to chronic disorders, which political remedies appear powerless to cure, one has every right to believe that the deep-rooted evil has its origin in intellectual disorganisation. All other troubles are merely symptoms. This, according to Comte, is precisely the state of contemporary society. It has neither “intellectual” nor “spiritual” government, and does not even feel the want of it. The minds of men recognise no common discipline. Not a principle subsists which negative and “corrosive” criticism has not attacked. The individual erects himself as a judge of all things--philosophy, ethics, politics, religion. The opinion which he adopts most frequently without any special qualification for so doing, and according to his passions, always appears to him to have as much right to be admitted as those of other men. He claims to be amenable to no one for his thoughts. And this scattering (later on Comte will say insurrection) of intelligences is what he calls a state of _anarchy_. But, we may say, does not this state represent the ordinary condition of human societies? Perhaps the “organic” state only appears occasionally and as an exception? Such a supposition is groundless. For, if such were the case societies could not subsist, and above all could not develop. We must admit, on the contrary, that periods of intellectual anarchy form the exception, and that in a normal state of society men are united by their unanimous submission to a sufficiently large body of principles and beliefs. History confirms this view. The immobility of civilisation in the Far-East is especially due to the intellectual stability which distinguishes it from our own condition. The societies of Antiquity (Grecian and Roman), rested upon a conception of man, of citizenship and of the world, which, as a matter of fact, scarcely varied during the whole period of their existence. Lastly, in the Middle-ages, Christianity had constituted an admirable spiritual authority. The organisation of Catholicism, “a masterpiece of political sagacity,” had established a body of beliefs which all minds accepted with complacent docility. It is the decomposition of this great system which has produced the majority of the evils with which we are now struggling. Mental anarchy is therefore truly an abnormal state, a pathological fact, what Comte will call later on the “western disease,” a mortal disease if it is to be prolonged. Either modern society must perish, or minds must regain their stable equilibrium by submission to common principles.