In the same way as the capitalists, the workers are public functionaries, and they perform a no less important service. Independently of their salary, they are deserving social gratitude. Our customs already admit of this feeling in the case of the liberal professions in which the salary does not dispense with gratitude. This feeling will have to be extended to all work which contributes to the common weal. The service of humanity, says Comte, is a gratuitous one. The salary, whatever it may be, only pays for the material part in every office. It serves to repair the consumption demanded by the organ and the function. As to the essence of service itself it allows of no other reward than the very satisfaction of performing it, and the gratitude which it arouses.[348] Consequently in a “truly organised” society (note this expression which M. de Bonald often uses), the vulgar distinction between public and private functionaries is destined to disappear. As, in an army, even the private soldier has his own dignity which comes from the close solidarity of the military organisation, and from this fact, that all share the same honour in it; so, when positive education has made evident to all the part played by each one in the social work, professions which are humblest to-day will become ennobled.[349] The industrial _régime_ of to-day, which shows us little else than the conflict of rival egoisms, is an anarchical _régime_, or, to put it better, an “absence of _régime_.” Modern society has not yet got its morals. It will form them gradually, in the same way as military society did. Military life, more than any other, is ruled by the predominating selfish inclinations. Nevertheless, as it could only be developed by the spirit of union, this condition alone sufficed for it to determine admirable devotion.[350] Why should it not be the same in industrial life which rests upon the peaceful and constructing instinct? Otherwise, if the present “anarchy” of morals were to last, modern society would remain below the level of the Middle Ages, which really was organised by its spiritual power. It would even be below the level of military societies. What would be the use of substituting monopoly to conquest, and a despotism based upon the right of the richest to the despotism resting upon the right of the strongest?[351] Everything then depends upon the common moral education, which itself depends upon the establishment of a spiritual power. The superiority of the positive doctrine lies in the fact that it has restored this power. The innovating schools all wish to secure normal education and regular work for the proletariat. But they want both at once, or work before education. Positivism wishes to organise education _first_.[352]