“In the name of the Past and of the Future, the servants of Humanity—theoricians and practicians—come forward to claim as their due the general direction of this world, in order to construct at length the true Providence, moral, intellectual, and material; excluding once for all from political supremacy all the different servants of God—Catholic, Protestant, or Deist—as at once belated and a source of trouble.” With this uncompromising announcement, on Sunday, 19th October 1851, in the Palais Cardinal, after a summary of five hours, I ended my third Course of Philosophical Lectures on the General History of Humanity. Since that memorable conclusion, the publication of the second volume of my System of Positive Politics has lately manifested directly how appropriate is such a social destination to the philosophy which is able to suggest the most systematic theory of the human order.

We come forward then, avowedly, to deliver the West from an anarchical democracy and from a retrograde aristocracy, so to constitute, as far as practicable, a true Sociocracy, one combining wisely, in furtherance of the common regeneration, all the powers of man, each in every case brought to bear according to its nature. In fact, we Sociocrats are no more democrats than aristocrats. In our eyes the respectable mass of these two opposite parties represents, though on no system, on the one hand solidarity, and on the other continuity, between which Positivism establishes on a deep foundation a necessary subordination, the substitute at last for their deplorable antagonism.