Like many of his contemporaries Auguste Comte thought himself singled out for the mission of formulating the principle of “social reorganisation.” But this is where he differs from them. Each of the reformers begins by proposing his own solution of the social problem, and all his efforts only tend to justify it. As this problem is the most urgent one in their eyes, it is also the only one which they have put directly to themselves. Now this method, according to Comte, is a bad one, and in following it they court certain failure. For a social problem is such that its solution cannot be obtained immediately; other problems, more theoretical in character, must be solved beforehand. It is therefore these which must first be dealt with, if we seek anything else than the lengthening of the history of political dreams and of social chimeras. “Institutions,” Comte says, “depend on morals, and morals, in their turn, depend on beliefs.” Every scheme of new institutions will therefore be useless so long as morals have not been “reorganised,” and so long as, to reach this end, a general system of opinions has not been founded, which are accepted by all minds as true, as was, for instance, the system of Catholic dogma in Europe in the Middle Ages. Therefore, either the5 social problem admits of no solution—and Comte does not stop at this pessimistic hypothesis,—or the solution sought for supposes that a new philosophy shall have been previously established. This is why Comte wishes to be at first only a philosopher. In 1824 he writes “I regard all discussions upon institutions as pure nonsense, until the spiritual reorganisation of society has been brought about, or at least is very far advanced.”1