I will not dwell here on another and perhaps only superficial resemblance between their theories: the fact that with Comte the necessary development proceeds according to the famous law of the three stages, while with Hegel a similar threefold rhythm is the result of the growth of mind as a dialectical process which proceeds from thesis to antithesis and synthesis. More important is the fact that for both men history leads to a predetermined end, that it can be interpreted teleologically as a succession of achieved purposes.
Their historical determinism--by which is meant, not merely that historical events are somehow determined, but that we are able to recognize why they were bound to take a particular course--necessarily implies a thorough fatalism: man cannot change the course of history. Even the outstanding individuals are, with Comte, merely ``instruments''17.42 or ``organs of a predestined movement,''17.43 or with Hegel Geschdftsfährer des Weltgeistes, managers of the World Spirit whom Reason cunningly uses for its own purposes.
There is no room for freedom in such a system: for Comte freedom is ``the rational submission to the domination of natural laws,''17.44 that is, of course, his natural laws of inevitable development; for Hegel it is the recognition of necessity.17.45 And since both are in possession of the secret of the ``definitive and permanent intellectual unity''17.46 to which evolution is tending according to Comte, or of the ``absolute truth'' in Hegel's sense, they both claim for themselves the right to impose a new orthodoxy. But I have to admit that in this as in many other respects the much abused Hegel is still infinitely more liberal than the ``scientific'' Comte. There are in Hegel no such fulminations against the unlimited liberty of conscience as we find throughout the work of Comte, and Hegel's attempt to use the machinery of the Prussian state to impose an official doctrine17.47 appears very tame compared with Comte's plan for a new ``religion of humanity'' and all his other thoroughly antiliberal schemes for regimentation which even his old admirer John Stuart Mill ultimately branded as ``liberticide.''17.48
I have not the time to show in any detail how these similar political attitudes are reflected in equally similar evaluations of different historical periods or of different institutions. I will merely mention, as particularly characteristic, that the two thinkers show the same dislike of Periclean Greece and of the Renaissance, and the same admiration for Frederick the Great.17.49