 The first principle has two sides. The negative side expresses Comte’s lack of interest in the concept of State. The positive side argues we must consider how social life works in order to understand why there must be a government. Surprisingly, Comte’s starting point is the same as Hayek’s, namely the existence of a spontaneous order. The title of the fiftieth lesson of the Course reads: Social statics, or theory of spontaneous order of human society. But, for positivism, spontaneous order covers all natural phenomena and is neither perfect nor immutable. In general, human action aims to substitute natural order with an artificial one more in line with our desires. Government action is only a special case, applied to the spontaneous order intrinsic to human society, which is determined by division of labor. Increasing specialization, which accompanies division of labor, threatens the cohesion of society even if it is the sine qua non condition of progress. That is why a government is needed: its function is ‘to check the disorganizing and to foster the converging tendencies’ of the agents (1852, 205; E. 277).