 While Comte holds that the driving force of human progress is intellectual development, he asserts that progress itself consists in moral improvement.  Comte refrains from claiming that humans are becoming subjectively happier (1853, v. 2, 232).  Instead, despite his rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics, Comte invokes a form of human flourishing akin to Aristotle's in the Nicomachean Ethics (1097b22–1098a17).  Comte claims that human excellence is exercising the uniquely human capacity for reason.  The human race is progressing because humans are becoming more rational and less emotional (v. 2, 299). 