comte, auguste - the positive philosophy vol II

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their intense and continuous action, the general course of intellectual operations, which are, in most animal species, entirely subordinated to them. This great department of the theory of sensations is even more obscure and unadvanced than the foregoing. The only positive notion which is fairly established in regard to it is that the nervous system is indispensable to both kinds of sensibility.

Once again we see how the extreme imperfection of doctrine here is owing to the imperfection of method; and that again, as before, to the inadequate preparation of the inquirers to whom the study belongs. It is a great thing, however, to have withdrawn the subject from the control of the metaphysicians; and some labours of contemporary physiologists authorize us to hope that the true spirit of the inquiry is at length entered into; and that the study of the sensations will be directed, as it ought to be. to develop the radical accordance between anatomical and physiological analysis.

Having reviewed the two orders of animal functions, we must consider the complementary part of the theory of animality;—the ideas about the mode of action which are common to the phenomena of irritability and sensibility. It is true, these ideas belong also to intellectual and moral phenomena; but we must review them here, to complete our delineation of the chief aspects of the study of animal life.

The considerations about such mode of action naturally divide themselves into two classes: the one relating to the function of either motion or sensation, separately; and the other to the association of the two functions. The first may relate to either the mode or the degree of the animal phenomenon. Following this order, the first theory that presents itself is that of the intermittence of action, and consequently, that of habit, which results from it. Bichat was the first who pointed out the intermittent character of every animal faculty, in contrast with the continuousness of vegetative phenomena. The double movement of absorption and exhalation which constitutes life could not be suspended for a moment without determining the tendency to disorganization: whereas, every act of irritability or sensibility is necessarily intermittent, as no contraction or sensation can be conceived of as indefinitely prolonged; so that continuity would imply as great a contradiction in animal life as interruption in the organic. All the progress made, during the present century, it physiological anatomy, has contributed to the perfecting of this theory of intermittence. Rationality understood, it applies immediately to a very extensive and important class of animal phenomena; that is, to those

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which belong to the different degrees of sleep. The state of sleep thus consists of the simultaneous suspension, for a certain time, of the principal actions of irritability and sensibility. It is as complete as the organization of the superior animals admits when it suspends all motions and sensations but such as are indispensable to the organic life,—their activity being also remarkably diminished. The phenomenon admits of great variety of degrees, from simple somnolence to the torpor of hybernating animals. But this theory of sleep, so well instituted by Bichat, is still merely initiated, and presents many fundamental difficulties, when we consider the chief modifications of such a state, even the organic conditions of which are very imperfectly known, except the stagnation of the venous blood in the brain, which appears to be generally an indispensable preliminary to all extended and durable lethargy. If is easy to conceive how the prolonged activity of the animal functions in a waking state may, by the law of intermittence, occasion a proportional suspension but it is not so, easy to see why the suspension should be total when the activity has been only partial. Yet we see how profound is the sleep, intellectual and muscular, induced by fatigue of the muscles alone in men who, while awake, have often very little exercise to their sensibility, interior, or even exterior. We know still less of incomplete sleep; especially when only a part of the intellectual or affective turbans, or of the locomotive apparatus is torpid, whence arise dreams and various kinds of somnambulism. Yet such a state has certainly its own general laws, as well as the waking state. Some experiments, not duly attended to perhaps justify the idea that, in animals, in which the cerebral life is much less varied, the nature of dreams becomes, to a certain point, susceptible of being directed at the pleasure of the observer, by the aid of external impressions produced, during sleep, upon the senses whose action is involuntary; and especially smell. And in the case of Man, there is no thoughtful physician who, in certain diseases, does not take into the account the habitual character of the patient’s dreams, in order to perfect the diagnosis of maladies in which the nervous system is especially implicated: and this supposes that the state is subject to determinate laws, though they may be unknown. But, however imperfect the theory of sleep may still be, in these essential respects, it is fairly constituted upon a positive basis of its own; for, looked at as a whole, it is explained, according to the scientific acceptation of the term, by its radical identity with the phenomena of partial repose offered by all the elementary acts of the animal life. When the theory of intermittence is

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perfected, we shall, I imagine, adopt Gall’s view of connecting it with the sympathy which characterizes all the organs of animal life, by regarding the two parts of the symmetrical apparatus as alternately active and passive, so that their function is never simultaneous: and this, as much in regard to the external senses as the intellectual organs. All this, however, deserves a fresh and thorough investigation.

The theory of Habit is a sort of necessary appendix to that of intermittence; and, like it, due to Bichat. A continuous phenomenon would be, in fact, capable of persistence, in virtue of the law of inertia: but intermittent phenomena alone can give rise to habits properly so called: that is, can tend to reproduce themselves spontaneously through the influence of a preliminary repetition, sufficiently prolonged at suitable intervals. The importance of this animal property is now universally acknowledged among able inquirers, who see in it one of the chief bases of the gradual perfectibility cf animals, and especially of Man. Through this it is that vital phenomena may, in some sort, participate in the admirable regularity of those of the inorganic world, by becoming, like them, periodical, notwithstanding their greater complexity. Hence also results the transformations,—optional up to a certain point of inveteracy of habit, and inevitable beyond that point,—of voluntary acts into involuntary tendencies. But the study of habit is no further advanced than that of intermittence, in regard to its analysis: for we have paid more attention hitherto to the influence of habits once contracted than to their origin, with regard to which scarcely any scientific doctrine exists. What is letdown lies in the department of natural history, and not in that of biology. Perhaps it may be found, in the course of scientific study, that we have been too hasty in calling this an animal property, though the animal structure may be more susceptible of it. In fact, there is no doubt that inorganic apparatus admits of a more easy reproduction of the same acts after a sufficient regular and prolonged reiteration, as I had occasion to observe in regard to the phenomenon of sound: and this is essentially the character of animal habit. According to this view, which I commend to the attention of biologists, and which, if true, would constitute the most general point of view on this subject, the law of habit may be scientifically attached to the law of inertia, as geometers understand it in the positive theory of motion and equilibrium.

In examining the phenomena common to irritability and sensibility under the aspect of their activity, physiologists have to examine the two extreme terms,—exaggerated action, and insufficient action. in order to

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determine the intermediate normal degree for the study of intermediate cases can never be successfully undertaken till the extreme cases which comprehend then; have been first examined.

The need of exercising the faculties is certain the most general and important of all those that belong to the animal life: we may even say that it comprehends them all, if we exclude what relates merely to the organic life. The existence of an animal organ is enough to awaken the need immediately. We shall see, in the next volume, that this consideration is one of the chief bases that social physics derives from individual physiology. Unhappily this study is still very imperfect with regard to most of the animal functions, and to all the three degrees of their activity. To it we must refer the analysis of all the varied phenomena of pleasure and pain, physical and moral. The case of defect has been even less studied than that of excess; and yet its scientific examination is certainly not less important, on account of the theory of ennui, the consideration of which is so prominent in social physics,—not only in connection with an advanced state of civilization but even in the roughest periods, in which. as we shall see hereafter, ennui is one of the chief moving springs of social evolution. As for the intermediate degree, which characterizes health, welfare, and finally happiness, it cannot be well treated till the extremes are better understood. The only positive principle yet established in this part of physiology is that which prescribes that we should not contemplate this normal degree in an absolute manner, but in subordination to the intrinsic energy of the corresponding faculties; as popular good sense has already admitted, however difficult it may be practically to conform to the precept in social matters, from the unreflecting tendency of every man to erect himself into a necessary type of the whole species.

We have now only to notice, further, the third order of considerations; the study of the association of the animal functions.

This great subject should be divided into two parts, relating to the sympathies, to which Bichat has sufficiently drawn the attention of physiologists, and the synergies, as Barthez has called them, which are at present too much neglected. The difference between these two sorts of vital association corresponds to that between the normal and the pathological states: for there is synergy whenever two organs concur simultaneously in the regular accomplishment of any function; whereas sympathy supposes a certain perturbation, momentary or permanent, partial or general which has to be stopped by the intervention of an organ not

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primarily affected. These two modes of physiological association are proper to the animal life, any appearance to the contrary being due to the influence of animal over organic action. The study is fairly established on a rational basis; the physiologists of our time seeming to be all agreed as to the nervous system being the necessary agent of all sympathy; and this is enough for the foundation of a positive theory. Beyond this, we have only disjointed though numerous facts. The study of the synergies, though more simple and better circumscribed, does not present, as yet, a more satisfactory scientific character, either as to the mutual association of the different motions, or as to the different modes of sensibility; or as to the more general and complex association between the phenomena of sensibility and those of irritability. And yet this great subject leads directly to the most important theory that physiology can finally present,—that of the fundamental unity of thy animal organism, as a necessary result of a harmony between its various chief functions. Here alone it is that taking each elementary faculty in its normal state, we call find the sound theory of the Ego, so absurdly perverted at present by the vain dreams of the metaphysicians: for the general sense of the I is certainly determined by the equilibrium of the faculties, the disturbance of which impairs that consciousness so profoundly in many diseases.

Chapter VI

Intellectual And Moral, or Cerebral Functions

The remaining portion of biological philosophy is that which relates to the study of the affective and intellectual faculties, which leads us over from individual physiology to Social Physics, as vegetative physiology does from the inorganic to the organic philosophy.

While Descartes was rendering to the world the glorious service of instituting a complete system of positive philosophy, the reformer, with all his bold energy, was unable to raise himself so far above his age as to give its complete logical extension to his own theory by comprehending in it the part of physiology that relates to intellectual and moral phenomena. After having instituted a vast mechanical hypothesis upon the fundamental theory of the most simple and universal phenomena, he extended in succession the same philosophical spirit to the different elementary notions relating to the inorganic world; and finally subordinated to it the study of the chief physical functions of the animal organism. But, when he arrived at the functions of the affections and the

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intellect, he stopped abruptly, and expressly constituted from them a special study, as an appurtenance of the metaphysico-theological philosophy, to which he thus endeavoured to give a kind of new life, after having wrought far more successfully in sapping its scientific foundations. We have an unquestionable evidence of the state of his mind in his celebrated paradox about the intelligence and instincts of animals. He called brutes automata, rather than allow the application of the old philosophy to them. Being unable to pursue this method with Man, he delivered him over expressly to the domain of metaphysics and theology. It is difficult to see how he could have done otherwise, in the then existing state of knowledge: and we owe to his strange hypothesis which the physiologists went to work to confute, the clearing away of the partition which he set up between the study of animals and that of Man, and consequently, the entire elimination among the higher order of investigators, of theological and metaphysical philosophy. What the first contradictory constitution of the modern philosophy was, we may see in the great work of Malebranche, who was the chief interpreter of Descartes, and who shows how his philosophy continued to apply to the most complex parts of the intellectual system the same methods which had been shown to be necessarily futile with regard to the simplest subjects. It is necessary to indicate this state of things because it has remained essentially unaltered during the last two centuries, notwithstanding the vast progress of positive science, which has all the while been gradually preparing for its inevitable transformation. The school of Boerhaave left Descartes’s division of subjects as they found it and if they, the successors of Descartes in physiology, abandoned this department of it to the metaphysical method, it can be no wonder that intellectual and moral phenomena remained, till this century, entirely excluded from the great scientific movement originated and guided by the impulse of Descartes. The growing action of the positive spirit has been, during the whole succeeding interval, merely critical,—attacking the inefficacy of metaphysical studies,—exhibiting the perpetual reconciliation of the naturalists on points of genuine doctrine, in contrast to the incessant disputes of various metaphysicians, arguing still, as from Plato downwards, about the very elements of their pretended science: this criticism itself relating only to results, and still offering no objection to the supremacy of metaphysical philosophy, in the study of Man, in his intellectual and moral aspects. It was not till our own time that modern science, with the illustrious Gall for its organ, drove the old philosophy

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from this last portion of its domain, and passed on in the inevitable course from the critical to the organic state, striving in its turn to treat in its own way the general theory of the highest vital functions. However imperfect the first attempts, the thing is done. Subjected for half a century to the most decisive tests, this new doctrine has clearly manifested all the indications which can guarantee the indestructible vitality of scientific conceptions. Neither enmity nor irrational advocacy has hindered the continuous spread, in all parts of the scientific world, of the new system of investigation of intellectual and moral man. All the signs of the progressive success of a happy philosophical revolution are present in this case.

The positive theory of the affective and intellectual functions is therefore settled, irreversibly, to be this:—it consists in the experimental and rational study of the phenomena of interior sensibility proper to the cerebral ganglions, apart from all immediate external apparatus. These phenomena are the most complex and the most special of all belonging to physiology; and therefore they have naturally been the last to attain to a positive analysis; to say nothing of their relation to social considerations, which must be an impediment in the way of their study. This study could not precede the principal scientific conceptions of the organic life, or the first notions of the animal life; so that Gall must follow Bichat: and our surprise would be that he followed him so soon, if the maturity of his task did not explain it sufficiently. The grounds of my provisional separation of this part of physiology from the province of animal life generally are—the eminent differences between this order of phenomena and those that have gone before,—their more direct and striking importance,—and, above all, the greater imperfection of our present study of them. This new body of doctrine, thus erected into a third section of physiology, will assume its true place within the boundaries of the second when we obtain a distincter knowledge of organic, and a more philosophical conception of animal physiology. We must bear in mind what the proper arrangement should be,—this third department differing much less from the second than the second differs from the first.

We need not stop to draw out any parallel or contrast between phrenology and psychology Gall has fully and clearly exposed the powerlessness of metaphysical methods for the study of intellectual and moral phenomena: and in the present state of the human mind, all discussion on this subject is superfluous. The great philosophical cause is tried and

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judged; and the metaphysicians have passed from a state of domination to one of protestation,—in the learned world at least, where their opposition would obtain no attention but for the inconvenience of their still impeding the progress of popular reason. The triumph of the positive method is so decided that it is needless to devote time and effort to any demonstration, except in the way of instruction: but, in order to characterize, by a striking contrast, the true general spirit of phrenological physiology, it may be useful here to analyse very briefly the radical vices of the pretended physiological method, considered merely in regard to what it has in common in the principal existing schools;—in those called the French, the German, and (the least consistent and also the least absurd of the three) the Scotch school:—that is, as far as we can talk of schools in a philosophy which, by its nature, must engender as many incompatible opinions as it has adepts gifted with any degree of imagination. We may, moreover, refer confidently to these sects for the mutual refutation of their most essential points of difference.

As for their fundamental principle of interior observation, it would certainly be superfluous to add anything to what I have already said about the absurdity of the supposition of a man seeing himself think. It was well remarked by M. Broussais, on this point, that such a method, if possible, would extremely restrict the study of the understanding, by necessarily limiting it to the case of adult and healthy Man, without any hope of illustrating this difficult doctrine by any comparison of different ages, or consideration of pathological states, which yet are unanimously recognized as indispensable auxiliaries in the simplest researches about Man. But, further, we must be also struck by the resolute interdict which is laid upon all intellectual and moral study of animals, from whom the psychologists can hardly be expecting any interior observation. It seems rather strange that the philosophers who have so attenuated this immense subject should be those who are for ever reproaching their adversaries with a want of comprehensiveness and elevation. The case of animals is the rock on which all psychological theories have split, since the naturalists have compelled the metaphysicians to part with the singular expedient imagined by Descartes, and to admit that animals, in the higher parts of the scale at least, manifest most of our affective, and even intellectual faculties, with mere differences of degree, a fact which no one at this day ventures to deny, and which is enough of itself to demonstrate the absurdity of these idle conceptions.

Recurring to the first ideas of philosophical common sense, it is at

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once evident that no function can be studied but with relation to the organ that fulfils it, or to the phenomena of its fulfilment: and, in the second place, that the affective functions, and yet more the intellectual, exhibit in the latter respect this particular characteristic,—that they cannot be observed during their operation, but only in their results,—more or less immediate, and more or less durable. There are then only two ways of studying such an order of functions; either determining, with all attainable precision, the various organic conditions on which they de- pend,—which is the chief object of phrenological physiology; or in directly observing the series of intellectual and moral acts,—which belongs rather to natural history, properly so called: these two inseparable aspects of one subject being always so conceived as to throw light on each other. Thus regarded, this great study is seen to be indissolubly connected on the one hand with the whole of the foregoing parts of natural philosophy, and especially with the fundamental doctrines of biology; and, on the other hand, with the whole of history,—of animals as well as of man and of humanity. But when, by the pretended psychological method, the consideration of both the agent and the act is discarded altogether, what material can remain but an unintelligible conflict of words, in which merely nominal entities are substituted for real phenomena? The most difficult study of all is thus set up in a state of isolation, without any one point of support in the most simple and perfect sciences, over which it is yet proposed to give it a majestic sovereignty: and in this all psychologists agree, however extreme may be their differences on other points.

About of psychology or ideology, enough has been said. As to the doctrine, the first glance shows a radical fault in it, common to all sects,— a false estimate of the general relations between the affective and the intellectual faculties. However various may be the theories about the preponderance of the latter, all metaphysicians assert that preponderance by making these faculties their starting-point. The intellect is almost exclusively the subject of their speculations, and the affections have been almost entirely neglected; and, moreover, always subordinated to the understanding. Now, such a conception represents precisely the reverse of the reality, not only for animals, but also for Man: for daily experience shows that the affections, the propensities, the passions, are the great springs of human life; and that, so far from resulting from intelligence, their spontaneous and independent impulse is indispensable to the first awakening and continuous development of the vari-

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ous intellectual faculties, by assigning to them a permanent end, without which—to say nothing of the vagueness of their general direction— they would remain dormant in the majority of men. It is even but too certain that the least noble and most animal propensities are habitually the most energetic, and therefore the most influential. The whole of human nature is thus very unfaithfully represented by these futile systems, which, if noticing the affective faculties at all, have vaguely connected them with one single principle, sympathy, and, above all, self-conscious- ness, always supposed to be directed by the intellect. Thus it is that, contrary to evidence, Man has been represented as essentially a reasoning being, continually carrying on, unconsciously, a multitude of imperceptible calculations, with scarcely any spontaneity of action, from infancy upwards. This false conception has doubtless been supported by a consideration worthy of all respect,—that it is by the intellect that Man is modified and improved; but science requires, before all things, the reality of any views, independently of their desirableness; and it is always this reality which is the basis of genuine utility. Without denying the secondary influence of such a view, we can show that two purely philosophical causes, quite unconnected with any idea of application, and inherent in the nature of the method, have led the metaphysicians of all sects to this hypothesis of the supremacy of the intellect. The first is the radical separation which it was thought necessary to make between brutes and man, and which would have been effaced at once by the admission of the preponderance of the affective over the intellectual faculties, and the second was the necessity that the metaphysicians found themselves under, of preserving the unity of what they called the I, that it might correspond with the unity of the soul in obedience to the requisitions of the theological philosophy, of which metaphysics is, as we must ever bear in mind, the final transformation. But the positive philosophers, who approach the question with the simple aim of ascertaining the true state of things, and reproducing it with all positive accuracy in their theories, have perceived that, according to universal experience, human nature is so far from being single that it is eminently multiple; that is, usually induced in various directions by distinct and independent powers, among which equilibrium is established with extreme difficulty when, as usually happens in civilized life, no one of them is, in itself, sufficiently marked to acquire spontaneously any considerable preponderance over the rest. Thus, the famous theory of the I is essentially without a scientific object, since it is destined to represent a purely fic-