comte, auguste - the positive philosophy vol III

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valuable suggestions; as, for instance, those conjectures of Albertus Magnus which planted the germs of sound cerebral physiology. As for the agreement of the new impulse with the general state of minds, it is proved by the unremitting eagerness which drew crowds of auditors to the lessons of the great European universities, during the third phase of the Middle Age period,—it being certain that the development of natural philosophic had quite as great a share in the interest as the metaphysical controversies of the time. In those times the different sciences were too restricted and too little explored to admit of the speciality of study which, after having been a great benefit, has become a great embarrassment. Under a system of scholastic entities, connected together by the general entity called Nature, an intellectual harmony, scientific and logical, existed which could find no parallel but under the old polytheism, and which can exist again only when our rudimentary positive philosophy shall have become a true organization. The artificial union of theology and science, by a metaphysical bond, could not last; but it had its advantages, as all such efforts have; and they showed themselves especially in the encyclopedical direction of abstract speculation. The monk Roger Bacon, for instance, wrote a treatise containing so vast a variety of views of different orders of phenomena, that most of our scientific men, so scornful about the Middle Ages, are certainly incapable, not only of writing, but even of reading it.

This scientific arrangement, precarious and imperfect, but the best that the times admitted, was effected chiefly through two general conceptions which served as a basis for astrology and alchemy. Nothing can be more erroneous than the superficial popular classification of these with the occult sciences, as they are called, whereby retrograde superstitions are confounded with progressive conceptions. Magic is a relic of polytheistic, or even fetich superstition; whereas, astrology and alchemy are merely a too bold extension of the positive spirit, before the theological philosophy was got rid of. That the two classes have been confounded is owing to religious vindictiveness, and is a natural consequence of the antipathy between science and theology.—No doubt, mediaeval astrology exhibits strong traces of theological influence in its supposition that the universe was made for Man,—a notion which gave way only on the discovery of the earth’s motion: but, apart from that, it is evident that the doctrine rested upon the subordination of all phenomena to invariable natural laws. Its original title of judicial astrology conveyed this. No scientific analysis existed at that time which could

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assign to astronomical phenomena their true position in general physics, and there was therefore no principle which could restrain the ideal exaggeration attributed to celestial influences. In such a state of things, it was certainly right that human reason, resting upon the only phenomena whose laws were ascertained, should endeavour to refer to them all other phenomena even human and social. This was the rational scientific course; and its universality and persistence till the seventeenth century prove its agreement with the corresponding situation. If we look at its action upon the general education of the human mind, we shall find that it was most serviceable in disseminating everywhere a first notion of the subordination of all phenomena to invariable laws, by which rational prevision became possible. The general conception of alchemy could not but be less philosophical, from the more complex and less advanced state of the corresponding studies, which were then barely proposed; but its primary rationality is unquestionable. We have seen, in our serves of chemistry, that phenomena of composition and decomposition could not be even perceived while, as under the old philosophy, but one principle was admitted, and that speculations of that order were necessarily based on Aristotle’s doctrine of four elements. Now, these elements were common to almost all substances, real and artificial; so that, while that doctrine prevailed, the famous transmutation of metals could not appear more chimerical than the transformations daily effected by modern chemists among vegetable and animal substances, through the identity of their constituent principles. The absurdity of the bold hopes of alchemy could not appear till the discoveries of less than a century ago furnished the demonstration. Alchemy rendered the same service with astrology in spreading the conception of the subjection of all phenomena to invariable natural laws: for, whatever may have been the influence of the theological spirit on the hopes of the alchemists, their perseverance shows their conviction of this truth. The vague expectation of some sort of miracle might help to sustain their courage under perpetual disappointment: but it must have been some conviction of the permanence of natural laws which induced them to pursue their object by other means than prayer and fasting, and religious expedients of that kind. I hope this brief notice may conduce to a tardy rendering of justice to these two great series of labours, which contributed so largely and so long to the development of human reason, notwithstanding all the errors involved in the process. The successors of the astrologers and alchemists not only found science instituted by their perseverance, but

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the more difficult task achieved,—the establishment of the principle of invariable natural laws. To influence less active and profound than theirs could have effected the popular admission of this truth; and we are reaping the fruits of it while we forget the hands that planted. The moral influence of these great provisional conceptions was not less favourable than the intellectual; for astrology a high idea of human wisdom from its power of prevision under natural laws: and alchemy roused a noble sense of human power, before depressed by theological notions, by inspiring bold hopes; from our intervention in phenomena which admitted of modification.

Such was the origin of modern scientific procuress, which I have described up to the time when the industrial evolution called upon it for aid in daily labour, and the aesthetic evolution prepared the popular mind for science by rousing the speculative activity of Man. From this point, having examined the period which is beset with injurious prejudices, we can proceed rapidly to review the progressive course of science during, the last five centuries.

Happily, it was already too closely connected with social interests to be endangered by the struggles between popes and filings. It was not rendered secure by such great practical applications as now connect it with broad industrial interests: nor could it depend, like Art, on personal sympathies easily excited; for the scientific faculties of Man are weak; and the leaders of the time were quite satisfied with theological, or at least with metaphysical explanations. Royal lovers of science, like Charlemagne and Frederick the Great, are rare; while princely patrons of Art, like Francis I and Louis XIV, are much more common: and thus it was only as astrologers and alchemists that scientific men could obtain any welcome; the resources of the universities being then at the command of the metaphysical spirit, from which the scientific was beginning to separate itself. The footing which science had obtained, as astrology and alchemy, was all the more necessary because Catholicism, in its decline, was now manifesting its antipathy to the scientific expansion which it had at first assisted, but the irreligious influence of which it now began to fear. A long array of examples shows us what disastrous oppression science must have undergone if, at that period, astrological and alchemical conceptions had not secured protection to its professors among the clergy themselves.

As for the speculative development, it could not at that time occasion any remarkable progress in knowledge already existing. Chemistry

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must long remain in the preparatory stage of collecting material; and this process went on rapidly. It might seem that astronomy, and geometry in connection with it, were in the way of improvement; but, in astronomy, epi-cycles were still resorted to, to sustain the old hypothesis of circular and uniform motion; and geometry was stopped short at special methods and researches, by the imperfection of algebra, and was waiting for Descartes: so that the chief improvement consisted in the simultaneous extension of nascent algebra and of trigonometry, completed in time by the use of tangents, while in astronomy, calculations were beginning to be preferred to graphical procedures; and observations, angular and especially horary, became more precise. This was the time when astrology afforded the strongest stimulus to scientific investigation, by proposing the most extended and decisive aim, with an instrumentality which served as a criterion of celestial theories,—that of determining the binary, ternary, and quaternary aspects, which could only be done by diligent study of the heavenly bodies. The moveable feasts of the Catholic church were for a time useful in encouraging this kind of observation; but the influence of astrology was much more powerful and durable. The only radical accession to natural philosophy at this period was from the rise of Anatomy, which had now, for the first time, the advantage of the dissection of the human frame. There had before been some inadequate exploration of brutes; but religious prejudice had prevented the examination of the human body. Though the advance of anatomy could not rival that of chemistry, it was yet of great importance, because it completed the nascent system of modern science, which thus began to extend from the study of the universe to that of Man, with molecular physics for the link between there. Socially, it was of importance as connecting the physicians, as a body, with the speculative class; they having risen from their very low ancient position to an influence nearly rivalling that of the priesthood. The union between biological science and medical art, which we justly complain of now, was necessary then, to sustain anatomical studies in the absence of established theory: and the advantages yielded by astrological and alchemical conceptions were paralleled in this science by the strong belief in a Panacea, which involved the two suppositions of the invariableness of physical hews, and the power of Man to modify his own organism,— suppositions which could not but disclose the radical incompatibility between the scientific and the religious spirit.

The second phase of the period was, in science as in art, the most

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eminently progressive, on account especially of the movement which, from Copernicus to Newton, laid the foundation of the true system of astronomical knowledge, which presently became the type of the whole of natural philosophy. As in the other cases, too, governments began to afford systematic encouragement, partly from the general advance of speculation, and partly from the practical value of science, when mathematical and chemical doctrines were in demand for the purposes of a new art of war and an expanding industry. This systematic encouragement was however more tardy than in the case of the fine arts; and it was only towards the close of this phase that scientific academies were founded in England and France, the influence of which was chiefly felt in the next phase. They were of great use, however, in sustaining science through the crisis of its conflict with the ancient philosophy, from which it was now becoming finally disengaged. It is clear from the nature of the case that science could be protected by the temporal power, which was not concerned in the serious abstract animosities of the spiritual power, whether theological or metaphysical, which was now making its assaults on science; and thus science had even perhaps a more direct interest than art and industry in the establishment of a temporal diet atorship, under one or the other of its forms. If the spiritual power had obtained the ascendancy, science would have suffered more eminently than any other interest under its retrograde influence, and social progression would have been thereby found impracticable.

On the same grounds as in the former cases, it appears that the monarchical form of rule was more favourable to science than the aristocratic. Science is not usually attractive to the great: it is less so than art; and it requires a central authority, alike for its support and for its restraint from spreading out into too much speciality. Abstract speculation has held a freer and higher course wider royal rule shall under aristocratic influence, which has been too apt to subordinate scientific research to practical aims. In the one case, science becomes more favourably incorporated with the social polity, and spreads more certainly among all classes, to the great benefit of general education: and in the other case, there is likely to be a more spontaneous pursuit of science, and a more original treatment of it. The evils in that case, moreover, were more evident in the third than in the second phase, as we shall presently see. Before Protestantism showed its anti-scientific tendencies, it exercised a favourable influence through its principle of free inquiry, which established a state of half-independence strongly condu-

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cive to the development of natural philosophy, whose great astronomical discoveries were at this time made among Protestant nations. Wherever the Catholic polity was the most decisively established, the scientific development was retarded;—in Spain, conspicuously, notwithstanding the promising beginning made at a former period.

The great speculative movement, carried on when the time was ripe by a few men of genius, exhibited two modes of progression, very closely connected; the scientific or positive, consisting of mathematical and astronomical discoveries; and the philosophical and usually negative, relating to the revolt of the scientific spirit against the thraldom of the old philosophy. The rallying point of this last, in which Germany, Italy, France, and England bore a noble part, was Kepler’s investigation, which, prepared for by the Copernican discovery, and the labours of Tycho Brahe, constitutes the true system of celestial geometry; whilst, giving birth to celestial mechanics, it divas connected with Newton’s final discovery, through Galileo’s mathematical theory of motion, necessarily followed by the achievements of Huyghens. Between these two series, whose succession is direct, the historical method naturally interposes the great mathematical revolution of Descartes, which issued, towards the end of this second phase, in the sublime analytical discovery of Leibnitz, without which Newton’s achievement could not have been, as it was, the active principle of the final development of celestial mechanics in the next phase. The filiation of these vast discoveries is too evident to need illustration, especially after the character assigned to them separately in the first part of this world.

While engaged in these great operations the scientific spirit had to sustain a perpetual conflict with the dominant philosophy,—the metaphysical no less than the theological; for the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler, and even Tycho Brahe’s, with regard to comets, were as distasteful to the one as the other. The antagonism became evident as early as the sixteenth century,—the fate of Ramus proving that metaphysical hatred is no less fatal shall theological. We have before seen why Galileo’s discovery must be the ground of the chief discussion; and the odious persecution which it occasioned has ineffaceably impressed human memory with the date of the first direct collision between modern science and ancient philosophy. This was indeed the epoch when the invariableness of physical laws was seen to be incompatible with theological conceptions, which were now the only hindrance to the reception of a truth confirmed by long and unanimous experience. In

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this connection therefore we must historically refer to the contemporary labours of Bacon, and yet more of Descartes to exhibit the essential characteristics of the positive as opposed to the theologico-metaphysi- cal spirit. I must however connect with the scientific movement the bold conception of Descartes in regard to the general mechanism of the universe. Descartes probably did not deceive himself about its value or duration, which scarcely extended to two generations; and the existing state of the human mind rendered some such hypothetical venture necessary to the introduction of a sound system of celestial mechanics, such as Huyghens was then silently preparing, by following up the labours of Galileo. We have seen, while treating of the theory of hypothesis, why this mode of transition is the necessary way of passing from inaccessible questions and absolute explanations into the region of positive know ledge. We see too evident traces of this method still existing in every department but that of astronomy, to be surprised that it once existed there also.

To these great mathematical and astronomical acts of progression, we must add the truly creative works of Galileo on barology, by which natural philosophy was substantially extended. Many fortunate discoveries of a secondary nature followed these, and ulterior creations in acoustics and optics. In those days nothing but the most exceptional events excited astonishment; and yet those were the days in which, wordily out and disclosing the destination of modern science to regenerate the humblest elementary notions, Galileo revealed the unsuspected laws of the commonest phenomena, the study of which, in immediate connection with geometry and astronomy, turns out to be nothing less than a disclosure of the department of Physics. The new science assumed its place between astronomy and chemistry; and a new class of inquirers arose, whose special function was to develop the resource of experimentation. If we consider that the geometers and astronomers, who had hitherto been one and the same, now separated, in consequence of the rapid extension of the two sciences, we shall perceive that the organization of scientific labour, especially with regard to inorganic philosophy, which was almost everything at that time, was very much like what it is now. As for the other great departments, it is clear that Chemistry, and yet more Anatomy, were in the preparatory state of accumulating materi- als,—important as were the new facts which they amassed, and especially Harvey’s discoveries about generation and the circulation of the blood, which imparted so strong a stimulus to physiological observa-

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tion, though the time was not come for incorporating them with any true biological doctrine.

It is especially noteworthy that this was the time when the positive spirit began to manifest its true social character and its popular influence. The growing disposition of modern society to grant its confidence to doctrines founded on demonstration at the expense of ancient beliefs appears, towards the end of this period, in the universal admission of the double motion of the earth, a century before the papacy solemnly tolerated it. Thus was a new faith growing up amidst the disintegration of the old, partly from the verification of scientific prevision, and partly from the agreement of competent judges; the two in combination being enough for the satisfaction of minds which, from any cause, were inaccessible to direct demonstration. The growth of such habits of conviction proved that the provisional anarchy on social and moral subjects arose from no disposition to perpetual disorder, but merely from the defect of positive doctrine which could command assent. The action of science was certainly more effectual than that of Art in occasioning a wide social agreement: for Art, though operating, more strongly and immediately, is restricted by differences of language and manners; whereas, the general and abstract character of scientific conceptions admits of unlimited intellectual communion. At a time when national divergences were still very great, and when the Catholic bond was dissolved, the universities threw open their doors to foreigners, so as to mark the new speculative class as European, and to afford the best testimony to the cosmopolitan character of the scientific spirit. The influence of that spirit on general education began to appear, though the organized scholastic system was perpetuated, as it is to this day, under some accessory modifications which do not affect its spirit. The mathematical order of studies was gaining upon the literary, as it has done ever since; and as it would have done yet more if the official course of modification had followed the general direction of manners and opinions, instead of being bound to keep up, at all cost, the ancient system of education.

During the third phase, the encouragement of Science, as of Art and Industry, became an express duty of government, the neglect of which would have called forth general censure: and at the same time the increasing implication of natural philosophy with military and industrial processes extended the social influence of science, both by the creation of special schools, and by the formation of the intermediate class whose

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function was to connect theory and practice. The men of science could not yet pretend to the private independence of poets and artists, whose works were of so much more popular a character; but their small number, and their closer co-operation for the public benefit, conferred an almost equal importance on their social existence. Their position was most favourable in the countries which had kept clear of Protestantism, where the old Catholic spirit of eoutemplation and of generality wits directly united with the boldness and independence of the revolutionary movement. Thus it was in France that the full benefit of royal protection was found, and that science flourished most. In England, the men of science were dependent on private protection, while the exorbitant popular interest in industrial affairs discredited all speculative discovery which did not admit of a direct practical application: and at the same time, the anti-scientific tendencies of Protestantism began to show themselves, not only through the incorporation of Protestantism with the government, in which form they manifested the repugnance of theology to the spread of the positive spirit, but in the mournful individual case of Newton himself, whose old age was darkened by absurd theological vagaries. The exclusive nationality of England was mischievous to science by its active adoption of none but indigenous discoveries. This appears even in regard to the mathematical sciences, universal as they are; for there was a repugnance in England to the common introduction of analytical geometry, which is still too unfamiliar in the English schools, and an analogous prejudice against the employment of purely infinitesimal notations,—so justly preferred everywhere else: and this irrational exclusiveness is all the more repulsive from its contrast with the exaggerated admiration of France for the genius of Newton, for whose sake Descartes was somewhat ungratefully set aside, during the reaction against his Vortex doctrine in favour of the law of gravitation. His merits are even now insufficiently acknowledged, though his genius has never been rivalled but by Newton, I,eitnitz, and Lagrange.

The scientific progress during the third phase followed two lines in the mathematical province, which remains the chief. The first relates to the Newtonian principle, and the gradual construction of celestial mechanics, whence were derived the valorous theories of rational mechanics. The other arose out of the Cartesian revolution, and, by the analytical stimulus given by Leibnitz, occasioned the development of mathematical analysis, and a great generalization and co-ordination of all geometrical and mechanical conceptions. In the first direction, Maclaurin

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and Clairaut gave us, in relation to the form of the planets, the general theory of the equilibrium of fluids, while Daniel Bernouilli constructed the theory of the tides. In relation to the precession of the equinoxes, D’Alembert and Euler completed the dynamics of solids by forming the difficult theory of the movement of rotation, while D’Alembert founded the analytical system of hydrodynamics, before suggested by Daniel Bernouilli: and Lagrange and Laplace followed with their theory of perturbations. On the other line, Euler was extending mathematical analysis, and regulating its intervention in geometry and mechanics;—an evermemorable succession of abstract speculations, in which analysis discloses its vast fecundity, without degenerating, as it has done since, into a misleading verbiage. It was a curious retribution for the narrow nationality of England that with the exception of Maclaurin, her men of science could take only a secondary part in the systematic elaboration of the Newtonian theory, which was developed and co-ordinated almost exclusively in France, Germany, and lastly, Italy, represented by Lagrange. In Physics, which had just produced barology and optics, there was now a scientific institution of thermology and electrology, which connect it immediately with chemistry. In thermology, Black made his luminous discovery of changes of state; and Franklin popularized electrology, and Coulomb gave it a certain degree of rationality. Pure astronomy had nearly merged in celestial geometry; so that, among many illustrious observers, we have only to notice one great name in this department, Bradley, whose researches on the aberration of light were certainly the finest contribution to this part of science since Kepler’s day.

The chief originality of this phase was owing to the creation of real Chemistry, which underwent a provisional modification very like, in its effects, that of the vortices in relation to celestial mechanics. In this case it was Stahl’s conception that fulfilled the provisional office. preceded by Boerhaave’s too mechanical attempt, and furthering the more rational course of Bergmann and then of Scheele. Then ensued the experiments of Priestly and Cavendish, preparing the way for the decisive action of Bavoisier, who raised Chemistry to the rank of a true science, intermediate, both as to the method and doctrine, between the inorganic and organic philosophy. There was now a preparatory movement even in regard to Biology. There were desultory attempts made under all the three divisions of taxonomy, anatomy, and physiology,—uncombined by any common principle, but disclosing the spirit of each. Linnaeus