comte, auguste - the positive philosophy vol III

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followed Jussieu in the first department; Daubenton was making comparative analyses in the second, to be rationalized by the general views of Vicq-d’Azyr: and Holler and Spallanzani were accumulating material, and carrying on experiments in the third. Buffon, with his synthetic and concrete genius, at the same time pointed out the chief encyclopedical relations of the science of living bodies, and its moral and social importance, which were well illustrated also by Leroy and Bonnet. Nothing definite could be done in this science, however, while the animal hierarchy was as yet hardly recognized in the dimmest way, and the elementary idea of the vital state was still thoroughly confused and uncertain: but it is necessary to point out the first really scientific elaboration of organic philosophy.

On the whole, this epoch may, I think, be regarded as the best age of scientific speciality, embodied in academies, whose members had not yet lost sight of the fundamental conception of Bacon and Descartes, which considered special analysis to be simply a necessary preparation for general synthesis,—always kept in view by the scientific men of this period, however remote its realization might be. The dispersive tendency of labours of detail was as yet restrained by the impulse which induced scientific men, like artists, to aid the great philosophical movement, the anti-theological tendency of which was thoroughly congenial with the scientific instinct; and this adhesion of science to the movement gave it a most serviceable intellectual consistency. The negative philosophy, by its character of generality, repaid provisionally to science advantage received from it: and the scientific men, like the artists, found in it, besides a social destination which incorporated them with the movement, a kind of temporary substitute for systematic direction. It is the undue protraction of this mental condition in our day which explains the deplorable aversion of both scientific men and artists to all general ideas.

The philosophical progression has always depended on the scientific, from the point of their divergence;—that point being the division in the Greek schools between natural philosophy, which had become metaphysical, and moral philosophy which remained theological. as we have seen. There was, as I have also shown, a provisional fusion between the two philosophies during the scholastic period of the Middle Ages; and this union remained throughout the first phase of the period we are now surveying, so that we have only the two subsequent phases to review, during which the philosophical movement was more and more separated from the scientific. It is necessary to revert briefly to the latter

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point of departure, in order to ascertain the true nature of the transitory philosophy which, for the three last centuries, science has been destroying.

Scholasticism had realized the social triumph of the spirit, by disguising its organic impotence through its incorporation with the Catholic constitution, the political properties of which rendered an ample equivalent for the intellectual assistance which it provisionally received from the metaphysical philosophy. When this philosophy extended from the inorganic world to Man, implanting its entities in his moral and social nature, monotheistic faith began to be irretrievably perverted by admitting the alliance of reason. No longer resting on a natural universal obedience to a direct and permanent revelation, the faith subjected itself to the protection of demonstrations, which must necessarily admit of permanent controversy, and even of refutation; such as those which, in strange incoherence, were already named Natural Theology. This historical title is a good exponent of the temporary fusion of reason and faith, which could end in nothing but the absorption of faith by reason: it represents the contradictory dualism established between the old notion of God and the new entity of Nature, which were the respective centres of the theological and metaphysical philosophies. The antagonism of the two conceptions was reconciled for the moment by the intervention of the positive instinct, which offered the hypothesis of a God creating invariable laws, which he bound himself never to alter, and confided to Nature for special and continuous application;—a fiction which is in close analogy with that of politicians about constitutional royalty. This supposition bears a characteristic metaphysical impress; and it made Nature the main object of contemplation and interest, reserving only a barren veneration for the majestic inertia of the supreme divinity, and therefore placing him at a remote distance from thought, which would naturally seer; him less and less. Popular good sense never accepted this doctrine, which neutralized all theological ideas of arbitrary will and permanent action, and it is therefore no wonder that popular instinct urged the charge of atheism against so many learned assertors of Natural theology. At the present time, the case is so inverted, that that which was denounced by public reason as impiety is now considered to be religion par excellence; and it is laboriously cultivated by demonstrations which I have shown to be one of the chief causes of the mental destruction of monotheism. We thus see how the scholastic compromise brought about only a thoroughly contradictory situation, which could

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have no stability, though it was provisionally necessary to scientific progress. The special discussion which best illustrates this general tendency is the controversy of the Realists and the Nominalists, which shows the superiority of mediaeval metaphysics, with its infusion of the positive spirit, over the ancient form of it. This debate was, in fact, under its apparently idle names, the main struggle between the positive spirit and the metaphysical; and its stages mark the gain of the scientific philosophy upon the metaphysical, in the form of the growing triumph of Nominalism over Realism; for it was the very character of metaphysics to personify abstractions which could have a merely nominal existence outside of our intelligence. The Greek schools had certainly never proposed a controversy so lofty, nor one so decisive, either to break up the system of entities or to suggest the relative nature of true philosophy. However this may be, it is clear that almost immediately after their combined victory over the monotheistic spirit, and therefore over the last remains of the religious system, the positive and the metaphysical spirit began that mutual divergence which could end only in the complete ascendancy of the one over the other. The conflict could not take place immediately; for the metaphysical spirit was busy in supporting the temporal against the spiritual power, while the positive spirit was engaged in amassing astrological and alchemical observations. But when, during the second phase, the metaphysical spirit was enthroned by Protestantism, at the same time that the positive was making discoveries which were as incompatible with the metaphysical as with the theological system, the state of things was changed. The story of the great astronomical movement of the sixteenth century, and many mournful instances of the fate of scientific men, prove how metaphysics had succeeded, under different forms, to the domination hitherto exercised by theology. But the logical evolution, properly so called, is the one which can be least effectually restrained, aided as it ever is by those who assume to include it, and undervalued in its scope till it has proved that scope; and the struggle issued therefore, in the early part of the seventeenth century, in the irreversible decline of the system of entities, which was abrogated in regard to the general phenomena of the external world, and virtually therefore in regard to all the rest.

All civilized Europe, except Spain, took part in this vast controversy, which was to decide the future of the human race. Germany had brought on the crisis, in the preceding century, by the Protestant convulsion, and by the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe,

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and Kepler: but she was now engrossed by political struggles. But England, France, and Italy each furnished a great warrior in this noble strife,—Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo who will for ever be regarded as the founders of the positive philosophy, because each was aware of its true character, understood its conditions, and foresaw its final supremacy. Galileo’s labours, which were purely scientific, wrought in this movement by freely extending science, and not by abstract philosophical precepts. The works of Bacon and Descartes were alike aimed against the old philosophy, and destined to form the new; and their differences are in remarkable agreement with the nature of each philosopher and with their respective environment. Both showed the necessity of abandoning the old mental system; both set forth the genuine attributes of the new system; and both declared the provisional character of the special analysis which they prescribed as the path of approach to the general synthesis which must hereafter be attained. Agreeing thus far, all else proved the extreme unlikeness between these great philosophers, occasioned by organization, education, and position. Bacon had more natural activity of mind, but less rationality, and in every way less eminence; his education was vague and desultory, and he grew up in an environment essentially practical, in which speculation was subordinated to its application; so that he gave only an imperfect representation of the scientific spirit, which, in his teachings, oscillates between empiricism and metaphysics, and especially with regard to the external world, which is the immutable basis of natural philosophy. Descartes, on the other hand, was as great a geometer as philosopher, and derived positivism from its true source, thus being able to lay down its essential conditions with firmness and precision. The discourse in which he simply narrates his own evolution is an unconscious description of the course of the human mind in general, and it will still be read with profit when Bacon’s diffuse elaboration will retain only an historical interest. But, in another aspect, the superiority of Bacon is no less striking,—in the study of Man and Society. Descartes constituted the inorganic philosophy as well as the age allowed, and abandoned the moral and social field to the old methods: whereas Bacon aimed chiefly at the renovation of this second half of the philosophical system, which he foresaw to be the ultimate means of regenerating the human race altogether. These differences must be attributed partly to the diversity of their genius, and partly to the opportunity afforded to Descartes by his position of better estimating the revolutionary state of modern Europe. It must be observed that the tendency

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of the Cartesian school has been to correct the imperfections of its head, whose metaphysics did not rise in honour with his corpuscular theory, whereas, is England and elsewhere, the Baconian school has applied itself to restrict the noble social spirit of its founder, and exaggerate its abstract incouveuiences, sinking his conception of observation into a kind of sterile empiricism, such as is always within the reach of patient mediocrity. Thus when our men of science desire to give a philosophical appearance to their narrow specialities, they appeal to Bacon, and not to Descartes, whose scientific character they depreciate; and yet the precepts of Bacon are quite as hostile as the conceptions of Descartes to pursuits like theirs, which are completely opposed to the common aim of the two great philosophers. Important as were these two schemes, they were not sufficient, even when united, to constitute the positive philosophy. That philosophy had as yet scarcely touched Physics, and had not reached Chemistry; and its extension to moral and social conceptions, which was Bacon’s noble aim, was impossible before the advent of biological science. The point of time was remarkable therefore as introducing a new philosophy, and vaguely disclosing the conditions of its development; and all that the two great philosophers proposed was a provisional method, which might render positive all the elements of speculation, in preparation for an ultimate system, which they knew to be unattainable without such preparation. The transitional state of the human mind must therefore endure till Chemistry and Biology should have taken their place among the sciences. Till that should happen, there was really nothing to be done but to modify once more the original separation, decreed by Aristotle and Plato, between natural and moral philosophy, by bringing each of them forward one stage, and thus showing their difference to be more marked than ever; for there is wider difference when natural philosophy is in the positive stage, and moral philosophy in the metaphysical stage, than when one was in the metaphysical and the other in the theological Descartes saw the state of things more clearly and deeply than Bacon, and he applied himself to the extension of positivity to the utmost limit that could be then ventured, even including in it the intellectual and moral study of animals, under his famous hypothesis of the automatism of brutes, thus leasing to metaphysics only the domain which could not be emancipated from it in those days—the study of Man, moral and social. In doing this. he made useless efforts to invest the last functions of the old philosophy with more rationality than really belonged to an expiring doctrine; and there-

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fore the second part of his work was less adapted to his time, and less successful than the first. Bacon’s object being, not the distribution of the sciences, but the regeneration of moral find social science, he did not fall under the same liability; but the impossibility of rendering moral philosophy positive at that time compelled his school to recognize the old division, modified by Descartes, provisionally, though not doctrinally. Any attempt at a premature union could merely have set back everything, under metaphysical domination as we see by the attempts of Malebranche and Leibnitz, who laboured to set up a consistent sys- tem,—the one with his monads and the other with his pre-established harmony. Neither of them succeeded, more or less, in effacing the distinction between natural and moral philosophy; and though we non see the really contradictory nature of that division, He also perceive how its temporary admission must have been absolutely necessary, since the genius of a Leibnitz tailed to abolish it.

We thus see the first result of the philosophical stimulus imparted by Bacon and Descartes. The positive spirit obtained complete possession of natural philosophy, while the metaphysical spirit was left for awhile in possession of moral philosophy; and thus the reign of entities, which had been universal, was fatally encroached upon. In the intervening period it appears to me that the pursuit of specialities in study has broken up the metaphysical regime, thoroughly and filially. The best minds have, with a few exceptions, turned to science; and philosophy, released from the grave, preparatory study, which was once thought necessary, and floating between science and theology, has fallen into the hands of men of letters, who have made use of it for the demolition of the old system, thus concealing for awhile its organm impotence. It cannot be necessary to treat of the varieties of a philosophy which has no adaptation to the needs of the times. It is notorious that it contemplates the abstract action of the human understanding, in one case through the external conditions, and in another through the internal; and that thus two systems or two modes, have arisen, equally vicious, because alike separating the two indispensable considerations of the medium and the organism, the combination of which furnishes the only sound basis of biological speculation of any kind. It appears to me that the two errors represent the Catholic and Protestant aspects of the philosophy of Europe: the Catholic metaphysics being more critical, and therefore more tending to the positive, and to the consideration of the external world, whereas, the Protestant metaphysics, incorporated with the governments,

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and tending to the theological state, must naturally take its stand in Man, and proceed thence to the study of the universe. In England however the school of Hobbes formed a memorable exception to this. This transitory school represented by Locke, undertook, under the Baconian instigation, a direct regeneration of moral and social study, and began by a radical criticism, which was therefore of an Aristotelian character, and must be developed and propagated in another direction.

Before I go on to the next phase, I ought to point out that some preparation for the renovation of political philosophy was already made by Hobbes and Bossuet. Machiavel had before made some able partial attempts to connect the explanation of certain political phenomena with purely natural causes, though he spoiled his work by a thoroughly vicious estimate of modern society, which he could never sufficiently distinguish from the ancient. Hobbes’s famous view of primitive war and the supposed reign of force has been usually misunderstood; but, impartially considered, it will be granted to be a striking primitive view, statical and dynamical, of the preponderance of temporal influences among permanent social conditions, taken as a whole; and also, of the necessarily martial condition of primitive society. This was a sound view introduced in the midst of fantastic hypotheses about the state of nature and the social contract; and it was valuable accordingly Bossuet’s share in the work of preparation is more obvious and less disputed I have before pointed out the value of his historical survey, where, for the first time, political phenomena are regarded as subject to invariable laws, which, by rational treatment, may be made to determine each other. The theological principle which prevails in this work impairs this very enlightened conception, but cannot altogether disguise its importance, nor intercept its beneficial influence on the historical studies of the ensuing period. It was the last great inspiration of Catholicism which, as we have seen, was much more adapted than the negative philosophy to form an estimate of human progress, which indeed the negative philosophy could not justly appreciate at all. The nature of Bossuet’s great service appears in its destination; which was to propose systematic history as the necessary basis of political education.

The third phase of the period was, in this case again, simply a prolongation of the second. The Scotch school appears here favourably circumstanced in regard to Morals, by the speculative independence which it enjoyed, both as being Presbyterian in the midst of Anglicanism, and as having no sympathy of principle with either side of the contro-

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versy on external and internal conditions of mental development. The value of this school was solely in the merit of its individual thinkers, who had no systematic connection with each other. In an intellectual view, Hume, one of the chiefs of the illustrious group, treated of the theory of causation with great originality and boldness, but with the imperfection inseparable from a sundering of philosophy from science. He here proposed the true character of positive conceptions; and notwithstanding its serious defects, this work appears to me to be the only great step that the human mind has taken towards understanding the relative character of sound philosophy, since the great controversy between the Realists and the Nominalists. In this connection I must point out again the able survey, by Adam Smith, of the history of the sciences, and of astronomy particularly, in which perhaps approaches even nearer than his friend Hume to the true sense of rational positivity. It gratifies me to record here my special gratitude to these two eminent thinkers, whose influence was very useful to my early philosophical education, before I discovered the great law which necessarily guided it from that time forward.

Political philosophy made a great advance during the last century, inasmuch as social development became more and more the express object of historical treatment. The process was detective, of course, from the absence of all theory of evolution, by which alone any scientific dignity can be given to works which, without it, remain essentially literary. One class of students were at world whose labours have obtained too little credit,—the scholars who employed themselves during the second phase as well as the third in elucidating separate points of history by antiquarian and literary research. These labours are, in regard to positive sociology, analogous to those which at a former time accumulated provisional material for the future formation of chemistry and biology; and it is only by means of the lights thus afforded that sociology can begin to rise out of that preparatory state through which every science has passed on its way to its station in systematic positivism.

The one great conception which belongs to this third phase is that of human progress, as an express view. It could only arise from the scientific evolution as a whole, for the idea of true progression could no otherwise be so clearly conveyed as by the succession of terms through an unquestionable filiation. Pascal, who first expressed the philosophical conception of human progress in the maxim which I quoted before, certainly derived it from the general history of the mathematical sci-

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ences. The innovation however could not produce any effect while only one kind of evolution was studied, for two are required for generalization on the simplest subjects of speculation; and then a third case is indispensable to confirm the prior comparison. The first condition was fulfilled through the evident conformity between scientific and industrial progression; but no third case was ready: for the spirit of the times caused a strange misjudgment of the merit of the aesthetic movement, which seas supposed to be retrograde when it was much otherwise. From a comparison of modern with ancient Art. the discussion extended to other social aspects, and the result was that, though the original question remained doubtful, the idea of human progress, sustained be the universal instinct of modern civilization, was established as systematically as it could be before the clearing up of the apparent anomaly of the Middle Ages,—a difficulty which I may hope to have now removed.

Political Economy afforded an indirect aid towards the close of the period. by fixing general attention on the industrial life of modern society, and by marking out the temporal differences between our civilization and that of thc ancients, which again favoured a political understanding of the intermediate social state, according to the logical rule that a mean condition can be judged of only from a comparison of the extremes. We have seen the result in the enterprises of Turgot, Condorcet, and Montesquieu, whose merits and imperfections I pointed out in the first chapter of this volume.

At the close of our review of philosophical progress, from its origin in the Middle Ages to the beginning of the great French crisis, we cannot but see that, in the aggregate, made up as it is of’ a mass of remains, with a few fare and desultory materials of value, it is a merely preliminary affair, which can issue only in a direct institution of human regeneration. Though this conclusion has resulted from each of the several kinds of p regress that I have treated of, its vast importance compels me to educe it again from their general approximation, by pointing out the chasms which remain to be filled, and which are common to and characteristic of them all.

In each kind of progression, pursued without a sense of its connection with the whole, an instinct of speciality must prevail, exalting the spirit of detail, at the expense of a more general view. This partial and desultory development was obviously the only one possible at a time when all systematic views related to a system which must pass away, and when it was only in such special pursuit that the new forces could

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manifest their character and tendency. Such a course, however in editable, not but produce the anti-social dispositions proper to those preparatory progressions, out of which the elements of future combinations could arise only very gradually,—not having even yet attained any real association. This dispersive empiricism did not come to an end when its destination was fulfilled; and it is now the great obstacle in the way of final regeneration. It insists that neither industry, nor art, nor science, nor philosophy itself requires or admits of any systematic organization in our modern social state; so that their respective progress must be left, even more than ever, to special instinct in each case. Now, the most complete exposure of the radical vice of this conception will be found in the proof that each of these four kinds of progress has been more and more impeded by the increase of the primitive empiricism.

With regard to Industry, first, by which modern society is consti- tuted,—there is no case in which there has been stronger opposition to organization,—the doctrines of political economy having been constructed under metaphysical and negative influences.—We have seen that industrial progression was at first concentrated in the towns; and thus the main element, the agricultural, was left so far behind that it adhered more than all others to the ancient organization. We have even seen that, where feudal repression was insufficient, the opposite course of town and country industry often occasioned direct collision. This is the first case in which we recognize the need of a systematic action, bringing into a homogeneous state the elements which must thus be hereafter combined.—Again, if we observe only town industry, we see that, owing to the spread of individualism and speciality, the moral development is far in the rear of the material, though we should suppose that the more Man acquires new means of action, the more moral control is requisite at the same time, that he may not use his new powers to the injury of himself or society. As the whole industrial province lay outside of religious regulation, never having been contemplated in the theological scheme, it was tacitly abandoned to the antagonism of private interests, except that some vague general maxims were preached that there was no power to enforce. Industrial society was thus destitute, from its modern beginning, of all systematic morality which could regulate its various common relations. Among the innumerable connections of producers and consumers, and among the different industrial classes, especially capitalists and labourers, it seems agreed that the spirit of recent emancipation shall be preserved, unimproved,—every one seek-