comte, auguste - the positive philosophy vol III

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showed itself in physics, so as to originate the art of experimentation; but it is tar more complete in chemistry, inasmuch as it extends to molecular composition itself: and as such modification could not take place in vital cases without being liable to suspend or suppress phenomena of greater delicacy, chemistry will be always, and more and more, the chief basis of our material power. In a speculative view chemistry is of extreme scientific importance, as revealing the most intimate mode of inorganic existed, and as completing our knowledge of the general medium in its direct influence on the organism: thus being, with physics, but in a more marked way, the link between inorganic and organic speculation. In regard to interconnection, too, it is so superior to physics as to approach very near to biology: and from biology it will, no doubt, hereafter derive some of the collective spirit in which, with physics, it is now very deficient. I have before pointed out the comparative method and the taxonomical theory as probable agencies for perfecting chemical speculation in this way. Here then we find the limit of the ascendancy of the analytical system, and the natural beginning of that of the synthetical. Meantime, the science is remarkably open to abusive encroachment, and to spoliation by dispersive treatment. It requires protection from encroachment, not only from mathematics from which physics in a certain degree protects it, but from physics itself. As some scientific men see in physics only geometry and mechanics, others see in the best marked phenomena of chemistry nothing more than physical effects; a mistake the more hostile to chemical progression, that it rests in part upon the incontestible affinity of the two sciences. But whatever may be the logical and scientific imperfection of chemistry, in which prevision is scarcely possible in even secondary particulars, the sense of natural law, extended to the most complex phenomena of inorganic existence, is not the less strikingly and permanently developed. Thus then we survey as a whole the preparatory science of dead nature, from its astronomical beginning to its chemical conclusion, with physics for the link between the two.

Till biological science arose, the topical evolution required that the human mind should be occupied with inorganic science, which, from its superior simplicity, must constitute the basis of knowledge, from which alone rational positivity could arise; and till the positive spirit was extended to social phenomenon biology could not but suffer from the disturbance introduced into it from the anterior sciences. Biologists then have every reason to be grateful to sociology, as a protecting influence

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against the oppressive, through antagonistic pretensions of the physicists and the metaphysicians. Organic science marks out its own division into two parts,—the science of individual and of collective life: but human considerations are preponderant in both; and, while sociology is based on biology, it reacts upon it: first learning from it to understand the agent of its own phenomena, and then ascertaining the social medium, and exhibiting the course of human progression. The great misfortune of biology has been that, because its phenomena partake largely of the characteristics of the foregoing sciences, it has been extremely difficult to ascertain the nature and extent of the vast accession to material existence which takes place on the institution of vitality, and therefore to introduce the positive spirit into this order of researches. The theological or metaphysical spirit seemed for long the only protection against the intrusion of the scientific spirit; and how such protection must compromise the scientific spirit, I need not stop to prove. The situation produced by the necessary resistance of modern reason to the old system was curiously exemplified by the opposition of biological doctrine to obvious facts, as in the case of Descartes’ theory of the automatism of brutes, which held its ground for above a century, and was in some degree adopted by Buffon himself, though his own contemplations must have shown him its absurdity. He was sensible of the danger of mathematical usurpation in science; but he preferred it to theologico-metaphysical tutelage, which was then the only alternative. We have seen how the difficulty was solved by Bichat’s two great con- ceptions;—the one, physiological and dynamical, distinguishing the organic or vegetative from the animal life—a distinction which forms the basis of sound biological philosophy; and the other, anatomical and statical, the great theory of elementary tissues, which is m biology the philosophical equivalent of the molecular theory in physico-chemistry. This statical conception is contributory to the dynamical by enabling us to assign special seat to each of the two kinds of life. Bichat did not contemplate the extension of his theory beyond man: but, confined to the most complex case, it could never have become really rational. We owe the power of extending it and therefore of establishing the rationality of the science to the comparative method, which discloses to us the gradual succession of the degrees of organization or life. Lamarck, Olsen, and De Blainville have given us possession of this chief logical instrument of the science, which is also the preponderant idea of all lofty biological contemplation because the anatomical and physiological aspects there

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coalesce with the taxonomical. The consideration of the medium was once everything: but here the consideration of the organism rises more and more through the long series of vital systems of growing, complexity. Ideas of order and harmony were originated by inorganic studies, but their highest manifestation, in the form of classification and a hierarchy, could issue only from biological science, whence it was to extend to social science. At present, little more is done in biology than assigning the position of its different questions; and the chasms between them are many and wide: but the science has assumed its due character of generality in the hands of its most eminent interpreters and its scientific constitution is as rational as that of any of its predecessors: but that it is not yet complete is proved by the continuance of the controversy between the theologico-metaphysical school on the one hand, and the physico-chemical school on the other, and by the difficulties still encountered by the great conception of vital spontaneity being developed, in determinate degrees, within the limits of the laws of universal existence. One remedy will be found in such an education as will enable biologists to apply the truths of other sciences to their own, without admitting intrusion from either restricted science or false philosophy: but the intervention of sociology is also necessary,—the last biological degree, the intellectual and moral life, bordering so closely as it does upon the social. The smallness of the results yet obtained from the admirable conception of Gall is owing to the insufficiency of the individual, that is, the biological, view of Man: and the best conceptions of the science can never acquire complete efficacy, or even stability, till they are attached to the basis of social science. Thus only can they be safe from the prolonged dominion of the old philosophy on the one hand, and from the usurpations of the mathematical spirit on the other, in the physico-chemical form; and thus alone can the same conception, in biology as in social science, fulfil the conditions at once of order and of progress.

The accession of real existence, then. occasioned by its extension from the individual to the collective organism, is the originating cause of the only science which can be final. If the definite complexity is of a different kind from the three preceding, it is quite as indisputable. It is as evident as the implication of the mathematical with the physical; the physical with the chemical; and the chemical with the biological: and it also accords with the decreasing generality of successive phenomena. The continuous expansion and almost indefinite perpetuity which char-

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acterize the social organism separate this case widely from the biological, though their elements are necessarily; homogeneous; and the separation will be the more indisputable. if we take into the account, as we are scientifically bound to do, the whole of the human race, instead of the portion whose history we have explored. In a logical view, we have seen that individual investigation would not yield us the method of filiation: and in a scientific view, it is equally clear that the knowledge of the laws of individual life can never enable us to make deductions of successive social phenomena; for each stage is deducible only from the one immediately preceding, though the aggregate must be in agreement with the system of biological ideas. While this separation is indispensable, it appears to constitute the chief difficulty, logical and scientific, of the most advanced minds, on account of the tendency of the earlier sciences to absorb the later in virtue of their earlier positivity and their natural relations; tendencies so specious in this most recent case as to have ensnared almost every eminent thinker of our age. By the establishment of sociology we now witness the systematic fulfilment of the eternal conditions of the originality and pre-eminence of social speculations, which theology and metaphysics have instinctively struggled to maintain, though very insufficiently since the positive method began to prevail more and more in the modern mental evolution. In the name of positivism and rationality we have demanded and reconstructed the philosophical ascendancy of social speculation, by undoing the work of the theological and metaphysical schools, which strove to isolate moral and political research from that system of natural philosophy with which we have now incorporated it. We see that the coalescing logical and scientific needs prescribe the subordination of this final science to all the rest, over which it then becomes preponderant by its philosophical reaction. This is the ground of my anxiety to point out the direct relations which result from the nature of the respective studies, on account of the constant necessity of the preparatory knowledge of the medium of the social evolution on the one hand, and the agent on the other. The place assigned to sociology in the encyclopedical scale is thus confirmed on all possible occasions, apart from the logical obligation to raise the positive method, by this successive procedure, to the sociological phase. But, whatever may be the importance of the ideas communicated by the inorganic sciences to sociology, the scientific office must especially belong to biology, which, from the nature of the subjects concerned, must always furnish the fundamental ideas that must guide sociological re-

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search; and often even rectify or improve the results. Moreover, it is biology which presents to us the domestic state, intermediate between individual and social existence, which is more or less common to all the superior animals, and which is, in our species, the true primitive basis of the more vast collective organism. However, the first elaboration of this new science could not but be essentially dynamical; so that the laws of harmony have nearly throughout been implicitly considered among the laws of succession in which alone social physics can at present consist. The scientific link between biology and sociology is the connection of their two series, by which the second may be regarded as the prolongation of the first, though the terms of the one may be successive, and of the other, coexisting. With this difference. we find that the essential character of the human evolution results from the growing power of the superior attributes which place Man at the head of the animal hierarchy, where they also enable us to assign the chief degrees of animality. Thus we see the vast organic system really connecting the humblest vegetative existence with the noblest social life through a long succession, which, if necessarily discontinuous, is not the less essentially homogeneous. And, in as far as the principle of such a connection consists in the decreasing generality of the chief phenomena, this double organic series is connected with the rudimentary inorganic, the interior succession of which is determined by the same principle. The necessary direction of the human movement being thus ascertained, the only remaining task, in constituting sociology, was to mark out its general course. This was done by my ascertaining the law of evolution, which in connection with the hierarchical law, establishes a true philosophical system, the two chief elements of which are absolutely interconnected. In this dynamical conception, sociology is radically connected with biology. since the original state of humanity essentially coincides with that in which the superior animals are detained be their organic imperfection,—their speculative ability never transcending the primitive fetichism from which mom could not have issued but for the strong impulsion of the collective development. The resemblance is yet stronger in the practical aspect. The sociological theory being thus constituted, nothing remained but to put it to the proof by an historical application of it to the intellectual and social progression of the most advanced portion of the human race through forty centuries. This test has discredited all the historical conceptions proposed before, and has shown the reality of the theory by explaining and estimating each phase as it passed in review, so as to

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enable us to do honour to the services of the most opposite influences,— as in the case of the polytheistic and monotheistic states, political and philosophical preparation like this was necessary to emancipate the mind of the inquirer from the old philosophy and critical prejudices, and to substitute for them the scientific condition of mind which is indispensable for the humblest speculations, but far more necessary, and at the same time more difficult, in the case of the most transcendent and the most impassioned researches that the human mind can undertake. Thus the same conditions which required this task, at this time, are especially favourable to it. Its practical efficacy is inseparable from its theoretical soundness, because it connects the present under all possible aspects, with the whole of the past, so as to exhibit at once the former course and the future tendency of every important phenomenon; and thence results in a political view, the possibility of a natural connection between the science and the art of modern society. New as is this science, it has already fulfilled the essential conditions of its institution, so that it has only to pursue its special development. Its complexity is more than compensated by its interconnection, and the consequent preponderance of the collective spirit over the spirit of detail: and from its origin, therefore, it is superior in rationality to all the foregoing sciences, and is evidently destined to extend its own collective spirit over them by its reactive influence, thus gradually repairing the mischiefs of the dispersive tendencies proper to the preparatory stages of genuine knowledge.

Thus the scientific and logical estimate are complete, and found to have attained the same point; and the long and difficult preparation proposed and begun by Descartes and Bacon is accomplished, and all made ready for the advent of the true modern philosophy. It only remains for me to show the action of this philosophy, intellectual and social, as far as it is at present rationally ascertainable by means of a last and extreme application of our theory of human evolution.

Chapter XV

Estimate of the Final Action of the Positive Philosophy

No preceding revolutions could modify human existence to anything like the degree that will be experienced under the full establishment of the positive philosophy, which we have seen to be the only possible issue from the great crisis which has agitated Europe for half a century

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past. We have already perceived what must be the political task and character of this philosophy in a rapidly approaching time; and I have only therefore to point out, in a more general way, the natural action of the new philosophical system when it shall have assumed its throne. I will sketch the great impending philosophical regeneration from the four points of view which my readers will at once anticipate;—the scientific, or rather rational; the moral; the political; and finally, the aesthetic.

The positive state will, in the first place, The scientific be one of entire intellectual consistency, such action as has never yet existed in an equal degree, among the best organized and most advanced minds. The kind of speculative unity which existed under the polytheistic system, when all human conceptions presented a uniformly religious aspect, was liable to perpetual disturbance from a spontaneous positivity of ideas on individual and familiar matters. In the scholastic period, the nearest approach to harmony was a precarious and incomplete equilibrium: and the present transition involves such contradiction that the highest minds are perpetually subject to three incompatible systems. It is impossible to conceive of the contrasting harmony which must arise from all conceptions being fully positive, without the slightest necessary intermixture of any heterogeneous philosophy. We may best form some idea of it by anticipating the total and final extension of the popular good sense, which, long confined to partial and practical operations, has at length taken possession of the speculative province. We are naturally familiar with the general wisdom which prevails in regard to the simplest affairs of life; and when we shall habitually restrict our inquiries to accessible subjects and understand, as of course, the relative character of all human knowledge, our approximation towards the truth which can never be completely attained by human faculties will be thorough and satisfactory as far as it goes; and it will proceed as far as the state of human progress will admit. This logical view will completely agree with the scientific conviction of an invariable natural order, independent of us and our action, in which our intervention can occasion none but secondary modifications; these modifications however being infinitely valuable, because they are the basis of human action. We have never experienced, and can therefore only imperfectly imagine, the state of unmingled conviction with which men will regard that natural order when all disturbing intrusions, such as we are now subject to from lingering theological influences, shall have been cast out by the spontaneous certainty of the invariableness of natural laws. Again, the absolute tendencies of

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the old philosophies prevent our forming any adequate conception of the privilege of intellectual liberty which is secured by positive philosophy. Our existing state is so unlike all this, that we cannot yet estimate the importance and rapidity of the progress which will be thus secured; our only measure being the ground gained during the last three centuries, under an imperfect and even vicious system, which has occasioned the waste of the greater part of our intellectual labour. The best way of showing what advance may be made in sciences which are, as yet, scarcely out of the cradle, when systematically cultivated in an atmosphere of intellectual harmony, will be to consider the effect of positivity on abstract speculation first, then on concrete studies, and lastly on practical ideas.

In abstract science, men will be spared the preliminary labour which has hitherto involved vast and various error, scientific and logical, and will be set forward far and firmly by the full establishment of the rational method. When the ascendancy of the sociological spirit shall have driven out that of the scientific, there will be an end of the vain struggle to connect every order of phenomena with one set of laws and the desired unity will be seen to consist in the agreement of various orders of laws,—each set governing and actuating its own province; and thus will the free expansion of each kind of knowledge be provided for, while all are analogous in their method of treatment, and identical in their destination. Then there will be an end to the efforts of the anterior sciences to absorb the more recent and of the more recent to maintain their superiority by boasting of sanction from the old philosophies, and the positive spirit will decide the claims of each, without oppression or anarchy, and with the necessary assent of all. The same unquestionable order will be established in the interior of each science; and every proved conception will be secured from such attacks as all are now liable to from the irregular ambition or empiricism of unqualified minds. Though abstract science must hold the first place as Bacon so plainly foresaw, the direct construction of concrete science is one of the chief offices of the new philosophical spirit, exercised under historical guidance. which can alone afford the necessary knowledge of the successive states of everything that exists. Besides the light which will thus be cast on the elementary laws of all kinds of action, and the valuable practical suggestions which must be thus obtained, there will be another result which I ought to point out, which could not be otherwise obtained, and which relates especially to the highest and most complex phenomena. I mean the fix-

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ing,—not yet possible, but then certainly practicable,—of the general duration assigned by the whole economy to each of the chief kinds of existence; and, among others, to the rising condition of the human race. This great evolution, which has scarcely yet escaped from its preparatory stage, must certainly continue to be progressive through a long course of centuries, beyond which it would be equally inopportune and irrational to speculate; yet it is of consequence to the development of the philosophical spirit to admit in principle that the collective organism is necessarily subject, like the individual to a spontaneous decline, independently of changes in the medium. The one has no more tendency to rejuvenescence than the other hand the only difference in the two cases is in the immensity of duration and slow progression in the one, compared with the brief existence, so rapidly run through, of the other. There is no reason why, because we decline the metaphysical notion of indefinite perfectibility we should be discouraged in our efforts to ameliorate the social state; as the health of individuals is ministered to when destruction is certainly near at hand. Nor need we attempt to determine the last aspects that the philosophical spirit will assume, in an extremely remote future, always ready as that spirit is to recognize, without any fruitless disturbance, any destiny which is clearly inevitable, in order to solace the natural pain of decline by nobly sustaining the dignity of humanity. It is too soon in infancy to prepare for old age; and there would be less wisdom in such preparation in the collective than in the individual case. As to the case of practical knowledge,—the most obvious prospect is of the permanent agreement that will be established between the practical point of view and the speculative, when both are alike subordinated to the philosophical. The practical development must go on rapidly under the ascendancy of rational positivity; and, on the other hand technical advancement will be equally efficacious in proving the immense superiority of the true scientific system to the desultory state of speculation that existed before. The sense of action and that of prevision are closely connected, through their common dependence on the principle of natural law, and this connection must tend to popularize and consolidate the new philosophy, in which each one will perceive the realization of the same general course with regard to all subjects accessible to our reason. The medical art, and the political, will be instances, when they shall rise out of their present infantile state, and be rationalized under the influence of a true philosophical unity, and concrete studies shall, at the same time, have been properly instituted. As the most

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complex phenomena are the most susceptible of modification, the true relation between speculation and action will be most conspicuous in the provinces which are most nearly concerned with the human condition and progress. Such will be the results in the intellectual portion of future human life.

As to the moral,—its antagonism with the intellectual will be proved to he what we have shown it—merely provisional; and dissolved at once when the sociological point of view is established as the only true one. I need not dwell on so clear a point as the moral tendency of the scientific elevation of the social point of view, and of the logical supremacy of collective conceptions, such as characterize the positive philosophy. In our present state of anarchy, we see nothing that can give us an idea of the energy and tenacity that moral rules must acquire when they rest on a clear understanding of the influence that the actions and the tendencies of every one of us must exercise on human life. There will be an end then of the subterfuges by which even sincere believers have been able to elude moral prescriptions, since religious doctrines have lost their social efficacy. The sentiment of fundamental order will then retain its steadiness in the midst of the fiercest disturbance. The intellectual unity of that time will not only determine practical moral convictions in individual minds, but will also generate powerful public prepossession, by disclosing a plenitude of assent, such as has never existed in the same degree, and will supply the insufficiency of private efforts, in cases of very imperfect culture, or entanglement of passion. The instrumentality will not be merely the influence of moral doctrine, which would seldom avail to restrain vicious inclinations: there would be first the action of a universal education, and then the steady intervention of a wise discipline, public and private, carried on by the same moral power which had superintended the earlier training. The results cannot be even imagined without the guidance of the doctrines themselves, under their natural division into personal, domestic, and social morality.

Morality must become more practical than it ever could be under religious influences, because personal morality will be seen in its true relations,—withdrawn from all influences of personal prudence and recognized as the basis of all morality whatever, and therefore as a matter of general concern and public rule. The ancients had some sense of this, which they could not carry out; and Catholicism lost it by introducing a selfish and imaginary aim. We should fix our attention on the advantages that must arise from the concentration of human efforts on an