comte, auguste - the positive philosophy vol III

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actual life, individual and collective, which Man is impelled to ameliorate as much as possible in its whole economy, according to the whole of the means within his power,—among which, moral rules certainly hold the very first place, because they especially admit of the universal concurrence in which our chief power resides. If we are thus brought back from an immoderate regard to the future by a sense of the value of the present, this will equalize life by discouraging excessive economical preparation; while a sound appreciation of our nature, in which vicious or unregulated propensities originally abound, will render common and unanimous the obligation to discipline, and regulate our various inclinations. Again, the scientific and moral conception of Man as the chief of the economy of nature will be a steady stimulus to the cultivation of the noble qualities, affective as well as intellectual, which place him at the head of the living hierarchy. There can be no danger of apathy in a position like this,—with the genuine and just pride of such pre-emi- nence stirring within us; and above us the type of perfection, below which we must remain, but which will ever be inviting us upwards. The result will be a noble boldness in developing the greatness of Man in all directions, free from the oppression of any fear, and limited only by the conditions of life itself. As for domestic morality, we have seen what is the subordination prescribed by nature in the cases of sex and of age. It is here, where sociology and biology meet, that we find how profoundly natural social relations are, as they are immediately connected with the mode of existence of all the higher animals, of which Man is only the more complete development: and an application of the uniform positive principle of classification, abstract and concrete, will consolidate this elementary subordination, by connecting it with the whole of the speculative constitution. It will moreover be found that progression will develop more and more the natural differences on which such an economy is based, so that each element will tend towards the mode of existence most suitable to itself, and consonant with the general welfare. While the positive spirit will consolidate the great moral ideas which belong to this first stage of association, it will exhibit the increasing importance of domestic life for the vast majority of men as modern sociality approaches its truest condition; and the natural order, by which domestic life becomes the proper introduction to social, will be established, past risk of change.

The positive philosophy is the first that has ascertained the true point of view of social morality. The metaphysical philosophy sanc-

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tioned egotism; and the theological subordinated real life to an imaginary one; while the new philosophy takes social morality for the basis of its whole system. The two former systems were so little favourable to the rise of the purely disinterested affections, that they often led to a dogmatic denial of their existence; the one being addicted to scholastic subtleties, and the other to considerations of personal safety. No set of feelings can be fully developed otherwise than by special and permanent exercise; and especially if they are not naturally very prominent; and the moral sense,—the social degree of which is its completest manifesta- tion,—could be only imperfectly instituted by the indirect and factitious culture of a preparatory stage. We have yet to witness the moral superiority of a philosophy which connects each of us with the whole of human existence, in all times and places. The restriction of our expectations to actual life must furnish new means of connecting our individual development with the universal progression, the growing regard to which will afford the only possible, and the utmost possible, satisfaction to our natural aspiration after eternity. For instance, the scrupulous respect for human life, which has always increased with our social progression, must strengthen more and more as the chimerical hope dies out which disparages the present life as merely accessory to the one in prospect. The philosophical spirit being only an extension of good sense, it is certain that it alone, in its spontaneous form has for three centuries maintained any general agreement against the dogmatic disturbances occasioned or tolerated by the ancient philosophy, which could have overthrown the whole modern economy if popular wisdom had not restrained the social application of it. The effects are, at best, only too evident; the practical intervention of the old philosophy taking place only in cases of very marked disorder, such as must be always impending and ever renewed while the intellectual anarchy which generates it yet exists. By its various aptitudes, positive morality will tend more and more to exhibit the happiness of the individual as depending on the complete expansion of benevolent acts and sympathetic emotions towards the whole of our race; and even beyond our race, by a gradual extension to all sentient beings below us, in proportion to their animal rank and their social utility. The relative nature of the new philosophy will render it applicable with equal facility and accuracy, to the exigencies of each case, individual or social, whereas we see how the absolute character of religious morality has deprived it of almost all force in cases which, arising after its institution, could not have been duly provided for. Till

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the full rational establishment of positive morality has taken place, it is the business of true philosophers, ever the precursors of their race, to confirm it in the estimation of the world by the sustained superiority of their own conduct, personal, domestic, and social; giving the strongest conceivable evidence of the possibility of developing, on human grounds alone, a sense of general morality complete enough to inspire an invincible repugnance to moral offense, and an irresistible impulse to steady practical devotedness.

The political results of the positive philosophy have been so mixed up with the whole treatment of the future in this volume, and the near future has been so expressly exhibited in the twelfth chapter, that I need say little here under that head. I have only to glance at the growth and applicant of the division between the spiritual or theoretical organism and the temporal or practical, the beginning of which I have already sufficiently described.

We have seen that Catholicism afforded the suggestion of a double government of this kind, and that the Catholic institution of it shared the discredit of the philosophy to which it was attached: and again, that the Greek Utopia of a Reign of Mind (well called by Mr. Mill a Pedantocracy), transmitted to the modern metaphysical philosophy, gained ground till its disturbing influence rendered it a fit subject for our judgment and sentence. The present state of things is that we have a deep and indestructible, though vague and imperfect, sense of the political requirements of existing civilization, which assigns a distinct province, in all affairs, to the material and the intellectual authority, the separation and co-ordination of whiich are reserved for the future. The Catholic division was instituted on the ground of a mystical opposition between heavenly and earthly interests, as is shown by the terms spiritual and temporal, and not at all from any sound intellectual and social appreciation, which was not then possible, nor is possible even yet; and when the terrestrial view prevailed over the celestial, the principle of separation was seriously endangered, from there being no longer any lexical basis which could sustain it against the extravagances of the revolutionary spirit. The positive polity must therefore go back to the earliest period of the division, and re-establish it on evidence afforded by the whole human evolution; and, in its admission of the scientific and logical preponderance of the social point of view it will not reject it in the case of morality, which most always allow its chief application, and in which everything must be referred, not to Man, but to Humanity.

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Moral laws. like the intellectual, are much more appreciable in the collective than in the individual case; and, though the individual nature is the type of the general, all human advancement is much more completely characterized in the general than in the individual case; and thus morality will always, on both grounds, be connected with polity. Their reparation will arise from that distinction between theory and practice which is indispensable to the common destination of both. We may already sum up the ultimate conditions of positive polity by conceiving of its systematic wisdom as reconciling the opposing qualities of that spontaneous human wisdom successively manifested in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, for there was a social tendency involved in the ancient subordination of morality to policy, however carried to an extreme under polytheism; and the monotheistic system had the merit of asserting, though not very successfully, the legitimate independence, or rather, the superior dignity of morality. Antiquity alone offered a complete and homogeneous political system; and the Middle Ages exhibit an attempt to reconcile the opposite qualities of two heterogeneous systems, the one of which claimed supreme authority for theory, and the other for practice. Such a reconciliation will take place hereafter, on the ground of the systematic distinction between the claims of education and of action. We find something like an example of how this may be done,— theory originating practice, but never interfering with it except in a consultative way,—in the existing relations between art and science, the extension of which to the most important affairs, under the guidance of sound philosophy, contemplating the whole range of human relations. If the whole experience of modern progress has sanctioned the independence, amidst co-operation, of theory and practice, in the simplest cases, we must admit its imperative necessity, on analogous grounds, in the most complex. Thus far, in complex affairs, practical wisdom has shown itself far superior to theoretical; but this is because much of the proudest theory has been ill-established. However this evil may be diminished when social speculation becomes better founded, the general interest will always require the common preponderance of the practical or material authority, as long as it keeps within its proper limits, admitting the independence of the theoretical authority; and the necessity of including abstract indications among the elements of every concrete conclusion. No true statesman would think of disputing this, when once the philosophers had evinced the scientific character and the political aspect adapted to their social destination. It may be well however to present, in a sum-

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mary way, the rational securities which will exist against any encroachment of moral upon political Government, in order to meet the instinctive prejudices which still oppose the advent of what I have shown to be the first social condition of final regeneration.

In treating of the training for such an organization, I insisted on limiting it to the five nations of Western Europe, in order to secure its distinctness and originality from the confusion of modern speculative habits. But such a restriction must give way when we contemplate the final extension of the positive organism, first to the whole of the white race, and at length to the whole of mankind, as their preparation becomes complete. It was the theological philosophy which divided Western Europe into independent nationalities for five centuries past; and their interconnection, determined by their positive progression, can be systematized only by the process of total renovation. The European case must be much fitter than the national for manifesting the qualities of the spiritual constitution; and it will acquire new consistence and efficacy after each new extension of the positive organism, which will thus become more and more moral, and less and less political; the practical authority all the while preserving its active preponderance. By a necessary reaction, liberty will gain as much as order by this inevitable progression; for as intellectual and moral association becomes confirmed by extension, the temporal authority which is now necessary to keep the social system together will naturally relax as repression becomes less and less needed. As for the influence of human passions, which will arise under the new system as under every other, I have already spoken of them, so as to need only to say here that they will affect the early institution of the system more than its normal development. We have still to reap some of the bitter fruits of our intellectual and moral anarchy: and especially, in the quarrels between capitalists and labourers first, and afterwards in the unsettled rivalship between town and country. In short, whatever is now systematized must be destroyed; and whatever is rot systematized, and therefore has vitality, must occasion collisions which we are not yet able accurately to foresee or adequately to restrain. This will be the test of the positive philosophy, and at the same time the stimulus to its social ascendancy. With this troubled initiation, the worst will be over. The difficulties proper to the action of the new if regime, the same in kind will be far less in degree, and will disappear as the conditions of order and progress become more and more thoroughly reconciled. We have seen that the advent of the positive economy will

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have been owing to the affinity between philosophical tendencies and popular impulses and if so, it is easy to see how that affinity must become the most powerful permanent support of the system. The same philosophy which asserts the intellectual supremacy of the general reason cannot but admit, without any danger of anarchy, the social supremacy of genuine popular needs, by establishing the universal sway of morality, governing at once scientific energies and political conclusions. And thus, after some passing troubles occasioned by the unequal development of practical exigencies, and theoretical satisfactions, the positive philosophy, in its political form, will necessarily lead up the human race to the social system which is most suitable to the nature of Man, and which will greatly surpass in unity extension, and stability all that the past has ever produced.

One of the least anticipated results of this action. working out of opinions, morals, and institutions under the guidance of positive philosophy, is the development which must take place in the modes of expressing them. For five centuries, society has been seeking an aesthetic constitution correspondent to its civilization. In the time to come,— apart from all consideration of the genius that will arise, which is wholly out of the reach of anticipation,—we may see how Art must eminently fulfil its chief service, of charming and improving the humblest and the loftiest minds, elevating the one, and soothing the other. For this service it must gain much by being fitly incorporated with the social economy, from which it has hitherto been essentially excluded. Our philosophical speculation has shown us how favourable the human view and collective spirit must be to the rise and spread of aesthetic tastes, and our historical survey had before taught us, that a progressive social condition marked and durable, is indispensable to the completeness of such a development. On both grounds, the future is full of promise. The public life and military existence of antiquity are exhausted, but the laborious and pacific activity proper to modern civilization is scarcely yet instituted, and has never yet been aesthetically regarded; so that modern art, like Modern science and industry, is so far from being worn out, that it is as yet only half formed. The most original and popular species of modern art, which forms a preparation for that which is to ensue, has treated of private life, for want of material in public life. But public life will be such as will admit of idealization: for the sense of the good and the true cannot be actively conspicuous without eliciting a sense of the beautiful; and the action of the positive philosophy is in the highest

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degree favourable to all the three. The systematic regeneration of human conceptions must also furnish new philosophical means of aesthetic expansion, secure at once of a noble aim and a steady impulsion. There must certainly be an inexhaustible resource of poetic greatness in the positive conception of Man as the supreme head of the economy of Nature, which he modifies at will, in a spirit of boldness and freedom, within no other limits than those of natural law. This is yet an untouched wealth of idealization, as the action of Man upon Stature was hardly recognized as a subject of thought till art was declining from the exhaustion of the old philosophy. The marvellous wisdom of Nature has been sung, it imitation of the ancients, and with great occasional exaggeration; and the conquests of Man over nature, with science for his instrument, and sociality for his atmosphere, remains, promising much more interest and beauty than the representation of an economy in which he has no share, and in which magnitude was the original object of admiration, and material grandeur continues to be most dwelt upon. There is no anticipating what the popular enthusiasm will be when the representations of Art shall be in harmony with the noble instinct of human superiority, and with the collective rational convictions of the human mind. To the philosophical eye it is plain that the universal reorganization will assign to modern Art at once inexhaustible material in the spectacle of human power and achievement, and a noble social destination in illustrating and endearing the final economy of human life. What philosophy elaborates, Art will propagate and adapt for propagation, and will thus fulfil a higher social office than in its most glorious days of old.—I have here spoken of the first of the arts only—of Poetry, which by its superior amplitude and generality has always superintended and led the development of them all but the conditions which are favourable to one mode of expression are propitious to all, in their natural succession While the positive spirit remained in its first phase the mathematical, it was reproached for its anti-aesthetic tendency: but we now see how when it is systematized from a sociological centre, it becomes the basis of an aesthetic organization no less indispensable than the intellectual and social renovation from which it is inseparable.

The five elements of this great process will each bring their own special contribution to the new system, which will inseparably combine them all France will bring a philosophical and political superiority; England, an earnest predilection for reality and utility; Germany, a natural aptitude for systematic generalization; Italy, its genius for art, and Spain,

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its familiar combined sense of personal dignity and universal brotherhood. By their natural co-operation, the positive philosophy will lead us on to a social condition the most conformable to human nature, in which our characteristic qualities will find their most perfect respective confirmation, their completest mutual harmony, and the freest expansion for each and all.

[Added to Miss Martineau’s translation. See Introduction.—F.H.]:—

This summary estimate of the ultimate result of the Positive Philosophy brings me to the close of the long and arduous task I took in hand in order to carry forward the great impulse given to philosophy by Bacon and Descartes. Their work was essentially occupied with the first canons of the positive method: it was entirely powerless to found any final reconstruction of human society, the need for which was hardly apparent in their age, but which is now so urgently required by the prospect of social anarchy and revolutionary agitation. In the course of my labours, which material difficulties have prolonged over twelve years, my own mind has spontaneously, but exactly, traversed the successive phases of our modern mental evolution. This progression, however, has been perfectly homogeneous, as the reader will observe if he compares the last three charters with the two chapters of the Introduction, or the original synopsis of my course with the table of contents. The only divergence from my first scheme has been, not in the order of the sciences. but in the unexpected increase in the bulk of the social physics. As the new science of Sociology had to be created, it was not planned with the same precision as the older sciences which were actually constituted. But even here I hope that all competent readers will admit that each science has been treated in the degree of its true philosophical importance.

Having thus worked through the entire scale of the sciences, I feel that my mind has reached a really positive condition, and has wholly disengaged itself from metaphysics as well as theology. And I am now free to appeal to all energetic thinkers to co-operate in the task of supplying our modern intelligence with a definitive system. It remains for me to state the part which I hope to take in this task—regarding the Treatise here concluded simply as the starting point of the labours to which I dedicate the remainder of my life. There are four essential works required: and these I will mention in the order in which I originally conceived them; though the order of their actual execution may be changed as the existences of the positive movement or the conditions of

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my own life may demand. In the work just completed I felt myself bound to follow inexorably the scheme first laid down, and to reject the injudicious, but friendly advice to break my work into separate parts. In what remains I will briefly consider the best order to be followed, and am most willing to give attention to the suggestions of any who may have followed the development of the new philosophy and feel an interest in its further growth.

Two of the four contemplated works would be occupied with the more complete elaboration of the new system of philosophy; the other two works relate to the application of it to practice.

In the Treatise just completed, it was inevitable that each science in turn should be handled from the point of view of its actual condition. I was thus able to train my own mind and that of the reader, by a gradual and sure process of growth to the ultimate state which I had conceived from the first, but which I could only reach by passing through the successive stages of modern evolution in the same way as Descartes did in his famous formula. Now, whatever may have been the advantages of this method of systematizing the sciences a posteriori, and without it I must have failed in my object, the consequence was, that the philosophy of each science, on which the general positive philosophy was founded, could not be presented in its definitive form. This definitive form could only be secured by the reaction upon each science of the new philosophical synthesis. Such an effect, which, duly completed, will be for abstract purposes the final state of the positive systematization, would properly require as many special philosophical treatises, each infused with the sociological spirit, as there are different substantive sciences. It is obviously impossible that I could ever properly complete so vast a task in the span of life that remains to me; and I have decided to restrict my own part of the work to the first and the last of the sciences, which are the more decisive, and also those with which I am most familiar. I shall accordingly limit myself to Mathematics and Sociology, and shall leave it to my successors or my colleagues to deal with the philosophy of the four intermediate sciences—astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology.

The philosophy of Mathematics will be the subject of a special work in two volumes, the first treating abstract mathematics or analysis, the second treating concrete mathematics, subdivided into geometry and mechanics. When I composed the first part of this work twelve years ago, I certainly thought that the theories on the philosophy of mathemat-

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ics there put forward would be sufficiently clear to be grasped. I underrated the extreme narrowness of the views now current in that science. And hence I feel it necessary to attempt to lay down a true philosophy of mathematical science, the base, in fact, of the whole scientific series.

The second work, on Sociology, has been so often described in the second half of this Treatise, that I need say no more as to its scope and the need for it. It will consist of four volumes, the first dealing with the methods of Sociology, the second with Social Statics, the third with Social Dynamics, the last with the practical application of the doctrine. Those who have followed what I have done in the second half of this Treatise towards founding a Science of Society, will be prepared to find that I regard this as little more than an indispensable basis for the future work. It might be thought, looking to the bulk occupied by Social Dynamics in this Treatise, that a single volume of the proposed work would not suffice for the definitive treatment of this science. But the Dynamical part of the present Treatise was inevitably occupied with much discussion of the Statical part, and even the methods of Sociology. The philosophy of the Social Polity is the most important task that awaits me. The present treatise has definitively established the supreme importance of the social point of view, both in logic or in science. And thus the most direct mode of contributing to the general acceptance of the new positive philosophy must he found in promoting the normal completeness of the social science. Besides this, there are strong practical grounds for giving a special importance to Sociology.

With regard to the two works concerned with the practical application of the new system of philosophy, I propose, as the third task before me, a Treatise upon the principles of positive education in a single volume. This great subject has not yet been treated in a manner sufficiently systematic; for the course of the education of the individual can be properly described only with relation to the evolution of the race, as was shown in the last chapter but one of this work. Now that the true theory of this evolution has been established, the path is clear to treat of education in the proper sense of the word. The scope as well as the principles of a work on education have been already defined, as education must always be the first step towards a political regeneration. Thus the third world I propose is a sequel to the present Treatise. Its important duty would be the reorganization of Morals on a positive basis. This will, in fact, be the principal part of education, and this alone will effectively dispel that theological philosophy, which, in its decline, is still powerful