Marriage._Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Columbus" to "Condottiere" Volume 6, Slice 7

In 1825 Comte married a Mdlle Caroline Massin. His marriage was one of

those of which "magnanimity owes no account to prudence," and it did not

turn out prosperously. His family were strongly Catholic and royalist,

and they were outraged by his refusal to have the marriage performed

other than civilly. They consented, however, to receive his wife, and

the pair went on a visit to Montpellier. Madame Comte conceived a

dislike to the circle she found there, and this was the too early

beginning of disputes which lasted for the remainder of their union. In

the year of his marriage we find Comte writing to the most intimate of

his correspondents:--"I have nothing left but to concentrate my whole

moral existence in my intellectual work, a precious but inadequate

compensation; and so I must give up, if not the most dazzling, still the

sweetest part of my happiness." He tried to find pupils to board with

him, but only one pupil came, and he was soon sent away for lack of

companions. "I would rather spend an evening," wrote the needy

enthusiast, "in solving a difficult question, than in running after some

empty-headed and consequential millionaire in search of a pupil." A

little money was earned by an occasional article in _Le Producteur_, in

which he began to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing

in his mind. He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was

hoped would bring money as well as fame, and which were to be the first

dogmatic exposition of the Positive Philosophy. A friend had said to

him, "You talk too freely, your ideas are getting abroad, and other

people use them without giving you the credit; put your ownership on

record." The lectures attracted hearers so eminent as Humboldt the

cosmologist, Poinsot the geometer and Blainville the physiologist.

Serious illness.

Unhappily, after the third lecture of the course, Comte had a severe

attack of cerebral derangement, brought on by intense and prolonged

meditation, acting on a system that was already irritated by the chagrin

of domestic discomfort. He did not recover his health for more than a

year, and as soon as convalescence set in he was seized by so profound

a melancholy at the disaster which had thus overtaken him, that he threw

himself into the Seine. Fortunately he was rescued, and the shock did

not stay his return to mental soundness. One incident of this painful

episode is worth mentioning. Lamennais, then in the height of his

Catholic exaltation, persuaded Comte's mother to insist on her son being

married with the religious ceremony, and as the younger Madame Comte

apparently did not resist, the rite was duly performed, in spite of the

fact that Comte was at the time raving mad. Philosophic assailants of

Comtism have not always resisted the temptation to recall the

circumstance that its founder was once out of his mind. As has been

justly said, if Newton once suffered a cerebral attack without

forfeiting our veneration for the _Principia_, Comte may have suffered

in the same way, and still not have forfeited our respect for Positive

Philosophy and Positive Polity.

Official work.

In 1828 the lectures were renewed, and in 1830 was published the first

volume of the _Course of Positive Philosophy_. The sketch and ground

plan of this great undertaking had appeared in 1826. The sixth and last

volume was published in 1842. The twelve years covering the publication

of the first of Comte's two elaborate works were years of indefatigable

toil, and they were the only portion of his life in which he enjoyed a

certain measure, and that a very modest measure, of material prosperity.

In 1833 he was appointed examiner of the boys who in the various

provincial schools aspired to enter the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris.

This and two other engagements as a teacher of mathematics secured him

an income of some L400 a year. He made M. Guizot, then Louis Philippe's

minister, the important proposal to establish a chair of general history

of the sciences. If there are four chairs, he argued, devoted to the

history of philosophy, that is to say, the minute study of all sorts of

dreams and aberrations through the ages, surely there ought to be at

least one to explain the formation and progress of our real knowledge?

This wise suggestion, still unfulfilled, was at first welcomed,

according to Comte's own account, by Guizot's philosophic instinct, and

then repulsed by his "metaphysical rancour."

Meanwhile Comte did his official work conscientiously, sorely as he

grudged the time which it took from the execution of the great object of

his thoughts. "I hardly know if even to you," he writes to his wife, "I

dare disclose the sweet and softened feeling that comes over me when I

find a young man whose examination is thoroughly satisfactory. Yes,

though you may smile, the emotion would easily stir me to tears if I

were not carefully on my guard." Such sympathy with youthful hope, in

union with industry and intelligence, shows that Comte's dry and austere

manner veiled the fires of a generous social emotion. It was this which

made him add to his labours the burden of delivering every year from

1831 to 1848 a course of gratuitous lectures on astronomy for a popular

audience. The social feeling that inspired this disinterested act showed

itself in other ways. He suffered imprisonment rather than serve in the

national guard; his position was that though he would not take arms

against the new monarchy of July, yet being a republican he would take

no oath to defend it. The only amusement that Comte permitted himself

was a visit to the opera. In his youth he had been a playgoer, but he

shortly came to the conclusion that tragedy is a stilted and bombastic

art, and after a time comedy interested him no more than tragedy. For

the opera he had a genuine passion, which he gratified as often as he

could, until his means became too narrow to afford even that single

relaxation.

Of his manner and personal appearance we have the following account from

one who was his pupil:--"Daily as the clock struck eight on the horologe

of the Luxembourg, while the ringing hammer on the bell was yet audible,

the door of my room opened, and there entered a man, short, rather

stout, almost what one might call sleek, freshly shaven, without vestige

of whisker or moustache. He was invariably dressed in a suit of the most

spotless black, as if going to a dinner party; his white neck-cloth was

fresh from the laundress's hands, and his hat shining like a racer's

coat. He advanced to the arm-chair prepared for him in the centre of the

writing-table, laid his hat on the left-hand corner; his snuff-box was

deposited on the same side beside the quire of paper placed in readiness

for his use, and dipping the pen twice into the ink-bottle, then

bringing it to within an inch of his nose to make sure it was properly

filled, he broke silence: 'We have said that the chord AB,' &c. For

three-quarters of an hour he continued his demonstration, making short

notes as he went on, to guide the listener in repeating the problem

alone; then, taking up another cahier which lay beside him, he went over

the written repetition of the former lesson. He explained, corrected or

commented till the clock struck nine; then, with the little finger of

the right hand brushing from his coat and waistcoat the shower of

superfluous snuff which had fallen on them, he pocketed his snuff-box,

and resuming his hat, he as silently as when he came in made his exit by

the door which I rushed to open for him."

Completion of "Positive Philosophy."

In 1842, as we have said, the last volume of the _Positive Philosophy_

was given to the public. Instead of that contentment which we like to

picture as the reward of twelve years of meritorious toil devoted to the

erection of a high philosophic edifice, Comte found himself in the midst

of a very sea of small troubles, of that uncompensated kind that harass

without elevating, and waste a man's spirit without softening or

enlarging it. First, the jar of temperament between Comte and his wife

had become so unbearable that they separated (1842). We know too little

of the facts to allot blame to either of them. In spite of one or two

disadvantageous facts in her career, Madame Comte seems to have

uniformly comported herself towards her husband with an honourable

solicitude for his well-being. Comte made her an annual allowance, and

for some years after the separation they corresponded on friendly terms.

Next in the list of the vexations was a lawsuit with his publisher. The

publisher had inserted in the sixth volume a protest against a certain

footnote, in which Comte had used some hard words about Arago. Comte

threw himself into the suit with an energy worthy of Voltaire and won

it. Third, and worst of all, he had prefixed a preface to the sixth

volume, in which he went out of his way to rouse the enmity of the men

on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of examiner for the

Polytechnic school. The result was that he lost the appointment, and

with it one-half of his very modest income. This was the occasion of an

episode, which is of more than merely personal interest.

J. S. Mill.

Before 1842 Comte had been in correspondence with J. S. Mill, who had

been greatly impressed by Comte's philosophic ideas; Mill admits that

his own _System of Logic_ owes many valuable thoughts to Comte, and

that, in the portion of that work which treats of the logic of the moral

sciences, a radical improvement in the conceptions of logical method was

derived from the _Positive Philosophy_. Their correspondence, which was

full and copious, turned principally upon the two great questions of the

equality between men and women, and of the expediency and constitution

of a sacerdotal or spiritual order. When Comte found himself straitened,

he confided the entire circumstances to Mill. As might be supposed by

those who know the affectionate anxiety with which Mill regarded the

welfare of any one whom he believed to be doing good work in the world,

he at once took pains to have Comte's loss of income made up to him,

until Comte should have had time to repair that loss by his own

endeavour. Mill persuaded Grote, Molesworth, and Raikes Currie to

advance the sum of L240. At the end of the year (1845) Comte had taken

no steps to enable himself to dispense with the aid of the three

Englishmen. Mill applied to them again, but with the exception of Grote,

who sent a small sum, they gave Comte to understand that they expected

him to earn his own living. Mill had suggested to Comte that he should

write articles for the English periodicals, and expressed his own

willingness to translate any such articles from the French. Comte at

first fell in with the plan, but he speedily surprised and disconcerted

Mill by boldly taking up the position of "high moral magistrate," and

accusing the three defaulting contributors of a scandalous falling away

from righteousness and a high mind. Mill was chilled by these

pretensions; and the correspondence came to an end. There is something

to be said for both sides. Comte, regarding himself as the promoter of a

great scheme for the benefit of humanity, might reasonably look for the

support of his friends in the fulfilment of his designs. But Mill and

the others were fully justified in not aiding the propagation of a

doctrine in which they might not wholly concur. Comte's subsequent

attitude of censorious condemnation put him entirely in the wrong.

From 1845 to 1848 Comte lived as best he could, as well as made his wife

her allowance, on an income of L200 a year. His little account books of

income and outlay, with every item entered down to a few hours before

his death, are accurate and neat enough to have satisfied an ancient

Roman householder. In 1848, through no fault of his own, his salary was

reduced to L80. Littre and others, with Comte's approval, published an

appeal for subscriptions, and on the money thus contributed Comte

subsisted for the remaining nine years of his life. By 1852 the subsidy

produced as much as L200 a year. It is worth noticing that Mill was one

of the subscribers, and that Littre continued his assistance after he

had been driven from Comte's society by his high pontifical airs. We are

sorry not to be able to record any similar trait of magnanimity on

Comte's part. His character, admirable as it is for firmness, for

intensity, for inexorable will, for iron devotion to what he thought the

service of mankind, yet offers few of those softening qualities that

make us love good men and pity bad ones.

Literary method.

It is best to think of him only as the intellectual worker, pursuing in

uncomforted obscurity the laborious and absorbing task to which he had

given up his whole life. His singularly conscientious fashion of

elaborating his ideas made the mental strain more intense than even so

exhausting a work as the abstract exposition of the principles of

positive science need have been. He did not write down a word until he

had first composed the whole matter in his mind. When he had thoroughly

meditated every sentence, he sat down to write, and then, such was the

grip of his memory, the exact order of his thoughts came back to him as

if without an effort, and he wrote down precisely what he had intended

to write, without the aid of a note or a memorandum, and without check

or pause. For example, he began and completed in about six weeks a

chapter in the _Positive Philosophy_ (vol. v. ch. 55) which would fill

forty pages of this Encyclopaedia. When we reflect that the chapter is

not narrative, but an abstract exposition of the guiding principles of

the movements of several centuries, with many threads of complex thought

running along side by side all through the speculation, then the

circumstances under which it was reduced to literary form are really

astonishing. It is hardly possible, however, to share the admiration

expressed by some of Comte's disciples for his style. We are not so

unreasonable as to blame him for failing to make his pages picturesque

or thrilling; we do not want sunsets and stars and roses and ecstasy;

but there is a certain standard for the most serious and abstract

subjects. When compared with such philosophic writing as Hume's,

Diderot's, Berkeley's, then Comte's manner is heavy, laboured,

monotonous, without relief and without light. There is now and then an

energetic phrase, but as a whole the vocabulary is jejune; the sentences

are overloaded; the pitch is flat. A scrupulous insistence on making his

meaning clear led to an iteration of certain adjectives and adverbs,

which at length deadened the effect beyond the endurance of all but the

most resolute students. Only the interest of the matter prevents one

from thinking of Rivarol's ill-natured remark upon Condorcet, that he

wrote with opium on a page of lead. The general effect is impressive,

not by any virtues of style, for we do not discern one, but by reason of

the magnitude and importance of the undertaking, and the visible

conscientiousness and the grasp with which it is executed. It is by

sheer strength of thought, by the vigorous perspicacity with which he

strikes the lines of cleavage of his subject, that he makes his way

into the mind of the reader; in the presence of gifts of this power we

need not quarrel with an ungainly style.

Hygiene cerebrale.

Comte pursued one practice which ought to be mentioned in connexion with

his personal history, the practice of what he style _hygiene cerebrale_.

After he had acquired what he considered to be a sufficient stock of

material, and this happened before he had completed the _Positive

Philosophy_, he abstained from reading newspapers, reviews, scientific

transactions and everything else, except two or three poets (notably

Dante) and the _Imitatio Christi_. It is true that his friends kept him

informed of what was going on in the scientific world. Still this

partial divorce of himself from the record of the social and scientific

activity of his time, though it may save a thinker from the deplorable

evils of dispersion, moral and intellectual, accounts in no small

measure for the exaggerated egoism, and the absence of all feeling for

reality, which marked Comte's later days.

Madame de Vaux.

In 1845 Comte made the acquaintance of Madame Clotilde de Vaux, a lady

whose husband had been sent to the galleys for life. Very little is

known about her qualities. She wrote a little piece which Comte rated so

preposterously as to talk about George Sand in the same sentence; it is

in truth a flimsy performance, though it contains one or two gracious

thoughts. There is true beauty in the saying--"_It is unworthy of a

noble nature to diffuse its pain._" Madame de Vaux's letters speak well

for her good sense and good feeling, and it would have been better for

Comte's later work if she had survived to exert a wholesome restraint on

his exaltation. Their friendship had only lasted a year when she died

(1846), but the period was long enough to give her memory a supreme

ascendancy in Comte's mind. Condillac, Joubert, Mill and other eminent

men have shown what the intellectual ascendancy of a woman can be. Comte

was as inconsolable after Madame de Vaux's death as D'Alembert after the

death of Mademoiselle L'Espinasse. Every Wednesday afternoon he made a

reverential pilgrimage to her tomb, and three times every day he invoked

her memory in words of passionate expansion. His disciples believe that

in time the world will reverence Comte's sentiment about Clotilde de

Vaux, as it reveres Dante's adoration of Beatrice--a parallel that Comte

himself was the first to hit upon. Yet we cannot help feeling that it is

a grotesque and unseemly anachronism to apply in grave prose, addressed

to the whole world, those terms of saint and angel which are touching

and in their place amid the trouble and passion of the great mystic

poet. Whatever other gifts Comte may have had--and he had many of the

rarest kind,--poetic imagination was not among them, any more than

poetic or emotional expression was among them. His was one of those

natures whose faculty of deep feeling is unhappily doomed to be

inarticulate, and to pass away without the magic power of transmitting

itself.

Positive Polity.

Comte lost no time, after the completion of his _Course of Positive

Philosophy_, in proceeding with the _System of Positive Polity_, for

which the earlier work was designed to be a foundation. The first volume

was published in 1851, and the fourth and last in 1854. In 1848, when

the political air was charged with stimulating elements, he founded the

Positive Society, with the expectation that it might grow into a reunion

as powerful over the new revolution as the Jacobin Club had been in the

revolution of 1789. The hope was not fulfilled, but a certain number of

philosophic disciples gathered round Comte, and eventually formed

themselves, under the guidance of the new ideas of the latter half of

his life, into a kind of church, for whose use was drawn up the

_Positivist Calendar_ (1849), in which the names of those who had

advanced civilization replaced the titles of the saints. Gutenberg and

Shakespeare were among the patrons of the thirteen months in this

calendar. In the years 1849, 1850 and 1851 Comte gave three courses of

lectures at the Palais Royal. They were gratuitous and popular, and in

them he boldly advanced the whole of his doctrine, as well as the direct

and immediate pretensions of himself and his system. The third course

ended in the following uncompromising terms--"In the name of the Past

and of the Future, the servants of Humanity--both its philosophical and

its practical servants--come forward to claim as their due the general

direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at length a real

Providence in all departments,--moral, intellectual and material.

Consequently they exclude once for all from political supremacy all the

different servants of God--Catholic, Protestant or Deist--as being at

once behindhand and a cause of disturbance." A few weeks after this

invitation, a very different person stepped forward to constitute

himself a real Providence.

In 1852 Comte published the _Catechism of Positivism_. In the preface to

it he took occasion to express his approval of Louis Napoleon's _coup

d'etat_ of the 2nd of December,--"a fortunate crisis which has set aside

the parliamentary system and instituted a dictatorial republic."

Whatever we may think of the political sagacity of such a judgment, it

is due to Comte to say that he did not expect to see his dictatorial

republic transformed into a dynastic empire, and, next, that he did

expect from the Man of December freedom of the press and of public

meeting. His later hero was the emperor Nicholas, "the only statesman in

Christendom,"--as unlucky a judgment as that which placed Dr Francia in

the Comtist Calendar.

Death.

In 1857 he was attacked by cancer, and died peaceably on the 5th of

September of that year. The anniversary is celebrated by ceremonial

gatherings of his French and English followers, who then commemorate the

name and the services of the founder of their religion. By his will he

appointed thirteen executors who were to preserve his rooms at 10 rue

Monsieur-le-Prince as the headquarters of the new religion of Humanity.

Comte's philosophic consistency.

Early writing.

In proceeding to give an Outline of Comte's system, we shall consider

the _Positive Polity_ as the more or less legitimate sequel of the

_Positive Philosophy_, notwithstanding the deep gulf which so eminent a

critic as J. S. Mill insisted upon fixing between the earlier and the

later work. There may be, as we think there is, the greatest difference

in their value, and the temper is not the same, nor the method. But the

two are quite capable of being regarded, and for the purposes of an

account of Comte's career ought to be regarded, as an integral whole.

His letters when he was a young man of one-and-twenty, and before he had

published a word, show how strongly present the social motive was in his

mind, and in what little account he should hold his scientific works, if

he did not perpetually think of their utility for the species. "I feel,"

he wrote, "that such scientific reputation as I might acquire would give

more value, more weight, more useful influence to my political sermons."

In 1822 he published a _Plan of the Scientific Works necessary to

reorganize Society_. In this he points out that modern society is

passing through a great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing

movements,--the first, a disorganizing movement owing to the break-up of

old institutions and beliefs; the second, a movement towards a definite

social state, in which all means of human prosperity will receive their

most complete development and most direct application. How is this

crisis to be dealt with? What are the undertakings necessary in order to

pass successfully through it towards an organic state? The answer to

this is that there are two series of works. The first is theoretic or

spiritual, aiming at the development of a new principle of co-ordinating

social relations, and the formation of the system of general ideas which

are destined to guide society. The second work is practical or temporal;

it settles the distribution of power, and the institutions that are most

conformable to the spirit of the system which has previously been

thought out in the course of the theoretic work. As the practical work

depends on the conclusions of the theoretical, the latter must obviously

come first in order of execution.

In 1826 this was pushed farther in a most remarkable piece called

_Considerations on the Spiritual Power_--the main object of which is to

demonstrate the necessity of instituting a spiritual power, distinct

from the temporal power and independent of it. In examining the

conditions of a spiritual power proper for modern times, he indicates in

so many terms the presence in his mind of a direct analogy between his

proposed spiritual power and the functions of the Catholic clergy at the

time of its greatest vigour and most complete independence,--that is to

say, from about the middle of the 11th century until towards the end of

the 13th. He refers to de Maistre's memorable book, _Du Pape_, as the

most profound, accurate and methodical account of the old spiritual

organization, and starts from that as the model to be adapted to the

changed intellectual and social conditions of the modern time. In the

_Positive Philosophy_, again (vol. v. p. 344), he distinctly says that

Catholicism, reconstituted as a system on new intellectual foundations,

would finally preside over the spiritual reorganization of modern

society. Much else could be quoted to the same effect. If unity of

career, then, means that Comte, from the beginning designed the

institution of a spiritual power, and the systematic reorganization of

life, it is difficult to deny him whatever credit that unity may be

worth, and the credit is perhaps not particularly great. Even the

readaptation of the Catholic system to a scientific doctrine was plainly

in his mind thirty years before the final execution of the _Positive

Polity_, though it is difficult to believe that he foresaw the religious

mysticism in which the task was to land him. A great analysis was to

precede a great synthesis, but it was the synthesis on which Comte's

vision was centred from the first. Let us first sketch the nature of the

analysis. Society is to be reorganized on the base of knowledge. What is

the sum and significance of knowledge? That is the question which

Comte's first master-work professes to answer.

Law of the Three States.

The _Positive Philosophy_ opens with the statement of a certain law of

which Comte was the discoverer, and which has always been treated both

by disciples and dissidents as the key to his system. This is the Law of

the Three States. It is as follows. Each of our leading conceptions,

each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three

different phases; there are three different ways in which the human mind

explains phenomena, each way following the other in order. These three

stages are the Theological, the Metaphysical and the Positive.

Knowledge, or a branch of knowledge, is in the Theological state, when

it supposes the phenomena under consideration to be due to immediate

volition, either in the object or in some supernatural being. In the

Metaphysical state, for volition is substituted abstract force residing

in the object, yet existing independently of the object; the phenomena

are viewed as if apart from the bodies manifesting them; and the

properties of each substance have attributed to them an existence

distinct from that substance. In the Positive state, inherent volition

or external volition and inherent force or abstraction personified have

both disappeared from men's minds, and the explanation of a phenomenon

means a reference of it, by way of succession or resemblance, to some

other phenomenon,--means the establishment of a relation between the

given fact and some more general fact. In the Theological and

Metaphysical state men seek a cause or an essence; in the Positive they

are content with a law. To borrow an illustration from an able English

disciple of Comte:--"Take the phenomenon of the sleep produced by opium.

The Arabs are content to attribute it to the 'will of God.' Moliere's

medical student accounts for it by a _soporific principle_ contained in

the opium. The modern physiologist knows that he cannot account for it

at all. He can simply observe, analyse and experiment upon the phenomena

attending the action of the drug, and classify it with other agents

analogous in character."--(_Dr Bridges._)

The first and greatest aim of the Positive Philosophy is to advance the

study of society into the third of the three stages,--to remove social

phenomena from the sphere of theological and metaphysical conceptions,

and to introduce among them the same scientific observation of their

laws which has given us physics, chemistry, physiology. Social physics

will consist of the conditions and relations of the facts of society,

and will have two departments,--one, statical, containing the laws of

order; the other dynamical, containing the laws of progress. While

men's minds were in the theological state, political events, for

example, were explained by the will of the gods, and political authority

based on divine right. In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to

retain our instance, political authority was based on the sovereignty of

the people, and social facts were explained by the figment of a falling

away from a state of nature. When the positive method has been finally

extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these

social facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into

relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old

sense of the word, men will only examine the conditions of social

existence. When that stage has been reached, not merely the greater

part, but the whole, of our knowledge will be impressed with one

character, the character, namely, of positivity or scientificalness; and

all our conceptions in every part of knowledge will be thoroughly

homogeneous. The gains of such a change are enormous. The new

philosophical unity will now in its turn regenerate all the elements

that went to its own formation. The mind will pursue knowledge without

the wasteful jar and friction of conflicting methods and mutually

hostile conceptions; education will be regenerated; and society will

reorganize itself on the only possible solid base--a homogeneous

philosophy.

Classification of sciences.

The _Positive Philosophy_ has another object besides the demonstration

of the necessity and propriety of a science of society. This object is

to show the sciences as branches from a single trunk,--is to give to

science the ensemble or spirit or generality hitherto confined to

philosophy, and to give to philosophy the rigour and solidity of

science. Comte's special object is a study of social physics, a science

that before his advent was still to be formed; his second object is a

review of the methods and leading generalities of all the positive

sciences already formed, so that we may know both what system of inquiry

to follow in our new science, and also where the new science will stand

in relation to other knowledge.

The first step in this direction is to arrange scientific method and

positive knowledge in order, and this brings us to another cardinal

element in the Comtist system, the classification of the sciences. In

the front of the inquiry lies one main division, that, namely, between

speculative and practical knowledge. With the latter we have no concern.

Speculative or theoretic knowledge is divided into abstract and

concrete. The former is concerned with the laws that regulate phenomena

in all conceivable cases: the latter is concerned with the application

of these laws. Concrete science relates to objects or beings; abstract

science to events. The former is particular or descriptive; the latter

is general. Thus, physiology is an abstract science; but zoology is

concrete. Chemistry is abstract; mineralogy is concrete. It is the

method and knowledge of the abstract sciences that the Positive

Philosophy has to reorganize in a great whole.

Comte's principle of classification is that the dependence and order of

scientific study follows the dependence of the phenomena. Thus, as has

been said, it represents both the objective dependence of the phenomena

and the subjective dependence of our means of knowing them. The more

particular and complex phenomena depend upon the simpler and more

general. The latter are the more easy to study. Therefore science will

begin with those attributes of objects which are most general, and pass

on gradually to other attributes that are combined in greater

complexity. Thus, too, each science rests on the truths of the sciences

that precede it, while it adds to them the truths by which it is itself

constituted. Comte's series or hierarchy is arranged as follows:--(1)

Mathematics (that is, number, geometry, and mechanics), (2) Astronomy,

(3) Physics, (4) Chemistry, (5) Biology, (6) Sociology. Each of the

members of this series is one degree more special than the member before

it, and depends upon the facts of all the members preceding it, and

cannot be fully understood without them. It follows that the crowning

science of the hierarchy, dealing with the phenomena of human society,

will remain longest under the influence of theological dogmas and

abstract figments, and will be the last to pass into the positive stage.

You cannot discover the relations of the facts of human society without

reference to the conditions of animal life; you cannot understand the

conditions of animal life without the laws of chemistry; and so with the

rest.

The double key of positive philosophy.

This arrangement of the sciences, and the Law of the Three States, are

together explanatory of the course of human thought and knowledge. They

are thus the double key of Comte's systematization of the philosophy of

all the sciences from mathematics to physiology, and his analysis of

social evolution, which is the base of sociology. Each science

contributes its philosophy. The co-ordination of all these partial

philosophies produces the general Positive Philosophy. "Thousands had

cultivated science, and with splendid success; not one had conceived the

philosophy which the sciences when organized would naturally evolve. A

few had seen the necessity of extending the scientific method to all

inquiries, but no one had seen how this was to be effected.... The

Positive Philosophy is novel as a philosophy, not as a collection of

truths never before suspected. Its novelty is the organization of

existing elements. Its very principle implies the absorption of all that

great thinkers had achieved; while incorporating their results it

extended their methods.... What tradition brought was the results; what

Comte brought was the organization of these results. He always claimed

to be the founder of the Positive Philosophy. That he had every right to

such a title is demonstrable to all who distinguish between the positive

sciences and the philosophy which co-ordinated the truths and methods of

these sciences into a doctrine."--_G. H. Lewes._

Criticism on Comte's classification.

Comte's classification of the sciences has been subjected to a vigorous

criticism by Herbert Spencer. Spencer's two chief points are these:--(1)

He denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the

principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that there are as many

examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing

generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds that any grouping

of the sciences in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their

genesis and their interdependence; no true filiation exists; no science

develops itself in isolation; no one is independent, either logically or

historically. Littre, by far the most eminent of the scientific

followers of Comte, concedes a certain force to Spencer's objections,

and makes certain secondary modifications in the hierarchy in

consequence, while still cherishing his faith in the Comtist theory of

the sciences. J. S. Mill, while admitting the objections as good, if

Comte's arrangement pretended to be the only one possible, still holds

the arrangement as tenable for the purpose with which it was devised. G.

H. Lewes asserts against Spencer that the arrangement in a series is

necessary, on grounds similar to those which require that the various

truths constituting a science should be systematically co-ordinated

although in nature the phenomena are intermingled.

The first three volumes of the _Positive Philosophy_ contain an

exposition of the partial philosophies of the five sciences that precede

sociology in the hierarchy. Their value has usually been placed very low

by the special followers of the sciences concerned; they say that the

knowledge is second-hand, is not coherent, and is too confidently taken

for final. The Comtist replies that the task is philosophic; and is not

to be judged by the minute accuracies of science. In these three volumes

Comte took the sciences roughly as he found them. His eminence as a man

of science must be measured by his only original work in that

department,--the construction, namely, of the new science of society.

This work is accomplished in the last three volumes of the _Positive

Philosophy_, and the second and third volumes of the _Positive Polity_.

The Comtist maintains that even if these five volumes together fail in

laying down correctly and finally the lines of the new science, still

they are the first solution of a great problem hitherto unattempted.

"Modern biology has got beyond Aristotle's conception; but in the

construction of the biological science, not even the most

unphilosophical biologist would fail to recognize the value of

Aristotle's attempt. So for sociology. Subsequent sociologists may have

conceivably to remodel the whole science, yet not the less will they

recognize the merit of the first work which has facilitated their

labours."--_Congreve._

Sociological conceptions.

Method.

We shall now briefly describe Comte's principal conceptions in

sociology, his position in respect to which is held by himself, and by

others, to raise him to the level of Descartes or Leibnitz. Of course

the first step was to approach the phenomena of human character and

social existence with the expectation of finding them as reducible to

general laws as the other phenomena of the universe, and with the hope

of exploring these laws by the same instruments of observation and

verification as had done such triumphant work in the case of the latter.

Comte separates the collective facts of society and history from the

individual phenomena of biology; then he withdraws these collective

facts from the region of external volition, and places them in the

region of law. The facts of history must be explained, not by

providential interventions, but by referring them to conditions inherent

in the successive stages of social existence. This conception makes a

science of society possible. What is the method? It comprises, besides

observation and experiment (which is, in fact, only the observation of

abnormal social states), a certain peculiarity of verification. We begin

by deducing every well-known historical situation from the series of its

antecedents. Thus we acquire a body of empirical generalizations as to

social phenomena, and then we connect the generalizations with the

positive theory of human nature. A sociological demonstration lies in

the establishment of an accordance between the conclusions of historical

analysis and the preparatory conceptions of biological theory. As Mill

puts it:--"If a sociological theory, collected from historical evidence,

contradicts the established general laws of human nature; if (to use M.

Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, any very decided

natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction; if it supposes

that the reason, in average human beings, predominates over the desires,

or the disinterested desires over the personal,--we may know that

history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is false. On the

other hand, if laws of social phenomena, empirically generalized from

history, can, when once suggested, be affiliated to the known laws of

human nature; if the direction actually taken by the developments and

changes of human society, can be seen to be such as the properties of

man and of his dwelling-place made antecedently probable, the empirical

generalizations are raised into positive laws, and sociology becomes a

science." The result of this method, is an exhibition of the events of

human experience in co-ordinated series that manifest their own

graduated connexion.

Next, as all investigation proceeds from that which is known best to

that which is unknown or less well known, and as, in social states, it

is the collective phenomenon that is more easy of access to the observer

than its parts, therefore we must consider and pursue all the elements

of a given social state together and in common. The social organization

must be viewed and explored as a whole. There is a nexus between each

leading group of social phenomena and other leading groups; if there is

a change in one of them, that change is accompanied by a corresponding

modification of all the rest. "Not only must political institutions and

social manners, on the one hand, and manners and ideas, on the other, be

always mutually connected; but further, this consolidated whole must be

always connected by its nature with the corresponding state of the

integral development of humanity, considered in all its aspects of

intellectual, moral and physical activity."--_Comte._

Decisive Importance of Intellectual development.

Is there any one element which communicates the decisive impulse to all

the rest,--any predominating agency in the course of social evolution?

The answer is that all the other parts of social existence are

associated with, and drawn along by, the contemporary condition of

intellectual development. The Reason is the superior and preponderant

element which settles the direction in which all the other faculties

shall expand. "It is only through the more and more marked influence of

the reason over the general conduct of man and of society, that the

gradual march of our race has attained that regularity and persevering

continuity which distinguish it so radically from the desultory and

barren expansion of even the highest animal orders, which share, and

with enhanced strength, the appetites, the passions, and even the

primary sentiments of man." The history of intellectual development,

therefore, is the key to social evolution, and the key to the history of

intellectual development is the Law of the Three States.

Among other central thoughts in Comte's explanation of history are

these:--The displacement of theological by positive conceptions has been

accompanied by a gradual rise of an industrial regime out of the

military regime;--the great permanent contribution of Catholicism was

the separation which it set up between the temporal and the spiritual

powers;--the progress of the race consists in the increasing

preponderance of the distinctively human elements over the animal

elements;--the absolute tendency of ordinary social theories will be

replaced by an unfailing adherence to the relative point of view, and

from this it follows that the social state, regarded as a whole, has

been as perfect in each period as the co-existing condition of humanity

and its environment would allow.

The elaboration of these ideas in relation to the history of the

civilization of the most advanced portion of the human race occupies two

of the volumes of the _Positive Philosophy_, and has been accepted by

very different schools as a masterpiece of rich, luminous, and

far-reaching suggestion. Whatever additions it may receive, and whatever

corrections it may require, this analysis of social evolution will

continue to be regarded as one of the great achievements of human

intellect.

Social dynamics in the Positive Polity.

The third volume of the _Positive Polity_ treats of social dynamics, and

takes us again over the ground of historic evolution. It abounds with

remarks of extraordinary fertility and comprehensiveness; but it is

often arbitrary; and its views of the past are strained into coherence

with the statical views of the preceding volume. As it was composed in

rather less than six months, and as the author honestly warns us that he

has given all his attention to a more profound co-ordination, instead of

working out the special explanations more fully, as he had promised, we

need not be surprised if the result is disappointing to those who had

mastered the corresponding portion of the _Positive Philosophy_. Comte

explains the difference between his two works. In the first his "chief

object was to discover and demonstrate the laws of progress, and to

exhibit in one unbroken sequence the collective destinies of mankind,

till then invariably regarded as a series of events wholly beyond the

reach of explanation, and almost depending on arbitrary will. The

present work, on the contrary, is addressed to those who are already

sufficiently convinced of the certain existence of social laws, and

desire only to have them reduced to a true and conclusive system."

The Positivist system.

The Religion of humanity.

The main principles of the Comtian system are derived from the _Positive

Polity_ and from two other works,--the _Positivist Catechism: a Summary

Exposition of the Universal Religion, in Twelve Dialogues between a

Woman and a Priest of Humanity_; and, second, _The Subjective Synthesis_

(1856), which is the first and only volume of a work upon mathematics

announced at the end of the _Positive Philosophy_. The system for which

the _Positive Philosophy_ is alleged to have been the scientific

preparation contains a Polity and a Religion; a complete arrangement of

life in all its aspects, giving a wider sphere to Intellect, Energy and

Feeling than could be found in any of the previous organic

types,--Greek, Roman or Catholic-feudal. Comte's immense superiority

over such prae-Revolutionary utopians as the Abbe Saint Pierre, no less

than over the group of post-revolutionary Utopians, is especially

visible in this firm grasp of the cardinal truth that the improvement of

the social organism can only be effected by a moral development, and

never by any changes in mere political mechanism, or any violences in

the way of an artificial redistribution of wealth. A moral

transformation must precede any real advance. The aim, both in public

and private life, is to secure to the utmost possible extent the

victory of the social feeling over self-love, or Altruism over

Egoism.[1] This is the key to the regeneration of social existence, as

it is the key to that unity of individual life which makes all our

energies converge freely and without wasteful friction towards a common

end. What are the instruments for securing the preponderance of

Altruism? Clearly they must work from the strongest element in human

nature, and this element is Feeling or the Heart. Under the Catholic

system the supremacy of Feeling was abused, and the Intellect was made

its slave. Then followed a revolt of Intellect against Sentiment. The

business of the new system will be to bring back the Intellect into a

condition, not of slavery, but of willing ministry to the Feelings. The

subordination never was, and never will be, effected except by means of

a religion, and a religion, to be final, must include a harmonious

synthesis of all our conceptions of the external order of the universe.

The characteristic basis of a religion is the existence of a Power

without us, so superior to ourselves as to command the complete

submission of our whole life. This basis is to be found in the Positive

stage, in Humanity, past, present and to come, conceived as the Great

Being.

"A deeper study of the great universal order reveals to us at length

the ruling power within it of the true Great Being, whose destiny it

is to bring that order continually to perfection by constantly

conforming to its laws, and which thus best represents to us that

system as a whole. This undeniable Providence, the supreme dispenser

of our destinies, becomes in the natural course the common centre of

our affections, our thoughts, and our actions. Although this Great

Being evidently exceeds the utmost strength of any, even of any

collective, human force, its necessary constitution and its peculiar

function endow it with the truest sympathy towards all its servants.

The least amongst us can and ought constantly to aspire to maintain

and even to improve this Being. This natural object of all our

activity, both public and private, determines the true general

character of the rest of our existence, whether in feeling or in

thought; which must be devoted to love, and to know, in order rightly

to serve, our Providence, by a wise use of all the means which it

furnishes to us. Reciprocally this continued service, whilst

strengthening our true unity, renders us at once both happier and

better."

Remarks on the religion.

The exaltation of Humanity into the throne occupied by the Supreme Being

under monotheistic systems made all the rest of Comte's construction

easy enough. Utility remains the test of every institution, impulse,

act; his fabric becomes substantially an arch of utilitarian

propositions, with an artificial Great Being inserted at the top to keep

them in their place. The Comtist system is utilitarianism crowned by a

fantastic decoration. Translated into the plainest English, the position

is as follows: "Society can only be regenerated by the greater

subordination of politics to morals, by the moralization of capital, by

the renovation of the family, by a higher conception of marriage and so

on. These ends can only be reached by a heartier development of the

sympathetic instincts. The sympathetic instincts can only be developed

by the Religion of Humanity." Looking at the problem in this way, even a

moralist who does not expect theology to be the instrument of social

revival, might still ask whether the sympathetic instincts will not

necessarily be already developed to their highest point, before people

will be persuaded to accept the religion, which is at the bottom hardly

more than sympathy under a more imposing name. However that may be, the

whole battle--into which we shall not enter--as to the legitimateness of

Comtism as a religion turns upon this erection of Humanity into a Being.

The various hypotheses, dogmas, proposals, as to the family, to capital,

&c., are merely propositions measurable by considerations of utility and

a balance of expediencies. Many of these proposals are of the highest

interest, and many of them are actually available; but there does not

seem to be one of them of an available kind, which could not equally

well be approached from other sides, and even incorporated in some

radically antagonistic system. Adoption, for example, as a practice for

improving the happiness of families and the welfare of society, is

capable of being weighed, and can in truth only be weighed, by

utilitarian considerations, and has been commended by men to whom the

Comtist religion is naught. The singularity of Comte's construction, and

the test by which it must be tried, is the transfer of the worship and

discipline of Catholicism to a system in which "the conception of God is

superseded" by the abstract idea of Humanity, conceived as a kind of

Personality.

And when all is said, the invention does not help us. We have still to

settle what _is_ for the good of Humanity, and we can only do that in

the old-fashioned way. There is no guidance in the conception. No

effective unity can follow from it, because you can only find out the

right and wrong of a given course by summing up the advantages and

disadvantages, and striking a balance, and there is nothing in the

Religion of Humanity to force two men to find the balance on the same

side. The Comtists are no better off than other utilitarians in judging

policy, events, conduct.

The worship and discipline.

The particularities of the worship, its minute and truly ingenious

re-adaptations of sacraments, prayers, reverent signs, down even to the

invocation of a New Trinity, need not detain us. They are said, though

it is not easy to believe, to have been elaborated by way of Utopia. If

so, no Utopia has ever yet been presented in a style so little

calculated to stir the imagination, to warm the feelings, to soothe the

insurgency of the reason. It is a mistake to present a great body of

hypotheses--if Comte meant them for hypotheses--in the most dogmatic and

peremptory form to which language can lend itself. And there is no more

extraordinary thing in the history of opinion than the perversity with

which Comte has succeeded in clothing a philosophic doctrine, so

intrinsically conciliatory as his, in a shape that excites so little

sympathy and gives so much provocation. An enemy defined Comtism as

Catholicism _minus_ Christianity, to which an able champion retorted by

calling it Catholicism _plus_ Science. Comte's Utopia has pleased the

followers of the Catholic, just as little as those of the scientific,

spirit.

The priesthood.

The elaborate and minute systematization of life, proper to the religion

of Humanity, is to be directed by a priesthood. The priests are to

possess neither wealth nor material power; they are not to command, but

to counsel; their authority is to rest on persuasion, not on force. When

religion has become positive, and society industrial, then the influence

of the church upon the state becomes really free and independent, which

was not the case in the middle ages. The power of the priesthood rests

upon special knowledge of man and nature; but to this intellectual

eminence must also be added moral power and a certain greatness of

character, without which force of intellect and completeness of

attainment will not receive the confidence they ought to inspire. The

functions of the priesthood are of this kind:--To exercise a systematic

direction over education; to hold a consultative influence over all the

important acts of actual life, public and private; to arbitrate in cases

of practical conflict; to preach sermons recalling those principles of

generality and universal harmony which our special activities dispose us

to ignore; to order the due classification of society; to perform the

various ceremonies appointed by the founder of the religion. The

authority of the priesthood is to rest wholly on voluntary adhesion, and

there is to be perfect freedom of speech and discussion. This provision

hardly consists with Comte's congratulations to the tsar Nicholas on the

"wise vigilance" with which he kept watch over the importation of

Western books.

Women.

From his earliest manhood Comte had been powerfully impressed by the

necessity of elevating the condition of women. (See remarkable passage

in his letters to M. Valat, pp. 84-87.) His friendship with Madame de

Vaux had deepened the impression, and in the reconstructed society women

are to play a highly important part. They are to be carefully excluded

from public action, but they are to do many more important things than

things political. To fit them for their functions, they are to be raised

above material cares, and they are to be thoroughly educated. The

family, which is so important an element of the Comtist scheme of

things, exists to carry the influence of woman over man to the highest

point of cultivation. Through affection she purifies the activity of

man. "Superior in power of affection, more able to keep both the

intellectual and the active powers in continual subordination to

feeling, women are formed as the natural intermediaries between Humanity

and man. The Great Being confides specially to them its moral

Providence, maintaining through them the direct and constant cultivation

of universal affection, in the midst of all the distractions of thought

or action, which are for ever withdrawing men from its influence....

Beside the uniform influence of every woman on every man, to attach him

to Humanity, such is the importance and the difficulty of this ministry

that each of us should be placed under the special guidance of one of

these angels, to answer for him, as it were, to the Great Being. This

moral guardianship may assume three types,--the mother, the wife and the

daughter; each having several modifications, as shown in the concluding

volume. Together they form the three simple modes of solidarity, or

unity with contemporaries,--obedience, union and protection--as well as

the three degrees of continuity between ages, by uniting us with the

past, the present and the future. In accordance with my theory of the

brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic

instincts--veneration, attachment and benevolence."

Conclusion.

How the positive method of observation and verification of real facts

has landed us in this, and much else of the same kind, is extremely hard

to guess. Seriously to examine an encyclopaedic system, that touches

life, society and knowledge at every point, is evidently beyond the

compass of such an article as this. There is in every chapter a whole

group of speculative suggestions, each of which would need a long

chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss. There is at least one

biological speculation of astounding audacity, that could be examined in

nothing less than a treatise. Perhaps we have said enough to show that

after performing a great and real service to thought Comte almost

sacrificed his claims to gratitude by the invention of a system that, as

such, and independently of detached suggestions, is markedly retrograde.

But the world will take what is available in Comte, while forgetting

that in his work which is as irrational in one way as Hegel is in

another.