Sociology, an abstract and wholly theoretical science, only sets itself

the task of discovering the laws of phenomena, without first taking

into account any possible applications. I shall not have, says Comte,

to concern myself directly with political anarchy.[234] Here, more than

anywhere else, science must be separated from the corresponding art.

The same reasons which led to physiology being constituted apart from

medicine, with which it had for so long been confused, also require

that social science should be distinguished from politics, of which,

up to the present time, it has only been a more or less empirical or

arbitrary interpretation.

Comte who took such pains to define the physical fact, the chemical

fact, the biological fact, has not given a definition of the

sociological fact. The reasons for this are not difficult to see. In

the first place, this fact defines itself so to speak, by elimination.

As there are no phenomena accessible to us more complicated than those

of the social life, all the phenomena which are not studied by the

preceding sciences are of course the subject of sociology. Moreover,

there might be a reason to seek for a definition of the sociological

fact, if we started from the consideration of the individual to rise

to that of society. But Comte’s conception is radically different.

For him it is the individual who is an abstraction; and society is

the true reality. He must not explain humanity by man, but on the

contrary, man by humanity. From this moment, all the human phenomena

properly so-called are _ipso facto_ sociological. It is an essential

characteristic of Comte’s system that man, considered individually,

is not an object of science. The science of man belongs for one part

to biology, for the other to sociology. To define the sociological

fact amounts then to establishing the relations between biology and

sociology.

We have already seen that these relations are extremely close. On the

one hand, sociology could not be constituted so long as higher biology

had not reached a certain degree of development. History has furnished

us with a proof of this: the state of infancy of biology contributed

largely to the failure of Montesquieu’s and Condorcet’s sociological

attempts. But, on the other hand, the study of the intellectual and

moral functions, that is to say, the highest part of biology, can only

be made from the sociological point of view. Here we have a kind of

mixed domain, which properly belongs neither to the one nor to the

other of the sciences.

Could we not then consider sociology as a simple extension of biology,

an extension which would be far more important in the case of the human

species than in any of the others? Do we not do this implicitly when we

attribute the study of the intellectual and moral functions to biology,

since everything which bears the name of “moral science,” history, law,

political economy, etc., finally rests upon these functions? What is

the use of a new fundamental science for the study of phenomena which

at bottom reduce themselves to biological phenomena?

Comte protested against this interpretation of his doctrine.[235]

According to him, sociology is no less irreducible to biology, than

the latter is to chemistry. The sociological phenomena, independently

of the more general laws which are common to them with the subjacent

orders, have laws of their own which regulate them. If animal societies

only existed as we see them to-day, it would perhaps not be impossible

to consider sociology as an appendix of biology. But human society

excludes any attempt of this kind. For it is social life which has

made the extraordinary development of the intellectual and moral

functions possible in man, and this development is the very definition

of humanity. Now, the first consequence of this development is that

biology properly so-called, no longer suffices for studying it. We need

a new method in it, the method of historical observation. Already,

were it for this reason alone, there can be no question of reducing

sociology to biology.

In the second place, when we pass from the individual to the collective

organism, “the continued expansion and the almost indefinite

perpetuity” of the latter makes it almost impossible not to separate

it from the former in a scientific study.[236] Comte is not deceived

by the analogy between the two kinds of organism. To speak accurately,

sociology with him, hardly ever considers anything except a single

organism. Let us leave aside the little that it says of animal

societies. It represents the human race as constituting, in time

and in space, “an immense and eternal social unity, whose various

organs, individuals and nations, united by universal solidarity, each,

according to a determined manner and degree concur in the evolution of

Humanity.”

One of the ideas which Comte most admires in Condorcet, and which

he regards as indispensable to social science, is that which makes

a single being in process of evolution of the totality of the human

species.[237] Henceforth, the parallelism between this immense “social

unity,” and the organisms studied by biology could not be a strict one.

“The complex nature of the former,” says Comte himself, “deeply differs

from the indivisible constitution of living beings.” We must then

know how to restrain comparison wisely, “in order that it should not

give rise to faulty approximations, instead of precious indications.”

Comte has sometimes failed in carrying out this prudent precept, for

instance, when in the social organism he looks for what is analogous

to tissues, organs, and systems studied by the anatomists. But he has,

none the less, traced very firmly the limits beyond which the use of

analogy here becomes an abuse.

These limits are determined by the specific character of the social

reality, which escapes the grasp of the biological method. For the

principal phenomenon in sociology, the one which establishes most

evidently its scientific originality, is the gradual and continuous

influence of human generations upon one another. Now our intelligence

cannot “guess the principal decisive phases of such a complex evolution

without an historical analysis properly so-called.”[238] Here is the

final word: no history, no sociology. Comte had already written in

1822: To reduce sociology to biology is to annul the direct observation

of the social past. Undoubtedly the reason for man’s superiority over

the other animals lies in the relative perfection of his organisation.

In this sense, social physics, that is to say, the study of collective

development of the human species, is really a branch of physiology.

In this sense, the history of civilisation is but the sequel and the

indispensable complement of the natural history of man. But, important

as it is to form a proper conception, and never to lose sight of this

relation, yet it would be a mistake to conclude from it that no clear

division should be established between social physics and physiology

properly so-called. For, in the case of the human race, there is

history _which cannot be reached by a process of deduction_.[239]

III.

Already, in biology the nature of the object had compelled scientific

men to start from the consideration of the whole to reach that of the

parts, to proceed from the complex to the simple. With still greater

reason, the same inversion of method imposes itself in sociology. For,

although the individual elements of society appear to be more separable

than those of the living being, the social _consensus_ is still closer

than the vital _consensus_.[240]

The spirit of the sociological method will then be always to consider

simultaneously the various social aspects, whether in statics, or in

dynamics. Undoubtedly each of them can be the object of a special

study, by the way of “preliminary elaboration.” But, as soon as the

science is sufficiently advanced, the correlation of phenomena will

serve as a guide for their analysis. Political economy has proved

by facts that the isolated study of a series of social phenomena is

condemned to remain irrational and barren. Those then who, in the

system of social studies, wish to imitate “the methodical parcelling

out, which belongs to the inorganic sciences,” misunderstand what the

essential conditions of their subject require. Here the most general

laws must be known first. It is from them that science must then

descend to the more particular laws.

The more complex the phenomena, the more numerous are the processes

of method at our disposal for studying them. This law of compensation

is verified again in the present case. Sociology, over and above the

processes made use of by the preceding sciences possesses some which

are peculiarly its own. To put it more plainly, in its capacity of

final science, the whole positive method belongs to it. As method is

only learnt by practice, the sociologist will therefore have to be

formed by a complete scientific education from mathematics, which will

give him the feeling of positivity, to biology which will teach him

the comparative method. The _Cours de philosophie positive_ precisely

retraces this methodical ascent, which leads the human mind, by

successive degrees, up to social science. And, since the intellectual

evolution of the individual reproduces that of the species, the

sociologist will cover the same ground to reach the same end.

At any rate, if a mathematical education is indispensable so as to

accustom him to the positive mode of thought, he will, however,

acknowledge that social phenomena do not allow of the use of numbers

or of mathematical analysis, nor more especially of the calculation

of probabilities. Comte treats Laplace’s attempt upon this point

as absurd, an attempt which has been taken up again by other

mathematicians. He likes to quote it as a proof of the lack of the

philosophical spirit among geometers. Indeed, according to him, to

apply the calculation of probabilities to historical events, implies a

failure to understand that these phenomena are subject to invariable

laws like all other phenomena.

In default of the powerful instrument furnished by mathematics,

sociology makes use of the methods employed in the physical and natural

sciences. Of these observation is the first. Social phenomena seem easy

to observe, because they are very common, and the observer takes part

in them more or less. But, on the contrary, these two circumstances

render sociological observation very difficult. We only observe well

on condition that we place ourselves outside what we observe.[241]

Sociological facts ought then to appear objective to us, detached from

us, independent of the state of our individual consciousness. Nothing

is more difficult to realise. In order to obtain, and more especially

to maintain, “such an inversion of the spontaneous point of view,”

the mind must already have partly constructed what it wishes to see.

Were it not already provided with a preliminary theory, for the most

part the observer would not know what he must look for in the fact

which is taking place under his eyes. It is therefore by the preceding

facts that we learn to see the following ones. There lies “the immense

difficulty” of sociology, in which we are thus obliged, in a certain

measure, to determine simultaneously the facts and the laws. If we are

not already possessed of the necessary speculative indications to grasp

them, the facts remain barren and even unseen, although we are, so to

speak, immersed in them.

Consequently, a social fact can have no scientific significance if

it is not brought into relation with another fact. In an isolated

condition, it remains in the state of a simple anecdote, capable at

most of satisfying “idle curiosity,” but unfit for any rational use.

An infinite number of facts may be useful to sociology, apparently

very insignificant customs, all kinds of monuments, the analysis and

the comparison of languages; but the mind must be provided for their

observation with general points of view. Only on this condition will

a mind, well prepared by rational education, be able to transform

the actions which take place beneath its eyes into sociological

indications, “according to the more or less direct points of contact,

which he will be able to discern in these actions with the highest

notions of science, in virtue of the connexion of the various social

aspects.”

There can be no question of experimenting in sociology.[242] Not that

we cannot act upon the social phenomena: they are, on the contrary,

the most modifiable of all. But an experiment properly so-called

consists in comparing two cases which differ from each other by a

certain definite circumstance, and by that one alone. We have no means

of determining two cases of this kind in sociology. It is true that in

the absence of direct experiments nature presents indirect ones. They

are the pathological cases, unfortunately too frequent in the life of

societies, the more or less serious perturbations which they undergo

through accidental or passing causes. Such are the revolutionary

periods which correspond to diseases in living bodies. If we properly

extend Broussais’ principle to sociology, that is to say, if we admit

that morbid phenomena are produced by the effect of the same laws as

normal phenomena, then social pathology will in some measure replace

experiments. It will be said that this study has been fruitless up

to the present time. But the reason of this is, according to Comte,

that direct or indirect experimenting ought, like simple observation,

to be subject to rational conceptions. Both are only productive in a

sociology already possessed of its essential laws.

The comparative method, so useful to the biologist, is also precious

for the sociologist. It draws together the various states of human

society which coexist on the different parts of the earth’s surface,

and among peoples independent of one another. Undoubtedly, if the total

development only is considered, the evolution of Humanity is one.

It nevertheless remains true that very considerable and very varied

populations have as yet only reached the more or less inferior degrees

of this evolution. We can thus observe them simultaneously and compare

their successive phases. From the Fuegians to the most civilised

nations in Europe, we can imagine no “social shade” which is not at

present realised on some portion of the globe. Frequently, within the

same nation, the social condition of the various classes represents

states of civilisation which are very far removed from one another.

Paris to-day contains more or less faithful “survivors” of nearly

all the anterior degrees of social evolution, especially from the

intellectual point of view.[243] This comparative process holds good

for social statics as for social dynamics. Even in statics a comparison

can be established between animal societies and human society.

However, this type of method is not devoid of inconvenience in

sociology. It does not consider the necessary succession of the various

phases in the social evolution: it seems on the contrary to consider

them all as simultaneous. Consequently, it prevents us from seeing

the filiation of social forms. It also runs the risk of falsifying

the analysis of the cases which are observed, and of causing simple

secondary factors to be taken for main causes. This is what happened

to Montesquieu who compared indifferently the cities of antiquity,

the France of the Middle Ages, the England of the XVIII. century, the

republic of Venice, the government of Byzantium, the Empire of the

Sultan, and that of the Shah of Persia.

So the comparative method is only an auxiliary process in sociology.

Like observation and experiment, it has to be made subordinate to a

rational conception of the evolution of humanity. The latter in turn

depends upon the use of an original method of observation, belonging

to social phenomena, and free from the dangers presented by the

preceding ones. This specific sociological method, this “transcendent”

process, by which the positive method is completed, is, says Comte, the

historical method.[244]

IV.

Sociology is an abstract science: history, which is its essential

method, cannot therefore be history merely considered as a narrative.

There are two ways of conceiving history, the one abstract and the

other concrete. The latter dominates in the historical works written

up to the present time. Their end is to relate and to array in

chronological order a certain sequence of events. Undoubtedly in the

XVIII. century efforts were made to co-ordinate political phenomena

and to determine their filiation. But for all that this kind of work

has not ceased to be descriptive and literary. The other form of

history, which does not exist up to the present, has for its end the

research of the laws which regulate the social development of the human

species.[245]

Difference of object leads to difference of method. If an historian

proposes to himself to compose exact “annals,” to relate things as

they took place, he will begin by the special history of the various

peoples, which, in its turn, is founded upon the chronicles of the

provinces and the towns. It will be necessary for him to investigate

documents in detail, and to neglect no source: the work of combination

will only come subsequently. But if our end is the abstract science

of history, that is to say the linking together of social phenomena,

quite a different course will have to be followed. Indeed all the

classes of these phenomena are simultaneously developed, and under the

mutual influence of one another. We cannot explain the line of advance

followed by anyone among them, without having first conceived in a

general way “the progression of the whole.” Before all things then we

must set ourselves to conceive the development of the human species in

its widest generality, that is to say, to observe and to link together

among themselves the most important steps towards progress which it

has successively taken in the various fundamental directions. Then

we shall subdivide the periods and the classes of the phenomena to be

observed.[246]

These “various fundamental directions” correspond to what Comte

called later the “social series.” By this he indicates the groups of

social phenomena arranged for a scientific study. Once these groups

are formed, then, according to the totality of historical facts, the

sociologist seeks to determine the continuous growth of each, physical,

moral, intellectual or political disposition or faculty, combined

with the indefinite decrease of the opposite disposition or faculty:

for instance, the tendency of human society to pass from the warlike

form to the industrial form, from revealed religion to demonstrated

religion, etc. From this will be drawn the scientific forecast of

the triumph of the one and the fall of the other, provided that this

conclusion is also in conformity with the general laws of the evolution

of Humanity.

Such a forecast could never be founded upon the knowledge of the

present alone. For the present exposes us to the danger of confusing

the principal with the secondary facts, of “placing noisy passing

demonstrations above deep-seated tendencies,” and of regarding

institutions or doctrines as growing which are really on the decline.

Our statesmen scarcely look back beyond the XVIII. century, our

philosophers beyond the XVI. This is too little. It does not even

suffice to make us understand the French revolution. The study of the

“historical series” alone allows the understanding of the present

and the prevision of the future. The sociologist will even exercise

himself in predicting the past, that is to say, in acquiring a rational

knowledge of it, and in deducing each historical situation from the

whole of its antecedents. He will thus become familiar with the spirit

of the historical method.

However, if this abstract historical method were used by the

sociologist to the exclusion of every other, he would sometimes

come to a wrong conclusion, and take the continuous decrease in a

natural faculty for a tendency to total extinction. For instance, as

civilisation becomes more refined, man eats less than formerly. Nobody

concludes from this that he tends not to eat at all. But the absurdity

which is palpable here, might, in other cases pass unperceived. That

is why the historical method in sociology requires to be controlled by

the positive theory of human nature. All the inductions which might

contradict this theory are to be rejected. Indeed, the whole social

evolution is at bottom but a simple development of humanity, without

the creation of new faculties. The germ, at any rate, of all the

dispositions or effective faculties which sociological observation,

(and in particular, history), may make known, must then be found in the

primordial type which biology has constructed beforehand for sociology.

Accordance between the conclusions of historical analysis and the

preliminary notions of the biological theory is the indispensable

guarantee of sociological demonstrations.[247]

V.

Thus conceived the historical method rests upon the postulate

given by Comte, as we have seen, as a basis to his sociology. This

postulate is thus enunciated: _The nature of man evolves without being

transformed._ The various physical, moral and intellectual faculties,

must be found the same at all the degrees of historical evolution, and

always similarly co-ordinated among themselves. The development which

they receive in the social state can never change their nature, nor

consequently destroy or create any one of them, nor even intervene in

the order of their importance.

In a word, the chief regulator of sociology is the science of human

nature. It can even be said, without forcing the meaning of Comte’s

thought, that sociology is really a psychology:[248] not indeed, it

is true, a psychology founded upon the introspective analysis of the

individual subject, but a psychology whose object is the analysis by

history, of the universal subject, that is to say, of Humanity.

Comte endeavours to bring the complexity and the extreme variety of

social phenomena into an intelligible unity. This complexity is such

that we could not determine the laws by starting from the observation

of the simplest phenomena to reach the more complex ones afterwards.

Moreover, these facts only possess sociological significance if the

observer is already provided with a general theory before he ascertains

them. But, on the other hand, history cannot be deduced. Given an

already positive knowledge of human nature and of the “_milieu_” in

which it evolves, we could not say _a priori_ how it will evolve.

History must then teach us how, as a matter of fact, social life has

developed Humanity. Nevertheless, once this concession has been made

to observation the method becomes again deductive. Since sociology is

a science it ought, like the other sciences, to be able to substitute

rational prevision to the empirical establishment of facts.

To complete the characterising of this final science, it must be at

once positive, like the subjacent fundamental sciences, and universal

like philosophy, which alone up to the present time has looked at

things from “the point of view of the whole.” Henceforth these two

conditions are fulfilled. In the first place, the positivity of

sociology cannot be doubted. In it social facts are conceived as

subject to laws, and Comte abstains from any research as to their mode

of production. Then, sociology, in spite of the extreme difficulties

of its object, has assumed the deductive form, and has brought

secondary laws under more general laws. Comte is even convinced that

his sociology comes nearer to the perfect scientific form than physics

or chemistry. By his discovery of the great dynamic law of the three

states, has he not given it a unity which is to be found as complete

nowhere else but in astronomy? But, at the same time, it is truly

universal, since it is a philosophy of history, or, in other words,

the science of humanity considered in its evolution. As this science

presupposes biology, and as biology in turn presupposes the science of

the “_milieu_” in which living beings are immersed, sociology becomes

at once the summary and the crown of the sciences which precede it.

Thus in replacing man in Humanity, and Humanity in the system of its

conditions of existence, Comte constructs a final science which is at

the same time the supreme science, the only science, that is to say,

philosophy. “If the laws of sociology could be sufficiently known

to us, they alone would suffice to replace all the others, save the

difficulties of deduction.”[249] The science of Humanity is the centre

around which the others range themselves in order.

Already with Descartes, the anthropological character of philosophy

was strongly marked. After him, philosophical speculation took man for

its centre more and more. This tendency also predominates in Comte’s

doctrine. But in it it assumes a social character. Here the “universal

subject” is no longer the intellectual consciousness of Kant, or the

absolute “ego” of Fichte; it is Humanity evolving in time, whose unity

is displayed through the succession of generations connected in strict

solidarity with each other. Henceforth the philosophical problems,

no longer present themselves from the point of view of man conceived

in the abstract or in himself apart from time. The consideration of

history necessarily intervenes. Problems are formulated in social

terms. There lies the deep significance of the doctrine systematised

by Comte.

FOOTNOTES:

[228] Cours, IV, 200.

[229] Cours, IV, 191-2.

[230] Cours, IV, 193-99; Pol. pos., IV, Appendice, p. 106.

[231] Cours, IV, 200-205; Pol. pos. IV, Appendice, p. 109.

[232] Cours, IV, 243-4.

[233] Lettres à Valat, p. 138-9 (8 septembre, 1824).

[234] Cours, IV, 2-3.

[235] Cours, IV, 391; VI, 775-6; Pol. pos., IV, Appendice, p. 124-7.

[236] Pol. pos., II. 288-9.

[237] Cours, IV. 326.

[238] Cours, IV. 387.

[239] Pol. pos., IV. Appendix, p. 124-7.

[240] Cours, IV. 279-80.

[241] Cours, IV. 337.

[242] Cours, IV, 342-44.

[243] Cours. IV. 354-sq.

[244] Cours, IV, 360.

[245] Cours. IV, 225.

[246] Cours, IV., 366 sq; Pol. pos., IV. Appendice, p. 135 sq.

[247] Cours, IV, 371-3; Pol. pos., I, 624-6.

[248] Pol. pos., III, 47-48.

[249] Pol. pos., I, 442.

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL STATICS

As biology distinguishes the anatomical point of view, “relating to

the ideas of organisation,” and the physiological point of view,

“relating to the ideas of life,” so sociology separates the study of

the conditions of existence of a society (social statics), and that of

the laws of its movements (social dynamics).

This distinction has the advantage of corresponding exactly to that

of order and progress, from the practical point of view, while it is

closely allied to the encyclopædic law called “the principle of the

conditions of existence.”

Comte will not admit that he is making two distinct sciences of

social statics and social dynamics. Sociology, according to him, is

constituted by the constant drawing together of these two corresponding

studies. However, they each have their own object, and Comte has

treated them separately. Indeed, social statics and dynamics are far

from having the same importance in his work.

The essential part, on his own showing, is dynamics.[250] When he

makes history the characteristic process of the Sociological method,

when he shows that the tradition transmitted from every generation

to the following one is pre-eminently the sociological phenomenon,

when finally he considers the new science as having been founded

from the day when the law of the three states was discovered, is

he not placing himself at the dynamic point of view? After having

demonstrated that dynamic laws of social phenomena exist, he concludes

that these phenomena are also subject to static laws: there would be a

contradiction in admitting the one set of laws without the other. In

Comte’s mind then dynamics preceded statics. Even from an objective

point of view, dynamics seem to be the most important. For, if we knew

the dynamic laws it would not be impossible to deduce the static laws

from them, while to do the reverse would be impracticable, at any rate

for minds constituted like ours.

So, in the _Cours de philosophie positive_, social statics holds a very

small place compared with that occupied by dynamics. It is true that it

takes up the whole of the second volume of the _Politique positive_.

But there Comte brings into it many considerations which arise more

from ethics and religion than from sociology properly so called.

I.

The idea of the social _consensus_, more restricted than that of the

vital _consensus_, dominates the whole of social statics. The science

sets itself to study the continual actions and reactions which the

various parts of the social system exercise upon one another. Each

of the numerous elements of this system, instead of being observed

by itself, must be conceived as in relation with all the others,

with which it has constant solidarity. From whatever social element

we start, it is always connected, in a more or less direct way, with

the whole of the others, even with those which at first sight appear

independent.[251]

What are the ultimate “social elements?” In biology, anatomical

analysis was to stop at the tissue, or at least at the cell. In

sociology, statical analysis will stop at the family. “Human society

is made up of families and not of individuals: it is an elementary

axiom in statical sociology.” In the eyes of social science, the

individual is an abstraction. All social strength is the result of a

“more or less extended co-operation,” that is to say of the combined

action of a greater or smaller number of individuals. There is nothing

purely individual except physical force. But what is the physical force

of a man alone, without arms or tools? (for these already imply a

co-operation of social activities). Intellectual power is of value only

when others participate in it: so it is with moral power.

On the other hand, if all social force is the result of union, all

social force is, nevertheless represented by an individual. The

social organism is “collective in its nature, and individual in its

functions.”[252] In this way the part played by the individual again

becomes a very considerable one. If the individual, in so far as he

is a social force, always represents some group, he is none the less

possessed of his own personality which may precisely have taken a great

part in the formation of such or such a group. We know that the social

organism must not on all points be compared with the living organism.

If the family is the ultimate element for social statics, this element

is however itself made up of persons who are naturally independent, and

who cannot be compared to cells.

The positive theory of the family is founded upon the biological theory

of the physical and moral nature of man. This nature is sociable. The

human species belongs to the category of those in which individuals

not only live in more or less permanent bands, but form definite and

durable societies. This is a fact in our experience. The social state

is, for men, the state of nature. The “contract” theory cannot then

be maintained. Comte does not stop to criticise it. The theorists of

the counter-Revolution have sufficiently refuted Rousseau. According

to Comte, sociability is spontaneous in the human species, in virtue

of the instinctive leaning towards common life, “independently of any

personal calculation, and often against the most immediate interest of

the individual. Society is not then founded upon utility, which could

moreover only appear in a state of society already established.”[253]

Thus, the family is the ultimate social element. Being preoccupied

by this idea, Comte, who had such a deep, clear-sighted feeling of

the evolution of societies, does not ask himself whether the family

has evolved from something which existed previously. For him it is

something natural, that is to say something given, beyond which we

should not go back, and of which only the biological conditions can

be determined. It is from this point of view that Comte defines the

relations of man and woman in the family. He bases himself upon

biology (that is to say both upon physiology and psychology), to

represent the female sex as living in “a kind of state of continuous

childhood.” Whence he concludes to the natural subordination of woman.

This inferiority does not moreover extend to the whole of her moral

nature, for, “in general, women are as superior to men by the natural

development of sympathy, and sociability, as they are inferior to

them where intellect and reasoning powers are concerned.”[254] On

this last point, John Stuart Mill held the contrary opinion, and this

disagreement contributed not a little to alienate him from positive

philosophy. Later on, in his “second career,” Comte, who more and

more came to subordinate the intellect to the heart, still more

extolled the moral excellence of woman, and ended by considering her

as “intermediary between humanity and man.” But even then, while

proclaiming the sentimental, moral, and æsthetic superiority of woman,

he persisted in maintaining that, from the intellectual point of view,

by reason of immutable biological conditions, she remains inferior to

man.

From analogous motives, Comte regards marriage as a “universal natural

disposition, the first necessary basis of all society.” Every thing

which tends to weaken marriage tends to disorganise the family, and,

consequently, to destroy society in its constitutive elements. Comte

will thus condemn divorce, of which he himself had the best reasons

for appreciating the advantages. Generally, Comte’s theory of the

family is modelled upon the Christian family. According to his constant

practice, he seeks to detach the institutions of Catholicism, which he

admires, from its dogmas which he believes to be almost dead. These

institutions, excellent in themselves only suffer from being bound up

with beliefs which are disappearing. So long, he says, as the family

continues to have no other intellectual basis than religious doctrines,

it will necessarily participate in their growing discredit. Positive

philosophy “can alone henceforth establish the spirit of the family

upon an immoveable foundation, with the modifications suitable to the

modern character of the social organism.”[255] This new intellectual

basis is established by positive psychology and social statics. The

constitution of the family remains the same. But its foundation is

henceforth positive dogma instead of religious dogma, demonstrated

belief instead of revealed faith.

Perhaps we must recognise in the energetic defence made by Comte of

the family and of marriage as he found them established by the side of

Catholic influence, a desire not to be confused with the followers of

Saint Simon, of Fourier, and the other reformers of his time. These did

not hesitate to contradict current and traditional customs. In Comte’s

view, this contradiction is a sign of error. Scientific truth is found

in the prolongation of public reason and of common sense. Here Comte

sees a new, and not one of the least, important arguments, in support

of his own theory.

II.

A society is composed of families: it is not itself a greater family.

Neither is it an assemblage of contiguous families living together.

The family and society are distinguished from each other by very clear

differential characteristics.

The family is a “union” of an essentially moral nature, and secondarily

intellectual.[256] The chief constituent of the family is found in the

affective functions, (the mutual tenderness of husband and wife, of

the parents for the children, etc.). Society is, on the contrary, not

a union, but a co-operation” of an essentially intellectual nature,

and secondarily moral. Undoubtedly, an association of men cannot be

conceived as subsisting without their sympathetic feelings being

interested in it. Nevertheless, when we pass from the consideration

of the single family to the co-ordination of several families, the

principle of co-operation necessarily ends by prevailing. So Rousseau’s

theory is not false on all points. Metaphysical philosophy, especially

in France, says Comte, has undoubtedly committed an error of capital

importance by attributing the very creation of the social state to

this principle, for it is evident that co-operation, far from having

been able to produce society, presupposes it. But if we confine this

assertion to society properly so-called (the family being set aside)

it is not so startling. For, if co-operation could not “create”

human societies, it alone at least, has been able to “communicate to

these spontaneous associations a definite character and a lasting

consistency.”

This co-operation is called to-day “the division of labour.” Comte

knew this expression: Adam Smith had already made it famous. If Comte

did not make use of it, it is because economists had limited the idea

and the term to “merely material usages.” He wishes, on the contrary,

to consider co-operation in the whole of its rational extension. It

then becomes an extremely general principle, dominating the whole of

social statics, and finding its application in the greatest as in the

most limited social groups. This principle leads us to regard not only

individuals and classes, but also, in many respects the different

peoples, “as participating together in a suitable way and a determined

degree, in an immense common work whose development unites those

actually co-operating with the series of their successors and their

predecessors.” Thus we see the relation between the dynamical and the

statical laws of social continuity which binds successive generations,

with social solidarity which unites men living in the same period. This

solidarity arises especially from the division of labour. The latter is

the “primitive cause” of the extension and of the growing complexity of

the social organism, which may be conceived as comprising the whole of

our species.

The founder of social statics, Aristotle, had formulated its most

general principle: “separation of offices and combination of

efforts.”[257] Without the “separation of offices” there would only be

an agglomeration of families and not a society. But the indispensable

counterpart of the separation of offices is the combination of efforts,

that is to say a general thought which directs them, in a word, a

government.

Thus, the ideas of society and of government are implied in one

another. Indeed, there is no society properly so-called without

the division of social labour, a division immediately generating

consequences which make government a necessity. Society in developing

grows more and more complex. Instead of a small group of a few

families, it ends by numbering hundreds, thousands, and even millions

of them. At the same time the division of labour often gives rise

to individual differences, at once intellectual and moral. Minds

are developed, but each one according to its special line, at least

according to that of his profession or of his class. The communion

of feeling and of thought tends to become weaker. This last is not

the least serious inconvenience. Smith had already pointed it out

from the economical point of view, and the utopian reformers, Fourier

especially, have shown strongly its extent and its dangers.

This is, according to Comte, what it is the mission of a government

to remedy. Its social function consists in repressing and in opposing

as far as possible the tendency to the scattering of ideas, of

feelings, and of interests. This tendency is the result of the very

development of society, and left to itself, it would end by stopping

this development. Government may thus be defined in its abstract and

elementary function as “the necessary reaction of the whole upon the

parts.”[258]

Government, at first, appears “spontaneously.” As Hobbes clearly saw,

it is then in the hands of those to whom force belongs. But it soon

becomes regularised and organised into a definite social function.

As, in the development of the sciences, the growing differentiation

of their object rendered research more and more special, and at last

caused the appearance of a particular class of learned men, (the

philosophers), whose own function is to attempt the synthesis of human

knowledge; so, in the division constantly more ramified of social

functions, a new one had to be constituted, “capable of intervening in

the accomplishment of all the others, unceasingly to recall in them the

thought of the whole, and the feeling of common solidarity.”

We are then entirely mistaken, when we want to reduce the function of

government to “vulgar attributions of material order.” Government is

not a simple institution of police, a guarantee of public order, nor,

as was said in the XVIII. century, a necessary evil which will reduce

itself to a minimum with progress, or even will tend to disappear. On

the contrary, the more a society is developed, the more indispensable

the function of government becomes in it, the more importance it

assumes. Progress in the future will make a more and more considerable

place for it in social life. Although it does not itself realise any

determined social progress, government necessarily contributes to

whatever progress society can make.

If the idea of the division of labour is not to be understood in

a purely material and economical sense, the principle of _social

cohesion_, which Comte calls government, cannot any more be founded

upon a single conformity of interests. This would not suffice to

maintain a human society. For such a society to subsist, there must

be a certain “communion” of beliefs, and feelings of sympathy, which

themselves depend in a certain measure upon these beliefs. Undoubtedly,

society could not resist a deep and durable divergence of interests.

But it would still less resist incompatibility of feelings, and

especially of beliefs among its members. In a word, the basis of human

society is intellectual before all things. And, as the first object of

the mind of man is the interpretation of the world which surrounds him,

the constitutive basis of human society is religion. The groups which

are united in the same general conception of the universe are part of

the same society. Hence, in the past, we see endless conflicts between

the societies whose religions were different; hence, in the future, the

unity of the human species will finally become entirely rallied around

positive religion.

If this is the case, government, which is by definition the highest

and most general social function which represents the “spirit of the

whole,” cannot be confined to temporal action. Its object is not only

to assure the security of property and of persons. It must at the same

time strengthen and preserve that “communion” of beliefs which is the

basis of human society. It must guarantee the union of intellects, by

establishing and teaching universally accepted principles. It must, in

a word, be a “spiritual power.” In this capacity, in positive society,

it will exercise an action at least equal to that enjoyed by the

catholic clergy in the Christendom of the Middle Ages, as long as the

Popes preserved its supreme direction.

These consequences are legitimately drawn from Comte’s principles. His

philosophy made social reorganisation dependent upon the reorganisation

of morals, and the reorganisation of morals upon that of ideas. He was,

therefore, in social statics, to seek for the foundation of society in

the harmony of intellects and to define government by its spiritual as

much as by its temporal function.

III.

Comte’s social statics are far from fulfilling the programme which he

indicated in a word when he called it “social anatomy.” Undoubtedly

he is right in not pushing the comparison between living beings and

society to dangerous or childish attempts at precision. But, in

sociology as in biology, he separates the study of the organs from

that of the functions, and we must admit that he insisted very little

upon the analysis of the social organs. From the statical point of

view he only distinguishes the individual, the family, and society

taken as a whole. Moreover the consideration of the individual is only

preliminary, since the families represent the real social elements. He

therefore sees, or at least he studies nothing intermediary between

these elements and the totality of the social body, that is to say

the human species. He limits himself to indicating the separation

of offices which increases with the extension of the social body.

But what is the structure of this body, what diversity of organs and

apparatus does it contain? Social statics tells us nothing of this. The

_Politique positive_ scarcely gives us a few brief indications on this

point. The collective organism would be composed first of families,

which constitute its real element, then of the classes or castes which

form its tissues, and finally of towns or villages which are its real

organs.

This is very vague. Only in the dynamics shall we find views a little

more precise on the appearance, the structure, and the functions of

the different social forms. Even then Comte does not really take the

physiological point of view, any more than in statics he takes the

really anatomical point of view. Before all things, his sociology

remains a philosophy of history. It analyses the past of humanity, that

it may find in it the interpretation of its present and the rational

prevision of its future.

This science differs profoundly then from the fundamental sciences

which precede it, in that it studies a single being, of which it cannot

analyse the phenomena or discover the laws except by considering it in

the first place in its totality. Comte hardly ever in social statics

(and far less in dynamics) says society, as in biology he said, animals

and vegetables. He says the _collective organism_: a simple, immense

organism, whose life indefinitely extends into the past and into the

future, in a word, Humanity. This conception representing humanity as a

single Being which is an hypothesis for science, becomes an ideal for

ethics, and an object of love for religion. Insensibly Comte passes

from one of these points of view to the other. At the same time the

character of social statics changes. From being an abstract science in

the _Cours_, in the _Politique_ it is transformed into a picture of

future Humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[250] Cours, IV, 430.

[251] Cours, IV. 258.

[252] Pol. pos., II, 265.

[253] Cours, IV, 432-6.

[254] Cours, iv, 459. Correspondance de Comte et de John Stuart Mill,

p. 219-288.

[255] Cours, IV, 450.

[256] Cours, IV, 472 sq.

[257] Pol. pos., II, 281-3; IV, Appendice, p. 67.

[258] Cours, IV, 482-5.

CHAPTER IV

SOCIAL DYNAMICS

For Comte, social dynamics is the chief part of sociology. He tells us

that it occupied his attention “in a preponderating and even almost

exclusive manner.”[259] This preference is easily explained. In the

first place the idea which best distinguishes sociology from biology,

the idea of the gradual development of humanity belongs to social

dynamics. Then, the method which particularly belongs to sociology,

the historical method, applies especially to dynamics. Finally, the

very conception of a social science became fixed in Comte’s mind by the

discovery of the law of the three states which is a dynamic law.

Social dynamics is defined as “the science of the necessary and

continuous movement of humanity,”[260] or, more briefly, the science

of the laws of progress. Here, as in social statics, and even still

more exclusively, a single case is studied, namely, the case of the

human species, regarded as a single individual, and considered in

the whole of its past and future development. Henceforth, without

misunderstanding the distinction between biology and sociology, should

we not in the first place seek some of the conditions of social

progress in the physical and moral nature of the individual man? This

question did not escape Comte, and he says that it would be right to

begin a methodical treatise on social science with it. However, he

did not expressly deal with the question. He contented himself with

indicating “this fundamental instinct which is the complex result of

the necessary co-operation between all our natural tendencies, which

urges man ceaselessly to ameliorate his condition in all respects, and

always to develop the whole of his moral, intellectual, and physical

life in every way as much as the system of conditions in which he finds

himself placed allows of it.”[261] This indication is completed by the

study of the conditions which determined the first efforts of man, when

he had to overcome his natural laziness, at the dawn of civilisation.

It suffices at least to show the close union which exists in Comte’s

thought between social dynamics and psychology. It is true that the

sociological laws cannot be _deduced_ from the biological laws. Nothing

can replace a direct observation of social phenomena. But the very fact

of progress, which is the object of social dynamics, would not exist

without the “individual impulses which are its own elements.”

I.

Under the name of progress Comte understands a “social advance towards

a definite although never attained termination, by a series of

necessarily determined stages.” This idea was never clearly defined

in antiquity.[262] The men of ancient times were more inclined to

represent social movements as oscillatory or circular. Upon special

points, for instance in morals, they had a foreshadowing of the idea of

progress.[263] They conceived an effort towards improvement. But the

scientific idea of social progress in its entirety remained foreign to

them. For this idea is only formed by observation and by the analysis

of history. Their historical outlook was yet too narrow for such a

suggestion.

The idea of progress appears with the philosophy of history taught

by Christianity; for, this religion gives a rational explanation of

universal history considered as a whole. It proclaims the superiority

of the Christian world over the pagan world, and of the new law

over the old.[264] But, scarcely has the idea of progress thus come

into existence when it becomes clouded over and tends to fade away.

Catholicism clearly sees progress in the series of events which

caused it to succeed a former state, but it denies the progress which

continues from that moment. It considers itself as final. It “limits

onward progress to the advent of Christianity.” It claims to fix an

invariable dogma which contains immutable and absolute truth. This is

the very negation of the positive idea of progress. In order to find

this idea clearly conceived and scientifically formulated, we must come

to Condorcet, and even to the XIX. century, that is to say, to the

foundation of social science by Comte. He was especially led to it,

he says, by the historical study of the development of the sciences.

For, of all the social series, this is the one whose evolution is most

advanced. No other suggests so clearly the idea of a “progression”

whose terms succeed each other by virtue of a necessary filiation.

Pascal already gave a very fine formula of it, in his _Préface du

Traité du Vide_. Is it not remarkable that, in his sketch of the

positive idea of progress, he should have been led at once to the

essential hypothesis of social dynamics, that is to say, to consider

the whole succession of generations as a single man, always living,

continually learning?[265]

Nevertheless, the idea of progress, so well applied to the evolution of

the sciences in the XVII. century, could not then be extended to all

social facts. It had met with an insurmountable obstacle in the Middle

Ages. Men considered that period as one of retrogression and barbarism,

although, as a matter of fact, it was “characterised by the universal

perfecting of human sociability.” The idea of progress therefore

remained a special one. Thus originated the quarrel of the Ancients and

the Moderns[266] whose importance has not been sufficiently understood.

The “eminent” Fontenelle and the “judicious” Perrault have very clearly

shown in respect to intellectual activity generally considered, what

Pascal had already established for science properly so-called.[267]

The XVIII. century was full of the idea of progress. But, failing to

follow a positive method, it gave a false direction to this idea.

It believed in the indefinite perfectibility of man and of society.

Now, this notion does not coincide with that of progress. It is even

fundamentally opposed to it. Progress signifies “development subject

to fixed conditions, and operating in virtue of necessary laws, which

determine its advance and its limitations.” It is precisely the

ignorance of these conditions and of these laws which gives rise to the

idea of indefinite perfectibility. If Helvetius and Condorcet had had

a positive knowledge of human nature, they would not have entertained

so many illusions and unreasonable hopes. Biology, that is to say,

scientific psychology, would have taught them that human nature is

invariable in its basis, that the preponderance of the selfish over the

altruistic instincts is essential to this nature, and that, if progress

favours the development of the altruistic feelings, it cannot, however,

overturn the natural equilibrium of our inclinations. In a word,

indefinite perfectibility is a metaphysical idea. Imagination plays a

greater part in it than observation. The philosophers who conceived it

did not realise the relations which bind the intellectual and the moral

life of man to the structure of his organism.

In order that the idea of progress should reach its final form it was

necessary, in the first place, that positive psychology should have

put an end to the dreams of indefinite perfectibility. It was also

necessary that the French Revolution should come to render the course

of the history of humanity intelligible. Indeed, according to Comte, a

“progression” cannot be understood, so long as we do not know at least

three of its terms. Two terms do not suffice to define it. Now, up to

the time of the French Revolution, several “progressions” or social

series undoubtedly offered the required number of terms to scientific

reflection; for instance, the evolution of such and such a science or

of such and such an art. But, in sociology, the knowledge of secondary

laws is subordinated to that of primary laws, and the advance of such

and such a social series can only be understood if the development

of society in general is known in its fundamental law. To discover

this law then, we must possess at least, three terms of the general

“progression.” Now, before the French Revolution two terms only were

given: the _régime_ of the societies of antiquity, and the Christian

_régime_ (that is to say, the one which attained its highest degree of

perfection in the Catholic organisation of the Middle Ages.) The French

Revolution came to furnish the third term. It brought the idea of a

new _régime_. As Kant had said, in terms which were certainly unknown

to Comte, it gave men the idea of a social organisation founded upon

principles different from those of the existing societies. Henceforth

the idea of progress could apply itself to the whole of the historical

development of humanity. “It is to this salutary disturbance,” says

Comte, “that we owe the strength and the audacity to conceive a notion

upon which rests the whole of social science, and consequently the

whole of positive philosophy, of which this final science alone could

constitute the unity.”[268]

This social science remained to be constructed. It will be the special

work of Auguste Comte. According to him, the French Revolution only

brought an imperfect idea of social progress. It helped to bring

about the conception of the idea of a different _régime_, but without

actually founding it. The functions of the new philosophy will be

to realise the positive idea of social progress. In a word, the

revolutionary impulse made this philosophy possible. It has not done

away with its utility.[269]

II.

Sociology being an abstract and speculative science in the same way

as the other fundamental sciences, progress in it is not understood

in a utilitarian or moral sense. From 1826 Comte exerted himself

to prevent any equivocation on this point. The insufficiency of

language, he says, obliges him to make use of the words “improvement”

and “development,” of which the former and even the latter, although

clearer, recalls ideas of absolute good and of indefinite amelioration,

which Comte has no intention of expressing. These words for him have

the simple scientific object of indicating, in social physics, a

certain succession of states of the human species, “being effected

according to determined laws: a usage exactly analogous to the one

which physiologists make of them in the study of the individual

organism, to indicate a succession of transformations with which no

idea of continuous amelioration or deterioration is connected.”[270]

It would be easy to treat of the whole of social physics without once

using the word improvement, and always replacing it by the scientific

term development. For the question is not to appreciate the respective

value of successive states referred to an ideal state, but simply to

establish the laws of their succession. “The present is full of the

past and big with the future.” Liebnitz’s formula thus expresses the

general idea of progress. Comte only makes it positive by discovering

the general laws of this progress, and by showing that they are

correlated to the laws of social statics.

As a matter of fact, does the development of humanity lead to

improvement or progress, in the moral and practical sense of the word?

Social science has not to answer this question. However, Comte thinks

that this improvement takes place, and that progress, so understood,

can be shown at once in our condition and in our nature.[271] As proofs

of this, in the first place, he gives the increase in the population,

at least in that portion of humanity which he nearly always considers

alone, the white race; then he mentions the law--according to which

exercise perfects the organs. This progress is fixed by heredity. Comte

thus admits this principle laid down by Lamarck, with this reservation,

that evolution never transforms “natural dispositions.”

As to our condition, it is improved according to the measure in which

we can act upon natural phenomena, and this power in turn depends upon

the knowledge we have acquired of the laws of phenomena. “Vision brings

prevision and thus facilitates provision.” Progress is here manifested

by the extension of our scientific knowledge and by the improvement of

the arts founded upon this knowledge. If scientific knowledge, which

is necessarily abstract, has to be separated from practice in order

to seek for the general laws which regulate phenomena, science, once

constituted, makes possible a system of reasoned applications which

reaches immeasurably farther than empirical art. Like Descartes, Comte

founds the most ambitious hopes upon the positive science of nature.

Now, the most “modifiable” phenomena, those in which our intervention

is most efficacious, are the human phenomena, be they individual or

collective. On the other hand, our action upon the external world

especially depends upon the dispositions of the agent. In every way

then we must improve these dispositions. The most important improvement

will be that of our internal nature. It will consist in bringing about

the greater and greater prevalence of the attributes which distinguish

man from the animals, that is to say, intelligence and sociability,

correlated faculties, which are at once as a means and as an end to one

another. We know, moreover, that there are limits to this progress. The

perfect preponderance within ourselves of humanity over animality is a

_limit_, nearer to which our efforts must ever bring us, without ever

actually reaching it.[272]

Whether it be a question of our condition or of our nature the

improvement, in both cases, can only be very slow. It is never easy

to substitute to natural order an artificial order resting upon the

scientific knowledge of the former. Of those different forms of

progress, the first, which Comte calls the material progress, because

it is the easiest, is the most advanced. The great attraction which

it has for the men of to-day is thus explained, but the importance

given to it is quite exaggerated. If our nature could be brought to a

higher degree of perfection it would assuredly be preferable. But it

is perhaps necessary that our material conditions of existence should

first have been ameliorated?

The improvement in our nature may be physical, intellectual, or moral.

The first would consist in an addition to the average duration of human

life; it depends upon the progress of biology, and, consequently,

of medicine and hygiene. Intellectual (scientific and æsthetic)

improvement, would be still more desirable. It “means a greater

soaring upwards” than is represented by all physical improvements or

_a fortiori_ by any material improvements: for the intellect is a

“universal tool” whose uses have a universal application. But human

happiness depends far more upon moral progress “over which we have,

also more command, although it is more difficult.” No intellectual

improvement could be equal in value to an increase in goodness or in

courage. If we were wise our whole endeavour therefore would be in this

direction. At any rate we ought always to remember that other forms of

progress are desirable simply as means, and moral progress alone as an

end.[273]

III.

The theory of progress is the “principle” of social dynamics, itself

the essential part of sociology, while sociology lies at the heart

of positive philosophy. It was therefore to be expected that the

adversaries of this philosophy would especially seek to ruin the theory

of progress, which supports everything else. Indeed the objections have

been numerous and pressing. Of these objections Comte had foreseen the

two most important, and he had endeavoured to answer them beforehand.

According to him, the theory of progress implies neither fatalism nor

optimism, nor the quietism which has been represented as a consequence

of it.[274]

On the first point, Comte draws our attention to the fact that the

necessary consequence of his principle of laws is not the absolute

determinism of phenomena, whether it be a question of social or

other phenomena. Positive philosophy admits nothing absolute.

Determinism, like free-will, is a metaphysical thesis, Comte is not

compelled to take sides either with one or the other: he leaves them

to mutually refute each other. The positive conception of the moral

and intellectual faculties of man, as Gall clearly established, does

not imply that human actions might not be otherwise than they are.

Similarly, if in general natural phenomena are subject to laws, this

does not prevent us from conceiving these phenomena as modifiable by

man’s intervention. Now, of all natural phenomena, social phenomena are

precisely the most modifiable; so much so that for a long time it was

possible to ignore that they were governed by laws.

There is then no contradiction in affirming the reality of these laws,

and in considering at the same time the intervention of human activity

in social phenomena as efficacious. As early as 1824 Comte wrote to

his friend Valat: “It would be misunderstanding my thought to conclude

from it that I forbid all improvement, since, on the contrary, I

formally establish that every government must change in consequence

of the progress of civilisation, and that it is in no way a matter of

indifference that these changes should take place by the mere force of

circumstances, or by calculated planes based upon observation. I do not

deny the power of political measures, I limit it.”[275]

It belongs to social science to determine the limits of the useful

action of man upon social phenomena. These limits are narrow enough.

Man can only modify, from the static point of view, the intensity,

and from the dynamic point of view, the speed of social phenomena.

Indeed, here as elsewhere, modifications can only be produced in

conformity with laws. To suppose the contrary would be to deny the very

existence of these laws. Now, the fundamental law of statics is the

intimate solidarity and the mutual dependence of all social elements,

at all the moments of their common evolution. There is, therefore, no

disturbing influence, whatever its origin may be, which can “cause

unsympathetic opposing elements to coexist in a given society.”[276]

Rather would it destroy this society. All that is possible is to modify

the respective tendencies which indeed coexist in this society, but

without causing the appearance or disappearance of any of them. In the

same way, from the dynamic point of view, the order of the successive

phases of progress is determined by laws. No external influence (nor

in particular that of man), could overturn or disturb this order, or

“skip” one of the stages. The evolution could only be made more rapid,

that is to say, easier. The statesman, infatuated with his power,

will perhaps find this a very humble part to play. But, even within

these limits, human intervention could still be of capital importance

provided that it were directed by science.

History confirms these views. In it we never see social phenomena

modified by man otherwise than in their intensity, or in their speed.

Where we best know their evolution, that is to say, in the social

series, which includes the history of the sciences, of the arts, of

morals and institutions, the verification of this law is constant. For

instance, among the scientific men at Alexandria astronomy stopped at

a certain point, because the further development of this science was

not compatible with the general conditions of society at that time. And

if Montesquieu’s attempt to subject social facts to laws failed, it is

because, before sociology, positive biology had first to be founded.

Analogous examples abound, and a contrary case has never presented

itself.

Three secondary factors, race, climate, and man’s political action

especially modify progress, in the measure which has just been

indicated. In the present state of science it is impossible to arrange

them in the order of their importance. Montesquieu, made too much of

climates: others have made too much of races.[277] Those elements of

social evolution have not yet been studied by the positive method.

Until the foundation of social dynamics their part was, of necessity,

wrongly conceived. It was not known that the essential law, the law of

the three states, is independent of these secondary factors, whilst on

the contrary the secondary factors can only act in conformity with this

law, without ever suspending it. In order that the modifications which

they produce should become intelligible, it was necessary that the

normal type of evolution should first be known. To study the influence

of climates and of races before first possessing the general laws of

social dynamics, was, almost, to pretend to establish pathology without

having first constituted physiology.

As to man’s political action, it too has been wrongly understood. In

the absence of a positive conception of social phenomena, some denied

the efficacy of this action, others exaggerated it. When it was used

in the direction of progress, it almost necessarily appeared to be

the principal cause of the results which social evolution would have

brought about in any case. The illusion was all the more inevitable

from the fact that social forces are always personified in individuals.

On the other hand, how often have the most vigorous political efforts

only been successful for a day, because the general evolution of

society was proceeding in the contrary direction!

So long as the theological and metaphysical period lasts, man does not

hesitate to ascribe to himself an almost boundless action upon natural

phenomena. Having reached the positive period, he knows that phenomena

are only, modifiable within certain limits, determined by their

laws, and that he can only aspire to relative results. Once positive

sociology is established it wholly transforms the familiar idea of

political art. But because it entertains less great and less gratifying

ambitions, this art will only be all the more effective. Compare what

medicine and surgery are able to do to-day for the good of the sick

with what they could do before chemistry and biology became positive

sciences!

But, it is said, admitting that man can modify social phenomena, what

reason has he to interfere with them, since progress takes place

of itself? Why not allow the natural evolution which most certainly

realises it to work itself out?

This objection confuses progress understood as a succession of states

which unfold according to a law, with progress understood in the sense

of indefinite improvement. On this point again the comparison of

society with living organisms is instructive. Do not these develop in

conformity with invariable laws? Yet, Comte regards them as extremely

imperfect, and in what concerns the human body, the intervention of the

doctor or the surgeon is often useful and even indispensable. When we

reproach the sociological theory of progress with having optimism as

its consequence, we take _the scientific notion of spontaneous order

for the systematic justification of any existing order_.[278] There is,

however, a very long distance from one to the other. Spontaneous order

may often be a very rough form of order.

Here, as everywhere else, positive philosophy substitutes the

scientific principle of the conditions of existence to the metaphysical

principle of final causes. It admits that spontaneously, according

to natural laws, a certain necessary order is established; but it

acknowledges that this order offers serious and numerous disadvantages,

modifiable, in certain degrees, by man’s intervention. The more

complex these phenomena, the more are the imperfections multiplied and

intensified. The biological phenomena are “inferior” in this respect

to those of inorganic nature. By reason of their complication, which

is _maxima_, social phenomena must be the most “disorderly” of all.

In a word if the idea of a natural law implies that of a certain

order, the notion of this order must be completed by the “simultaneous

consideration of its inevitable imperfection.”

The theory of progress is then incompatible neither with the

ascertainment of social evil, nor with the effort to remedy it. The

most complex of all organisms, the social organism, is also the one

most subject to diseases and to crises. Thus, Comte foresees in a near

future great internal struggles in our society, in consequence of our

mental and moral anarchy.[279] To-day, only that is systematised which

is destined to disappear, and what is not yet systematised, that is to

say all that lives, will not be organised without violent conflicts. It

is enough here to think of the relations between masters and workmen.

Revolutions occur which nothing can prevent. It is an inevitable evil,

and Comte gives a striking psychological reason for it. Our mind is too

weak and our life too short for us ever to form a positive idea of a

social system other than the one in which we were born and in which we

live. It is from this one that, willingly or unwillingly, we draw the

elements of our political and social ideas. Even men of a utopian turn

of mind do not escape this necessity. Their dreams always reflect, at

bottom, either the past, or a contemporary social state. In order that

a new political system should appear, and especially for it to find

access to men’s minds, the destruction of the preceeding system must be

already very far advanced. Until then “even the most open minds could

not perceive the characteristic nature of the new system hidden from

all eyes by the spectacle of the old organisation.”[280] Hence, the

lengthy processes of decomposition of worn-out _régimes_, the no less

lengthy birth of new institutions, and the cruel periods of transition,

full of troubles, of wars, and of revolutions.

With this same cause are connected what we may call the phenomena of

survival. Institutions, powers, as also doctrines, have a tendency to

subsist beyond the function which the general advance of the human mind

had assigned to them.[281] Conflicts then take place which it is beyond

anybody’s power to prevent: happy is he who can make them shorter and

less acute! The solution only comes with time when the vanquished ideas

fall into “disuse.” The combat never ceases except from the lack of

combatants.

All this in no way excludes the possibility for man to exercise a

beneficent or a detrimental action. To understand is not always to

justify. It is true that a comprehensive view of history disposes us

to be indulgent, because it brings out the close solidarity of all

the social elements of the same period. The responsibilities being

shared, and so to speak diffused, appear to be less serious for each

individual. Nevertheless this philosophy allows praise and blame for

the past, and active intervention in social phenomena for the present.

But this intervention will only produce the desired results if it rests

upon social science. The positive polity does not propose to direct the

human race towards an arbitrarily selected end. It knows that humanity

is moved by its own impulse, “according to a law no less necessary,

although more modifiable than that of gravitation.”[282] It is only a

question for politics to facilitate this advance by throwing light upon

it. It is a very difficult thing to undergo the action of a law without

understanding it, or to submit to it with a full knowledge of the case.

It remains in man’s power to soften and to shorten crises, as soon as

he grasps their reasons and foresees the issue. He will not pretend to

govern the phenomena, but only to modify their spontaneous development.

“This demands that he should know their laws.”[283]

Let us also know how to own that in respect to many of these phenomena,

and not the least important of them, we are absolutely powerless.

Their conditions escape our grasp. For instance, the duration of human

life is far from being as favourable to social evolution as might be

conceived.[284] On the contrary, after the extreme imperfection of our

organism, the brevity of life is one of the causes of the slowness of

social development. How many powerful minds have died before their full

maturity had yielded all its fruit! What would not have been expected

of their genius if they had been in full possession of their faculties

during three or four centuries!

The positive theory of progress therefore entails neither optimism nor

quietism. The intervention of man being excluded, the social state,

which evolves, according to laws, at each period is just as good and

as bad as it can be, “according to the whole of the situation.”[285]

More than one pessimist would be satisfied with this formula. It is

legitimately drawn from the principle of the conditions of existence.

But, truly, from the point of view of this principle, that is to say,

from the point of view of positive and relative philosophy, there can

be no question either of optimism or of pessimism. Metaphysics alone

can offer an absolute judgment upon the whole of the social reality.

The positive doctrine, here as elsewhere, only seeks the statical and

dynamical laws of phenomena. It is true, that it finds that the social

evolution is, as a matter of fact, accompanied by improvement. But this

improvement is so slow, so laborious, interrupted by so many crises,

disturbed by so many conflicts, that if humanity aspires to a better

condition, it is mainly from her own efforts that she must expect a

slightly more rapid progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[259] Cours, IV, 430.

[260] Cours, IV, 299. See also chapter II in Book I.

[261] Cours, IV, 290-7.

[262] Cours, IV, 182-6.

[263] Pol. pos., II, 332-3.

[264] Cours, V, 366.

[265] Cours, IV, 185-7.

[266] This referred in the Author’s mind to the famous quarrel in

French literature between the admirers of ancient poetry like Boileau,

who declared it to be superior to modern poetry, and their opponents

like Perrault and Fontenelle, who took the contrary view.

[267] Cours, IV, 257-9.

[268] Pol. pos., I, 60-3.

[269] Cours, IV, 188.

[270] Pol. Pos., IV, Appendice, p. 199.

[271] Cours, IV, 304-6.

[272] Discours sur l’esprit positif, p. 59-60.

[273] Pol. Pos., I, 106-8.

[274] Pol. Pos., I, 54-56.

[275] Lettres à Valat, p. 140 (8 septembre, 1824).

[276] Cours, IV, 314-20.

[277] Pol. pos. II, 450.

[278] Cours, IV, 273.

[279] Cours, VI, 825.

[280] Cours, IV, 30-1; V, 241-2.

[281] Cours, IV, 266.

[282] Pol. pos., IV, Appendice, p. 95.

[283] Cours, IV, 326.

[284] Cours, IV, 510-12.

[285] Cours, IV, 310-11.

CHAPTER V

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

If social dynamics is a science, and if the law of the three states,

discovered by Comte, is its fundamental law, this law (and those which

proceed from it), must explain the successive phases of humanity,

from the first dawn of civilisation, to the present condition of the

most advanced nations. They must “introduce unity and continuity into

this immense spectacle, where in general we see so much confusion

and incoherence.”[286] Thus the counterpart of social science is

a philosophy of history. In it, social science finds its concrete

expression and its verification. In the absence of the prevision of

social facts for the future, a prevision which is rendered almost

impossible by the extreme complication of these facts, social science

at least allows of the “rational co-ordination” of the whole of the

past.

In order to establish this philosophy of history, Comte gave himself

two postulates. The first is common to him and to all those who

endeavoured to set forth the evolution of humanity from its beginnings,

especially before the recent progress made by anthropology. Comte

“constructs” primitive man and the society in which he lived. The

second postulate consists in considering, instead of the history of

the whole of humanity, “the most complete and the most characteristic

evolution,” that is to say, that of the white race; and in this race,

only the populations of western Europe.[287] Comte will almost confine

himself to the periods dealt with by Bossuet in the _Discours sur

l’histoire universelle_, which, moreover, he greatly esteems. His

philosophy of history only embraces Egyptian civilisation, very little

known in his time, then Greece and Rome, and finally after the fall of

the Roman Empire, the development of some Latin and Germanic peoples in

Europe.

We can understand that Bossuet should have so limited universal history

as to include in it only a small portion of humanity gathered on the

shores of the Mediterranean. He was obliged to do so by the leading

idea in his work which makes the appearance of Christianity the

culminating point in the human drama. All that precedes it must tend

to bring it about, all that comes after it must arise from it. But is

Auguste Comte, like Bossuet, justified in leaving out of universal

history the great civilisations of the far east, almost the whole of

Africa, and the whole of the new world? Since, according to him, there

is no chosen people, nor “providential direction,” must he not consider

the total evolution of humanity? He has no right to isolate a part of

it in an arbitrary manner, and to neglect the rest. He has it all the

less in that he considers the species in its entirety as an individual,

and that this hypothesis of Condorcet has become a principle of social

science with him.

But Comte believes his postulate to be as well justified by his

definition of sociology, as Bossuet’s plan could have been by his

theological doctrine. Resembling on this point the other positive

sciences, sociology is made of laws not of facts. The pure and

simple knowledge of facts is only an end from the point of view of

scholarship. Science only seeks for this knowledge in the measure in

which it is indispensable for the determination of laws. Consequently,

if the evolution of human society proceeded simultaneously at different

points on the globe, as, this evolution takes place, as we suppose,

everywhere according to invariable laws, and as climate and race can

only modify it within very narrow limits, the sociologist is not bound

to study all the societies of the past and of the present. He will

only do so in order to make use of the comparative method, in the

measure which is judged useful and within the limitations permitted by

this method. In the second place, among those historical evolutions,

up to the present time independent of one another, to which will he

give the preference to seek in it the verification of abstract social

dynamics? Evidently to the most complete and the most characteristic:

for there he will have least difficulty in disengaging the laws from

the extraordinary complexity of facts. Have we not seen that the

idea of progress, without which sociology cannot be constituted, has

only been definitely formulated since the French Revolution? Comte

then thought himself authorised to “limit his historical study to

the sole examination of a homogeneous and continuous series, which

was nevertheless justly qualified as universal.” At every moment in

history, the people whose evolution is most advanced represent the

whole of humanity since the rest of humanity is destined, sooner or

later to pass through the same phase. Hence the idea, which is found

equally in Hegel and in Renan, of a “mission” of races and of peoples.

A temporary mission which, while it lasts, constitutes their might and

their right, but which, too often, they have the misfortune to survive.

I.

The positive philosophy of history takes as its guiding principle

the idea of unity. In virtue of a postulate which is an audacious

anticipation concerning an uncertain future, the human species, in

it, is regarded as an immense social unity. Similarly, in it, the

evolution of humanity is regarded as ending in the moral and religious

unity of all men. Humanity goes from spontaneous religion where it

begins, to demonstrated religion where it becomes finally established.

Between the two lies the domain of history. The successive states

through which humanity passes in evolving are not homogeneous. The

theological and the positive spirit are mingled in them at various

degrees. They struggle one against the other. These states then contain

within themselves the principle of their own destruction. Each one

necessarily prepares the appearance of the following one, until the

final state in which the positive spirit alone will predominate.

The spring of these concrete views of history is the logical need

of unity. It is this which determined the initial movement. For the

primitive religions, unity was never perfect. Even at the period when

fetichism rules without question, some rudiments of the positive spirit

exist. Human nature, being invariable, the germ of its final state was

already contained in a primitive state. From that time it was certain

that, if humanity emerged from its primitive state, it would evolve

until it found unity in the final religion.

If this be so, how is it that Comte did not regard the succession of

religious forms as the supreme dynamic law, as the principle of the

philosophy of history? Why did he believe rather that he had found this

principle in the law of the evolution of philosophies? It is because,

according to him, the evolution of religious forms is a function

of intellectual evolution. It is even subordinate to intellectual

evolution, in this sense, that progress in the knowledge of the laws

of nature sooner or later brings about a religious revolution. In the

second place, if the philosophy of history had chosen the succession

of religious forms as its chief axis, it would only have studied the

process of decomposition of beliefs, which, up to the present time, has

led them from the period when all thought is religious (fetichism), to

that when no thought seems to be so any more (philosophical deism). It

would not show at the same time the inverse and simultaneous process

of the positive spirit, which not only determines this progressive

decomposition, but also prepares the elements of a new faith. It would

not show how by degrees, by means of science, this spirit establishes

a conception of nature which by becoming social will become universal,

and which will be the basis of the final religion. This is why Comte,

while making religion the chief element in individual and social human

life, was nevertheless to take the evolution of the intellect, that is

to say, the sciences and the philosophies, as the “guiding thread” of

his philosophy of history.

II.

It does not come within the purpose of this work to give even a summary

outline of the philosophy of history developed by Comte first in the

_Cours de philosophie positive_, and then in the third volume of the

_Politique positive_. Neither shall we disengage the ingenious or

profound views of detail with which it abounds. It will suffice for us

to show how, according to Comte, the laws of social dynamics are always

verified, and how apparent exceptions end by being interpreted in the

direction of these laws.

Fetichism, properly so-called, was succeeded by astrology, then by

polytheism, which was first conservative (the régime of castes in

Egypt), then intellectual (Greece), and social (the Roman empire).

With the Christian religion monotheism comes to be substituted to

polytheism. But does not the theory of progress soon meet with an

insurmountable obstacle? How does it explain the Middle Ages, that

long succession of centuries which Voltaire and the philosophers had

described as full of darkness, of superstition, and of ignorance,

as the disgrace of history? How to reconcile this lamentable

“retrogression” with the “continuity” of progress affirmed by social

dynamics?

Auguste Comte’s answer is presented in two forms.

In the first place the “retrogression” was never complete. At the time

when the Middle Ages were at their darkest in Europe, Arab civilisation

was going through its most brilliant period. In it many of the sciences

were going beyond the extreme point reached by them in antiquity.

The continuity of evolution was then not interrupted. It suffices to

understand, in conformity with the postulate laid down by Comte at the

beginning of social dynamics, that, at this period, the Arabs were the

part of humanity whose intellectual evolution was most advanced, and

who, consequently, represented the rest.

But, above all, the current opinion concerning the Middle Ages is

erroneous. The philosophers of the XVIII. century did not know it.

They only saw this period through their prejudices, or rather they did

not deign to look at it. Nevertheless, the whole spiritual movement

of modern centuries goes back to those “memorable times, unjustly

qualified as dark by metaphysical criticism, of which Protestantism was

the first organ.”[288]

In the first place--and this is a capital proposition in historical

philosophy[289]--the feudal _régime_ as a temporal organisation, was

the natural result of the situation of the Roman world. In any case

it would have been formed, even if the invasions had not taken place.

In virtue of the _consensus_ which is the fundamental principle of

social statics, the other series of phenomena which accompanied the

establishment of the feudal _régime_ were then also produced as a

“natural development,” and it is a misunderstanding to see in them

an interruption of “progress.” The superiority of Antiquity over

the Middle Ages, especially in the fine arts, will be raised as an

objection. But Comte only recognises this superiority in the plastic

arts, and especially in sculpture.[290] According to him, it is

explained by certain features in Greek customs which were sure to

make the people of antiquity incomparable in the art of expressing

the beauty of the human form. For the rest, the æsthetic education of

humanity “progressed during the Middle Ages. Architecture produced

marvels of which antiquity had no idea. Dante is a unique poet.

Modern music has its origin in the old Gregorian. Finally, the art

of the Middle Ages presented two characteristics which the art of

the aristocratic societies of antiquity did not possess, at least in

the same degree. It was spontaneous, that is to say, in full natural

harmony with the whole of the surrounding conditions. Consequently, it

was popular, it expressed marvellously for the people, the very soul of

the people.

If then it be true that “the mainspring of the fine arts is to be found

under the sway of polytheism,” none the less has the development of

our æsthetic faculties been continuous: and the law of progress has

not been reversed. It is true that since antiquity these faculties

have not found a combination of such favourable circumstances, such a

direct and energetic stimulus; but that proves nothing “against their

intrinsic activity, nor against the real merit of their productions.”

The æsthetic spirit has become more widespread, more varied, and even

more complete than it could ever have been in antiquity.[291] Hence

it is that the Renaissance did more harm than good to the fine arts.

It inspired an exclusive and servile admiration for the masterpieces

of antiquity, which are related to an absolute social system. “In

this sense,” says Comte, “the appreciation of the present romantic

school only sins in the direction of historical exaggeration; but its

recriminations are far from being groundless.”[292]

Similarly, the intellectual activity of the Middle Ages has been very

unjustly treated. Certainly, positive philosophy cannot be suspected of

partiality in favour of theological dogmas and metaphysical subtleties.

But, just as in physics we distinguish the material changes, which are

within reach of our senses, and the molecular movements which escape

them, so at certain periods the human intellect produces outside

itself works which testify to its activity, and at other moments,

without being less active its labour remains an internal one. There are

periods of secret and silent preparation. Such, for instance, was the

first portion of the Middle Ages. Far from the human mind remaining

stationary and inactive at that time it did, on the contrary, a very

considerable work: it was creating the modern languages, that is to

say, the indispensable instrument for subsequent progress of thought.

We must also be fair to two immense series of labours, (alchemy and

astrology), which have contributed so greatly and for so long to

the development of human reason. In coming after the astrologers

and the alchemists, modern scientific men not only found “science

roughly outlined by the perseverance of these bold precursors,”[293]

they further received from them the indispensable principle of the

invariability of natural laws. Astrology tended to suggest a high view

of human wisdom. Alchemy restored the feeling of man’s power, which had

been lowered by theological beliefs. In speaking of Roger Bacon, Comte

goes so far as to say that the greater number of the scientific men of

to-day who despise the Middle Ages so much, would be incapable not only

of writing but even of reading “the great composition of this admirable

monk,” on account of the immense variety of views on all orders of

phenomena contained in it.[294]

Comte further enlarges with pleasure upon the mutual obligations

of feudal tenure, “an admirable combination of the instinct of

independence and of the feeling of devotion,” upon the appearance

of chivalry, upon the raising of the condition of women, upon the

enfranchisement of the commons upon the formation of the _tiers état_,

etc.[295] Like the romantic school, being preoccupied with the duty

of fighting the systematic detractors of the Middle Ages, he goes to

the opposite extreme. He no longer sees the famines, the the plagues,

the stakes, the interminable wars. He is not content with showing

that, in spite of all, the Middle Ages was a period of progress. He

wants it to be a model period, in which we should find the indication,

_in all essential aspects_, of the programme which we are to realise

to-day.[296]

The secret of Comte’s partiality for the Middle Ages is not hard to

discover. He never tires of praising the Catholic organisation of this

period, the separation of the temporal from the spiritual power,[297]

last of all “the miracle of the papal hegemony.” Nothing of the

kind was known in antiquity. That alone suffices to establish the

superiority of the Middle Ages. Positive philosophy will restore this

separation of the two powers to-day. It will complete the “admirable

sketch” drawn of old by the Catholic Church.

Positivism, says Huxley, is “Catholicism minus Christianity.” Comte

would not have protested very violently against this definition.

Indeed, in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, he distinguishes

between the doctrine and the institutions. The doctrine is on the

decline and will disappear. But the institutions were masterpieces of

political wisdom, and they have only been ruined by having seemed to be

inseparable from this doctrine. They ought to be re-established upon

intellectual bases at once broader and more permanent.[298] Positive

philosophy furnishes these bases. It will know how to restore the

“government of souls,” according to the model left by the Catholic

Church of the Middle Ages.

It has often been said that the social action of Catholicism was

especially due to its moral teaching. Comte reverses this proposition.

The moral efficacy of Catholicism principally depended upon the

constitution of the Church, and only in an accessory way upon its

doctrine.[299] Without the constant action of an organised spiritual

power, a religion, however pure it may be, cannot have much power over

the conduct of men. Catholicism had understood this. It had founded

a system of common education which was equally received by rich and

poor. Morality thus acquired the “ascendency which belongs to it.”

The feelings were subjected to an admirable discipline, which exerted

itself to uproot even the smallest seeds of corruption.[300]

To conclude, “the eternal honour”[301] of Catholicism is to have

brought a decisive improvement into the theory of the social

organism, by the separation of the two powers. Many causes have

contributed to its being misunderstood; the excessive admiration of

the modern historians for the city of classical times, the partiality

of Protestants for the early Church, and finally the contempt of

philosophers for the supposed darkness of the Middle Ages. We judge

of it better to-day. Positive philosophy does not confine itself to

rehabilitating the Catholic organisation: it takes it up again on its

own account. “The more I investigate this immense subject,” writes

Comte to John Stuart Mill, “the more confirmed I become in the view

which I already held twenty years ago, at the time of my work upon the

spiritual power, of regarding ourselves, we, systematic positivists,

as the real successors of the great men of the Middle Ages, by taking

up the social work again at the point to which Catholicism had carried

it.”[302] Undoubtedly the conditions are not the same to-day, and we

must take the differences into account. But as to the extent and the

intensity of action, we may say that for each of the social relations

on which the Catholic clergy had to pronounce, an analogous attribution

exists for the modern spiritual power.[303] In a word, excepting for

the dogma, Comte borrows from the Catholicism of the Middle Ages

almost everything, its organisation, its _régime_, its worship, and,

if he could, its clergy and its cathedrals. His religion will be a

Catholicism raised upon another basis.

III.

The separation between the temporal and spiritual power realised by

Catholicism in the Middle Ages marks a decisive progress in the history

of humanity. But it was not finally established. The _régime_ of

which it formed a part was bound to disappear, because of the “mutual

antipathy” between the elements included within it. The Catholic

organisation of the thirteenth century was first shaken and then

destroyed by the advancing ascendancy of the positive spirit, and the

resistance of theological dogma. From this “organic” period European

society has passed to a “critical” period which has filled centuries,

and which positive philosophy alone is able to bring to a close. The

whole of modern history, political, religious, scientific, æsthetic,

economic, etc., is, at bottom, merely the succession of the necessary

stages in this double work; the decomposition of the _régime_ of the

Middle Ages, and the preparation for the positive period. In a first

phase, which occupies the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the

movement remains a spontaneous one. It ignores the end to which it is

tending. In the second, which extends to the end of the eighteenth

century, the disorganisation becomes deeper under the influence of an

entirely negative philosophy.[304]

The first signs of the decomposition which was beginning were of an

economic order. The phenomena of this order are indeed a factor of

the highest importance in the whole of social life. The economic

evolution, according to Comte, necessarily precedes the æsthetic and

scientific evolution. It is the former, far more than the two latter,

which characterises our civilisation in contrast with the societies of

antiquity.[305] Through it the organisation of modern societies was to

begin. The freeing of the serfs, the foundation of independent urban

communes, the transformation of industry which arose from this, are

described by Comte almost in the same terms as those used by Augustin

Thierry, (who like him had worked by the side of Saint-Simon). It is

the ending of an economic organisation, and the heralding of a new

_régime_.

When this spontaneous decomposition had reached a certain point, the

critical doctrines could appear and push it further. But, to see in

these doctrines the original cause of this great movement, is to credit

them with an exaggerated influence, and even, strictly speaking, an

incomprehensible one. In order that doctrines may arise and prosper

they must find favourable ground. The contrary opinion exaggerates

“beyond all possibility” the political influence of the intellect, and

creates a kind of vicious circle.[306]

The principle of “free examination” was at first, in the XVI century,

only a natural result of the new social situation gradually brought

about by the two preceding centuries. For this principle corresponds to

a state of “non-government” of minds. And this state, in turn, comes

from the progressive dissolution of mental discipline. It lasts so long

as a spiritual power has not been reconstituted upon new foundations.

In a society where spiritual power is normally exercised, that is to

say, where it governs the universality of minds, united by a body of

common beliefs, the need of intellectual liberty is not developed in

individuals. At any rate it does not challenge unanimously accepted

principles. But, when this power is weakened, the principles begin

to be discussed. Each one soon claims to be a judge of their value.

Everything then depends on the combination of social conditions. We can

no more produce than we can stifle this disposition of minds, “outside

the conditions which are favourable or unfavourable to it.” It is only

developed during the periods which are not “organic.” “It is through

having misunderstood this law of social statics that so many historical

errors have been committed, in which the symptom is mistaken for the

cause, and the result for the principle.”[307]

The first general form of the principle of freedom of examination

expressed itself in Protestantism. In it this freedom at first remained

confined within the more or less narrow limits of Christian theology.

The spirit of criticism at first especially endeavoured, in the very

name of Christianity, to ruin the admirable system of the Catholic

hierarchy, which was its social realisation. This is the characteristic

inconsequence of the metaphysical spirit, which always denies the

logical deductions while claiming to maintain the principles, and

which, in this particular case, aspired to reform Christianity at the

same time that it destroyed the necessary conditions of its existence,

that is to say, its organisation.

In the same way, as in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, Comte

chiefly admires “the masterpiece of political wisdom,” which knew how

to separate the attributes of temporal power from those of spiritual

power; so in Protestantism he especially sees the destructive principle

of this masterpiece. He unceasingly reproaches it with having

subordinated the spiritual to the temporal power in the whole of

Europe. This “chief perturbation” was the origin of all the others.

In accordance with the leaders of the traditionalist school, with

de Maistre and de Bonald in France, with Haller in Germany, Comte

insists upon the close relationship between the Protestant spirit and

the revolutionary spirit. Once it has been demanded, the right of

examination spreads by a necessity which is at once mental and social

and cannot be overcome, to all individuals and all questions. The name

of Protestantism should not be restricted to religious reform. It is

no less suitable for the whole of the revolutionary philosophy. For

this philosophy, from Lutheranism to the Deism of the XVIII. century,

“without excluding Atheism which constitutes its extreme phase” is

a _protestation_, at first against the principles of the old social

order, and then against any organisation, whatever.[308]

The “absolute and indefinite” dogma of free examination sets up each

individual judgment as an arbiter upon all social questions. From this

dogma gradually emerge absolute liberty in speaking and writing, the

political sovereignty of the masses at will creating or destroying

institutions, the equality of all men, the isolation of nations: in

a word, as Haller has said, “social and political atomism.” These

consequences had become inevitable from the day when Protestantism

gave the supreme decision in religious questions to every one, without

taking into account conditions either of competence, or authority. This

first step was a decisive one. If, supposing an impossibility, modern

society were replaced in the state in which it was when Protestantism

succeeded in becoming established, the same necessary succession of

social and political consequences would again unfold themselves.

After that, it matters little that Protestantism should have fought

against the revolutionary spirit, and that it should have disavowed

“anarchical” philosophy. It matters little that it should have made

repeated efforts to constitute a spiritual authority, and that it

should have produced a multitude of sects “of which each pitied the

preceding one and abhorred the one which followed it.”[309] Whatever

it may do, Protestantism remains purely critical, negative and

disorganising. Consequently the part it plays can only be transitory.

It contains no element which the positive organisation should preserve.

It naturally ends in philosophical Deism.

This Deism appears as early as the XVII. century in England, and in

Holland with Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle. The right of examination is

henceforth recognised as indefinite in principle, but in fact, it is

thought possible to maintain the metaphysical discussion within the

more general limits of monotheism.[310] At bottom they continue “to

destroy religion in the name of the religious principle.” A “rational

theology” is constructed; and the natural religion, dear to the XVIII.

century, is finally reached.

Now, in Comte’s eyes, rational theology is an “incoherent

expression,”[311] and natural religion “a monstrous drawing together

of terms.” As if every religion (with the exception of the positive

one), was not necessarily supernatural! The harmony between

reason and belief, even when sought for with perfect sincerity,

is deadly for faith. For the strength of theological conceptions

lies in their spontaneity. Logical proof, even admitting that it

be really demonstrative, never fortifies and can only weaken them.

The innumerable proofs of the existence of God which have appeared

since the XII. century, not only state the bold doubts of which this

existence has been the object: it can also be asserted that they

have largely contributed to the propagation of those doubts, “either

through the contempt which the weakness of many of these arguments

was bound to reflect upon ancient beliefs, or even by consideration

of the strongest of these arguments.”[312] Popular instinct was not

mistaken in calling the metaphysicians who were working at these proofs

atheists. Their work was essentially anti-theological. Our century sees

it in another light. As the decay of theology still continues, that

which formerly was judged by public opinion as impious, may to-day

appear to be a pious occupation.

The criticism of religious beliefs has been developed and spread

without giving too much offence to temporal power, thanks to the care

taken by philosophers in general to reassure it upon the immediate

consequences of their labours. Hobbes in the XVII. century, Voltaire

in the XVIII. are as conservative from the political point of view

as they are revolutionary from the religious point of view. The

precaution was a very wise one on their part. But it did not arrest the

consequences which arose from their principles. Critical philosophy,

urging the dogma of the freedom of examination to the assault of all

the principles of the established régime, shook and ruined them one

after the other, until the “final explosion” of the French Revolution.

This was the conclusion in fact of the long work of decomposition which

had been going on during five centuries. The old régime was rotten; the

Revolution overturned it, meaning to clear the ground.

But did it lay down the basis of the régime which was to succeed

this one? It did not, replies Comte with Saint-Simon and de Maistre.

He admires the energy of the political gifts of the Convention.

Nevertheless it was wrong in believing that “critical” principles could

take the place and carry out the functions of “organic” principles. So

long as the struggle lasted, the critical principles had been all the

more effective in that they were credited with an absolute value. Thus

the dogma of boundless liberty of conscience had served to destroy the

spiritual power of the catholic clergy, the dogma of the sovereignty

of the people to upset the temporal government, finally the dogma of

natural equality to decompose the system of social classes. But, once

the old régime was abolished the error of taking these dogmas as the

basis of “reorganisation” was committed.

It was not seen that they were incompatible not only with the régime

which they had just destroyed, but _with any social system whatever_.

In this way it is moral and political disorder which was upheld as

the end of social perfection. For, each of the dogmas of the critical

doctrine, when it is taken in an organic sense, “comes exactly to lay

down as a principle that in this particular respect society _must not

be organised_.”[313]

What becomes of government, for instance in this system? “By a direct

and total supervision of the most fundamental political notions,”

government is represented, the necessary enemy of society.[314] The

latter must always hold it in a state of suspicion and of supervision,

it must more and more restrict its modes of activity, and finally only

leave it functions of general police, without its contributing in any

way to the direction of the collective life and social development.

In a word, with no action upon ideas, upon beliefs or feelings, the

government would only have charge of the protection of interests.

But is not this formally denying the very idea of government, which

by definition, should on the contrary represent “the spirit of the

whole,” and the “directing function” of society? Is it not giving up

at the same time the great progress realised by the Middle Ages, that

is to say a spiritual power independent of the temporal power? Even

considering interests alone, this system only maintains order with

great difficulty. It is obliged to have recourse to corruption, and it

leads to continual increase in public expenditure.

The principles of critical philosophy cannot then be used as a

foundation for a new social organisation. The attempt has been made

and has been condemned by history. This failure could have been

foretold. For, being essentially metaphysical, this philosophy implies

a contradiction which necessarily renders it powerless. It tends to

preserve the general bases of the old political system, whose chief

conditions of existence it has however destroyed.[315] There is a very

close relationship between the natural religion of philosophers and

the political conceptions of the revolutionists. The latter are still

connected by their deepest roots with the old order of beliefs which

they have fought against with all their strength. Liberty, equality,

the sovereignty of the people, the whole of the “absolute” rights which

constitute the basis of the revolutionary doctrine is shielded, in the

last place, by a kind of “religious although vague consecration.” The

French Revolution was the work of the Deists. Comte has set apart the

thinkers of the XVIII century whom he considers as his precursors,

that is to say, as the anticipatory representatives of the positive

spirit: Fontenelle, Hume, Montesquieu, Diderot, and d’Alembert, Turgot,

Condorcet and a few others. He judges the rest of the philosophy of

the century more severely. He does not spare the _Encyclopédie_,

and in the majority of the philosophical writings of this period he

finds little but “a frivolous and feeble sophistic argumentation.”

Circumstances almost alone have made its success. This philosophy is

incomparably inferior to that which the counter-revolution opposed to

it. In the logical respect _which finally predominates_, says Comte,

the revolutionary criticism cannot to-day resist the system of the

“retrograde school.” In a regular discussion, the latter would soon

have compelled it to admit that it allows the essential principles

of the old régime while refusing to accept their most indispensable

consequences.[316]

The inmost contradiction from which the revolutionary philosophy

suffers will become more and more apparent. A not far distant moment

will arrive when the effort to restore the past will include a

large number of those who have contributed to its destruction. The

partisans of natural religion, and even those of the most advanced

Deism will rally to Catholicism as to the real foundation of the

social organisation which they defend. The alternative will then be

set up between the only two solutions which are logical and organic:

either the old régime, with the Catholic organisation, or the new,

with the positive organisation. Between these two there is no room for

the critical, liberal, metaphysical, revolutionary system, which, by

whatever name it may be called, signifies “no organisation at all.”

IV.

The old régime was bound to perish because in it, the social

organisation was connected with a system of beliefs and of dogmas

which could not withstand the spirit of investigation. In order that

the new régime may escape this cause of death, must it be able without

suffering to bear the indefinite exercise of an absolute freedom

of examination?——No, replies Comte, there is no system capable of

enduring under these conditions. But it suffices that in constituting

itself, the new faith, which is the basis of social order, should have

undergone the test of free examination as we see it practised in the

positive sciences. It suffices that, instead of a revealed faith, we

should have a demonstrated faith which will then be immovable, and

which will no more have to be called in question.

Comte then admits the preliminary test, but he is opposed to free

examination indefinitely renewed. This distinction allows us to

reconcile some of his declarations which otherwise would appear

contradictory. His language differs according as he speaks of the

positive dogma in the process of formation, or of that dogma once

it has been formed. When it is in process of formation the dogma is

subject to criticism, and if it is not victorious in resisting it

it does not become an object of belief. No matter how much we may

deplore the ever-dissolving energy of the spirit of analysis and of

examination, it remains beneficial none the less, by compelling,

for the intellectual and moral reorganisation, the production of

a philosophy capable of sustaining the decisive test of a deep

discussion, “freely prolonged until the entire conviction of public

reason” has taken place. This is a condition from which nothing

henceforth can exempt us.[317] The spiritual reorganisation, says

Comte, will be the result of purely intellectual action. It supposes

a voluntary and unanimous assent at the end of complete discussion

without the intervention of the spiritual powers to hasten the

conclusion.

But does it follow that freedom of examination should _remain_

indefinitely without limits? Undoubtedly it has been a good thing that

men should see in this liberty an indefeasible right which they were

all to enjoy. The dissolution of old beliefs in this way was easier and

more rapid. The better this “singular phase” in our social development

is analysed, the more will the conviction gain ground that without

the conquest and use of this unlimited freedom social reorganisation

could not have been prepared. But this singular phase was a transitory

one. When it has been gone through, when common principles have again

become universally accepted, “after sufficient verification,” the

right of examination will again return within its normal and permanent

limits, which consist in discussing the connection of consequences

with fundamental and uniformly respected rules, but without again

questioning these rules themselves.[318]

The question then reduces itself to knowing when the test may be

legitimately considered as at an end. Will the individual approbation

of all the members of society be required, and a kind of consecration

by universal suffrage? As a matter of fact, such unanimity will perhaps

never be realised. In justice it is not necessary. When we demand it we

forget that Politic science is a positive science, the highest and most

complicated of all. No one possesses any authority in the sciences if

he is not competent. The people has no thought of making its opinion

prevail in them; and, in matters of science, all who are not in a

condition to understand demonstrations are the people. The convergence

of intellects presupposes the voluntary and intentional renunciation

on the part of the greater number of their “sovereign right of

examination.”[319]

In this way the right is taken from no one. The use of it is simply

intrusted by those who are incompetent to the competent ones. This

intrusting, freely accepted by all, lasts as long as the conditions

which made it necessary. No moral order could be compatible with

the “wandering liberty of minds at the present time,” if it were to

persist indefinitely. It is not possible that any man, whether he be

competent or not, should every day call into discussion the very bases

of society. “Systematic tolerance cannot exist, and has never really

existed, except on the subject of opinions which are regarded as

indifferent or as doubtful.”[320]

Such is the meaning of the celebrated passages on liberty of conscience

with which Comte has so often been reproached. He had written it in

1822, and quoted it himself in the fourth volume of the _Cours de

philosophie positive_,[321] never suspecting that anything could be

said against it. “There is no liberty of conscience in astronomy,

in physics, in chemistry, in physiology, in the sense that everyone

would deem it absurd not to take on trust the principles established

in these sciences by competent men. If it is otherwise in politics,

it is because the old principles have fallen, and, as the new ones

are not yet formed, there are, properly speaking, in this interval no

established principles.” It is then in no way a question of imposing

beliefs upon men of which they are not to judge, by a kind of spiritual

despotism. Comte merely wishes to extend to politics, _considered as

a positive science_, what is admitted in the other sciences by common

consent.

V.

Without much trouble, it is easy to see whence originate the essential

features of this philosophy of history. In so far as it represents the

development of humanity as subject to a law of evolution, which causes

it to go through a succession of phases whose order is rationally

determined, in a word as _progress_, the leading-idea is due to Comte’s

“spiritual father,” to Condorcet.

For the interpretation of more recent events, and for the judgment

passed upon the Middle Ages, Comte draws his inspiration from Joseph

de Maistre, from the traditionalist school, and from Saint-Simon. To

the latter, among other ideas, Comte owes the distinction between the

critical and the organic periods. But, on Comte’s own confession,

Joseph de Maistre’s influence over his mind was especially decisive.

Like de Maistre, he thinks that the entirely negative philosophy of

the XVIII. century knew very well how to destroy, but showed itself

powerless to construct. Like de Maistre again, he is persuaded of the

fact that social order requires a spiritual power beside the temporal

power, and that the régime of the Middle Ages was a “masterpiece of

political wisdom” precisely because at that period the Catholic Church

had brought about the independence of the spiritual power. Finally,

like de Maistre, he makes the salvation of humanity in the future

depend upon their return to a unity of beliefs.