_To the Editor of The Monist._
If all the readers of _The Monist_ for October were acquainted with the
life and writings of Littré I should not have to defend him against your
criticism, as everyone could see that there is more truth than poetry
in my sonnet. But I fear that “the voice, the spirit, and the soul of
Positivism” is not so well known as he deserves to be, and I venture to
ask for space to reply.
Proceeding in order, I should like to correct the impression left by the
following passage: “Comte had not nominated a successor who should in his
place be the _Directeur du positivisme_. Littré had forfeited this honor
on account of his quarrels with Comte in which he strongly sided with
Madame Comte against her husband.” The misunderstanding between the two
men had a more serious origin than these family squabbles and arose from
the fact that Littré would not follow Comte through the mystic vagaries
of the _Politique Positive_. He admits that being under his intellectual
ascendency he went too far on the new way, but he soon found that the
master was violating his own method and, having to choose between them,
he held to the method. Littré’s refusal to join Comte in his adhesion
to the régime of the coup d’état of 1851 was the immediate cause of the
rupture. His “excessive tolerance” did not extend to the Bonapartes, whom
he detested cordially. It is characteristic of the man that he continued
his yearly subscription to the fund that he had created for his friend’s
support notwithstanding this break in their relations.
As to his tolerance, I think with you that he carried it a little too far
in his own family. Greater firmness might have spared us the vision of
priests bedeviling him in his agony and dragging his body in triumph to
holy ground. But the case that you take as an example does not seem to
me conclusive. It was not necessary to possess his knowledge of history
in order to appreciate the difficulties attendant upon interference with
his catholic wife in the education of their daughter, and as success was
impossible he wisely limited his endeavor to fields unobstructed by the
“eternal feminine.”
Seriously, we admit that Littré was tolerant to excess, but not that the
attitude of his philosophy is, as you say, “mere scepticism leading to
indifferentism.” In the words of M. Wyrouboff, who aided him for many
years in editing the magazine called _La Philosophie Positive_, “men, no
matter how superior they may be, are never abstract formulas interpreting
with equal facility all the parts of a mental conception; they always
represent a mixture of strength and weakness in variable proportions....
It seemed as if intellectual activity had absorbed all the living forces
of his (Littré’s) being, leaving in the place of physical activity only
the faculty of passive resistance to the will of others.” This refers
to the man in his old age but in youth he was an athlete of remarkable
strength. Renan said of him: “While his temperament was calm his mind was
revolutionary, and therefore he never gave way. In July 1830, he was in
the first line of those who broke into the place du Carrousel and George
Farcy was shot through by his side.” I am tempted to quote a little
more from this master of words. “So great was his love of truth that,
perhaps alone in our century, he could retract without lessening himself.
Truth led him like a child.... It is not well to be too perfect.... His
apparent negations were only the extreme reserve of a mind that dreads
hazardous appreciations. He was so much afraid of going beyond what he
saw clearly that he often stopped short of it. Hesitation that implies a
thousand times more delicate worship of the eternal ideal than the rash
solutions that satisfy superficial minds.”
Even in old age there were no signs of “indifferentism” in his conduct.
In the words of Pasteur, “At the Mesnil he was consulting physician for
the whole village (always gratuitously). Continuing his labors till three
o’clock in the morning, the light of his lamp shone afar during the night
like a beacon that reassured the sick. It was known that at the first
call, M. Littré would leave his work and go wherever his aid was needed.”
These are the words of men that knew him, but my first-hand opinion of
him was formed solely from his writings and his public acts as senator,
etc.; fancy such a man in _our_ senate!
The note in which you say that I attended positivistic lectures
(Comte’s?) in France together with Mr. Frederic Harrison is a flattering
anachronism.
Littré’s father received a sword of honor while in the navy for beating
off an English ship of superior force, and the son’s philosophy prompts
not only to action but to action, if necessary, in the good old fashioned
positive way.
My second objection refers to the line where you say that your positivism
“has nothing to do with Comte or with any of Comte’s disciples,” and,
leaving Comte aside, I hope to show that you and Littré are much better
friends than you imagine. A view noted by him on p. 27, Vol. 1, of his
magazine, _La Philosophie Positive_, ought to assure this happy result.
In the preface of your valuable work entitled “Fundamental Problems” you
draw particular attention to the part that treats of “Form and Formal
Thought,” which, you say, discusses a subject of fundamental importance.
“A correct conception of form and the laws of form will clear away many
mysteries; it will afford a satisfactory explanation of causality and
shed a new light on all the other problems of philosophy.”
The part referred to begins thus: “In the introduction to his ‘Critique
of Pure Reason,’ Immanuel Kant proposes the question: How are synthetical
Judgments _a priori_ possible? on the solution of this problem the
whole structure of his philosophy rests, which he characterises as
_Transcendental Idealism_.” (“A priori, as used in the limited sense by
Kant, is purely formal knowledge, while a posteriori is identical with
experience.”)
Further on I read, “Our own views grew out of a study of Kant’s
Transcendentalism”; and the first words of your “Conclusion” are these:
“Although Kant’s Transcendental Idealism cannot be considered as a final
solution of the basic problem of philosophy, it nevertheless pursues the
right method and has thus actually led us to a solution which, we hope,
will in time be recognised as final.”
In looking for the difference between the two solutions to find the
part in yours that belongs to you alone, I see on p. 50 of “Fundamental
Problems” that “Kant thinks it is a strange and wonderful fact that
our formal thought (the rules of arithmetic, mathematics, logic, etc.,
which are _a priori_) agrees so precisely with the highest (i. e. the
most general) laws of nature, which can be ascertained and verified by
experience. Kant sees only two ways of solution. Either the laws of pure
reason, he says, have been gathered by experience from nature, or, on
the contrary, the laws of nature have been deduced from our _a priori_
rules. The former solution is impossible, since the formal sciences
are proven to have been formulated with the exclusion of all sensory
experience. ‘Therefore,’ says Kant, ‘the second solution only remains.
Reason dictates its laws to nature’; i. e. ... the sensory impressions
are the raw material only from which the well-ordered whole of nature, as
an object of science, is created by the synthetic faculty of reason....
Kant has taken into consideration two ways only. He overlooks the third
and most obvious explanation.... The third possibility is that which has
been propounded in the foregoing pages. According to our explanation, the
formal (the highest or most general) laws of nature and the formal laws
of thought are identical. Their agreement is not wonderful but inevitable
as both are expressions of the forms of existence in general.”
This then is your “solution of the basic problem of philosophy.”
Turning back to page 34, I find under the title “The Origin of the A
Priori”: “Kant answers the question ‘How are synthetic judgments _a
priori_ possible?’ by showing that such synthetic judgments undoubtedly
exist.” “He might have ventured a step further by proposing another
question: ‘What is the origin of the _a priori_?’ Only by answering
this question could he have shown _how_ synthetic judgments _a priori_
are possible. This he did not do, and the omission has produced great
confusion among German, French, and English thinkers.” On the next
page, 36, I find “According to our view, form is a property of reality
as well as of our cognition. Formless matter does not exist. Form and
matter as they exist in reality, are inseparable.... Knowledge also
in its primitive shape, when it is, so to say, natural and crude, is
an intimate combination of sense-perceptions and formal cognition.
The sense-perceptions are the real substance of knowledge, while
formal cognition is the principle which arranges and systematises
sense-experiences.” ... “Logic does not create order and system in our
brain, but it makes us conscious of the order that naturally grew in our
mind.”
In the division entitled “The Order of Nature” you say that “Formal
thought represents the mere laws of thought in their abstractness, and
has been acquired by abstraction. The mere forms of thought exhibit
a wonderful regularity.... This regularity of formal thought, which
is expressed in all logical laws, arithmetical calculations, and in
all mathematical conceptions, has naturally grown in our mind as the
psychical expression of a physical regularity in the arrangement of the
various brain-structures and their combinations. The arrangement of
brain-structures in certain regular forms has been effected in accordance
with the same laws that govern the development of forms generally.”
This answer to the question, “What is the origin of the _a priori_” is
what you call the corner-stone of your positivism, which, you say, “it is
to be hoped, will prove the only true Monism.”
Now I give my translation of Littré’s view, which he published in 1867,
in an article entitled “The Three Philosophies.”
“The effective certainty that the mathematical laws of number, of figure
and of motion are at the base of physical phenomena, and the inductive
belief that they are equally at the base of chemical and of biological
phenomena induce me to note here a view upon the relation that must be
found between subjective phenomena and objective phenomena, that is to
say upon the relation that causes the subject to draw from the object
a science and laws. The nervous substance, which is the organ of all
intelligence, is made up of material elements which arrive with their
conditions; and when this substance becomes capable of thinking, it
passes under the conditions proper to the elements that form it; which
results in (_se traduit par_) a science and its laws. The material
work that takes place in the brain while it fulfils its office, is, as
is known, a work of nutrition, which consists of a chemical exchange
of molecules. Every chemical action is, in turn, equivalent to a
certain quantity of heat; and again, this heat is equivalent to a
certain quantity of motion. Thus thought, no matter how we represent
to ourselves the relation to nervous substance, is connected with
mathematical modes of which it becomes conscious when it becomes
luminous. Not that I would in any way have it understood that thought
is but an equivalent of heat or of motion. Far from that, equivalence
is not identity; and whenever we change from one degree to another in
the natural and scientific order we meet a new unknown which is the
characteristic of this degree. The induction that leads us to connect
thought with mathematical conditions, leads us also to connect it with
physical, chemical, and biological conditions, of which it is necessarily
participant. Finally, when, at the highest point, it arrives face to face
with itself, it studies itself experimentally like the rest, and forms
its own doctrine. If it attempts to go out metaphysically into space,
it is reduced to combining subjectively its own elements, turns in a
circle without issue and falls back upon itself. If, on the contrary, it
makes the same attempt towards nature from which it emanates, then the
ways open, science is established, and positive philosophy appears. The
material constitution of the nervous substance is the point of junction
between the human mind and laws or general facts. If I had been younger,
I should have made a work of this view, not a paragraph; but old age must
hasten.”
I have translated more than was necessary so as to give the “view” as
a whole. Does it not contain the answer to your question, “What is the
origin of the _a priori_”?
Though Littré solved your “basic problem of philosophy” he did not attach
so much importance to this solution as you do because his philosophy is
based upon a generalisation from all facts and not upon any one fact,
however important it may be.
“Positive Philosophy is the conception of the world that results from the
systematised ensemble of the positive sciences” and does not depend upon
the solution of any psychological problem, although it recognises the
importance of all psychological facts.
Your originality lies in your application of Littré’s discovery.
The reader has his choice between Littré’s positivism and your
neo-Kantism, but if he side with you he must at least thank Littré for
the solution on which your philosophy is based.
You say that “Comtean Positivism, especially as it is represented by
Littré, consists mainly if not exclusively of the doctrine to ‘let
metaphysics alone.’” Is this fair to the man that solved your “basic
problem of philosophy” in a paragraph?
Positivism as represented by Littré gives due importance to the
subjective element. He recognised that three essentials were necessary
to the completion of Comte’s philosophy: a political economy, a cerebral
theory, and what, for want of a better name he termed the subjective
theory of humanity. This last comprised ethics, æsthetics, and
psychology. Speaking of a confusion that obscures the whole discussion
relative to psychology, he says: “_Cerebral theory_, _mental_ or
_psychological theory_ are taken in two very different senses, which
are never distinguished. These terms signify sometimes the organic
conditions under which intelligence manifests itself, sometimes the
formal conditions under which the intellect operates. As soon as these
two significations are separated we perceive the means of settling the
debate as to the place of psychology; for to the question: Where should
these two orders be studied? it will be answered that the first should
be studied in anatomy, physiology, zoölogy, the evolution of ages,
pathology, it belongs therefore without contest to biology; but it will
be answered that the second should be studied in the total development
of history and in the application to all the modes of cognition; it
belongs incontestably to philosophy. Thus there are two psychologies,
one biological, the other philosophical, one relating to the individual
man, the other to the collective man, one furnishing what is necessary
in order to pass from biology to sociology, the other examining the
subjective instrument by the light of all positive knowledge. But
this complement of philosophy I do not call psychology, I call it the
_subject-theory_ of _humanity_; because while including psychology, it
includes much more.” That is to say; ethics and æsthetics.... “In the
order of the positive method it is at first by means of the object that
human knowledge is built up, and we end with the subject.” “The theory of
the subject is the indispensable complement of the theory of the object.”
Of positive philosophy Littré says: “While it constructs the series of
the partial philosophies and thus embraces all objective knowledge, it
constructs at the same time the series of effective methods and thus
embraces all logical power. I borrow this expression from M. Comte, who
so happily named these effective methods the logical powers of the human
mind. When it has terminated its first series it is found to have also
terminated the second. Thus the ensemble of the methods represents the
function of the subject; the ensemble of the partial philosophies, the
function of the object.”
Is this what you call a “one-sided philosophy”?
You say that Littré is the worst kind of a metaphysician because he
maintains that we can know nothing about first and final causes; I quote
him to show his position: “Positive philosophy is at the same time a
system that comprises all that is known of the world, of man and of
society, and a general method including all the ways by which things have
been learned. What is beyond, either, materially, the depths (fond) of
boundless space, or, intellectually, the endless enchainment of causes,
is absolutely inaccessible to the human mind. But inaccessible does not
mean null or non-existent. Immensity, both material and intellectual,
holds by a narrow tie to what we know and becomes by this alliance a
positive idea of the same order; I mean to say that by touching and
bordering it, this immensity appears in its double character, reality and
inaccessibility. It is an ocean that washes our shore, and for which we
have neither bark nor sail, but whose clear vision is as salutary as it
is formidable.” _Aug. Comte et la Phil. Pos._, 2d Ed., p. 519.
As Littré had found this shore encumbered with the wrecks of expeditions
that had started out in search of first causes and final causes, it is no
wonder that he was a little timid. His metaphor needs explanation in the
light of other passages, otherwise it might seem to discourage pursuit
of the unknown. He did not discountenance hypotheses but he was very
much afraid of our inclination to take guesses for truth; and this, by
the way, is the reason why he is not appreciated in this country, where
we are so fond of guessing. What he really did was to discourage those
navigators who would go in search of the Jumping-off-place, for the best
that can befall them is to come back to where they started. The men that
know the earth is round are the only men that find new worlds.
In answer to your statement that Littré’s philosophy “is an inventory
rather than a plan to guide science in its further evolution” I will only
repeat in his words, what he has shown so well, that “positive philosophy
is the ensemble of human knowledge, disposed according to a certain order
which enables us to grasp its connections and its unity, and to draw from
it the general directions for each part and for the whole.”
You say that “Littré rejects the evolution theory and its attempts to
explain ethics.” I quote him from _La Philosophie Positive_, March, 1880:
“Positive philosophy does not deny the evolution of ethics; far from
doing so, it maintained and inculcated this evolution long before the
utilitarian doctrine made it its ethical pivot.”.... “General morality,
born of the gradual culture of the sentimental basis of the human
soul under the social protection of progressive centres, is entirely
disinterested, and this is what makes its purity and its force.”
In your philosophy you have a god and a religion, in his we have the same
things, but as they are so different from what is generally understood by
these terms, we use others. Here are some of the _Paroles de Philosophie
Positive_: “In the eyes of history, there are no false religions, there
are only incomplete religions which make their way through time and
perfect themselves.... The definition of religion is taken from its
office, which is: to put education, and consequently moral life, en
rapport with the conception of the world at each phase of humanity.
Whoever examines this definition will find that it satisfies all the
conditions of religion, either in the past, the present, or the future.
It will be perceived that theology is not inherent in the religious
idea. It was not always there in the past; for we cannot give the name
of theology to primordial fetichism, which addressed its worship to
neighboring objects, nor to the religions that adore natural agents, such
as air, wind, night, dawn; it is with polytheism that theology begins. As
for the future, general science, conceiving the world differently from
the way in which it was conceived during the reigns of the successive
religions, takes an office equivalent to the religious office, and must
in its turn place education and moral life in accord with the universe as
it appears to us.”.... “We do not outrage the old doctrine, whose past
is glorious and venerable; but there is a public for which it is a dead
letter; and it is to this public that we address ourselves and for this
public that we labor.”
Is this not aspiration to be in unison with “the order of the world,”
which you call God? And when Littré traces this aspiration back to its
organic origin is he not explaining what you affirm?
Our philosophies are not perfect, but we must apply them, such as they
are, to the needs of the day. The most pressing of all these needs, in
my opinion, is unity of action among those who are animated with the new
spirit.
Let us pull together.
Very truly yours,