Lavoisier, in the latter half of the last century (in a subsequent
treatise he places the date a generation earlier); and biology at the
beginning of the present, when Bichat drew the fundamental distinction
between nutritive or vegetative and properly animal life, and referred
the properties of organs to the general laws of the component tissues.
The most complex of all sciences, the Social, had not, he maintained,
become positive at all, but was the subject of an ever-renewed and
barren contest between the theological and the metaphysical modes of
thought. To make this highest of the sciences positive, and thereby
complete the positive character of all human speculations, was the
principal aim of his labours, and he believed himself to have
accomplished it in the last three volumes of his Treatise. But the term
Positive is not, any more than Metaphysical, always used by M. Comte in
the same meaning. There never can have been a period in any science when
it was not in some degree positive, since it always professed to draw
conclusions from experience and observation. M. Comte would have been
the last to deny that previous to his own speculations, the world
possessed a multitude of truths, of greater or less certainty, on social
subjects, the evidence of which was obtained by inductive or deductive
processes from observed sequences of phaenomena. Nor could it be denied
that the best writers on subjects upon which so many men of the highest
mental capacity had employed their powers, had accepted as thoroughly
the positive point of view, and rejected the theological and
metaphysical as decidedly, as M. Comte himself. Montesquieu; even
Macchiavelli; Adam Smith and the political economists universally, both
in France and in England; Bentham, and all thinkers initiated by
him,--had a full conviction that social phaenomena conform to invariable
laws, the discovery and illustration of which was their great object as
speculative thinkers. All that can be said is, that those philosophers
did not get so far as M. Comte in discovering the methods best adapted
to bring these laws to light. It was not, therefore, reserved for M.
Comte to make sociological inquiries positive. But what he really meant
by making a science positive, is what we will call, with M. Littré,
giving it its final scientific constitution; in other words, discovering
or proving, and pursuing to their consequences, those of its truths
which are fit to form the connecting links among the rest: truths which
are to it what the law of gravitation is to astronomy, what the
elementary properties of the tissues are to physiology, and we will add
(though M. Comte did not) what the laws of association are to
psychology. This is an operation which, when accomplished, puts an end
to the empirical period, and enables the science to be conceived as a
co-ordinated and coherent body of doctrine. This is what had not yet
been done for sociology; and the hope of effecting it was, from his
early years, the prompter and incentive of all M. Comte's philosophic
labours.
It was with a view to this that he undertook that wonderful
systematization of the philosophy of all the antecedent sciences, from
mathematics to physiology, which, if he had done nothing else, would
have stamped him, in all minds competent to appreciate it, as one of the
principal thinkers of the age. To make its nature intelligible to those
who are not acquainted with it, we must explain what we mean by the
philosophy of a science, as distinguished from the science itself. The
proper meaning of philosophy we take to be, what the ancients understood
by it--the scientific knowledge of Man, as an intellectual, moral, and
social being. Since his intellectual faculties include his knowing
faculty, the science of Man includes everything that man can know, so
far as regards his mode of knowing it: in other words, the whole
doctrine of the conditions of human knowledge. The philosophy of a
Science thus comes to mean the science itself, considered not as to its
results, the truths which it ascertains, but as to the processes by
which the mind attains them, the marks by which it recognises them, and
the co-ordinating and methodizing of them with a view to the greatest
clearness of conception and the fullest and readiest availibility for
use: in one word, the logic of the science. M. Comte has accomplished
this for the first five of the fundamental sciences, with a success
which can hardly be too much admired. We never reopen even the least
admirable part of this survey, the volume on chemistry and biology
(which was behind the actual state of those sciences when first written,
and is far in the rear of them now), without a renewed sense of the
great reach of its speculations, and a conviction that the way to a
complete rationalizing of those sciences, still very imperfectly
conceived by most who cultivate them, has been shown nowhere so
successfully as there.
Yet, for a correct appreciation of this great philosophical achievement,
we ought to take account of what has not been accomplished, as well as
of what has. Some of the chief deficiencies and infirmities of M.
Comte's system of thought will be found, as is usually the case, in
close connexion with its greatest successes.
The philosophy of Science consists of two principal parts; the methods
of investigation, and the requisites of proof. The one points out the
roads by which the human intellect arrives at conclusions, the other the
mode of testing their evidence. The former if complete would be an
Organon of Discovery, the latter of Proof. It is to the first of these
that M. Comte principally confines himself, and he treats it with a
degree of perfection hitherto unrivalled. Nowhere is there anything
comparable, in its kind, to his survey of the resources which the mind
has at its disposal for investigating the laws of phaenomena; the
circumstances which render each of the fundamental modes of exploration
suitable or unsuitable to each class of phaenomena; the extensions and
transformations which the process of investigation has to undergo in
adapting itself to each new province of the field of study; and the
especial gifts with which every one of the fundamental sciences enriches
the method of positive inquiry, each science in its turn being the best
fitted to bring to perfection one process or another. These, and many
cognate subjects, such as the theory of Classification, and the proper
use of scientific Hypotheses, M. Comte has treated with a completeness
of insight which leaves little to be desired. Not less admirable is his
survey of the most comprehensive truths that had been arrived at by each
science, considered as to their relation to the general sum of human
knowledge, and their logical value as aids to its further progress. But
after all this, there remains a further and distinct question. We are
taught the right way of searching for results, but when a result has
been reached, how shall we know that it is true? How assure ourselves
that the process has been performed correctly, and that our premises,
whether consisting of generalities or of particular facts, really prove
the conclusion we have grounded on them? On this question M. Comte
throws no light. He supplies no test of proof. As regards deduction, he
neither recognises the syllogistic system of Aristotle and his
successors (the insufficiency of which is as evident as its utility is
real) nor proposes any other in lieu of it: and of induction he has no
canons whatever. He does not seem to admit the possibility of any
general criterion by which to decide whether a given inductive inference
is correct or not. Yet he does not, with Dr Whewell, regard an inductive
theory as proved if it accounts for the facts: on the contrary, he sets
himself in the strongest opposition to those scientific hypotheses
which, like the luminiferous ether, are not susceptible of direct proof,
and are accepted on the sole evidence of their aptitude for explaining
phenomena. He maintains that no hypothesis is legitimate unless it is
susceptible of verification, and that none ought to be accepted as true
unless it can be shown not only that it accords with the facts, but that
its falsehood would be inconsistent with them. He therefore needs a test
of inductive proof; and in assigning none, he seems to give up as
impracticable the main problem of Logic properly so called. At the
beginning of his treatise he speaks of a doctrine of Method, apart from
particular applications, as conceivable, but not needful: method,
according to him, is learnt only by seeing it in operation, and the
logic of a science can only usefully be taught through the science
itself. Towards the end of the work, he assumes a more decidedly
negative tone, and treats the very conception of studying Logic
otherwise than in its applications as chimerical. He got on, in his
subsequent writings, to considering it as wrong. This indispensable part
of Positive Philosophy he not only left to be supplied by others, but
did all that depended on him to discourage them from attempting it.
This hiatus in M. Comte's system is not unconnected with a defect in his
original conception of the subject matter of scientific investigation,
which has been generally noticed, for it lies on the surface, and is
more apt to be exaggerated than overlooked. It is often said of him that
he rejects the study of causes. This is not, in the correct acceptation,
true, for it is only questions of ultimate origin, and of Efficient as
distinguished from what are called Physical causes, that he rejects. The
causes that he regards as inaccessible are causes which are not
themselves phaenomena. Like other people he admits the study of causes,
in every sense in which one physical fact can be the cause of another.
But he has an objection to the _word_ cause; he will only consent to
speak of Laws of Succession: and depriving himself of the use of a word
which has a Positive meaning, he misses the meaning it expresses. He
sees no difference between such generalizations as Kepler's laws, and
such as the theory of gravitation. He fails to perceive the real
distinction between the laws of succession and coexistence which
thinkers of a different school call Laws of Phaenomena, and those of
what they call the action of Causes: the former exemplified by the
succession of day and night, the latter by the earth's rotation which
causes it. The succession of day and night is as much an invariable
sequence, as the alternate exposure of opposite sides of the earth to
the sun. Yet day and night are not the causes of one another; why?
Because their sequence, though invariable in our experience, is not
unconditionally so: those facts only succeed each other, provided that
the presence and absence of the sun succeed each other, and if this
alternation were to cease, we might have either day or night unfollowed
by one another. There are thus two kinds of uniformities of succession,
the one unconditional, the other conditional on the first: laws of
causation, and other successions dependent on those laws. All ultimate
laws are laws of causation, and the only universal law beyond the pale
of mathematics is the law of universal causation, namely, that every
phaenomenon has a phaenomenal cause; has some phaenomenon other than
itself, or some combination of phaenomena, on which it is invariably and
unconditionally consequent. It is on the universality of this law that
the possibility rests of establishing a canon of Induction. A general
proposition inductively obtained is only then proved to be true, when
the instances on which it rests are such that if they have been
correctly observed, the falsity of the generalization would be
inconsistent with the constancy of causation; with the universality of
the fact that the phaenomena of nature take place according to
invariable laws of succession.[9] It is probable, therefore, that M.
Comte's determined abstinence from the word and the idea of Cause, had
much to do with his inability to conceive an Inductive Logic, by
diverting his attention from the only basis upon which it could be
founded.
We are afraid it must also be said, though shown only by slight
indications in his fundamental work, and coming out in full evidence
only in his later writings--that M. Comte, at bottom, was not so
solicitous about completeness of proof as becomes a positive
philosopher, and that the unimpeachable objectivity, as he would have
called it, of a conception--its exact correspondence to the realities of
outward fact--was not, with him, an indispensable condition of adopting
it, if it was subjectively useful, by affording facilities to the mind
for grouping phaenomena. This appears very curiously in his chapters on
the philosophy of Chemistry. He recommends, as a judicious use of "the
degree of liberty left to our intelligence by the end and purpose of
positive science," that we should accept as a convenient generalization
the doctrine that all chemical composition is between two elements only;
that every substance which our analysis decomposes, let us say into four
elements, has for its immediate constituents two hypothetical
substances, each compounded of two simpler ones. There would have been
nothing to object to in this as a scientific hypothesis, assumed
tentatively as a means of suggesting experiments by which its truth may
be tested. With this for its destination, the conception, would have
been legitimate and philosophical; the more so, as, if confirmed, it
would have afforded an explanation of the fact that some substances
which analysis shows to be composed of the same elementary substances
in the same proportions, differ in their general properties, as for
instance, sugar and gum.[10] And if, besides affording a reason for
difference between things which differ, the hypothesis had afforded a
reason for agreement between things which agree; if the intermediate
link by which the quaternary compound was resolved into two binary ones,
could have been so chosen as to bring each of them within the analogies
of some known class of binary compounds (which it is easy to suppose
possible, and which in some particular instances actually happens);[11]
the universality of binary composition would have been a successful
example of an hypothesis in anticipation of a positive theory, to give
a direction to inquiry which might end in its being either proved or
abandoned. But M. Comte evidently thought that even though it should
never be proved--however many cases of chemical composition might always
remain in which the theory was still as hypothetical as at first--so
long as it was not actually disproved (which it is scarcely in the
nature of the case that it should ever be) it would deserve to be
retained, for its mere convenience in bringing a large body of
phaenomena under a general conception. In a _résumé_ of the general
principles of the positive method at the end of the work, he claims,
in express terms, an unlimited license of adopting "without any vain
scruple" hypothetical conceptions of this sort; "in order to satisfy,
within proper limits, our just mental inclinations, which always turn,
with an instinctive predilection, towards simplicity, continuity, and
generality of conceptions, while always respecting the reality of
external laws in so far as accessible to us" (vi. 639). "The most
philosophic point of view leads us to conceive the study of natural laws
as destined to represent the external world so as to give as much
satisfaction to the essential inclinations of our intelligence, as is
consistent with the degree of exactitude commanded by the aggregate of
our practical wants" (vi. 642). Among these "essential inclinations" he
includes not only our "instinctive predilection for order and harmony,"
which makes us relish any conception, even fictitious, that helps to
reduce phaenomena to system; but even our feelings of taste, "les
convenances purement esthétiques," which, he says, have a legitimate
part in the employment of the "genre de liberté" resté facultatif pour
notre intelligence." After the due satisfaction of our "most eminent
mental inclinations," there will still remain "a considerable margin of
indeterminateness, which should be made use of to give a direct
gratification to our _besoin_ of ideality, by embellishing our
scientific thoughts, without injury to their essential reality" (vi.
647). In consistency with all this, M. Comte warns thinkers against too
severe a scrutiny of the exact truth of scientific laws, and stamps with
"severe reprobation" those who break down "by too minute an
investigation" generalizations already made, without being able to
substitute others (vi. 639): as in the case of Lavoisier's general
theory of chemistry, which would have made that science more
satisfactory than at present to "the instinctive inclinations of our
intelligence" if it had turned out true, but unhappily it did not. These
mental dispositions in M. Comte account for his not having found or
sought a logical criterion of proof; but they are scarcely consistent
with his inveterate hostility to the hypothesis of the luminiferous
ether, which certainly gratifies our "predilection for order and
harmony," not to say our "besoin d'idéalite", in no ordinary degree.
This notion of the "destination" of the study of natural laws is to our
minds a complete dereliction of the essential principles which form the
Positive conception of science; and contained the germ of the perversion
of his own philosophy which marked his later years. It might be
interesting, but scarcely worth while, to attempt to penetrate to the
just thought which misled M. Comte, for there is almost always a grain
of truth in the errors of an original and powerful mind. There is
another grave aberration in M. Comte's view of the method of positive
science, which though not more unphilosophical than the last mentioned,
is of greater practical importance. He rejects totally, as an invalid
process, psychological observation properly so called, or in other
words, internal consciousness, at least as regards our intellectual
operations. He gives no place in his series of the science of
Psychology, and always speaks of it with contempt. The study of mental
phaenomena, or, as he expresses it, of moral and intellectual functions,
has a place in his scheme, under the head of Biology, but only as a
branch of physiology. Our knowledge of the human mind must, he thinks,
be acquired by observing other people. How we are to observe other
people's mental operations, or how interpret the signs of them without
having learnt what the signs mean by knowledge of ourselves, he does not
state. But it is clear to him that we can learn very little about the
feelings, and nothing at all about the intellect, by self-observation.
Our intelligence can observe all other things, but not itself: we cannot
observe ourselves observing, or observe ourselves reasoning: and if we
could, attention to this reflex operation would annihilate its object,
by stopping the process observed.
There is little need for an elaborate refutation of a fallacy respecting
which the only wonder is that it should impose on any one. Two answers
may be given to it. In the first place, M. Comte might be referred to
experience, and to the writings of his countryman M. Cardaillac and our
own Sir William Hamilton, for proof that the mind can not only be
conscious of, but attend to, more than one, and even a considerable
number, of impressions at once.[12] It is true that attention is
weakened by being divided; and this forms a special difficulty in
psychological observation, as psychologists (Sir William Hamilton in
particular) have fully recognised; but a difficulty is not an
impossibility. Secondly, it might have occurred to M. Comte that a fact
may be studied through the medium of memory, not at the very moment of
our perceiving it, but the moment after: and this is really the mode in
which our best knowledge of our intellectual acts is generally acquired.
We reflect on what we have been doing, when the act is past, but when
its impression in the memory is still fresh. Unless in one of these
ways, we could not have acquired the knowledge, which nobody denies us
to have, of what passes in our minds. M. Comte would scarcely have
affirmed that we are not aware of our own intellectual operations. We
know of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time, or
by memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge, and not
(like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely by their
results. This simple fact destroys the whole of M. Comte's argument.
Whatever we are directly aware of, we can directly observe.
And what Organon for the study of "the moral and intellectual functions"
does M. Comte offer, in lieu of the direct mental observation which he
repudiates? We are almost ashamed to say, that it is Phrenology! Not,
indeed, he says, as a science formed, but as one still to be created;
for he rejects almost all the special organs imagined by phrenologists,
and accepts only their general division of the brain into the three
regions of the propensities, the sentiments, and the intellect,[13] and
the subdivision of the latter region between the organs of meditation
and those of observation. Yet this mere first outline of an
apportionment of the mental functions among different organs, he regards
as extricating the mental study of man from the metaphysical stage, and
elevating it to the positive. The condition of mental science would be
sad indeed if this were its best chance of being positive; for the later
course of physiological observation and speculation has not tended to
confirm, but to discredit, the phrenological hypothesis. And even if
that hypothesis were true, psychological observation would still be
necessary; for how is it possible to ascertain the correspondence
between two things, by observation of only one of them? To establish a
relation between mental functions and cerebral conformations, requires
not only a parallel system of observations applied to each, but (as M.
Comte himself, with some inconsistency, acknowledges) an analysis of the
mental faculties, "des diverses facultés élémentaires," (iii. 573),
conducted without any reference to the physical conditions, since the
proof of the theory would lie in the correspondence between the division
of the brain into organs and that of the mind into faculties, each shown
by separate evidence. To accomplish this analysis requires direct
psychological study carried to a high pitch of perfection; it being
necessary, among other things, to investigate the degree in which mental
character is created by circumstances, since no one supposes that
cerebral conformation does all, and circumstances nothing. The
phrenological study of Mind thus supposes as its necessary preparation
the whole of the Association psychology. Without, then, rejecting any
aid which study of the brain and nerves can afford to psychology (and it
has afforded, and will yet afford, much), we may affirm that M. Comte
has done nothing for the constitution of the positive method of mental
science. He refused to profit by the very valuable commencements made by
his predecessors, especially by Hartley, Brown, and James Mill (if
indeed any of those philosophers were known to him), and left the
psychological branch of the positive method, as well as psychology
itself, to be put in their true position as a part of Positive
Philosophy by successors who duly placed themselves at the twofold point
of view of physiology and psychology, Mr Bain and Mr Herbert Spencer.
This great mistake is not a mere hiatus in M. Comte's system, but the
parent of serious errors in his attempt to create a Social Science. He
is indeed very skilful in estimating the effect of circumstances in
moulding the general character of the human race; were he not, his
historical theory could be of little worth: but in appreciating the
influence which circumstances exercise, through psychological laws, in
producing diversities of character, collective or individual, he is
sadly at fault.