view of universal history, only a matter of detail. We find no
fundamental errors in M. Comte's general conception of history. He is
singularly exempt from most of the twists and exaggerations which we are
used to find in almost all thinkers who meddle with speculations of this
character. Scarcely any of them is so free (for example) from the
opposite errors of ascribing too much or too little influence to
accident, and to the qualities of individuals. The vulgar mistake of
supposing that the course of history has no tendencies of its own, and
that great events usually proceed from small causes, or that kings, or
conquerors, or the founders of philosophies and religions, can do with
society what they please, no one has more completely avoided or more
tellingly exposed. But he is equally free from the error of those who
ascribe all to general causes, and imagine that neither casual
circumstances, nor governments by their acts, nor individuals of genius
by their thoughts, materially accelerate or retard human progress. This
is the mistake which pervades the instructive writings of the thinker
who in England and in our own times bore the nearest, though a very
remote, resemblance to M. Comte--the lamented Mr Buckle; who, had he not
been unhappily cut off in an early stage of his labours, and before the
complete maturity of his powers, would probably have thrown off an
error, the more to be regretted as it gives a colour to the prejudice
which regards the doctrine of the invariability of natural laws as
identical with fatalism. Mr Buckle also fell into another mistake which
M. Comte avoided, that of regarding the intellectual as the only
progressive element in man, and the moral as too much the same at all
times to affect even the annual average of crime. M. Comte shows, on the
contrary, a most acute sense of the causes which elevate or lower the
general level of moral excellence; and deems intellectual progress in no
other way so beneficial as by creating a standard to guide the moral
sentiments of mankind, and a mode of bringing those sentiments
effectively to bear on conduct.
M. Comte is equally free from the error of considering any practical
rule or doctrine that can be laid down in politics as universal and
absolute. All political truth he deems strictly relative, implying as
its correlative a given state or situation of society. This conviction
is now common to him with all thinkers who are on a level with the age,
and comes so naturally to any intelligent reader of history, that the
only wonder is how men could have been prevented from reaching it
sooner. It marks one of the principal differences between the political
philosophy of the present time and that of the past; but M. Comte
adopted it when the opposite mode of thinking was still general, and
there are few thinkers to whom the principle owes more in the way of
comment and illustration.
Again, while he sets forth the historical succession of systems of
belief and forms of political society, and places in the strongest light
those imperfections in each which make it impossible that any of them
should be final, this does not make him for a moment unjust to the men
or the opinions of the past. He accords with generous recognition the
gratitude due to all who, with whatever imperfections of doctrine or
even of conduct, contributed materially to the work of human
improvement. In all past modes of thought and forms of society he
acknowledged a useful, in many a necessary, office, in carrying mankind
through one stage of improvement into a higher. The theological spirit
in its successive forms, the metaphysical in its principal varieties,
are honoured by him for the services they rendered in bringing mankind
out of pristine savagery into a state in which more advanced modes of
belief became possible. His list of heroes and benefactors of mankind
includes, not only every important name in the scientific movement, from
Thales of Miletus to Fourier the mathematician and Blainville the
biologist, and in the aesthetic from Homer to Manzoni, but the most
illustrious names in the annals of the various religions and
philosophies, and the really great politicians in all states of
society.[20] Above all, he has the most profound admiration for the
services rendered by Christianity, and by the Church of the middle ages.
His estimate of the Catholic period is such as the majority of
Englishmen (from whom we take the liberty to differ) would deem
exaggerated, if not absurd. The great men of Christianity, from St Paul
to St Francis of Assisi, receive his warmest homage: nor does he forget
the greatness even of those who lived and thought in the centuries in
which the Catholic Church, having stopt short while the world had gone
on, had become a hindrance to progress instead of a promoter of it; such
men as Fénélon and St Vincent de Paul, Bossuet and Joseph de Maistre.
A more comprehensive, and, in the primitive sense of the term, more
catholic, sympathy and reverence towards real worth, and every kind of
service to humanity, we have not met with in any thinker. Men who would
have torn each other in pieces, who even tried to do so, if each
usefully served in his own way the interests of mankind, are all
hallowed to him.
Neither is his a cramped and contracted notion of human excellence,
which cares only for certain forms of development. He not only
personally appreciates, but rates high in moral value, the creations of
poets and artists in all departments, deeming them, by their mixed
appeal to the sentiments and the understanding, admirably fitted to
educate the feelings of abstract thinkers, and enlarge the intellectual
horizon of people of the world.[21] He regards the law of progress as
applicable, in spite of appearances, to poetry and art as much as to
science and politics. The common impression to the contrary he ascribes
solely to the fact, that the perfection of aesthetic creation requires
as its condition a consentaneousness in the feelings of mankind, which
depends for its existence on a fixed and settled state of opinions:
while the last five centuries have been a period not of settling, but of
unsettling and decomposing, the most general beliefs and sentiments of
mankind. The numerous monuments of poetic and artistic genius which the
modern mind has produced even under this great disadvantage, are (he
maintains) sufficient proof what great productions it will be capable
of, when one harmonious vein of sentiment shall once more thrill through
the whole of society, as in the days of Homer, of Aeschylus, of Phidias,
and even of Dante.
After so profound and comprehensive a view of the progress of human
society in the past, of which the future can only be a prolongation, it
is natural to ask, to what use does he put this survey as a basis of
practical recommendations? Such recommendations he certainly makes,
though, in the present Treatise, they are of a much less definite
character than in his later writings. But we miss a necessary link;
there is a break in the otherwise close concatenation of his
speculations. We fail to see any scientific connexion between his
theoretical explanation of the past progress of society, and his
proposals for future improvement. The proposals are not, as we might
expect, recommended as that towards which human society has been tending
and working through the whole of history. It is thus that thinkers have
usually proceeded, who formed theories for the future, grounded on
historical analysis of the past. Tocqueville, for example, and others,
finding, as they thought, through all history, a steady progress in the
direction of social and political equality, argued that to smooth this
transition, and make the best of what is certainly coming, is the proper
employment of political foresight. We do not find M. Comte supporting
his recommendations by a similar line of argument. They rest as
completely, each on its separate reasons of supposed utility, as with
philosophers who, like Bentham, theorize on politics without any
historical basis at all. The only bridge of connexion which leads from
his historical speculations to his practical conclusions, is the
inference, that since the old powers of society, both in the region of
thought and of action, are declining and destined to disappear, leaving
only the two rising powers, positive thinkers on the one hand, leaders
of industry on the other, the future necessarily belongs to these:
spiritual power to the former, temporal to the latter. As a specimen of
historical forecast this is very deficient; for are there not the masses
as well as the leaders of industry? and is not theirs also a growing
power? Be this as it may, M. Comte's conceptions of the mode in which
these growing powers should be organized and used, are grounded on
anything rather than on history. And we cannot but remark a singular
anomaly in a thinker of M. Comte's calibre. After the ample evidence he
has brought forward of the slow growth of the sciences, all of which
except the mathematico-astronomical couple are still, as he justly
thinks, in a very early stage, it yet appears as if, to his mind, the
mere institution of a positive science of sociology were tantamount to
its completion; as if all the diversities of opinion on the subject,
which set mankind at variance, were solely owing to its having been
studied in the theological or the metaphysical manner, and as if when
the positive method which has raised up real sciences on other subjects
of knowledge, is similarly employed on this, divergence would at once
cease, and the entire body of positive social inquirers would exhibit
as much agreement in their doctrines as those who cultivate any of the
sciences of inorganic life. Happy would be the prospects of mankind if
this were so. A time such as M. Comte reckoned upon may come; unless
something stops the progress of human improvement, it is sure to come:
but after an unknown duration of hard thought and violent controversy.
The period of decomposition, which has lasted, on his own computation,
from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the present, is not yet
terminated: the shell of the old edifice will remain standing until
there is another ready to replace it; and the new synthesis is barely
begun, nor is even the preparatory analysis completely finished. On
other occasions M. Comte is very well aware that the Method of a science
is not the science itself, and that when the difficulty of discovering
the right processes has been overcome, there remains a still greater
difficulty, that of applying them. This, which is true of all sciences,
is truest of all in Sociology. The facts being more complicated, and
depending on a greater concurrence of forces, than in any other science,
the difficulty of treating them deductively is proportionally increased,
while the wide difference between any one case and every other in some
of the circumstances which affect the result, makes the pretence of
direct induction usually no better than empiricism. It is therefore, out
of all proportion, more uncertain than in any other science, whether two
inquirers equally competent and equally disinterested will take the same
view of the evidence, or arrive at the same conclusion. When to this
intrinsic difficulty is added the infinitely greater extent to which
personal or class interests and predilections interfere with impartial
judgment, the hope of such accordance of opinion among sociological
inquirers as would obtain, in mere deference to their authority, the
universal assent which M. Comte's scheme of society requires, must be
adjourned to an indefinite distance.
M. Comte's own theory is an apt illustration of these difficulties,
since, though prepared for these speculations as no one had ever been
prepared before, his views of social regeneration even in the
rudimentary form in which they appear above-ground in this treatise (not
to speak of the singular system into which he afterwards enlarged them)
are such as perhaps no other person of equal knowledge and capacity
would agree in. Were those views as true as they are questionable, they
could not take effect until the unanimity among positive thinkers, to
which he looked forward, shall have been attained; since the mainspring
of his system is a Spiritual Power composed of positive philosophers,
which only the previous attainment of the unanimity in question could
call into existence. A few words will sufficiently express the outline
of his scheme. A corporation of philosophers, receiving a modest support
from the state, surrounded by reverence, but peremptorily excluded not
only from all political power or employment, but from all riches, and
all occupations except their own, are to have the entire direction of
education: together with, not only the right and duty of advising and
reproving all persons respecting both their public and their private
life, but also a control (whether authoritative or only moral is not
defined) over the speculative class itself, to prevent them from wasting
time and ingenuity on inquiries and speculations of no value to mankind
(among which he includes many now in high estimation), and compel them
to employ all their powers on the investigations which may be judged, at
the time, to be the most urgently important to the general welfare. The
temporal government which is to coexist with this spiritual authority,
consists of an aristocracy of capitalists, whose dignity and authority
are to be in the ratio of the degree of generality of their conceptions
and operations--bankers at the summit, merchants next, then
manufacturers, and agriculturists at the bottom of the scale. No
representative system, or other popular organization, by way of
counterpoise to this governing power, is ever contemplated. The checks
relied upon for preventing its abuse, are the counsels and remonstrances
of the Spiritual Power, and unlimited liberty of discussion and comment
by all classes of inferiors. Of the mode in which either set of
authorities should fulfil the office assigned to it, little is said in
this treatise: but the general idea is, while regulating as little as
possible by law, to make the pressure of opinion, directed by the
Spiritual Power, so heavy on every individual, from the humblest to the
most powerful, as to render legal obligation, in as many cases as
possible, needless. Liberty and spontaneity on the part of individuals
form no part of the scheme. M. Comte looks on them with as great
jealousy as any scholastic pedagogue, or ecclesiastical director of
consciences. Every particular of conduct, public or private, is to be
open to the public eye, and to be kept, by the power of opinion, in the
course which the Spiritual corporation shall judge to be the most right.
This is not a sufficiently tempting picture to have much chance of
making converts rapidly, and the objections to the scheme are too
obvious to need stating. Indeed, it is only thoughtful persons to whom
it will be credible, that speculations leading to this result can
deserve the attention necessary for understanding them. We propose in
the next Essay to examine them as part of the elaborate and coherent
system of doctrine, which M. Comte afterwards put together for the
reconstruction of society. Meanwhile the reader will gather, from what
has been said, that M. Comte has not, in our opinion, created Sociology.
Except his analysis of history, to which there is much to be added, but
which we do not think likely to be ever, in its general features,
superseded, he has done nothing in Sociology which does not require to
be done over again, and better. Nevertheless, he has greatly advanced
the study. Besides the great stores of thought, of various and often of
eminent merit, with which he has enriched the subject, his conception of
its method is so much truer and more profound than that of any one who
preceded him, as to constitute an era in its cultivation. If it cannot
be said of him that he has created a science, it may be said truly that
he has, for the first time, made the creation possible. This is a great
achievement, and, with the extraordinary merit of his historical
analysis, and of his philosophy of the physical sciences, is enough to
immortalize his name. But his renown with posterity would probably have
been greater than it is now likely to be, if after showing the way in
which the social science should be formed, he had not flattered himself
that he had formed it, and that it was already sufficiently solid for
attempting to build upon its foundation the entire fabric of the
Political Art.
* * * * *
PART II.
THE LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE.[22]
The appended list of publications contain the materials for knowing and
estimating what M. Comte termed his second career, in which the
_savant_, historian, and philosopher of his fundamental treatise, came
forth transfigured as the High Priest of the Religion of Humanity. They
include all his writings except the Cours de Philosophic Positive: for
his early productions, and the occasional publications of his later life,
are reprinted as Preludes or Appendices to the treatises here enumerated,
or in Dr Robinet's volume, which, as well as that of M. Littré, also
contains copious extracts from his correspondence.
In the concluding pages of his great systematic work, M. Comte had
announced four other treatises as in contemplation: on Politics; on the
Philosophy of Mathematics; on Education, a project subsequently enlarged
to include the systematization of Morals; and on Industry, or the action
of man upon external nature. Our list comprises the only two of these
which he lived to execute. It further contains a brief exposition of his
final doctrines, in the form of a Dialogue, or, as he terms it, a
Catechism, of which a translation has been published by his principal
English adherent, Mr Congreve. There has also appeared very recently,
under the title of "A General View of Positivism," a translation by Dr
Bridges, of the Preliminary Discourse in six chapters, prefixed to the
Système de Politique Positive. The remaining three books on our list are
the productions of disciples in different degrees. M. Littré, the only
thinker of established reputation who accepts that character, is a
disciple only of the Cours de Philosophie Positive, and can see the weak
points even in that. Some of them he has discriminated and discussed
with great judgment: and the merits of his volume, both as a sketch of
M. Comte's life and an appreciation of his doctrines, would well deserve
a fuller notice than we are able to give it here. M. de Blignières is
a far more thorough adherent; so much so, that the reader of his
singularly well and attractively written condensation and popularization
of his master's doctrines, does not easily discover in what it falls
short of that unqualified acceptance which alone, it would seem, could
find favour with M. Comte. For he ended by casting off M. de Blignières,
as he had previously cast off M. Littré, and every other person who,
having gone with him a certain length, refused to follow him to the end.
The author of the last work in our enumeration, Dr Robinet, is a
disciple after M. Comte's own heart; one whom no difficulty stops, and
no absurdity startles. But it is far from our disposition to speak
otherwise than respectfully of Dr Robinet and the other earnest men, who
maintain round the tomb of their master an organized co-operation for
the diffusion of doctrines which they believe destined to regenerate the
human race. Their enthusiastic veneration for him, and devotion to the
ends he pursued, do honour alike to them and to their teacher, and are
an evidence of the personal ascendancy he exercised over those who
approached him; an ascendancy which for a time carried away even M.
Littré, as he confesses, to a length which his calmer judgment does not
now approve.
These various writings raise many points of interest regarding M.
Comte's personal history, and some, not without philosophic bearings,
respecting his mental habits: from all which matters we shall abstain,
with the exception of two, which he himself proclaimed with great
emphasis, and a knowledge of which is almost indispensable to an
apprehension of the characteristic difference between his second career
and his first. It should be known that during his later life, and even
before completing his first great treatise, M. Comte adopted a rule, to
which he very rarely made any exception: to abstain systematically, not
only from newspapers or periodical publications, even scientific, but
from all reading whatever, except a few favourite poets in the ancient
and modern European languages. This abstinence he practised for the sake
of mental health; by way, as he said, of "_hygiène cérébrale_." We are
far from thinking that the practice has nothing whatever to recommend
it. For most thinkers, doubtless, it would be a very unwise one; but we
will not affirm that it may not sometimes be advantageous to a mind of
the peculiar quality of M. Comte's--one that can usefully devote itself
to following out to the remotest developments a particular line of
meditations, of so arduous a kind that the complete concentration of the
intellect upon its own thoughts is almost a necessary condition of
success. When a mind of this character has laboriously and
conscientiously laid in beforehand, as M. Comte had done, an ample stock
of materials, he may be justified in thinking that he will contribute
most to the mental wealth of mankind by occupying himself solely in
working upon these, without distracting his attention by continually
taking in more matter, or keeping a communication open with other
independent intellects. The practice, therefore, may be legitimate; but
no one should adopt it without being aware of what he loses by it. He
must resign the pretension of arriving at the whole truth on the
subject, whatever it be, of his meditations. That he should effect this,
even on a narrow subject, by the mere force of his own mind, building on
the foundations of his predecessors, without aid or correction from his
contemporaries, is simply impossible. He may do eminent service by
elaborating certain sides of the truth, but he must expect to find that
there are other sides which have wholly escaped his attention. However
great his powers, everything that he can do without the aid of incessant
remindings from other thinkers, is merely provisional, and will require
a thorough revision. He ought to be aware of this, and accept it with
his eyes open, regarding himself as a pioneer, not a constructor. If he
thinks that he can contribute most towards the elements of the final
synthesis by following out his own original thoughts as far as they will
go, leaving to other thinkers, or to himself at a subsequent time, the
business of adjusting them to the thoughts by which they ought to be
accompanied, he is right in doing so. But he deludes himself if he
imagines that any conclusions he can arrive at, while he practises M.
Comte's rule of _hygiène cérébrale_, can possibly be definitive.
Neither is such a practice, in a hygienic point of view, free from the
gravest dangers to the philosopher's own mind. When once he has
persuaded himself that he can work out the final truth on any subject,
exclusively from his own sources, he is apt to lose all measure or
standard by which to be apprized when he is departing from common sense.
Living only with his own thoughts, he gradually forgets the aspect they
present to minds of a different mould from his own; he looks at his
conclusions only from the point of view which suggested them, and from
which they naturally appear perfect; and every consideration which from
other points of view might present itself, either as an objection or as
a necessary modification, is to him as if it did not exist. When his
merits come to be recognised and appreciated, and especially if he
obtains disciples, the intellectual infirmity soon becomes complicated
with a moral one. The natural result of the position is a gigantic
self-confidence, not to say self-conceit. That of M. Comte is colossal.
Except here and there in an entirely self-taught thinker, who has no
high standard with which to compare himself, we have met with nothing
approaching to it. As his thoughts grew more extravagant, his
self-confidence grew more outrageous. The height it ultimately attained
must be seen, in his writings, to be believed.