rich and the employers of labour, two classes who in M. Comte's system
are reduced to one, for he allows of no idle rich. A life made up of
mere amusement and self-indulgence, though not interdicted by law, is to
be deemed so disgraceful, that nobody with the smallest sense of shame
would choose to be guilty of it. Here, we think, M. Comte has lighted on
a true principle, towards which the tone of opinion in modern Europe is
more and more tending, and which is destined to be one of the
constitutive principles of regenerated society. We believe, for example,
with him, that in the future there will be no class of landlords living
at ease on their rents, but every landlord will be a capitalist trained
to agriculture, himself superintending and directing the cultivation of
his estate. No one but he who guides the work, should have the control
of the tools. In M. Comte's system, the rich, as a rule, consist of the
"captains of industry:" but the rule is not entirely without exception,
for M. Comte recognizes other useful modes of employing riches. In
particular, one of his favourite ideas is that of an order of Chivalry,
composed of the most generous and self-devoted of the rich, voluntarily
dedicating themselves, like knights-errant of old, to the redressing of
wrongs, and the protection of the weak and oppressed. He remarks, that
oppression, in modern life, can seldom reach, or even venture to attack,
the life or liberty of its victims (he forgets the case of domestic
tyranny), but only their pecuniary means, and it is therefore by the
purse chiefly that individuals can usefully interpose, as they formerly
did by the sword. The occupation, however, of nearly all the rich, will
be the direction of labour, and for this work they will be educated.
Reciprocally, it is in M. Comte's opinion essential, that all directors
of labour should be rich. Capital (in which he includes land) should be
concentrated in a few holders, so that every capitalist may conduct the
most extensive operations which one mind is capable of superintending.
This is not only demanded by good economy, in order to take the utmost
advantage of a rare kind of practical ability, but it necessarily
follows from the principle of M. Comte's scheme, which regards a
capitalist as a public functionary. M. Comte's conception of the
relation of capital to society is essentially that of Socialists, but he
would bring about by education and opinion, what they aim at effecting
by positive institution. The owner of capital is by no means to consider
himself its absolute proprietor. Legally he is not to be controlled in
his dealings with it, for power should be in proportion to
responsibility: but it does not belong to him for his own use; he is
merely entrusted by society with a portion of the accumulations made by
the past providence of mankind, to be administered for the benefit of
the present generation and of posterity, under the obligation of
preserving them unimpaired, and handing them down, more or less
augmented, to our successors. He is not entitled to dissipate them, or
divert them from the service of Humanity to his own pleasures. Nor has
he a moral right to consume on himself the whole even of his profits. He
is bound in conscience, if they exceed his reasonable wants, to employ
the surplus in improving either the efficiency of his operations, or the
physical and mental condition of his labourers. The portion of his gains
which he may appropriate to his own use, must be decided by himself,
under accountability to opinion; and opinion ought not to look very
narrowly into the matter, nor hold him to a rigid reckoning for any
moderate indulgence of luxury or ostentation; since under the great
responsibilities that will be imposed on him, the position of an
employer of labour will be so much less desirable, to any one in whom
the instincts of pride and vanity are not strong, than the "heureuse
insouciance" of a labourer, that those instincts must be to a certain
degree indulged, or no one would undertake the office. With this
limitation, every employer is a mere administrator of his possessions,
for his work-people and for society at large. If he indulges himself
lavishly, without reserving an ample remuneration for all who are
employed under him, he is morally culpable, and will incur sacerdotal
admonition. This state of things necessarily implies that capital should
be in few hands, because, as M. Comte observes, without great riches,
the obligations which society ought to impose, could not be fulfilled
without an amount of personal abnegation that it would be hopeless to
expect. If a person is conspicuously qualified for the conduct of an
industrial enterprise, but destitute of the fortune necessary for
undertaking it, M. Comte recommends that he should be enriched by
subscription, or, in cases of sufficient importance, by the State. Small
landed proprietors and capitalists, and the middle classes altogether,
he regards as a parasitic growth, destined to disappear, the best of the
body becoming large capitalists, and the remainder proletaires. Society
will consist only of rich and poor, and it will be the business of the
rich to make the best possible lot for the poor. The remuneration of the
labourers will continue, as at present, to be a matter of voluntary
arrangement between them and their employers, the last resort on either
side being refusal of co-operation, "refus de concours," in other words,
a strike or a lock-out; with the sacerdotal order for mediators in case
of need. But though wages are to be an affair of free contract, their
standard is not to be the competition of the market, but the application
of the products in equitable proportion between the wants of the
labourers and the wants and dignity of the employer. As it is one of M.
Comte's principles that a question cannot be usefully proposed without
an attempt at a solution, he gives his ideas from the beginning as to
what the normal income of a labouring family should be. They are on such
a scale, that until some great extension shall have taken place in the
scientific resources of mankind, it is no wonder he thinks it necessary
to limit as much as possible the number of those who are to be supported
by what is left of the produce. In the first place the labourer's
dwelling, which is to consist of seven rooms, is, with all that it
contains, to be his own property: it is the only landed property he is
allowed to possess, but every family should be the absolute owner of all
things which are destined for its exclusive use. Lodging being thus
independently provided for, and education and medical attendance being
secured gratuitously by the general arrangements of society, the pay of
the labourer is to consist of two portions, the one monthly, and of
fixed amount, the other weekly, and proportioned to the produce of his
labour. The former M. Comte fixes at 100 francs (£4) for a month of 28
days; being £52 a year: and the rate of piece-work should be such as to
make the other part amount to an average of seven francs (5_s_. _6d_.)
per working day.
Agreeably to M. Comte's rule, that every public functionary should
appoint his successor, the capitalist has unlimited power of
transmitting his capital by gift or bequest, after his own death or
retirement. In general it will be best bestowed entire upon one person,
unless the business will advantageously admit of subdivision. He will
naturally leave it to one or more of his sons, if sufficiently
qualified; and rightly so, hereditary being, in M. Comte's opinion,
preferable to acquired wealth, as being usually more generously
administered. But, merely as his sons, they have no moral right to it.
M. Comte here recognizes another of the principles, on which we believe
that the constitution of regenerated society will rest. He maintains (as
others in the present generation have done) that the father owes nothing
to his son, except a good education, and pecuniary aid sufficient for an
advantageous start in life: that he is entitled, and may be morally
bound, to leave the bulk of his fortune to some other properly selected
person or persons, whom he judges likely to make a more beneficial use
of it. This is the first of three important points, in which M. Comte's
theory of the family, wrong as we deem it in its foundations, is in
advance of prevailing theories and existing institutions. The second is
the re-introduction of adoption, not only in default of children, but to
fulfil the purposes, and satisfy the sympathetic wants, to which such
children as there are may happen to be inadequate. The third is a most
important point--the incorporation of domestics as substantive members
of the family. There is hardly any part of the present constitution of
society more essentially vicious, and morally injurious to both parties,
than the relation between masters and servants. To make this a really
human and a moral relation, is one of the principal desiderata in social
improvement. The feeling of the vulgar of all classes, that domestic
service has anything in it peculiarly mean, is a feeling than which
there is none meaner. In the feudal ages, youthful nobles of the highest
rank thought themselves honoured by officiating in what is now called a
menial capacity, about the persons of superiors of both sexes, for whom
they felt respect: and, as M. Comte observes, there are many families
who can in no other way so usefully serve Humanity, as by ministering to
the bodily wants of other families, called to functions which require
the devotion of all their thoughts. "We will add, by way of supplement
to M. Comte's doctrine, that much of the daily physical work of a
household, even in opulent families, if silly notions of degradation,
common to all ranks, did not interfere, might very advantageously be
performed by the family itself, at least by its younger members; to whom
it would give healthful exercise of the bodily powers, which has now to
be sought in modes far less useful, and also a familiar acquaintance
with the real work of the world, and a moral willingness to take their
share of its burthens, which, in the great majority of the better-off
classes, do not now get cultivated at all.
We have still to speak of the directly political functions of the rich,
or, as M. Comte terms them, the patriciate. The entire political
government is to be in their hands. First, however, the existing nations
are to be broken up into small republics, the largest not exceeding the
size of Belgium, Portugal, or Tuscany; any larger nationalities being
incompatible with the unity of wants and feelings, which is required,
not only to give due strength to the sentiment of patriotism (always
strongest in small states), but to prevent undue compression; for no
territory, M. Comte thinks, can without oppression be governed from a
distant centre. Algeria, therefore, is to be given up to the Arabs,
Corsica to its inhabitants, and France proper is to be, before the end
of the century, divided into seventeen republics, corresponding to the
number of considerable towns: Paris, however, (need it be said?)
succeeding to Rome as the religious metropolis of the world. Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales, are to be separated from England, which is of
course to detach itself from all its transmarine dependencies. In each
state thus constituted, the powers of government are to be vested in a
triumvirate of the three principal bankers, who are to take the foreign,
home, and financial departments respectively. How they are to conduct
the government and remain bankers, does not clearly appear; but it must
be intended that they should combine both offices, for they are to
receive no pecuniary remuneration for the political one. Their power is
to amount to a dictatorship (M. Comte's own word): and he is hardly
justified in saying that he gives political power to the rich, since he
gives it over the rich and every one else, to three individuals of the
number, not even chosen by the rest, but named by their predecessors. As
a check on the dictators, there is to be complete freedom of speech,
writing, printing, and voluntary association; and all important acts of
the government, except in cases of emergency, are to be announced
sufficiently long beforehand to ensure ample discussion. This, and the
influences of the Spiritual Power, are the only guarantees provided
against misgovernment. When we consider that the complete dominion of
every nation of mankind is thus handed over to only four men--for the
Spiritual Power is to be under the absolute and undivided control of a
single Pontiff for the whole human race--one is appalled at the picture
of entire subjugation and slavery, which is recommended to us as the
last and highest result of the evolution of Humanity. But the conception
rises to the terrific, when we are told the mode in which the single
High Priest of Humanity is intended to use his authority. It is the most
warning example we know, into what frightful aberrations a powerful and
comprehensive mind may be led by the exclusive following out of a single
idea.
The single idea of M. Comte, on this subject, is that the intellect
should be wholly subordinated to the feelings; or, to translate the
meaning out of sentimental into logical language, that the exercise of
the intellect, as of all our other faculties, should have for its sole
object the general good. Every other employment of it should be
accounted not only idle and frivolous, but morally culpable. Being
indebted wholly to Humanity for the cultivation to which we owe our
mental powers, we are bound in return to consecrate them wholly to her
service. Having made up his mind that this ought to be, there is with M.
Comte but one step to concluding that the Grand Pontiff of Humanity must
take care that it shall be; and on this foundation he organizes an
elaborate system for the total suppression of all independent thought.
He does not, indeed, invoke the arm of the law, or call for any
prohibitions. The clergy are to have no monopoly. Any one else may
cultivate science if he can, may write and publish if he can find
readers, may give private instruction if anybody consents to receive it.
But since the sacerdotal body will absorb into itself all but those whom
it deems either intellectually or morally unequal to the vocation, all
rival teachers will, as he calculates, be so discredited beforehand,
that their competition will not be formidable. Within the body itself,
the High Priest has it in his power to make sure that there shall be no
opinions, and no exercise of mind, but such as he approves; for he alone
decides the duties and local residence of all its members, and can even
eject them from the body. Before electing to be under this rule, we feel
a natural curiosity to know in what manner it is to be exercised.
Humanity has only yet had one Pontiff, whose mental qualifications for
the post are not likely to be often surpassed, M. Comte himself. It is
of some importance to know what are the ideas of this High Priest,
concerning the moral and religious government of the human intellect.
One of the doctrines which M. Comte most strenuously enforces in his
later writings is, that during the preliminary evolution of humanity,
terminated by the foundation of Positivism, the free development of our
forces of all kinds was the important matter, but that from this time
forward the principal need is to regulate them. Formerly the danger was
of their being insufficient, but henceforth, of their being abused. Let
us express, in passing, our entire dissent from this doctrine. Whoever
thinks that the wretched education which mankind as yet receive, calls
forth their mental powers (except those of a select few) in a sufficient
or even tolerable degree, must be very easily satisfied: and the abuse
of them, far from becoming proportionally greater as knowledge and
mental capacity increase, becomes rapidly less, provided always that the
diffusion of those qualities keeps pace with their growth. The abuse of
intellectual power is only to be dreaded, when society is divided
between a few highly cultivated intellects and an ignorant and stupid
multitude. But mental power is a thing which M. Comte does not want--or
wants infinitely less than he wants submission and obedience. Of all the
ingredients of human nature, he continually says, the intellect most
needs to be disciplined and reined-in. It is the most turbulent "le plus
perturbateur," of all the mental elements; more so than even the selfish
instincts. Throughout the whole modern transition, beginning with
ancient Greece (for M. Comte tells us that we have always been in a
state of revolutionary transition since then), the intellect has been in
a state of systematic insurrection against "le coeur." The
metaphysicians and literati (lettrés), after helping to pull down the
old religion and social order, are rootedly hostile to the construction
of the new, and desiring only to prolong the existing scepticism and
intellectual anarchy, which secure to them a cheap social ascendancy,
without the labour of earning it by solid scientific preparation. The
scientific class, from whom better might have been expected, are, if
possible, worse. Void of enlarged views, despising all that is too large
for their comprehension, devoted exclusively each to his special
science, contemptuously indifferent to moral and political interests,
their sole aim is to acquire an easy reputation, and in France (through
paid Academies and professorships) personal lucre, by pushing their
sciences into idle and useless inquiries (speculations oiseuses), of no
value to the real interests of mankind, and tending to divert the
thoughts from them. One of the duties most incumbent on opinion and on
the Spiritual Power, is to stigmatize as immoral, and effectually
suppress, these useless employments of the speculative faculties. All
exercise of thought should be abstained from, which has not some
beneficial tendency, some actual utility to mankind. M. Comte, of
course, is not the man to say that it must be a merely material utility.
If a speculation, though it has no doctrinal, has a logical value--if it
throws any light on universal Method--it is still more deserving of
cultivation than if its usefulness was merely practical: but, either as
method or as doctrine, it must bring forth fruits to Humanity, otherwise
it is not only contemptible, but criminal.
That there is a portion of truth at the bottom of all this, we should be
the last to deny. No respect is due to any employment of the intellect
which does not tend to the good of mankind. It is precisely on a level
with any idle amusement, and should be condemned as waste of time, if
carried beyond the limit within which amusement is permissible. And
whoever devotes powers of thought which could render to Humanity
services it urgently needs, to speculations and studies which it could
dispense with, is liable to the discredit attaching to a well-grounded
suspicion of caring little for Humanity. But who can affirm positively
of any speculations, guided by right scientific methods, on subjects
really accessible to the human faculties, that they are incapable of
being of any use? Nobody knows what knowledge will prove to be of use,
and what is destined to be useless. The most that can be said is that
some kinds are of more certain, and above all, of more present utility
than others. How often the most important practical results have been
the remote consequence of studies which no one would have expected to
lead to them! Could the mathematicians, who, in the schools of
Alexandria, investigated the properties of the ellipse, have foreseen
that nearly two thousand years afterwards their speculations would
explain the solar system, and a little later would enable ships safely
to circumnavigate the earth? Even in M. Comte's opinion, it is well for
mankind that, in those early days, knowledge was thought worth pursuing
for its own sake. Nor has the "foundation of Positivism," we imagine, so
far changed the conditions of human existence, that it should now be
criminal to acquire, by observation and reasoning, a knowledge of the
facts of the universe, leaving to posterity to find a use for it. Even
in the last two or three years, has not the discovery of new metals,
which may prove important even in the practical arts, arisen from one of
the investigations which M. Comte most unequivocally condemns as idle,
the research into the internal constitution of the sun? How few,
moreover, of the discoveries which have changed the face of the world,
either were or could have been arrived at by investigations aiming
directly at the object! Would the mariner's compass ever have been found
by direct efforts for the improvement of navigation? Should we have
reached the electric telegraph by any amount of striving for a means of
instantaneous communication, if Franklin had not identified electricity
with lightning, and Ampère with magnetism? The most apparently
insignificant archaeological or geological fact, is often found to throw
a light on human history, which M. Comte, the basis of whose social
philosophy is history, should be the last person to disparage. The
direction of the entrance to the three great Pyramids of Ghizeh, by
showing the position of the circumpolar stars at the time when they were
built, is the best evidence we even now have of the immense antiquity of
Egyptian civilization.[24] The one point on which M. Comte's doctrine
has some colour of reason, is the case of sidereal astronomy: so little
knowledge of it being really accessible to us, and the connexion of that
little with any terrestrial interests being, according to all our means
of judgment, infinitesimal. It is certainly difficult to imagine how any
considerable benefit to humanity can be derived from a knowledge of the
motions of the double stars: should these ever become important to us it
will be in so prodigiously remote an age, that we can afford to remain
ignorant of them until, at least, all our moral, political, and social
difficulties have been settled. Yet the discovery that gravitation
extends even to those remote regions, gives some additional strength to
the conviction of the universality of natural laws; and the habitual
meditation on such vast objects and distances is not without an
aesthetic usefulness, by kindling and exalting the imagination, the
worth of which in itself, and even its re-action on the intellect, M.
Comte is quite capable of appreciating. He would reply, however, that
there are better means of accomplishing these purposes. In the same
spirit he condemns the study even of the solar system, when extended to
any planets but those which are visible to the naked eye, and which
alone exert an appreciable gravitative influence on the earth. Even the
perturbations he thinks it idle to study, beyond a mere general
conception of them, and thinks that astronomy may well limit its domain
to the motions and mutual action of the earth, sun, and moon. He looks
for a similar expurgation of all the other sciences. In one passage he
expressly says that the greater part of the researches which are really
accessible to us are idle and useless. He would pare down the dimensions
of all the sciences as narrowly as possible. He is continually repeating
that no science, as an abstract study, should be carried further than is
necessary to lay the foundation for the science next above it, and so
ultimately for moral science, the principal purpose of them all. Any
further extension of the mathematical and physical sciences should be
merely "episodic;" limited to what may from time to time be demanded by
the requirements of industry and the arts; and should be left to the
industrial classes, except when they find it necessary to apply to the
sacerdotal order for some additional development of scientific theory.
This, he evidently thinks, would be a rare contingency, most physical
truths sufficiently concrete and real for practice being empirical.
Accordingly in estimating the number of clergy necessary for France,
Europe, and our entire planet (for his forethought extends thus far),
he proportions it solely to their moral and religious attributions
(overlooking, by the way, even their medical); and leaves nobody with
any time to cultivate the sciences, except abortive candidates for the
priestly office, who having been refused admittance into it for
insufficiency in moral excellence or in strength of character, may be
thought worth retaining as "pensioners" of the sacerdotal order, on
account of their theoretic abilities.