In the name of the Past and of the Future, the servants of
Humanity--both its philosophical and its practical servants--come
forward to claim as their due the general direction of the world.
Their object is to constitute at length a real Providence in all
departments--moral, intellectual and material.
--_Auguste Comte_
[Illustration: AUGUSTE COMTE]
A little city girl asked of her country cousin, when honey was the topic
up for discussion, "Does your papa keep a bee?"
Let the statement go unchallenged, that a single bee has neither the
disposition nor the ability to make honey.
Bees accomplish nothing save as they work together, and neither do men.
Great men come in groups.
Six men, three living at the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and
three at Cambridge, fifteen miles away, supplied America really all her
literature, until Indiana suddenly loomed large on the horizon, and
assumed the center of the stage, like the spirit of the Brocken.
Five men made up the Barbizon school of painting, which has influenced
the entire art education of the world. And that those who have been
influenced and helped most, deny their redeemer with an oath, is a
natural phenomenon psychologists look for and fully understand.
Greece had a group of seven thinkers, in the time of Pericles, who made
the name and fame of the city deathless.
Rome had a similar group in the time of Augustus; then the world went
to sleep, and although there were individuals, now and then, of great
talent, their lights went out in darkness, for it takes bulk to make a
conflagration.
Florence had her group of thinkers and doers when Michelangelo and
Leonardo lived only a few miles apart, but never met. Yet each man
spurred the other on to do and dare, until an impetus was reached that
sent the names of both down the centuries.
Boswell gives us a group of a dozen men who made each other
possible--often helped by hate and strengthened by scorn.
The Mutual Admiration Society does not live in piping times of peace,
where glowing good-will strews violets; often the sessions of this
interesting aggregation are stormy and acrimonious, but one thing
holds--the man who arises at this board must have something to say.
Strong men, matched by destiny, set each other a pace. Criticism is full
and free. The most interesting and the most successful social experiment
in America owed its lease of life largely to its scheme of Public
Criticism, a plan society at large will adopt when it puts off
swaddling-clothes. Public Criticism is a diversion of gossip into a
scientific channel. It is a plan of healthful, hygienic, social
plumbing.
England produced one group of thinkers that changed the complexion of
the theological belief of Christendom--Darwin, Spencer, Wallace, Huxley
and Mill. But this group built on the French philosophers, who were
taught antithetically by the decaying and crumbling aristocracy of
France. Rousseau and Voltaire loved each other and helped each other, as
the proud Leonardo helped the humble and no less proud peasant,
Michelangelo--by absent treatment.
Victor Hugo says that when the skulls of Voltaire and Rousseau were
taken in a sack from the Pantheon and tumbled into a common grave, a
spark of recognition was emitted that the gravedigger did not see.
Voltaire was patronized by Frederick the Great, who, though a married
man, lived a bachelor life and forbade women his court, and protected
Kant with the bulging forehead and independent ways. Kant lived among a
group of thinkers he never saw, but reached out and touched finger-tips
with them over the miles that his feet never traversed.
To Kant are we indebted for Turgot, that practical and farseeing man of
affairs told of in matchless phrase in Thomas Watson's "Story of
France," the best book ever written in America, with possibly a few
exceptions. Condorcet kept step with him, and Auguste Comte calls
Condorcet his spiritual stepfather, and a wit of the time here said,
"Then Turgot is your uncle"; and Comte replied, "I am proud of the
honor, for if Turgot is my uncle, then indeed am I of royal blood."
Auguste Comte is the one bright particular star amid that milky way of
riotous thinkers which followed close upon the destruction of the French
Monarchy.
When Napoleon visited the grave of Rousseau, he mused in silence and
then said, "Perhaps it might have been as well if this man had never
lived."
And Marshal Ney, standing near, said, "It reveals small gratitude for
Napoleon Bonaparte to say so." Napoleon smiled and answered, "Possibly
the world would be as well off if neither of us had ever lived."
Auguste Comte thought that Napoleon was just as necessary in the social
evolution as Rousseau, and that both were needed--and he himself was
needed to make the matter plain in print.
* * * * *
Auguste Comte was born at Montpelier, France, in Seventeen Hundred
Ninety-eight. His father was receiver of taxes, an office that carried
with it much leisure and a fair income. Men of leisure seldom have time
to think--if you want a thing done it is safest and best not to pick a
publican. Only busy men have time to do things. The men who have good
incomes and work little are envied only by those with a mental
impediment.
The boy Auguste owed little to his parents for his peculiar evolution,
save as his father taught him by antithesis: the children of drunkards
make temperance fanatics, and shiftless fathers sometimes have sons who
are great financiers.
When nine years of age, the passion to know and to become was upon
Auguste Comte. He was small in stature, insignificant in appearance, and
had a great appetite for facts. Comte is a fine refutation of the maxim
that infant prodigies fall victims to arrested development.
At twelve years of age he was filled with the idea that the social order
was all wrong. To the utter astonishment of his parents and tutors, he
argued that the world could not be bettered until mankind was taught the
lesson that history, languages, theology and polite etiquette were not
learning at all; and as long as educated men centered on these things,
there was no hope for the race.
The birch was brought in to disannex the boy from his foolishness, but
this only seemed to make him cling the closer to what he was pleased to
call his convictions.
He read books that wearied the brains of grown-ups, and took a hearty
interest in the abstruse, the obscure and the complex.
At thirteen, that peculiar time when the young turn to faith, this
perverse rareripe was so filled with doubt that it ran over and he stood
in the slop. He offered to publicly debate the question of Freewill with
the local cure; and on several occasions stood up in meeting and
contradicted the preacher.
His parents, thinking to divert his mind from abstractions to useful
effort, sent him to the Polytechnic School at Paris, that excellent
institution founded by Napoleon, which served America most nobly as a
model for the Boston School of Technology, only the French
"Polytechnique" was purely a government institution--a sample of the
Twentieth Century sent for the benefit of the Nineteenth.
But institutions are never much beyond the people--they can not be, for
the people dilute everything until it is palatable. Laws that do not
embody public opinion can never be enforced. No man who expresses
himself is really much ahead of his time--if he is, the times snuff him
out, and quickly.
In Eighteen Hundred Fourteen, the Polytechnic School was well saturated
with the priestly idea of education, and the attempt was made to
produce an alumni of cultured men, rather than a race of useful ones.
Revolt was rife in the ranks of the students. It is still debatable
whether revolution and riot in colleges are actuated by a passion for
truth or a love of excitement. Anyway, the "Techs" laid deep places to
the effect that when a certain professor appeared at chapel, a unique
reception would be in store for him.
He appeared, and a fusillade of books, rulers and ink-wells shot at his
learned head from every quarter of the room. Other professors appeared
and sought to restore order. Riot followed--seats were torn up, windows
broken, and there was much loud talk and gesticulation peculiarly
Gallic.
It was Ninety-three done in little.
Instead of expelling the delinquents, the National Assembly took the
matter in hand and simply voted to close the school.
Auguste Comte went home a hero, proud as a Heidelberg student, with a
sweeping scar on his chin and the end of his nose gone. "I have dealt
the Old Education its deathblow," he solemnly said, mistaking a
cane-rush for a revolution.
Against the direct command of his parents, he went back to Paris. He had
now reached the mature age of eighteen. He resolved to write out truth
as it occurred to him, and incidentally he would gain a livelihood by
teaching mathematics.
At Paris, the mental audacity of the youth won him recognition; he
picked up a precarious living, and was a frequenter at scientific
lectures and discussions, and in gatherings where great themes were up
for debate, he was always present.
Benjamin Franklin was his ideal. In his notebook he wrote this:
"Franklin at twenty-five resolved he would become great and wise. I now
vow the same at twenty." He had five years the start!
Franklin, calm, healthy, judicial, wise--the greatest man America has
produced--worked his philosophy up into life. He did not think much
beyond his ability to perform. To him, to think was to do. And he did
things that to many men were miracles.
Comte once said, "I would have followed the venerable Benjamin Franklin
through the street, and kissed the hem of the homespun overcoat, made by
Deborah." These men were very unlike. One was big, gentle, calm and
kind; the other was small, dyspeptic, excitable and full of challenge.
Yet the little man had times of insight and abstraction, when he tracked
reasons further than the big, practical man could have followed them.
Franklin's habit of life--the semi-ascetic quality of getting your
gratification by doing without things--especially pleased Comte. He
lived in a garret on two meals a day, and was happy in the thought that
he could endure and yet think and study. The old monastic impulse was
upon him, minus the religious features--or stay! why may not science
become a religion? And surely science can become dogmatic, and even
tyrannically build a hierarchy on a hypothesis no less than theology.
A friend, pitying young Comte's hard lot, not knowing its sweet
recompense, got him a position as tutor in the household of a nobleman;
like unto the kind man who caught the sea-gulls roosting on an iceberg,
and in pity, transferred them to the warm delights of a compost-pile in
his barnyard.
Comte held the place for three weeks and then resigned. He went back to
the garret and sweet liberty--having had his taste of luxury, but
miserable in it all--wondering how a gavotte or a minuet could make a
man forget that he was living in a city where thirty thousand human
beings were constantly only one meal beyond the sniff of starvation.
At this time Comte came into close relationship with a man who was to
have a very great influence in his life--this was Count Henri of
Saint-Simon, usually spoken of as Saint-Simon.
Saint-Simon was rich, gently proud, and fondly patronizing. He was a
sort of scientific Maecenas--and be it known that Maecenas was a poet and
philosopher of worth, and one Horace was his pupil.
Saint-Simon was an excellent and learned man who wrote, lectured and
taught on philosophic themes. He had a garden-school, modeled in degree
after that of Plato. Saint-Simon became much interested in young Comte,
invited him to his classes, supplied him books, clothing, and tickets to
the opera. Part of the time Comte lived under Saint-Simon's roof, and
did translating and copying in partial payment for his meal-ticket. The
teacher and the pupil had a fine affection for each other. What Comte
needed, he took from Saint-Simon as if it were his own.
In writing to friends at this time, Comte praises Saint-Simon as the
greatest man who ever lived--"a model of patience, generosity, learning
and love--my spiritual father!" There was fifty years' difference in
their ages, but they studied, read and rambled the realm of books
together, with mutual pleasure and profit.
The central idea of the "Positive Philosophy" is that of the three
stages through which man passes in his evolution. This was gotten from
Saint-Simon, and together they worked out much of the thought that Comte
afterward carried further and incorporated in his book.
But about this time, Saint-Simon, in one of his lectures, afterward
printed, made use of some of the thoughts that Comte had expressed, as
if they were his own--and possibly they were. There is no copyright on
an idea, no caveat can be filed on feeling, and at the last there is no
such thing as originality, except as a matter of form.
Young Comte now proved his humanity by accusing his teacher of stealing
his radium. A quarrel followed, in which Comte was so violent that
Saint-Simon had to put the youth out of his house.
The wrangles of Grub Street would fill volumes: both sides are always
right, or wrong--it matters little, and is simply a point of view. But
the rancor of it all, if seen from heaven, must serve finely to dispel
the monotony of the place--a panacea for paradisiacal ennui.
From lavish praise, Comte swung over to words of bitterness and
accusation. Having sat at the man's table and partaken of his
hospitality for several years, he was now guilty of the unpardonable
offense of ridiculing and berating him.
He speaks of the Saint as a "depraved quack," and says that the time he
spent with him was worse than wasted. If Saint-Simon was the rogue and
pretender that Comte avers, it is no certificate of Comte's insight that
it took him four years to find it out.
* * * * *
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five Comte married. The ceremony was
performed civilly, on a sudden impulse of what Schopenhauer would call
"the genius of the genus." The lady was young, agreeable; and having no
opinions of her own, was quite willing to accept his. Comte
congratulated himself that here was virgin soil, and he laid the
flattering unction to his soul that he could mold the lady's mind to
match his own. She would be his helpmeet. Comte had not read Ouida, who
once wrote that when God said, "I will make a helpmeet for him," He was
speaking ironically.
Comte had associated but very little with women--he had theories about
them. Small men, with midget minds, know femininity much better than do
the great ones. Traveling salesmen, with checkered vests, gauge women as
Herbert Spencer never could.
Comte's wife was pretty and she was astute--as most pretty women are.
John Fiske, in his lecture on "Communal Life," says that astute persons
add nothing of value to the community in which they live--their mission
being to be the admired glass of fashion for the non-cogitabund. The
value of astuteness is that it protects us from the astute.
Samuel Johnson and his wife had their first quarrel on the way from the
church, and Auguste Comte and his wife tiffed going down the steps from
the notary's. Comte had no use for ecclesiastical forms, and the lady
agreed with him until after the notary had earned his fee. Then she
suddenly had qualms, like those peculiar ladies told of by Robert Louis
Stevenson, who turn the Madonna's face to the wall.
The couple went to Montpelier on their wedding-tour, to visit Comte's
parents. The new wife agreed with the old folks on but one point--the
marriage should be solemnized by a priest. Having won them on this
point, they stood a solid phalanx against the husband; but the lady took
exceptions to Montpelier on all other grounds--she hated it thoroughly
and said so.
Instead of molding her to his liking, Comte was being kneaded into
animal crackers for her amusement.
Then we find him writing to a friend, confessing that his hopes were
ashes; but in his misery he grows philosophical and says, "It is all
good, for now I am driven back to my work, and from now on my life is
dedicated to science."
No doubt the lady was as much disappointed in the venture as was the
husband, but he, being literary, eased his grief by working it up into
art, while her side of the story lies buried deep in silence glum.
In choosing the names of philosophers for this series, no thought was
given in the selection beyond the achievements of the men. But it now
comes to me with a slight surprise that seven out of the twelve were
unmarried, and probably it would have been as well--certainly for the
wives--if the other five had remained bachelors, too. Xantippe would
have been the gainer, even if Socrates did miss his discipline.
To center on science and devote one's thought to philosophy produces a
being more or less deformed. There is great danger in specialization:
Nature sacrifices the man in order to get the thing done. Abstract
thought unfits one for domestic life; for, to a degree, it separates a
man from his kind.
The proper advice to a woman about to marry a philosopher would be,
"Don't!"
* * * * *
The advantage of a little actual hardship in one's life is that it makes
existence real and not merely literary. Comte was inclined to thrive on
martyrdom. His restless, eager mind invented troubles, if there were no
real ones, but he was wise enough to know this, as he once said: "The
trials of life are all of one size--imaginary pains are as bad as real
ones, and men who have no actual troubles usually conjure forth a few.
Thus far, happily, I am not reduced to this strait."
We thus see that the true essence of philosophy was there. Comte got a
gratification by dissecting, analyzing and classifying his emotions. All
was grist that came to his mill.
When he was twenty-eight the Positive Philosophy had assumed such
proportions in his mind that he announced a course of twelve lectures on
the subject.
He was jealous of his discoveries, and was intent on getting all the
credit that was due him. Money he cared little for; power and reputation
to him were the only gods worth appeasing. The thought of domestic joy
was forever behind, but philosophy came as a solace. A prospectus was
sent out and tickets were issued. The landlady where he boarded offered
her parlor and her boarder, second floor back, for the benefit of
science. Several zealous denizens of the Latin Quarter made a canvass,
and enough tickets were sold so that the philosopher felt that at last
the world was really at his feet.
When the afternoon for the first lecture arrived, no carriages blocked
the street, and as only about half of those who had purchased tickets
appeared, the difficulties of the landlady and her nervous boarder were
much lessened.
There was one man at this first lecture who was profoundly impressed,
and if we had his testimony, and none other, we might well restrain our
smiles. That man was Alexander von Humboldt. In various passages
Humboldt does Comte the honor of quoting from him, and in one instance
says, "He has summed up certain phases of truth better than they have
ever been expressed before."
Little did the landlady guess that her crusty, crabbed boarder was
firing a shot that would be heard 'round the world, and surely the
gendarme on that particular beat never heard it--so small and
commonplace are the beginnings of great things!
Comte was so saturated with this theme--so immersed in it--that it
consumed him like a fever. Three lectures were given, but at the third,
without warning, the man's nerves snapped--he stopped, sat down, and the
audience filed out perplexed, thinking they had merely seen an
exhibition of one of the eccentricities of genius. The philosopher's
mind was a blank, and kind friends sent him away to a hospital.
It was two years before he regained his reason. The enforced rest did
him good. Nervous Prostration is heroic treatment on the part of Nature.
It is an intent to do for the man what he will never do for himself.
* * * * *
Unkind critics, hotly intent on refuting the Positive Philosophy, seized
upon the fact of Comte's mental trouble and made much of it. "Look you!"
said they, "the man is insane!"
This is convenient, but not judicial. Comte's philosophy stands or falls
on its own merits, and what the author did before, after, or during the
writing of his theses matters not. Madmen are not mad all the time, and
the fact that Sir Isaac Newton was for a time unbalanced does not lessen
our regard for the "Principia," nor consign to limbo the law of
gravitation. Ruskin's work is not the less thought of because the man
had his pathetic spells of indecision. Martin Luther had visions of
devils before he saw the truth, and Emerson's love for Longfellow need
not be disparaged because he looked down on his still, white face and
said, "A dear gentle soul, but I really can not remember his name."
Men write on physiology, and then die, but this does not disprove the
truth they expressed, but failed, possibly, to fully live. The great man
always thinks further than he can travel--even the rest of us can do
that. We can think "Chicago" in a second, but to go there takes time,
strength and money.
When Comte's mental trouble was at its height, and two men were required
to care for him, Lamennais persuaded his wife to have their marriage
solemnized by the Church, and this was done. This performance was such
a violation of sanctity and decency that in after-years Comte could not
believe it was true, until he consulted the church records. "They might
as well have had me confirmed," said Comte, grimly. And we can well
guess that the action did not increase his regard for either his wife or
the Church. The trick seems quite on a par with that of the astute
colored gentleman who anxiously asks for love-powders at the corner
drugstore; or the good wives who purchase harmless potions from red-dyed
rogues to place in the husband's coffee to cure him of the liquor habit.
However, the incident gives a clew to the mental processes of Madame
Comte--she would accomplish by trickery what she had failed to do by
moral suasion, and this in the name of religion!
Two years of enforced rest, and the glowing mind of the philosopher
awoke with a start. He rubbed his eyes after his Rip-Van-Winkle sleep,
and called for his manuscripts--he must prepare for the fourth lecture!
The rest of the course was given, and in Eighteen Hundred Thirty the
first volume of Positive Philosophy was issued.
The sixth and last volume appeared in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two--twelve
years of intense application and ceaseless work. This was the happiest
time of Comte's life; he had the whole scheme in his head from the
start, but he now saw it gradually taking form, and it was meeting with
appreciation from a few earnest thinkers, at least. His services were
in demand for occasional lectures on scientific subjects. In astronomy,
especially, he excelled, and on this theme he was able to please a
popular assembly.
The Polytechnic School had now grown to large proportions, and the
institution that Comte had helped to slide into dissolution now called
him back to serve as examiner and professor.
The constant misunderstandings with his wife had increased to such a
point that both felt a separation desirable. Married people do not
separate on slight excuse--they go because they must. That Comte thought
much more of the lady when they were several hundred miles apart than
when they were together, there is no doubt. He wrote to her at regular
intervals, one-half of his income was religiously sent to her, and he
practised the most painstaking economy in order that he might feel that
she was provided for.
One letter, especially, to his wife reveals a side of Comte's nature
that shows he had the instinct of a true teacher. He says, "I hardly
dare disclose the sweet and softened feeling that comes over me when I
find a scholar whose heart is thoroughly in his work."
The Positive Philosophy was taken up by John Stuart Mill, who wrote a
fine essay on it. It was Mill who introduced the work to Harriet
Martineau. Mr. and Mrs. Mill had intended to translate and condense the
philosophy of Comte for English readers, but when Miss Martineau
expressed her intention of attempting the task, they relinquished the
idea, but backed her up in her efforts.
Miss Martineau condensed the six volumes into two, and what is most
strange, Comte thought so well of the work that he wrote a glowing
acknowledgment of it.
The Martineaus were of good old Huguenot stock, and the French language
came easy to Harriet. For the plain people of France she had a profound
regard, and being sort of a revolutionary by prenatal instincts, Comte's
work from the start appealed to her. James Martineau had such a
bristling personality--being very much like his sister Harriet--that
when this sister wrote a review of a volume of his sermons, showing the
fatuity and foolishness of the reasoning, and calling attention to much
bad grammar, the good man cut her off with a shilling--"which he will
have to borrow," said Harriet.
James hugged the idea to his death that his sister had insulted his
genius--"But I forgive her," he said, which remark proves that he
hadn't, for if he had, he would not have thought to mention the matter.
James Martineau was a great man, but if he had been just a little
greater he would have taken a profound pride in a sister who was so
sharp a shooter that she could puncture his balloon. James Martineau was
a theologian; Harriet was a Positivist. But Positivity had a lure for
him, and so there is a long review, penned largely with aqua fortis, on
Miss Martineau's translation, done by her brother for the "Edinburgh
Review," wherein Harriet is not once mentioned.
When Robert Ingersoll's wife would occasionally, under great stress of
the servant-girl problem, break over a bit, as good women will, and say
things, Robert would remark, "Gently, my dear, gently--I fear me you
haven't yet gotten rid of all your Christian virtues."
The Reverend Doctor James Martineau never quite got rid of his Christian
virtues, which perhaps proves that a little hate, like strychnin, is
useful as a stimulant when properly reduced, for Doctor Martineau died
only a few years ago, having nearly rounded out a century run.
Harriet Martineau was in much doubt about how Comte would regard her
completed work, but was greatly relieved when he gave it his unqualified
approval. On his earnest invitation she visited him in Paris.
Fortunately, she did not have to resort to the Herbert Spencer expedient
of wearing ear-muffs for protection against loquacious friends. She
liked Comte first-rate, until he began to make love to her. Then his
stock dropped below par.
Comte was always much impressed by intellectual women. His wife had
given him a sample of the other kind, and caused him to swing out and
idealize the woman of brains.
So that, when Harriet Martineau admired the Positive Philosophy, it was
proof sufficient to Comte of her excellence in all things. She knew
better, and started soon for Dover.
Mr. and Mrs. Mill had called on Comte a few months before, and given him
a glimpse of the ideal--an intellectual man mated with an intellectual
woman. But Comte didn't see that it was plain commonsense that made them
great. Comte prided himself on his own commonsense, but the article was
not in his equipment, else he would not have put the blame of all his
troubles upon his wife. A man with commonsense, married to a woman who
hasn't any, does not necessarily forfeit his own.
Mr. or Mrs. Mill would have been great anywhere--singly, separately,
together, or apart. Each was a radiant center. Weakness multiplied by
two does not give strength, and naught times naught equals naught.
* * * * *
Having finished the Positive Philosophy, Comte's restless mind began to
look around for more worlds to conquer.
In the expenditure of money he was careful, and in his accounts exact;
but the making of money and its accumulation were things that to him
could safely be delegated to second-class minds. A haughty pride of
intellect was his, not unmixed with that peculiar quality of the prima
donna which causes her to cut fantastic capers and make everybody kiss
her big toe.
Comte had done one thing superbly well. England had recognized his merit
to a degree that France had not, and to his English friends he now made
an appeal for financial help, so he could have freedom to complete
another great work he had in his mind. To John Stuart Mill he wrote,
outlining in a general way his new book on a social science, to be
called "The Positive Polity." It was, in a degree, to be a sequel to the
Positive Philosophy.
Mill communicated with Grote, the banker, known to us through his superb
history of Greece, and with the help of George Henry Lewes and a mite
from Herbert Spencer to show his good-will, a purse equal to about
twelve hundred dollars was sent to Comte.
Matters went along for a year, when Comte wrote a brief letter to Mill
suggesting that it was about time for another remittance. Mill again
appealed to Grote, and Grote, the man of affairs, wrote to his Paris
correspondent, who ascertained that Comte, now believing he was free
from the bread-and-butter bugaboo, was giving his services to the
Polytechnic, gratis, and also giving lectures to the people wherever
some one would simply pay for the hall.
To advance money to a man that he might write a book showing how the
nation should manage its finances, when the author could not look after
his own, reminded Grote of the individual who wrote from the Debtors'
Prison to the Secretary of the Exchequer, giving valuable advice. All
publishers are familiar with the penniless person who writes a book on
"How to Achieve Success," expecting to achieve success by publishing it.
Grote wrote to Mill, expressing the wholesome truth that the first duty
of every man was to make a living for himself--a fact which Mill states
in "On Liberty." Mill hadn't the temerity to pass Grote's maxim along to
Comte, and so sent a small contribution out of his own pocket. This was
very much like the Indian who, feeling that his dog's tail should be
amputated, cut it off a little at a time, so as not to hurt the animal.
We have all done this, and got the ingratitude we deserved.
Comte wrote back a most sarcastic letter, accusing Mill and Grote with
having broken faith with him.
He now treated them very much as he had Saint-Simon; and in his lectures
seldom failed to tell in pointed phrase what a lot of money-grubbing
barbarians inhabited the British Isles. To the credit of Mill be it
said that he still believed in the value of the Positive Philosophy, and
did all he could to further Comte's reputation and help the sale of his
books.
* * * * *
In Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when Comte was forty-seven years old, he
met Madame Clothilde de Vaux. Her husband was in prison, serving a
life-sentence for political offenses, and Comte was first attracted to
her through pity. Soon this evolved into a violent attachment, and Comte
began to quote her in his lectures.
Comte was now most busy with his "Polity" in collaboration with Madame
De Vaux. Her part of the work seems to have been to listen to Comte
while he read her his amusing manuscript: and she, being a good woman
and wise, praised the work in every part. They were together almost
daily, and she seemed to supply him the sympathy he had all of his life
so much craved.
In one short year Madame De Vaux died, and Comte for a time was
inconsolable. Then his sorrow found surcease in an attempt to do for her
in prose what Dante had done for Beatrice in poetry. But the vehicle of
Comte's thoughts creaked. The exact language of science when applied to
a woman becomes peculiarly non-piquant and lacking in perspicacity and
perspicuity. No woman can be summed up in an algebraic formula, and when
a mathematician does a problem to his lady's eyebrow, he forgets
entirely that femininity forever equals _x_. Those who can write Sonnets
from the Portuguese may place their loves on exhibition--no others
should. Sweets too sweet do cloy.
For the rest of his life, Comte made every Wednesday afternoon sacred
for a visit to the grave of Madame De Vaux, and three times every day,
with the precision of a Mussulman, he retired to his room, locked the
door, and in silence apostrophized to her spirit. Comte now continued as
industrious as ever, but the quality of his writing lamentably declined.
His popular lectures to the people on scientific themes were always
good, and his work as a teacher was satisfactory, but when he endeavored
to continue original research, then his hazards of mind lacked steady
flight.
The Positive Polity degenerated into a dogmatic scheme of government
where the wisest should rule. The determination of who was wisest was to
be left to the wise ones themselves, and Comte himself volunteered to be
the first Pope.
The worship of Humanity would be the only religion, and women would
shine as the high priests. Comte thought it all out in detail, and
arranged a complete scheme of life, and actually wished to form a
political party and overthrow the government, founding a gynecocracy on
the ruins. His ebbing mind could not grasp the thought that tyranny
founded on goodness is a tyranny still, and that a despotic altruism is
a despotism nevertheless. Slavery blocks evolution.
So thus rounded out the life of Auguste Comte--beginning in childhood,
he traversed the circle, and ended where he began.
He died in his sixtieth year. M. Littre, his most famous pupil,
touchingly looked after his wants to the last, ministered to his
necessities, advancing money on royalties that were never due. M. Littre
occasionally apologized for the meagerness of the returns, and was
closely questioned and even doubted by Comte, who died unaware of the
unflinching loyalty of a friendship that endured distrust and contumely
without resentment. Such love and patience and loyalty as were shown by
M. Littre redeem the race.
The best certificate to the worth of Auguste Comte lies in the fact
that, in spite of marked personal limitations and much petty
querulousness, he profoundly influenced such men as Littre, Humboldt,
Mill, Lewes, Grote, Spencer and Frederic Harrison.
To have helped such men as these, and cheered them on their way, was no
small achievement. Comte's sole claim for immortality lies in the
Positive Philosophy. The word "positive," as used by Comte, is similar
in intent to pose, poise--fixed, final. So, besides a positive present
good, Comte believed he was stating a final truth; to-wit: that which is
good here is good everywhere, and if there is a future life, the best
preparation for it is to live now and here, up to your highest and best.
Comte protested against the idea of "a preparation for a life to
come"--now is the time, and the place is here.
The essence of Positive Philosophy is that man passes through three
mental periods--the Theological or fictitious; the Metaphysical or
abstract; the Positive or scientific.
Hence, there are three general philosophies or systems of conceptions
concerning life and destiny.
The Theological, or first system, is the necessary starting-point of the
human intellect. The Positive, or third period, is the ultimate goal of
every progressive, thinking man; the second period is merely a state of
transition that bridges the gulf between the first and the third.
Metaphysics holds the child by the hand until he can trust his feet--it
is a passageway between the fictitious and the actual. Once across the
chasm, it is no longer needed. Theology represents the child;
Metaphysics the youth; Science the man.
The evolution of the race is mirrored in the evolution of the
individual. Look back on your own career--your first dawn of thought
began in an inquiry, "Who made all this--how did it all happen?"
And Theology comes in with a glib explanation: the fairies, dryads,
gnomes and gods made everything, and they can do with it all as they
please. Later, we concentrate all of these personalities in one god,
with a devil in competition, and this for a time satisfies.
Later, the thought of an arbitrary being dealing out rewards and
punishments grows dim, for we see the regular workings of Cause and
Effect. We begin to talk of Energy, the Divine Essence, and the Reign of
Law. We speak, as Matthew Arnold did, of "a Power, not ourselves, that
makes for righteousness." But Emerson believed in a power that was in
himself that made for righteousness.
Metaphysics reaches its highest stage when it affirms "All is One," or
"All is Mind," just as Theology reaches its highest conception when it
becomes Monotheistic--having one God and curtailing the personality of
the devil to a mere abstraction.
But this does not long satisfy, for we begin to ask, "What is this One?"
or "What is Mind?"
Then Positivity comes in and says that the highest wisdom lies in
knowing that we do not know anything, and never can, concerning a First
Cause. All we find is phenomena and behind phenomena, phenomena. The
laws of Nature do not account for the origin of the laws of Nature.
Spencer's famous chapter on the Unknowable was derived largely from
Comte, who attempted to define the limits of human knowledge. And it is
worth noting that the one thing which gave most offense in both Comte's
and Spencer's works was their doctrine of the Unknowable. This, indeed,
forms but a small part of the work of these men, and if it were all
demolished there would still remain their doctrine of the known. The
bitterness of Theology toward Science arises from the fact that as we
find things out we dispense with the arbitrary god, and his business
agent, the priest, who insists that no transaction is legal unless he
ratifies it.
Men begin by explaining everything, and the explanations given are
always first for other people. Parents answer the child, not telling him
the actual truth, but giving him that which will satisfy--that which he
can mentally digest. To say, "The fairies brought it," may be all right
until the child begins to ask who the fairies are, and wants to be shown
one, and then we have to make the somewhat humiliating confession that
there are no fairies.
But now we perceive that this mild fabrication in reference to Santa
Claus, and the fairies, is right and proper mental food for the child.
His mind can not grasp the truth that some things are unknowable; and he
is not sufficiently skilled in the things of the world to become
interested in them--he must have a resting-place for his thought, so the
fairy-tale comes in as an aid to the growing imagination. Only this: we
place no penalty on disbelief in fairies, nor do we make special offers
of reward to all who believe that fairies actually exist. Neither do we
tell the child that people who believe in fairies are good, and that
those who do not are wicked and perverse.
Comte admits that the theological and metaphysical stages are necessary,
but the sooner man can be graduated out of them the better. He brought
vast research to bear in order to show the growth and death of
theological conceptions. Hate, fear, revenge and doubt are all
theological attributes, detrimental to man's best efforts. That moral
ideas were an afterthought, and really form no part of theology, Comte
emphasized at great length, and shows from much data where these ideas
were grafted on to the original tree.
And the sum of the argument is, that all progress of mind, body and
material things has come to man through the study of Cause and Effect.
And just in degree as he has abandoned the study of Theology as futile
and absurd, and centered on helping himself here and now, has he
prospered.
Positivism is really a religion. The object of its worship is Humanity.
It does not believe in a devil or any influence that works for harm, or
in opposition to man. Man's only enemy is himself, and this is on
account of his ignorance of this world, and his superstitious belief in
another. Our troubles, like diseases, all come from ignorance and
weakness, and through our ignorance are we weak and unable to adjust
ourselves to conditions. The more we know of this world the better we
think of it, and the better are we able to use it for our advancement.
So far as we can judge, the Unknown Cause that rules the world by
unchanging laws is a movement forward toward happiness, growth, justice,
peace and right. Therefore, the Scientist, who perceives that all is
good when rightly received and rightly understood, is really the priest
or holy man--the mediator and explainer of the mysteries. As fast as we
understand things they cease to be supernatural, for the supernatural is
the natural not yet understood. The theological priest who believes in
a god and a devil is the real modern infidel. Such a belief is
fallacious, contrary to reason, and contrary to all the man of courage
sees and knows.
The real man of faith is the one who discards all thought of "how it
first happened," and fixes his mind on the fact that he is here. The
more he studies the conditions that surround him, the greater his faith
in the truth that all is well.
If men had turned their attention to Humanity, discarding Theology,
using as much talent, time, money and effort to wring from the skies the
secrets of the Unknowable, this world would now be a veritable paradise.
It is Theology that has barred the entrance to Eden, by diverting the
attention of men from this world to another. Heaven is Here.
All religious denominations now dimly perceive the trend of the times,
and are gradually omitting theology from their teachings and taking on
ethics and sociology instead. A preacher is now simply Society's walking
delegate. We are evolving theology out and sociology in. Theology has
ever been the foe of progress and the enemy of knowledge. It has
professed to know all and has placed a penalty on advancement. The Age
of Enlightenment will not be here until every church has evolved into a
schoolhouse, and every priest is a pupil as well as a teacher.