CHAPTER I
THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM
According to Comte, philosophy is destined to serve as a basis for morality, for politics and for religion. It is not an end in itself but a means to reach an end not otherwise attainable. Had Comte thought it possible to reorganise society without first reorganising morals, and to reorganise morals without first reorganising beliefs, he would not perhaps have written the six volumes of the “Cours de Philosophie positive” which occupied him from 1830 to 1842. He would have gone straight to what was of supreme interest.
He early became convinced that the shortest way would not be the best. In his view, all endeavour at religious, moral, or political reorganisation, must be vain so long as mental reorganisation has not taken place. It is therefore with a new philosophy that he must begin. Indispensable to the social end which Comte has in view, philosophy becomes, at least provisionally, an end in itself.
Comte is going to endeavour to reorganise beliefs, that is to say, to substitute a demonstrated faith to the revealed faith whose force is now spent. This demonstrated faith will have nothing in common with the natural religion of the XVIII. century, which was at bottom but a weak and degenerate form of belief in the supernatural. Under the metaphysical garb of Deism we still recognise theological thought. On the contrary the demonstrated faith will have its origin and its justification in positive science. The two words “faith” and “demonstration” appear to clash with each other. But the contradiction lies merely on the surface. For we are still concerned with “faith” since the great majority of men will always have to take on faith the conclusions of positive philosophy.
The number of men with sufficient leisure and enough culture to examine these conclusions and to go into their proofs will always be small. The attitude of the others must be one of submission and respect. But, differing on this point from the religious dogmas which humanity has known until now; the new faith will be “demonstrated.” It will contain nothing which has not been established and controlled by scientific methods, nothing which goes beyond the domain of the relative, nothing which at any moment cannot be proved to a mind capable of following the demonstration.
This form of “faith” already exists in the case of a great number of scientific truths. Thus all men to-day believe in the theory of the solar system which we owe to Copernicus, to Galileo and to Newton. Yet how many are in a position to understand the demonstrations upon which this theory rests? They know, however, that what here is a matter of faith to them, is a matter of science to others, and would be so equally for themselves had they gone through the necessary studies. Faith therefore signifies here not indeed a voluntary abdication of the intellect in presence of a mystery which surpasses its power of comprehension, but a submission to fact, which in no way encroaches upon the rights of reason. Every man is not capable, at any moment, of exercising this right to criticise. In practice, Comte will severely restrict the use of it.9 But in theory this right belongs to all men, and must ever remain unalterable. In the last place the legitimate existence of the demonstrated faith rests upon this proposition: “If all minds were in a condition to examine the dogmas of that faith, all, without exception, would understand the demonstration, and would agree with it.”
The words “belief” and “faith” must not be misunderstood. In the “reorganisation of beliefs” which he undertakes, Comte only concerns himself with beliefs capable of demonstration. He is here faithful to the thought of Saint Simon, who understood “religion” chiefly as a basis of political organisation. At any rate, in the early part of his philosophical career Comte does not bring into “faith” the mystical, sentimental and non-intellectual elements which this word usually implies and which so often oppose it to “reason.” The word signifies for Comte that which man believes concerning what may be for him a subject of knowledge. Until now these beliefs have set forth a more or less mythical or metaphysical explanation of the universe and of man, taught by priests and philosophers. But this no longer satisfies the human mind. By degrees positive science, which works on a totally different plan, substitutes a knowledge of the laws of phenomena to those “explanations.” From this moment the problem thus presents itself to Comte: To establish by rational means a system of universally accepted truths concerning man, society and the world.
Comte thus takes for granted: 1st, that the “opinions,” the “beliefs” and the “conceptions” relating to these matters, are to-day “anarchical”: 2nd, that their natural and normal condition is to be “organised.”
There is no need to prove the first part; a glance at contemporary society is enough. The confused disturbing movements which fill it with trouble and agitation, and which, unless rational harmony be at last established, threaten its destruction are not due merely to political causes. They proceed from moral disorder. And this in turn proceeds from intellectual disorder, that is to say from a lack of principles common to all minds, and from the absence of universally admitted conceptions and beliefs. For in order that a human society may subsist, a certain harmony of sentiment or even common interests among its members will not suffice. Above all things, intellectual concord which finds expression in a body of common beliefs is necessary.
If, therefore, a society be a prey to chronic disorders, which political remedies appear powerless to cure, one has every right to believe that the deep-rooted evil has its origin in intellectual disorganisation. All other troubles are merely symptoms. This, according to Comte, is precisely the state of contemporary society. It has neither “intellectual” nor “spiritual” government, and does not even feel the want of it. The minds of men recognise no common discipline. Not a principle subsists which negative and “corrosive” criticism has not attacked. The individual erects himself as a judge of all things—philosophy, ethics, politics, religion. The opinion which he adopts most frequently without any special qualification for so doing, and according to his passions, always appears to him to have as much right to be admitted as those of other men. He claims to be amenable to no one for his thoughts. And this scattering (later on Comte will say insurrection) of intelligences is what he calls a state of anarchy.
But, we may say, does not this state represent the ordinary condition of human societies? Perhaps the “organic” state only appears occasionally and as an exception? Such a supposition is groundless. For, if such were the case societies could not subsist, and above all could not develop. We must admit, on the contrary, that periods of intellectual anarchy form the exception, and that in a normal state of society men are united by their unanimous submission to a sufficiently large body of principles and beliefs. History confirms this view. The immobility of civilisation in the Far-East is especially due to the intellectual stability which distinguishes it from our own condition. The societies of Antiquity (Grecian and Roman), rested upon a conception of man, of citizenship and of the world, which, as a matter of fact, scarcely varied during the whole period of their existence. Lastly, in the Middle-ages, Christianity had constituted an admirable spiritual authority. The organisation of Catholicism, “a masterpiece of political sagacity,” had established a body of beliefs which all minds accepted with complacent docility. It is the decomposition of this great system which has produced the majority of the evils with which we are now struggling. Mental anarchy is therefore truly an abnormal state, a pathological fact, what Comte will call later on the “western disease,” a mortal disease if it is to be prolonged. Either modern society must perish, or minds must regain their stable equilibrium by submission to common principles.
The problem of the organisation of beliefs would seem to come under two heads. In the first place we have the philosophical problem: how to establish a system of principles and beliefs capable of being universally admitted; and, in the second place, a social problem: how to bring all minds into the new faith. But this distinction only appears on the surface. As a matter of fact, the solution of the first problem will necessarily imply that of the second. Does not the principal cause for the lack of common discipline lie in the disorder which troubles the mind of each individual? If intellects are divided among themselves it is because each intellect is divided against itself. Let one of them succeed in establishing a perfect harmony within itself, and by the mere force of logic, this harmony, by gradual diffusion will be communicated to the others—once true philosophy is established, the rest will only be a matter of time. It will therefore suffice to examine the opinions and beliefs which actually exist in one mind, and to inquire into the conditions necessary to substitute in it harmony to anarchy, or in a word, to realise within it a perfect logical coherence.
As Descartes, in order to test all his knowledge, had only to examine the sources from which it originated, so Comte, in order to verify the logical compatibility of his opinions, will content himself with the consideration of the methods which have furnished him with them. If he discovers methods which mutually tend to exclude each other, he will have found the cause of the mental disorder which gives birth to all the evils we see troubling modern society. At the same time he will have discovered the remedy which will bring about the disappearance of those contradictions. The human mind is so constituted, that the first thing it requires is unity. Understanding is spontaneously systematic. Opinions merely in juxtaposition in the mind but logically irreconcilable cannot satisfy it. As a matter of fact, the contradiction, even when it is ignored, nevertheless impresses itself. Whether we know it or not, each of our opinions implies a complexus of connected opinions all arrived at by the same method as the one in question; and this complexus is itself part of the more considerable whole which finally completes itself in a comprehensive conception of the world given in experience.
Now Comte saw in himself, as in his contemporaries, two general methods, two “modes of thought” which cannot coexist without contradiction, although neither one nor the other has obtained a full mastery up to the present time. Concerning several categories of phenomena he thinks as a scholar trained in the school of Hobbes, of Galileo, of Descartes and of their successors. He does not seek to explain them by causes. When, by means of observation or deduction, he has arrived at a knowledge of their laws he remains satisfied. For the knowledge of these laws allows him in certain cases to intervene in the phenomena, and to substitute to the natural order an artificial order better suited to his requirements. It is thus that mechanical, astronomical, physical, chemical and even biological phenomena are objects of relative and positive science for him to-day.
But, as soon as the question is one of facts which originate in the human conscience, or which are connected with social life and with history, an opposite tendency becomes predominant. Instead of solely seeking for the laws of phenomena, our mind desires to explain them. It wants to find the essence and the cause. It speculates upon the human soul, upon the relation of that soul to the other realities of the universe, upon the end which society should have in view, upon the best possible government, upon the social contract, etc. All these questions arise from the “metaphysical” mode of thought, and this mode is formally incompatible with the preceding one. Yet we see both of them subsisting in our minds to-day.
Social dynamics will show how this condition must have been produced. But whatever the historical reasons may be, the reality is only too evident. The human mind to-day can neither adhere entirely to nor give up entirely one or the other of these two modes of thought. Undoubtedly it feels that the conquests of positive science are “irrevocable.” For example, how could it return to a metaphysical or theological explanation of astronomical or physical phenomena? But, on the other hand, metaphysical and theological conceptions seem to it no less indispensable. It does not believe it could do without them. And this is natural. For, to satisfy the desire for unity, which is its supreme requirement, the human mind demands a conception of the whole which embraces all the orders of phenomena, what Kant called a totalizing of experience, in a word a “philosophy.”
Now, up to the present time, the positive mode of thought has not shown itself in a position to respond to this demand. It has only produced individual sciences. Positive Science has been “special” and fragmentary, always attached to the investigation of a more or less restricted group of phenomena. With a laudable prudence, which has made her strength, she has applied herself solely to works of analysis and partial synthesis. She has never ventured upon a synthesis of the whole of the real within our reach. Until now theologies and metaphysics alone have made the effort, and this office is, still to-day, the chief reason of their existence, this office must be fulfilled. The human mind is carried, by a spontaneous and necessary movement, towards the point of view of the universal. Sooner than leave the philosophical problems without an answer, it would remain attached indefinitely to the solutions, chimerical as they are, which the theologies and metaphysics offer him. In short, in the present state of things, the positive mind is “real” but “special.” The theologico-metaphysical mind is “universal” but “fictitious.” We can neither sacrifice the “reality” of science, nor the “universality” of philosophy. Which is the way out of this difficulty?
Three solutions alone are conceivable:
1. To find a reconciliation which will make it possible for the two modes of thought to coexist without contradiction:
2. To re-establish unity by making the theologico-metaphysical method universal:
3. To re-establish unity by making the positive method universal:
II.
The first solution at first sight appears to be the most acceptable. Why should not the positive investigation of the divers orders of natural phenomena be reconciled with a theological or metaphysical conception of the universe? Nothing prevents one from conceiving the phenomena as governed by invariable laws, and from seeking at the same time, by another method, for the reason which renders nature in general intelligible. Positive science liberated at last from theology and metaphysics, would assure them of the independence which she claims for herself. Thus, with growing precision would be fixed the boundaries on the one hand of the domain proper of positive science, and on the other that of the speculation which goes beyond experience.
This reconciliation, says Comte, has for a long time been considered legitimate, because for a long time it was indispensable. Up to the present time Theology and Metaphysics have been the only comprehensive conceptions of the world which the human mind has formed. They have fulfilled a necessary function. Moreover, without them positive science could neither have originated nor have been developed. But, as she is their heiress, she is also their antagonist. Her progress necessarily involves their downfall. The parallel history of religions and metaphysical dogmas on the one hand and of positive knowledge on the other shows that the conciliation between them has never been a lasting one.
Not that the antagonism between the two modes of thought can be solved by a supreme dialectical struggle in which the theological and metaphysical dogmas would be worsted. It is not thus that dogmas come to an end. They disappear, according to Comte’s striking expression, by desuetude, as is the case with forsaken methods. As a matter of fact, have they not been as methods for the human mind, which sought within a single point of view to embrace the universality of things before they had been sufficiently studied? Man demanded from his imagination at first sight an absolute knowledge of the real, which reason could only give him at a later stage, on a very modest scale, entirely relative and after the patient labour of the sciences. But by degrees, as he has advanced in the positive study of phenomena, he has forsaken the theological and metaphysical “explanations.” Without relinquishing altogether the search after causes, he has taken the habit of relegating them to more and more remote regions. Already, in what concerns phenomena whose concept has reached a positive stage we can very well do without any assumption of causes. It suffices for us to represent these phenomena to ourselves as subject to laws. When all the phenomena of all orders are habitually conceived in this way, when the idea of their laws, whatever they may be, will have become equally familiar to us, the metaphysical mode of thought will have disappeared.
In a word, as soon as the whole of science shall have become positive, philosophy will necessarily be positive also: For we only have at our disposal one point of view concerning things. All our real knowledge bears upon phenomena and their laws. If, therefore, considered one by one, all the orders of phenomena are conceived according to the positive mode of thought, how could it be that considered together, and in their totality, they should be conceived according to a mode of thought completely different, and even inconsistent with the former one?
As a matter of fact, the coexistence of these two modes of thought lasts so long as the positive spirit has not reached its complete expansion, so long as a more or less considerable portion of natural phenomena is still explained by their essence, their cause, or their end. But this cannot be indefinitely prolonged. The more the positive spirit progresses, the more the theological and metaphysical conception of the world loses ground, and it becomes more evident that we must make our choice. The unity of the understanding the perfect logical coherence, are at this price.
The conciliation being set aside, the alternative either to think solely or not at all, according to the positive mode, presents itself. The traditionalists, and especially Joseph de Maistre, saw this aspect of the problem very clearly. Comte gives them very great credit for it. De Maistre admits no salvation for our society except in the complete return to the theological mode of thought. He thus attacks at its very source, or to put it more plainly, in its many sources, the spirit of modern philosophy. He does not spare Locke any more than the philosophers of the XVIII. century who proceed from him, Bacon any more than Locke; the promoters of the Reformation any more than Bacon. He understood that the XVIII. century came as a mighty conclusion of which the XVI. and XVII. centuries were the premisses, and that the great destructive syllogism had originated in a work of decomposition which began as early as the XIV. century. He is therefore perfectly consistent with himself, when he endeavours to combat this diabolical work, and to bring Europe back to the mental and religious condition of the Middle-ages. The re-establishment of the spiritual supremacy of the Pope would put an end to mental and moral anarchy. The catholic doctrine would restore to men’s minds that unity which is their supreme need.
This solution fulfils ideally the conditions of the problem, but, as a matter of fact, the solution is impracticable. The tide of history cannot flow back. In order to bring men’s minds once again under the sway of that spiritual power which they freely accepted in the Middle-ages, we should also have to reconstitute the totality of the conditions in which they lived at that time. How can we wipe from the pages of history the discovery of America, the invention of printing, and so many other great social facts? How can we pretend that Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and all the heralds of positive Science never existed? And if, presuming what is impossible, we should succeed in restoring the mental and moral unity of Christian society in the Middle-ages, how could we prevent the natural laws which have once brought about its decomposition, from producing again the same result?
We are thus necessarily brought to the third and last solution. Since the conciliation between the positive mode of thought and the other one is impossible; since the exclusive ascendency of the theologico-metaphysical mode of thought is out of the question; since when all is said the human mind needs a philosophy, it follows that that philosophy can only proceed from the positive mode of thought itself. There is nothing, a priori, to prevent this solution from being realised. For the last positions of the theologico-metaphysical spirit are surely not impregnable. This spirit, “fictitious” in its essence, never could become “real.” The positive spirit is only accidentally “special.” It is quite capable of acquiring the universality which it lacks. The new philosophy would then be founded, and the problem of perfect logical coherence would be solved.
The whole difficulty thus appears to be in “universalising” the positive mode of thought. To do this it must be extended to those phenomena which are still habitually conceived according to the theologico-metaphysical mode, that is to say, to the moral and social phenomena. This will be Comte’s crowning discovery. He will found “social physics.” By so doing he will take from theology and metaphysics the last reason of their existence. He will make possible the transition from a positive science to an equally positive philosophy. Thus will be realised “the unity of the understanding,” and this mental harmony will carry with it as its consequence the moral and religious harmony of humanity.
CHAPTER II
THE LAW OF THE THREE STATES
In Comte’s system the constitution of sociology may be considered at the same time as a terminus and as a starting point. One sees the positive method attaining with it to the order of the highest, the most “noble,” the most complicated phenomena: in this sense sociology is the term reached by the positive spirit in its ascent. It thus reaches the summit of the hierarchy of the sciences, and henceforth rules over them all. On the other hand, positive philosophy, possible from this moment, will make this a starting point for establishing the principles of morality and of polity.
“Through the foundation of sociology,” says Comte at the beginning of the Cours, “positive philosophy will acquire that universal character which it still lacks, and will thus become qualified to take the place of theological and metaphysical philosophy, whose only real property to-day is this universality,”10 and at the end of the Cours he concludes: “The creation of sociology endows with fundamental unity the entire system of modern philosophy.”11
This creation, upon which everything else depended, dates from the time when Comte discovered the law of the three states as it is called. For, once this law is established, “social physics” ceases to be a mere philosophical conception, and becomes a positive science. This law had been anticipated and even already formulated in the XVIII. century by Turgot, then by Condorcet, and by Dr. Burdin. Comte, nevertheless, takes to himself the merit of the discovery. As he is generally most precise in doing full justice to his “precursors,” we must admit that, according to him, none of them had seen the scientific importance of this law. It certainly is one thing to gather the notion of a law out of a number of facts, and another to understand its capital importance, and to discern in it the fundamental law which governs the whole of the evolution of humanity.
This is the way in which Comte enounces it, in the Plan des travaux scientifiques nÉcessaires pour rÉorganiser la sociÉtÉ (1822).
“According to the very nature of the human intellect every branch of our knowledge must necessarily pass successively in the course of its progressive development, through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictitious state, the metaphysical or abstract state, finally the scientific or positive state.”12
In the first lesson of the Cours de philosophie positive, after having reproduced this statement, Comte adds: “In other words the human mind, by its nature, in each one of its researches makes use successively of three methods of philosophising, essentially different and even opposed to each other: firstly, the theological method, next, the metaphysical, and lastly the positive. Hence we find three kinds of philosophies, or general systems of conceptions of the totality of phenomena, which mutually exclude each other. The first is the necessary starting-point of human intelligence, the third, its fixed and final state; the second is solely destined to serve as a transition.”13
The words “theological” and “metaphysical” are here taken in a particular sense, strictly defined.
Comte calls “theology” a general system of conceptions concerning the universality of phenomena, which explains the appearance of these phenomena by the will of gods. He has not in his mind theological speculation as one usually understands it, as a rational or sacred science. He does not in the least dream of a study of revealed truth. He only designated by this name an interpretation of natural phenomena by means of supernatural and arbitrary causes. Theological—that is to say—fictitious. Elsewhere Comte calls this mode of explanation “imaginary” or “mythological.” It is in this sense that he could ask if each one of us did not remember having been in regard to his most important notions, a theologian in his infancy, a metaphysician in his youth, and a physicist in his manhood?14 Comte does not allude to the religious traditions which the child receives from his parents, but indeed to the spontaneous tendency which causes him in the first place to explain natural phenomena by wills, and not by laws. Theology is here synonymous with anthropomorphism in the conception of causes.
Similarly Comte does not take the word “metaphysics” in the most usual extension of its meaning. The science of Being as such, the science of Substance or of first Principles, is not here in question, at least directly. He only refers to a certain mode of explaining phenomena given in our experience. For example, in physics, the hypothesis of an ether to explain optical and electrical phenomena is metaphysical. So it is in physiology with the hypothesis of a vital principle, or, in psychology, with the hypothesis of a soul. “Metaphysical or abstract,” says Comte. At bottom this mode of explanation is no other than the preceding one, but more and more pale and colourless, vanishing, so to speak, as natural phenomena, better observed, are referred no longer to capricious wills, but to invariable laws.
Let us then be careful not to give here to the words “metaphysics” and “theology” their full meaning. For instance, to conclude from the law of the three States that the evolution of humanity ever carries it further from theology, to end in a final state wherein religion should have no place is singularly to misapprehend Comte’s doctrine. On the contrary the evolution of humanity is leading it to a state which will be pre-eminently religious. In it religion will regulate the whole life of man. Comte perhaps would not refuse to define man, as has often been done, as a religious animal. The history of humanity may be represented, in a sense, as an evolution which proceeds from primitive religion (fetichism) to final religion (positivism). But the object of the law of the three States is not to express the religious evolution of humanity. It is only concerned with the progress of the human intellect. It sets forth the successive philosophies which that intelligence has been obliged by turn to adopt in the interpretation of natural phenomena. It is, in a word, the general law of the evolution of thought.
Those who made a mistake about it probably only considered this law in the first lesson of the Cours, where it is separately presented. But the error is no longer possible when one refers to the fourth volume of the Cours, where the law is put in its place, in social dynamics, especially in the fifty-eighth lesson, in the sixth volume.
It is not, however, without reason that Comte set forth this law in the first pages of his Cours de philosophie positive. In sociology as he conceives it, the law of the intellectual evolution of humanity, that is to say the law of the three States is the essential law of dynamics, and therefore of the whole of social science. For, of all the social factors of which the concomitant and joint evolution constitutes the progress of humanity, the intellectual factor is the most important. It is the dominant one, in the sense that the others depend far more upon it than it does upon them. The history of art, of institutions, of morals, of law, of civilisation in general could not be understood without the history of intellectual evolution, that is to say of science and of philosophy, whereas this one, strictly speaking, would still be intelligible without the others. This evolution is therefore the principal axis around which the other series of social phenomena are arranged. Thus the law which expresses it is the most “fundamental,” the most “general,” in the precise sense in which Comte understands this word. In enunciating this law he declares legitimate by anticipation the existence of a social science. He proves ipso facto not only that it is possible, but that it already exists. Hence the eminent position which he gives to the law of the three states.
II.
The demonstration of this law presents itself under two distinct forms. In the first place Comte supports his argument by history. This proves indeed that every branch of our knowledge passes in turn through the three states, with never a single retrogression. It is true that much of our knowledge has not yet reached the positive state. But at any rate it is established that up to the present even those sciences which have not yet reached that state have all described the same curve, already described by those that have reached it.
Historical verification would suffice, if necessary, provided it were complete. Comte is not satisfied with it. He claims moreover to deduce the law of the three states from the nature of man. He will thus give a direct demonstration of it. However useful history may appear to him as an instrument of proof, he still wishes to render its verdict intelligible. To reach this end he has recourse to psychology. “We ought,” he says, “carefully to characterise the general motives, drawn from an exact knowledge of human nature, which must have rendered partly inevitable, partly indispensable, the necessary succession of social phenomena, considered directly with respect to the intellectual development which dominates essentially their chief advance.”15
In the first place, the human mind could only begin to interpret nature by a philosophy of the theological type. For it is the only one which is spontaneously produced, the only one which does not presuppose another. Man at first conceives all activity on the same plan as his own. In order to understand phenomena, he likens them to his own actions, whose mode of production he thinks he apprehends, because he has the feelings of his own efforts and the consciousness of his own volitions. This anthropomorphic explanation comes so naturally to us that we are always ready to give way to it. Even to-day, if we forget positive discipline for a moment, if we venture to ask for the mode of production of some phenomenon, we immediately dimly imagine an activity more or less like our own. And among the metaphysicians who profess to give an idea of God, the most consistent, according to Comte, are those who make a person of Him.
The spontaneity which characterises the theological mode of thought has been extremely useful. Without it, we do not see how man’s intelligence could have begun to unfold itself. For, in order to form a scientific theory, however modest and fragmentary, of natural phenomena, the mind needs previous observations, while, on the other hand, in default of a theory, or at any rate of a preexisting hypothesis, no scientific observation is possible. Absolute empiricism, says Comte, is barren, and even, strictly speaking, inconceivable. Simple collections of facts, however numerous we may suppose them to be, do not possess by themselves any scientific significance. Such, for instance, would be the case in the meteorological facts, making interminable lists, and filling volumes. They would only become observations if in collecting them the mind tried to put upon them some interpretation, however vague or precise, real or chimerical.
Caught between the two equally imperative necessities of observing in the first place in order to reach “suitable conceptions”, and of conceiving at the same time some theory in order to make coherent observations, the human mind saves itself by the theological mode of thought. For it has no need of previous observations to imagine everywhere in nature activities similar to its own. Once this hypothesis has arisen, observation comes into play, first to confirm it, but soon to oppose it. From that moment the impulse has been given. The evolution of the sciences and of philosophy will be continued through doctrines which will succeed each other in a necessary order.
In the same way, from the moral point of view, a theological philosophy alone could at first inspire weak and ignorant humanity with sufficient courage and confidence to shake off its primitive torpor. To-day, if man knows that phenomena are subject to invariable laws, he also knows that a knowledge of these laws gives him a certain control over nature. But in the days when man could not foresee the power of science, the idea that phenomena obeyed necessary laws would have filled him with despair. It would probably have paralysed him for all exertion. The theological mode of thought was far more encouraging since the phenomena are imagined to be arbitrarily modifiable. Anything may happen. Nothing is impossible, neither is anything necessary. The will of the gods suffices for a thing to happen or not to happen. Directly, man has no power over nature; indirectly he can do everything, provided only that he can propitiate the divinities whose will is law. In this way, it is at the moment when man’s impotence is greatest, that his confidence in his own power is the strongest.
Finally, from a social point of view, theological philosophy was indispensable for human society to subsist and to be developed. For this society does not merely imply sympathy of feeling and union of interests among its members, but first and above all unanimous adhesion to certain beliefs. Without a “certain system of common preliminary opinions” there can be no human society. But, on the other hand, how can we conceive the appearance of such a system, if social life is not organised? Here is a new vicious circle, out of which the theological philosophy alone can release us. It constitutes at first sight a totality of common beliefs. All the members of the society defend them all the more energetically, because with them are bound up their hopes and their fears, for this world, and for the next, if they already believe in it.
At the same time, this theological philosophy determines the formation, in society, of a special class, consecrated to speculative activity. What an immense progress this division between practice and theory must have been, however roughly outlined! Such a division was established as soon as a sacerdotal class began to be distinguished from the rest of the social body. And how slow this progress must have been, when we see even to-day how hard it is for men to accept any innovation which does not seem to carry with it any immediate practical advantage! The sacerdotal class, invested, by the nature of its functions with an authority which was precious for social progress, at the same time enjoyed that leisure which is indispensable for theoretical research. “Without the spontaneous establishment of such a class,” says Comte, “all our activity, thenceforth exclusively practical, would have confined itself to the improvement, very soon checked, of some processes having reference to military or industrial life.”16 The subsequent division of labour depended upon this initial step. Our savants, our philosophers, our engineers descend from the first priests, sorcerers and rain conjurors.
Thus, given the nature of Man, the theological philosophy was bound to appear spontaneously. This appearance was at the same time “inevitable and indispensable,” in a word, necessary. Immediately begins what one might call the dialectics of the intellectual history of humanity. The theological philosophy has made possible the observation of phenomena. In its turn, this observation introduces the idea of invariable laws into the mind, whereby the theological philosophy begins to be compromised. The time comes when it appears antiquated and pernicious and reason tends to take the place of the imagination in the interpretation of nature. The more evolution advances, the more marked becomes the preference of the human mind for the positive mode of thought, and, in the several orders of the sciences, after a more or less prolonged conflict, this latter ends by obtaining the ascendancy.
As a matter of fact, the theological stage of our knowledge, even when it exercises its greatest dominion, that is to say, at the time nearest to its origin, already contains the germs of its own decomposition. It is never perfectly homogeneous. There are very common phenomena whose regularity man has never failed to recognize, and which he has never conceived as depending upon arbitrary wills. Comte likes to quote a passage from Adam Smith, where that philosopher remarks that in no time and in no country do we find a god of Weight. Moreover, since the existence of society, man must have had some idea of psychological laws since he was obliged to regulate his conduct according to the way in which his fellows thought and acted. Consequently “the elementary germ of positive philosophy is quite as primitive, at bottom, as that of theological philosophy, although it could only be developed very much later.”17 Not being universal, theological philosophy could only be provisional. The philosophy, that is to say, the method of interpretation of natural phenomena, will alone be final, which will be applicable to all phenomena without exception, from the most simple to the most complicated. For this philosophy alone will realise the unity demanded by the understanding.
The passage from theological to positive philosophy is never suddenly accomplished. Their opposition is too sharply defined, and our intelligence does not lend itself to such an abrupt change. The metaphysical state serves as a transition. This state is distinguished from the two others, in that it has no principle proper which defines it. Theological philosophy is sufficient to itself. It forms a harmonious whole, at least so long as the germ of positiveness which it contains has not yet revealed its activity. In the same way, the positive state will be perfectly homogeneous. On the contrary, the metaphysical state is only described by a mixture of the two others. “The metaphysical conceptions,” wrote Comte in 1825, “proceed at the same time from theology and physics, or rather are only the former modified by the latter.”18 Under ever varying and progressively attenuated forms, metaphysics procure the indispensable conciliation in order that the theological and positive philosophies may coexist in men’s minds, so long as the latter is not perfectly worked out. Under cover of metaphysical hypotheses, the scientific method has been able to push its conquests, without greatly alarming the defenders of theological philosophy. Thus metaphysical speculation has a very active critical quality. It has not slightly contributed to the decomposition of the ancient system of beliefs. In this sense, Comte regards the French philosophers of the XVIII. century, for the most part, as excellent representatives of the metaphysical spirit.
Nevertheless, if we must refer this intermediate stage to one of the two extremes, Comte does not hesitate to approximate it to the theological stage. As a matter of fact, metaphysical philosophy substitutes entities to will, and Nature to the Creator, but with a very analogous function. It supplies, at bottom, the same “explanation” of the real, although weakened by a stronger and stronger sense of the need of natural laws. This equivocal method preserves theology, “while destroying its principal mental consistency.” It denies the consequences in the name of the principles. Moreover, it offers no guarantee against an offensive return of theological conceptions, so long as they have not been replaced by positive notions. In the final conflict between the theological spirit, and the positive spirit, the metaphysicians will probably be seen, with the Deists, involved in a retrograde concentration.”19 “Positive philosophy,” says Comte, “has neither historical nor dogmatic solidarity with this negative philosophy, and can only contemplate it as a final preparatory transformation of theological philosophy.”20
Thus the metaphysical stage is never other than an unstable compromise. It only lasts on condition that it changes continually. In default of a principle of its own, metaphysical philosophy is purely critical in character. As a fact, there are but two philosophies, that is to say two methods, two organic modes of thought. Only theological philosophy and positive philosophy allow the mind to construct a logical and harmonious system of ideas, the basis of a morality and of a religion. The theological spirit is “ideal in its advance, absolute in its conception, arbitrary in its application.” The positive spirit substitutes the method of observation to that of imagination, relative notions to absolute notions. It does not flatter itself with unlimited dominion over the phenomena of nature; it knows that its power is measured by its knowledge. The intellectual history of humanity shows by what stages it has passed from the former mode of thought to the latter.
III.
Comte regards the law of the three stages as demonstrated. “Seventeen years of continuous meditation on this great subject,” he writes in 1839, “discussed under all its aspects, and subjected to all possible tests, authorise me to affirm beforehand, without the slightest scientific hesitation, that we shall always see confirmed this historical proposition, which now seems to me as fully demonstrated as any of the general facts actually admitted in the other parts of natural philosophy.”21 It could only be doubted if we found any branch of our knowledge which had gone back from the metaphysical to the theological state, or from the positive state to either of the two preceding states. But this case has never presented itself. The theoretical demonstration of the law has established that it could not present itself.
Indeed this demonstration has shown that the successive advance through the three stages, in invariable order, was the necessary form of progress of the human mind in the knowledge of phenomena. It is founded upon the nature of the mind. In Comte’s thought, the law of the three states could therefore have been equally called psychological or historical.
But we are not here concerned with introspective Psychology, which uses self-consciousness as a means of investigation. Comte does not recognize any scientific value in this method.22 He even denies its possibility. Moreover the observation of a subject by himself, were it possible, would be of no help in the present case. For it would only reveal to him the present state of his individual intellect, and not the law of the evolution of the human mind. For this law to become manifest, we must consider not the individual, but the species. Giving up a fruitless effort at self-contemplation in its activity, the intellect must grasp the law of its successive phases in the progress of what it has produced. The philosophical history of our beliefs, of our conceptions, and of our systems: such is the consciousness which the human intellect can have of itself. There only, the philosopher sees the faculties of which this intellect contained the germ coming into play by turns, to reach a “durable harmony.” Then, once discovered, the law of the three States helps us to understand the intellectual evolution of each individual, and the study of the individual then furnishes us with a supplementary verification of the law. But, by itself, this study of the individual could not have established it. Whatever utility I may have often derived from the consideration of the individual, says Comte, it is evidently to the direct study of the species that I owed, not only the fundamental thought in my theory, but afterwards its specific development.
The law of the three States is then the general formula of the progress of the human intellect, considered not in an individual subject, but in the universal subject, which is humanity.
It is indeed also the “universal subject” that Kant has studied in his Critic of Pure Reason. But Kant’s method is altogether abstract and metaphysical, the universal subject of which he seeks the laws is a human mind “in itself,” considered in its essence. Comte, on the contrary, represents the universal subject as a concrete unity, which realized itself in time. For him, the study of the mental functions characteristic of man only becomes positive when it is carried out from an historical and sociological point of view. That is why the discovery of the law of the three States is an event of capital importance. It inaugurates the positive science of humanity, which was an indispensable condition for positive philosophy to be established. It marks the time when, all phenomena being henceforth studied after the same method, the “perfect logical coherence” is definitely assured. This law of social dynamics is the corner-stone of the whole positive system.
CHAPTER III
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES
According to the law of the three States, all our conceptions in the different orders of knowledge, begin by being theological, pass through the metaphysical transition, and end by becoming positive. If this evolution were terminated at the presented time, the philosophy which Comte wishes to found would be ipso facto established. But we are far from such a state of things. On the contrary, the three modes of thought theological, metaphysical, and positive, coexist, still to-day, even in the most cultivated minds. In a different measure, all lack the “logical coherence.”
Even in those sciences where the positive method has been finally and for a long time established, in physics, and in chemistry, for instance, we observe undoubted traces of the metaphysical spirit. To a still greater degree this spirit is manifested in what are called the moral and social sciences. Nevertheless, this “incoherence” cannot last. Now that the positive spirit has assumed full consciousness of itself, it is possible to proceed with a systematic purification, which will disentangle it from the theological and metaphysical spirit.
But is not this critical review of the whole of human knowledge an enterprise above the powers of a man?—Happily positive philosophy itself furnishes a means of lightening the task. It establishes an order which allows us to determine without too much trouble to what degree of positiveness the conception of a given category of phenomena has reached up to the present time. Comte calls this order the classification, or, more precisely the “positive hierarchy” of the fundamental sciences. It is “the plan which he will follow in the exposition of positive philosophy.”23
This plan is not a simple artifice destined to make the entirety of the doctrine clearer, or its exposition easier. It is not external to the work. It is born from the very spirit of positive philosophy; it expresses the spirit of that philosophy in a new form. It is the natural complement of the law of the three States. Comte puts it in plain words: “The different branches of our knowledge have not been able with equal rapidity to pass through the three great phases in their development, nor consequently to reach simultaneously the positive state. There exists, in this respect, an invariable and necessary order, which our different kinds of conceptions have followed and have been obliged to follow in their progress, and of which the exact consideration is the indispensable complement to the fundamental law previously enounced.”24
Comte did not, like his contemporary AmpÈre, set himself the logical problem of the classification of the sciences in their entirety. He did not seek according to what principle we could arrange them all in an order where the fact of their respective subordination would be maintained. He even doubts how far such a principle exists, and he is so far from thinking of establishing a complete classification of the sciences, that he begins by leaving out the greater number of them. He first sets aside all forms of human knowledge which refer to art, that is to say all the applied sciences, practical and technical. Similarly he sets aside all the concrete sciences, such as zoology, mineralogy, geography, etc. He only places within his classification the theoretical and abstract sciences, that is to say those which have no other object but the knowledge of laws, and which study phenomena, exclusive of the concrete beings in which these phenomena present themselves. Comte calls them “fundamental” because the other sciences suppose their existence, whereas the abstract sciences do not suppose the existence of the others before them.
These sciences are the only ones whose consideration is of consequence to the end which Comte has in view. For why does he need a classification of the sciences? It is in order to study the ascent of the positive spirit through the successive orders of phenomena. For this, he has no occasion to consider the applied or concrete sciences, which receive their principles from the theoretical and abstract sciences. It suffices for him to be concerned with these. It is in the methods and the progress of these sciences that the characteristic efforts of the human mind have been manifested; and it is therefore here that we can grasp the laws of its evolution.
In order to classify the fundamental sciences, Comte will conform to the principles of the positive method. He will be guided by the rational classifications of which the model is to be found in the natural sciences. The classification must spring from the very study of the objects which are to be classified, and must be determined by the real affinities and the series of connected links which they present, in such a way that this classification may itself be the expression of the most general truth, made manifest by the searching comparison of the objects which it embraces.
Comte will not therefore stop to consider the classifications which have preceded his own. In the first place, when they appeared, the rational method of classification was not established. Further, how could anyone have united the whole of the sciences into an encyclopÆdic conception, when some had already reached the positive state, while others remained in the theological or metaphysical states? How could anyone rationally arrange heterogenous conceptions in a single system?
Those premature attempts were doomed to failure. In order that the undertaking might succeed, it was necessary that all our conceptions, relating to the various orders of phenomena should have reached the positive form. Here again, the creation of sociology has been the decisive event, for it has allowed the series of fundamental sciences to be made complete. The discovery of the law of the three States has founded sociology, and at the same time it has accomplished the homogeneity of human knowledge. In its time, this homogeneity renders possible the rational classification of the sciences.
II.
Henceforth, the fundamental sciences are all conceived as equally positive. They have all given up the pursuit of the absolute for the study of the relative, and the search after causes for the knowledge of laws. All now proceed by means of the same general methods and their differences can therefore only arise from their object, that is to say from the nature of the phenomena which are studied. Consequently their relations of mutual dependence will solely result from the relations of these phenomena. Now, observation shows us that these phenomena form themselves into a certain number of natural categories, such that the rational study of each category presupposes a knowledge of the laws of the preceding category, and that a knowledge of this one is in turn presupposed for understanding the one that follows. This order is determined by the degree of generality of the phenomena, from which their successive dependence upon each other results, and as a consequence the greater or lesser simplicity of each science results from it also.
Upon this principle, the encyclopÆdic ladder of the fundamental sciences is easily constructed. After the mathematics, in an order of diminishing generality and of growing complexity, come astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology or biology, social physics or sociology. The first science considers the most general, the most simple, the most abstract phenomena, and those furthest removed from humanity. They influence all the others, without being influenced by them. The phenomena considered by the last are the most particular, the most complicated, the most concrete, and the most directly interesting for man; they depend more or less upon all the preceding ones. “Between these two extremes, the degrees of specialisation, of complication, and of individualisation, are in an ever-growing quantity.”
This classification is confirmed, in fact, by the general usage of learned men. It reproduces the historic order of the development of the sciences. Thus, for a long time, mathematics was the only science of a positive type. On the other hand, social science has been the last to reach this point. Nevertheless, Comte does not mean to say that the fundamental sciences came into existence one after the other, nor that, for every one of them, each period is sufficiently explained by the period immediately preceding it. His thought is very different. On the contrary, he represents the development of the several sciences as simultaneous. They act and react one upon another in a thousand ways. Often some progress in a science is the direct effect of a discovery made in an art which has apparently no affinities with it. Such is, to quote an example which Comte could not in the least have foreseen, the progress of astronomical observations due to photography. In fact, the history of a science during a given period is closely allied to that of the other sciences and arts during the same time, or rather, to be more explicit, to the general history of civilisation. But their respective transitions to the positive state is accomplished in the order set forth in the classification. For individually they could not reach this state, if the fundamental science immediately preceding had not attained to it before them. “It is in this order that the progress, although simultaneous, must have taken place.”25
III.
Mr. Herbert Spencer has made several objections to Auguste Comte’s classification of the sciences; LittrÉ has lengthily refuted them. It is not in our design to reopen this discussion. But it results from the preceding explanations that the greater number of Mr. Spencer’s criticisms miss the mark, perhaps because he has not read Comte properly. On his own admission, he only knows the two first lessons in the Cours de philosophie positive in the text, further the inorganic Physics and the first chapter of the Biology in Miss Martineau’s condensation, and finally the remainder in Lewes’s summing up in his History of Philosophy.26 If Mr. Spencer had been able to obtain a knowledge of the Cours de philosophie positive in its entirety, and especially of the three last lessons, or at least of the Discours sur l’Esprit positif or of the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme he would probably have appreciated differently the positive classification of the sciences. His own classification, in which he includes the concrete and concrete-abstract sciences, is not really opposed to that of Auguste Comte who only wished to classify the fundamental abstract sciences. Comte never sought to do what Mr. Spencer reproaches him with not having done.
Among Mr. Spencer’s objections, there is one which, bearing upon the very conception of the classification of the sciences, shows very clearly the misunderstanding which we are pointing out.
Mr. Spencer insists upon the “anthropocentric” character of Comte’s classification, which is indeed remarkable; and he is surprised at what appears to him to be a glaring contradiction. Is not the conception of things from man’s point of view, one of the essential forms of the theological mode of thought, according to Comte himself? Does not positive philosophy teach that man must not consider himself as a sort of “imperium in imperio,” but as a being subordinate to the whole of nature? If therefore we must substitute the objective to the subjective point of view in which man at first spontaneously places himself, how can the classification of the sciences be at the same time “anthropocentric” and positive?
This objection would perhaps be a strong one against positive philosophy as LittrÉ understood it. Against Auguste Comte it has no force, for he accepts it. He admits that his classification presents these two characters at the same time, and he does not think that in so doing he is contradicting himself. We must only distinguish with him two successive and different periods. So long as positive philosophy is in process of formation, (that is to say so long as the positive spirit remains special) it is quite true that it is orientated from the objective point of view, in other words, that it goes from the world to man. During this period, it is indeed opposed to the naÏve belief which makes man the centre and the end of the universe. But, when from special the positive spirit has become universal, when it has risen from science to philosophy, when sociology is at length founded, and when the understanding realises, from the positive point of view the logical unity which is indispensable to it, this unity is only completed when, in its turn, it takes man for its centre.
Considered as an exact reproduction of the real world, says Comte, our science is not capable of being completely systematised; and in this sense we must not seek for any unity save that of method, aspiring only to homogeneity and to the convergence of the different doctrines. It is otherwise in regard to the inner source of human theories contemplated as the results of our individual and collective mental evolution. “Thus referred, not to the universe, but to man, or rather to humanity, our real knowledge tends on the contrary towards an entire systematization. We must then conceive a single science, the human science, more precisely social, of which our existence constitutes at once the principle and the end. Into this human science the rational study of the external world becomes fused, at once as a necessary element and a fundamental preamble.”27
Comte would therefore not have repudiated, for his classification of the sciences, the qualification of “anthropocentric” on condition that it were understood. It is no longer the spontaneous subjectivism from which the theological philosophy starts; it is the conscious subjectivism to which the positive philosophy attains. It has the merit of uniting in itself the two methods called objective and subjective. The former has been in the ascendant during the long evolution of the sciences, which were by degrees and successively reaching the positive state. The latter allows us to concentrate the aim of the distinct sciences thus constituted into a supreme science, which subordinates all the others to itself, without absorbing them.
IV.
The classification of the sciences is, at the same time, a plan for the setting forth of the positive philosophy, and a complement of the law of the three States. But, while this law expresses the progress of the human intellect in the constitution of science and philosophy, the classification supposes that science and philosophy are already constituted. It expresses their order, and enunciates from the static point of view what the law formulates from the dynamic point of view. It shows the relations of the various elements of philosophy among themselves, and to the whole.
So long as this idea of the whole was not defined, that is to say, so long as positive science remained special, these relations could not be rationally established. But, once sociology was created, and with it positive philosophy, it became possible to embrace the whole of the fundamental sciences in a single conception. For, from that time, they can be represented as being various aspects of the development of the human intellect.
Truly, the object of science is single, and the divisions which are introduced into it for our convenience, without being arbitrary, are artificial. All the branches of our knowledge, that is to say all the fundamental sciences, must be considered as issuing from a single trunk. Not that these sciences can ever be reduced one to another. It suffices that they be homogeneous, and their homogeneity results from their subjection to the same method; further, from their tendency towards the same end, and finally, from their subordination to the same law of progress. In respect to the last and highest of these sciences, the others “must only be finally regarded as indispensable preliminaries in a progressive order.”28
Thus the ladder of the fundamental sciences represents, in Comte’s mind, the methodical ascent of the positive spirit towards universality and unity. It is a hierarchy, a scala intellectus, according to Bacon’s expression. It includes the whole of the “philosophia prima” also foreshadowed by Bacon and vainly sought after by philosophers.
The memory of Bacon does not prevent the preponderating influence in this conception of Comte from being that of Descartes. Comte is far from ignoring it. He calls himself the continuator and by a dreadful barbarism, the completer of Descartes.29 Undoubtedly Descartes had not like him conceived the series of the fundamental sciences. After having applied a positive method to the study of inorganic nature, and even of living nature, for the rest he had reverted to a metaphysical method. But this “cartesian compromise” could only be provisional. None the less to Descartes belongs the merit of having definitely acquired several orders of phenomena for the positive spirit, and of affirming the unity of science at the same time as the unity of method. He was unable himself to realise this twofold unity, for its time had not come, and the necessary conditions had not yet been brought together. Moreover in the cartesian idea of science metaphysical elements subsist, and Descartes wrongly believed that the universal method was to be obtained by a transformation of the mathematical method.
Comte takes up the leading ideas of Descartes again, and, at the same time, he corrects them, according as the progress of the positive spirit during two centuries enabled him to do. The position of “leading science,” if this expression can be allowed, passes from mathematics to sociology. Moreover, the unity of science, as Comte conceives it, no longer prevents the fundamental sciences from being irreducible to one another. This unity is sufficiently secured by the homogeneity of the sciences, which form a continuous series, an “encyclopÆdic hierarchy,” and which are all subordinated to the final science. Lastly the unity of the positive methods does not imply its uniformity everywhere. Each fundamental science, as will be seen further on, has its methods which are special to itself.30
The classification of the sciences thus shows how positive philosophy stretches back over the XVIII. cent., whence it springs, to link itself with Bacon and Descartes. Comte has retained Bacon’s view on this point, that all scientific knowledge rests upon facts which have been fully observed, and that a system of positive sciences constitutes the indispensable basis for the only philosophy which is within our reach. To Descartes he here owes the idea of the unity of method and of the unity of science. We might almost say that he has received from Bacon his idea of the contents of the sciences and from Descartes his idea of their form. By what means did he invest such matter with such a form? The answer to this question is found in the positive theory of science.
CHAPTER IV
SCIENCE
We may admit, with Aristotle, that curiosity is natural to man, and that we are inclined to inquire into things for the pleasure of knowing them. But it must be admitted, adds Comte, that this inclination is one of the least active and the least imperative in our nature. It must have been still less so in the beginning of mankind’s development; and it was, in any case, much weaker than the inclination to laziness, or than the repugnance to accept anything new. It has therefore been necessary, in order that man might emerge from his primitive intellectual torpor, that the activity of his mind should be induced and even compelled to exert itself by pressing circumstances. Such were undoubtedly the necessities of hunting, the dangers of war, and in a general way, the desire to avoid suffering and death.
Moreover, the knowledge which the human mind acquires at first is only very imperfectly real; for theological philosophy furnishes the mind with its first conceptions. Man begins by supposing everywhere wills like his own, and the world which surrounds him is peopled with gods or fetishes. Nevertheless, from this first period, the rudiments of a more positive knowledge already appear. In every order of phenomena some are very simple and of such striking regularity, that evidently no arbitrary will intervenes in their working. Man must very quickly have had a “real” idea of these phenomena. In all the other cases instead of observing the phenomena he imagined the mode of their production; but here he observed the sequences and concomitances which he could not resist; and he regulated his conduct upon this observation. From this humble beginning science came into being.
In this way, far from opposing scientific thought to common thought, as most of the philosophers do, Comte, without disregarding the special character of one and of the other shows that both spring from the same source, and that they do not present any essential point of difference. However abstract and however elevated science may become, it always remains, according to him, a “simple special prolongation” of good sense, of common sense and of “universal wisdom.” The character of “positivity,” by which scientific knowledge is distinguished from theological and metaphysical conceptions, belongs also to popular wisdom. Like this wisdom, which the practical necessities of life have formed, science abstains from searching after the causes, the ends, the substances, and whatever is beyond the reach of verification by experience. Its efforts bear exclusively upon the laws of coexistence and of succession which govern the phenomena. And again it is from this wisdom that it has borrowed the spirit of its positive method, which consists in observing facts and in systematising observations to rise to the concept of laws.
It follows from this that science contains within itself neither its starting-point nor its terminus. Both are given it by “common sense” whence it springs. The starting-point is the spontaneous observation of constant relations between the most simple phenomena. The terminus is the knowledge of these same relations among all given phenomena, as complete and as precise as our requirements demand. Indeed the common sense, or the popular wisdom, is soon baffled by the complexity of phenomena. If we had no other guide we should know very little, and in nearly all cases we should be reduced to a kind of empirical divination. The function of science is to substitute a real knowledge of laws to this divination.
This function would never have been fulfilled if the human mind had not possessed the property of being able to separate theory from practice. Undoubtedly the former proceeds from the latter. As has been said, every science is born from a corresponding art, and from the desire to perfect it. But this perfecting would not have gone very far, if the human mind had never lost sight of it. Happily, man is capable of temporarily forgetting his immediate interests in the pursuit of knowledge. By degrees, from the complexity of concrete cases, he has learnt to disengage the elements common to a whole class of phenomena. He has thus formed the idea of law, or the invariable relation between given phenomena. Beyond the intellectual satisfaction which this knowledge gave him, he found in time applications of it which he would never have imagined beforehand. To quote an example from a civilisation already very advanced, when the Greek geometers patiently applied themselves to the study of conic sections, did they suspect that their labours would one day serve in calculating certain astronomical determinations upon which the safety of mariners would depend?
In this way, science, utilitarian in its origin, since it sprang from the practical needs of man, utilitarian in its end, since it aims at providing for those needs, has nevertheless been unable to develop itself and will be unable still to do so in the future, except by neglecting this very utility. Better to fulfil its destiny, it must provisionally forget it; and it will be the more useful, in the long run, in proportion as it will have been the more disinterested. We never know, a priori, if a discovery which finds no application to-day, combined later with another one, will not be of capital interest for mankind. Therefore it is of the highest importance that theoretical order should remain clearly distinct from the practical order.
That is why Comte regarded the appearance of a sacerdotal class, specially occupied with speculative research, as a decisive moment in history of humanity. It matters little that these researches should have remained chimerical and absurd during long centuries. The essential point was that the human mind should form and keep the habit of disinterested speculation, that it should not rest content with immediately applicable knowledge, and that it should exert itself towards a theoretical conception of nature, however simple at first that conception was bound to be.
Thus, science has, properly speaking, two roots, the one practical, the other theoretical. If it originated in the primitive arts, it is no less closely allied with primitive philosophy. It still bears features which enable us to discern this twofold filiation. On the one hand, it has remained speculative as was the theological philosophy which first dominated over the human mind. Only this speculation has gradually abandoned everything except the laws of phenomena, and it has ended by undermining the theological conceptions from which it came. On the other hand, science has remained real, like the popular wisdom which gave it birth. But, while dealing with given phenomena in experience, it has developed in the direction of theory. Instead of only considering scenes of concrete objects, it has resolved them into their elements. A more and more powerful analysis has raised it to the consideration of laws more and more general and abstract. Thus, while the popular wisdom is limited to empirical generalisations, a science such as, for instance, astronomy discovers the law which governs the whole of an immense order of phenomena.
From this general idea of science the following consequences at once follow:
1. Science is the collective work of humanity. It bears upon an object common to all: Reality. It employs the method common to all: the positive method. All intellects work in the same manner on a common ground. It is what Comte calls “the profound mental identity of learned men with the crowd whose destiny fulfils itself in active work.31” The progress of the scientific mind is a methodical extension of popular common sense to all subjects accessible to human reason. But here method does almost everything. “The whole superiority of the philosophical mind over the popular common sense results from a special and continuous application to common speculations, in starting prudently from the initial step, after having brought them back to a normal state of judicious abstraction, for the purpose of generalising and coordinating. For, what ordinary intellects chiefly lack, is less the precision and penetration appropriate for discerning partial approximations, than the aptitude for generalising abstract relations, and for establishing a perfect logical coherence among our various notions.”32
The germ of the highest scientific conceptions is often to be found in common reason. Comte delights in giving as an example one of the discoveries which he most admires, Descartes’ invention of analytical Geometry. To determine at every moment the position of a point in space by its distance from fixed axes: is not that what geographers have been doing for so long in order to determine the longitude and latitude of a place upon the terrestrial sphere? And has not this proceeding itself been suggested to the geographer by simple common sense? For he instinctively seeks to mark the inaccessible points which interest him, by means of their distance from given points or lines. From this the idea of the Cartesian co-ordinates only differs by a superior degree of abstraction and of generality.
Thus all men must be regarded as collaborating in the discovery of truth as much as in making use of it. Speaking generally, if the great philosophers and scientific men of genius seem to be the intellectual guides of humanity, it is because they are the first to be affected by each mental revolution. They are the first to pass from a traditional to a new attitude and their example is decisive. But, says Comte, “the changes relating to the method of thinking with originality only become manifest when they are almost accomplished.” The great men whose names are justly authors attached to are, however, more the heralds than the of these changes.
2. Science is the work of all: it must therefore be accessible to all. It is a patrimony common to the whole of mankind; and the inheritance must be taken from no one. As a consequence, the State owes scientific instruction to those who are not in a position to procure it for themselves. Not that all men, all the people ought to acquire a deep knowledge of the several fundamental sciences, like those who make it the particular occupation of their lives. The impossibility of such a thing is too evident for several reasons. Neither is it a question of popularising the great scientific theories, for the use of badly prepared minds. Comte condemns severely this way of “simplifying” science. For instance, he will not allow Newton’s laws to be separated from their demonstrations. It will always be the duty of the greater number of men to adopt the majority of scientific truths on the testimony of those who will have discovered, criticised and verified them. But, what it will be the duty of common education to give to every mind, is the habit of conceiving all phenomena, from the most simple to the most complex, as equally governed by invariable laws, and, consequently, of understanding the whole of nature as an order which the positive method alone allows us to discover and to modify. And as this method cannot be studied apart from the sciences in which it is used, it will be necessary for every man to be made acquainted with a summary of each fundamental science, from mathematics to sociology. There is nothing impracticable in this scheme. Comte has drawn out, in the positive Polity, a plan of education conceived on this principle. On this condition alone will philosophy, founded upon positive science, succeed in realising the harmony of minds, and in “reorganising the beliefs.”
II.
Auguste Comte often says that the positive spirit consists in keeping oneself equally distant from two dangers, mysticism and empiricism.33 By mysticism he understands the recourse to non-verifiable explanations and to transcendent, hypotheses. Men’s imagination finds pleasure in these things, but we must be able to bring all “real” knowledge back to a general or particular fact. Positive science therefore abstains from searching after substances, ends, and even causes. It only bears upon phenomena and their relations.
Empiricism, in its turn, is no less than mysticism contrary to the spirit of science, Empiricism signifies for Comte the knowledge which does not go beyond the pure and simple ascertainment of a fact. Now, an accumulation of even precisely noted facts has no theoretical interest. It may, at most, be erudition, but it is not science. To think that by thus gathering facts together one is labouring at the work of science, is “to take a quarry for an edifice.”34 In a word, “science is made up of laws, and not of facts.”35
Strictly speaking, no scientific observation is even possible without a previous theory, that is to say, without a presupposed law, whose verification is in question. Undoubtedly in science when it has become positive, the imagination no longer constructs “causes” or “essences.” It must submit to reason, that is to say, to the methodical investigation of phenomena. Nevertheless, this investigation cannot take place without guiding hypotheses, and thus the imagination plays a part in science, subordinate it is true, but indispensable. Comte here separates himself from Bacon. According to the English philosopher, in the knowledge of nature, the mind must make itself as receptive as possible. In introducing anything of itself it would falsify science, and its whole effort must be to hold itself up to phenomena as a perfectly plain and unspotted mirror, so as to reflect them as they are. Now this is precisely the idea of science which Comte rejects under the name of empiricism. Without the hypotheses or the theories suggested by the very activity of the mind science would never be constituted, according to him. There would never even be an apprehension of fact, at least an apprehension such that it could be of service to science. In a word “absolute empiricism is impossible.” In the simple observation of a phenomenon by the human mind, the entire mind is interested, and in it the subjective conditions of science are already virtually given.
This being granted, science may be defined as a methodical processus of the connection and extension of our knowledge. It consists, in every department “in the exact relations established between observed facts, so as to deduce from the least possible number of fundamental data, the most extensive series of secondary phenomena, in renouncing absolutely the vain search after causes and essences.” So long as men seek to “explain” phenomena the theological and metaphysical spirit has not yet disappeared. Positive science abstains from all explanations of this kind. Thus, Newton has placed in the same category universal gravitation and the attraction of bodies. We cannot know what this mutual action of the stars and the attraction of terrestrial bodies are in themselves. But we know with full certainty, the existence and the law of these two orders of phenomena and moreover we know that they are identical. For the geometer weight is explained when he conceives it as a particular case of general gravitation. On the contrary it is weight which makes the physicist proper understand celestial gravitation. We can never go beyond such juxtapositions “of ideas.”36
But while science brings together similar phenomena, its chief function is to connect them, that is to say to determine them one by another according to the relations which exist between them. All science, says Comte, consists in the co-ordination of facts; and if the several observations remained isolated there would be no science. We may even say generally that science is destined, as far as the various phenomena permit, to dispense with direct observation, in allowing us to deduce the greatest possible number of results from the smallest number of acquired data. If a constant relation is found to subsist between two phenomena, it becomes useless to observe them both; for from the observation of one the variations of the other will be deduced. But the first may in its turn be the function of a third, and so on; until at last we conceive a constant connection between all the phenomena of a given order, which may allow us to deduce them all from a single law. Such for Comte would be the perfect form of science: how near it is to the Cartesian ideal! “The positive spirit,” he says, “without failing to recognize the preponderance of reality directly ascertained, tends to enlarge the rational at the expense of the experimental domain, by substituting the prevision of phenomena to their immediate observation.” Scientific progress consists in diminishing the number of distinct and independent laws, by continually multiplying their respective connections.37
“Prevision” thus becomes the essential characteristic of scientific knowledge, and that independently of any utilitarian mental reservation. For the eventual applications of science do not determine its theoretical advance. The prevision with which we are here concerned consists solely in the possibility of knowing with certainty without observing. It is knowledge a priori in the Aristotelian sense of the word, of which mathematics present the most perfect model. A rectilinear triangle being given, I do not need experience to know with certainty that the sum of the angles in it is equal to two right angles. Thus understood prevision applies to the present, and even to the past, as well as to the future. When Comte writes “All science has prevision for its aim,”38 we must understand: “All science tends to substitute deduction to experience, rational to empirical knowledge.” This prevision, a necessary consequence of the constant relations discovered between phenomena, will allow men never to mistake real science for fruitless erudition, which accumulates facts without deducing them one from another.
Thus the formula cited above enlarges itself: “Science is composed of laws and not of facts.” The more deduction is substituted to experience, the better is the extension and connection of our knowledge realised. Consequently, the more also does science draw near to that unity which is imperatively claimed by our understanding, and which is for it the criterion of truth. “Real science,” says Comte, “regarded from the highest point of view, has no other general object but to establish or to fortify unceasingly the intellectual order, which is the basis of all other order.”39 The mind which applies itself to the contemplation of the world requires, before everything, to find it intelligible. “Real” science satisfies it, not in imagining wills and causes, as did theology and metaphysics, but in discovering order in the constant relations between phenomena. When this order is harmonious, that is to say, when the several classes of phenomena are conceived as homogenous, and as similarly governed by laws, “the spontaneous unity of our understanding is consolidated.” It matters little that the various orders of phenomena are given to us as irreducible to one another. The highest object of science is to determine the point of view from which all phenomena appear intelligible, and this point of view is one as the understanding itself is one.
III.
Perhaps it would have been easy to pass from this conception of positive science to a theory of knowledge, and to a metaphysical view of nature, both idealistic. But Comte neither could nor would push his theory in this direction. In this respect nothing is more significant than his way of understanding the relativity of science.
This relativity is usually presented as the conclusion of a criticism of our understanding, of its nature, of its bearings, and of its relations to its objects. But, according to Comte, an inquiry pursued on these lines, has no chance of reaching a conclusion. The only theory of knowledge which is positive and “real,” is drawn from the history of the human mind. The laws of the mind are only revealed in the examination of the successive products of its activity, that is to say in its beliefs and in its science. The relativity of science can therefore only be stated at first, as a fact, leaving it for subsequent inquiry to determine the reason of that fact. The law of the three States suffices for this, for it shows that man began by seeking for absolute knowledge. The philosophy to which he first turns is, at the same time, the most naÏve and the most ambitious. But a necessary evolution causes him to abandon the pursuit of the absolute, first in its theological form and then in the metaphysical form. Having reached the positive state, man knows that his science, necessarily relative, is limited to “the systematic co-ordination of phenomena,” and the knowledge of their laws.
The condemnation which thus strikes researches bearing on the absolute is itself, moreover, only relative in character. It prejudges nothing respecting the ultimate solution of questions. Positive philosophy in no way takes sides in respect to these problems. It simply states that science has more and more cut them off from the number of those which it studies. Indeed it is impossible to apply the positive method to questions which concern the absolute. Now, this method being the only one which our mind can henceforth follow, at least if it wishes to maintain the logical unity which is its supreme requirement, it follows that these problems are in fact abandoned. Nothing more and nothing less. “Sound philosophy,” says Comte, “sets aside, it is true, insoluble questions”; but “in stating the motive of their rejection, it avoids denying anything respecting them, which would be contradictory to that systematic disuse by which alone uncontrovertible opinions must die out.” (Comte means: opinions which do not come within the range of positive discussion.) The problems relating to the essence of the soul or to the “substantia prima” will melt away, as the majority of the metaphysical problems which the scholastics put to themselves have already disappeared.
Even to positive science, we must be careful not to attribute an absolute character—that is to say, in a sense slightly different from the preceding one, but very frequently with Comte—a definite and immutable character. The laws which we can determine are never true except under certain conditions. We have no right to consider them as true absolutely. Newton’s law is demonstrated for our solar system: but do we know that it is verified in all the systems throughout space? Do not let us confound the world, which we can study with the united resources of observation and calculation with the universe, of which we know scarcely anything, and which outranges all our powers. In spite of the famous principle of the sufficient reason the absence of motives for negation does not constitute the right of affirmation, without any direct proof. Absolute notions, says Comte, seem to me so impossible that I would not even dare, whatever probability I may see in it, to warrant the necessary and unalterable perpetuity of the theory of gravitation restricted to the interior of our world, if one day, (which is moreover very difficult to admit) the precision of our present observations came to be perfected as much as we have done in comparison to Hipparchus.40
In the same way, must not attraction have seemed to be an absolute quality (that is to say an immutable one) of bodies, since neither change of shape, nor the passage from one physical constitution to another, nor any chemical metamorphosis, nor even the difference between the state of life and death could modify this quality, so long as the integrity of the substance was maintained? The Newtonian conception came and destroyed entirely at a signal stroke this character which must have appeared so indestructible, by showing that the weight of a body is a phenomenon purely relative to the position of this body in the world, or, more precisely, to its distance from the centre of the earth.41
In order that our positive science of any part of nature should be absolute, that is to say, final, it would have to be complete. But, as all things are caused or causing, helped or helping, according to Pascal’s expression, all the phenomena in a reciprocal universal action, all the laws relative one to another, our science will never be complete on any point. It only furnishes more or less imperfect approximations.42 The discovery of new facts and new laws is always possible.
How many times does not positive science find itself obliged to modify and to readjust a system of long acquired notions, in order to make a place for new elements? This is a work often very laborious, but from which science never dreams of shrinking, knowing that it is made liable to it, so to speak, by definition, that is to say, that it is relative. Examples of this abound, not only in the history of physical and natural science, but even in that of so-called exact sciences. Do we not hear M. PoincarÉ declaring in accordance with Hertz, that given the system of Galileo and of Newton in mechanics it is impossible to give a satisfactory idea of mass and of force?43
Thus the definitions, and even the laws, established by the positive sciences, are at every period approximations corresponding to the knowledge we have of facts. And as this knowledge can always be enriched the approximation may also become stricter, without ever reaching its confines. Leibnitz already said that the analysis of anything real reaches to infinity. This thought is with him, closely allied to the whole of his metaphysics. We find in Comte an expression in some way equivalent, although positive. He says, although the progress of the science of nature consists in substituting as much as possible the rational method to the experimental method, the limit can never be attained, we can never affirm that experience will not bring new elements which will oblige us to modify the edifice of science. The relativity of science thus serves to maintain an equal balance between the need of unity which comes from the understanding, and the inexhaustible diversity of the world of reality which this understanding studies.
As a fact, then, positive science is always relative. Rightly, it cannot be otherwise, and this for two essential reasons. It depends necessarily upon “our organisation” and “our situation”44 or, in other words, it is relative “both to the individual and to the species in its advance.”
It is relative in the first place to our organisation. Here Comte takes up again an idea which was dear to the philosophers of the XVIII. century and in particular to Diderot. If our organisation were different, the data which our science elaborates would be other that they are. With more organs we might perhaps grasp kinds of problems of which we have no idea. If we suppose our species to be blind, astronomy would not exist for it. And further, a natural law requires that the more complex and the higher phenomena in regard to their conditions of existence, should be subordinated to the more general and the more common phenomena. The intellectual phenomena thus depend, first, upon the biological phenomena, and then upon all those to which the biological phenomena are subordinated. In this sense, therefore, science is relative to our organisation, which is itself relative in respect to the milieu in which we live. But, reciprocally, the representation of this milieu and of this organisation rests upon intellectual laws which impart to science a need of unity and harmony special to the mind.
Comte concludes, therefore, that to endeavour to apportion what belongs to the object and what to the subject in scientific knowledge is a hopeless attempt. We simply know that science is not the exclusive product either of the subject or the object. Giving too much to the object leads us to “empiricism.” Falling to the opposite extreme leads to “mysticism.” The efforts of philosophers to construct an abstract theory of knowledge have only ended in miserable results. We have not gone beyond Aristotle’s “axiom as corrected by Leibnitz.” Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus. We are only certain of one thing: our science, necessarily conditioned by our organisation, is also necessarily relative.
But this is not the most decisive consideration for it only makes us see that our science would be different, if our organisation were to change. Now, as a matter of fact, our organisation does not change. Human nature, according to Comte, remains similar to itself in the whole course of its evolution. It is this evolution which itself becomes a cause, and a decisive one, of relativity for science. For, if our organisation does not vary, the system of our conceptions and of our science necessarily varies, according to our “situation,” that is to say, according to the position which we occupy in this evolution, which accomplishes itself according to laws.
Our conceptions, our religions, our philosophies, are not only individual phenomena; they are also and chiefly social phenomena, moments in a collective and continuous life, of which all the phases are interdependent. We only know in a given order of knowledge, what is compatible at that moment with the generally admitted philosophy, with the knowledge already acquired in this and in the other orders of phenomena, with the great hypotheses considered as true, with the methods in force, etc. As soon as the human mind has become conscious of the evolution to which it is subject, as soon as it has grasped its most general law (the law of the three states), in a word, as soon as sociology is founded, science can no longer be conceived as other than relative. For from that moment the various sciences appear as so many great social facts, which vary as so many functions of the rest of civilisation.
Our speculations, “depending on the totality of social progression,” can therefore never admit of that absolute fixity which metaphysicians have supposed. The continuous movement of history modifies, in the long run, the beliefs which appear to be the most immutable. Our theories tend to represent more and more faithfully the objects of our investigations, that is to say the laws of phenomena. We are thus brought back to the idea of limit, which is never attained, towards which we are advancing by means of approximations ever more exact.
The time is not yet far distant, when a doctrine of this kind could not have been advanced without at once being rejected as sceptical. The human mind is scarcely beginning to understand that truth cannot be immutable.45 Men believed that truth must always be identical with itself, always identical for all minds at all times and at all places. It seems that in losing this character, it must cease to be truth. That is why philosophy has been so persistent in the pursuit of the absolute. It was believed that no truth could be certain, unless it rested, ultimately, upon an immutable foundation.
Science was therefore made to hang on metaphysics. And the defeats, a thousand times repeated, of metaphysics would not have discouraged the human mind had not positive philosophy at last shown that the truth of which we are capable, because it is relative does not cease to be truth. We are not condemned to choose between the pursuit of an inaccessible absolute and the crumbling down of all science. It suffices to understand that human science evolves and that this evolution is subject to laws. It is never ended: it always “becomes.” It is not a “state:” it is a “progress.”
There are therefore provisional, and, if one may so speak, temporary truths. Does science ever establish any others? The ideas which Hipparchus and the Greek astronomers had of the heavens was not false in all respects. It was the astronomical truth compatible with the conditions of the society in which they lived. After the labours of the observers of the Middle Ages, utilised by Copernicus, this idea faded before another one which became more perfect with Newton and Laplace. Perhaps this one will be modified in its turn, in consequence of new discoveries! Similarly it was thought that the earth was a flat surface, then a round disc. Then it was represented as a sphere and finally as an ellipsoid. To-day we know that this ellipsoid is irregular.
Truth is then at each period “the perfect logical coherence,” or the correspondence between our conceptions and our observations. The history of human thought is composed of a progressive series of alternating periods. At a certain moment the mind has placed what it conceives in accordance with what it knows. But, by degrees, new facts are observed, known facts are better interpreted, discoveries burst forth. The harmony between the conceptions and the observations then becomes precarious. Minds find a greater and greater difficulty in fitting all the acquired knowledge into the traditional frame. At last the frame gives way. Then the harmony is re-established in a more comprehensive form, which in its turn is destined to become insufficient. Here positive philosophy recognises a sociological law. It gives up the vain dream of immutable truth. It no longer regards the truth of to-day as absolutely true, nor the truth of yesterday as absolutely false. It ceases to be critical in regard to the past.”
To conclude, the theory of science can therefore only be accomplished from the sociological point of view. It remains imperfect so long as “we” has not been substituted to “I,” the universal subject which is humanity to the individual subject, and a philosophical history of the sciences to mere reflective analysis. To the logical conditions of science, to define it completely, its biological and social conditions must be joined. Then, but then only, it will be understood, that, at each period, science is at the same time true and relative, without its relativity placing its truth in danger.
CHAPTER V
SCIENCE (CONTINUED)
PHENOMENA AND LAWS
The perfection of the positive system, towards which it unceasingly tends, although very probably it may never reach it, would be to represent all observable phenomena as particular cases of a single general fact, such as, for example, that of gravitation. The fundamental identity of phenomena, the reduction of particular laws to a supreme law; this is an ideal which we are free to entertain. Comte, after d’Alembert and Saint-Simon, has formulated it himself at the beginning of the Cours de philosophie positive.46
Unfortunately this ideal is not realisable. We apply a very weak intellect to a very complicated world.47 The unity which, scorning experience, we might establish, would naturally be valueless. For the several categories of phenomena proposed to us seem irreducible. If this48 be the case, the pursuit after scientific unity is “irrational.” Comte ended by treating it as an “absurd utopia.”49
However, this utopia is forever reappearing; for the human mind is secretly attached to it. It is because, on the one hand, unity pleases it above all things, and on the other hand because there is here an illusion produced and maintained by a philosophy born of mathematical inspiration. Descartes’ discovery which allowed questions of geometry to be dealt with by algebra has been the occasion of a grave error. It gave rise to the thought that differences of quality could be reduced to differences of quantity. Hence the idea of “reducing” the various categories of phenomena to one another. But this was a wrong interpretation of the principle of analytical geometry. Even there, we have a translation, not reduction, “The geometrical ideas of form and of situation,” says Comte—and Mr. Renouvier will repeat it after him—“are not naturally more like numerical notions than the other real conceptions. Every phenomenon, even social, would certainly have its equation, as a figure or a motion if its law were known to us with sufficient precision.
Analysis is therefore but an instrument of incomparable power for the study of phenomena. But, from the fact that we can make use of it, it does not in the least follow that the phenomena may be all brought back to an identical type. Quality is in no way by this means reduced to quantity, which is something entirely abstract, and this no more takes place in the case of geometrical quality than in the case of any other. Neither can the geometrical quality be reduced to pure analysis, nor the physical to the geometrical, nor the living to the inorganic, nor the social to the biological. At every stage something qualitatively new appears. Whether or no we can formulate the relations of phenomena in the form of an equation, their heterogeneity subsists always irreducible.
What is true of phenomena is also true of their laws. Each order of phenomena has its special laws over and above those which result from its relations with the less complicated and more general orders. The idea of a supreme law from which all the others would be deduced must therefore be forsaken. Even within the range of each fundamental science, it is doubtful how far the unity dreamt of could ever be attained. The number of irreducible laws is far more considerable than is imagined by a false appreciation of our mental powers and of scientific difficulties. For instance, in physics, how can optics and acoustics be reduced to one another? Physiological considerations, in default of other reasons, would be opposed to such a confusion of ideas.50 Likewise in biology, how can the laws of animal life be reduced to those of lower organic life? and in sociology, the laws of human society, implying a course of history, to those of animal societies which do not do so?
Instead, therefore, of conceiving a priori, the phenomena and the laws as capable of a “reduction” which is, in fact, impossible, the positive method requires the determination of the general characters of these phenomena and of these laws by observations. It first establishes the following:
1. The more complex phenomena become, the more also our means of studying them increase in number.
It is a natural but an insufficient compensation. For the difficulty of establishing the science of phenomena grows much more quickly than the number and the power of our methodical processes. However, without this compensation, scarcely any fundamental science would ever reach the positive state. Thus, to the method of pure mathematics observation in astronomy comes to be added. Experimentation appears in physics, the art of nomenclatures in chemistry, the comparative method in biology, the historical method in social science. With this final science, the positive method is henceforth complete.
2. The more complex phenomena become, the more modifiable they are.
We have no power over astronomical phenomena. Even the perfect knowledge of their laws would only allow us to foresee them. But we can, in a great number of cases, bring about or arrest physical and chemical phenomena. Our intervention is still more efficacious if we are concerned with biological phenomena, as is sufficiently proved by the good and the evil wrought by medicine and surgery. And it finally reaches the height of its power in social and political life. So much so that even cultivated men find it difficult to persuade themselves that social phenomena are governed by invariable laws, and that politics can become the object of a science. Experience seems to tell them, on the contrary, that the activity of man, and especially that of the man of genius, is all-powerful in this domain. Nevertheless it is not so, as sociology, by the mere fact of its existence sufficiently proves. But it remains true that, of all the phenomena of nature, the social and moral phenomena are those in which man’s intervention is at once the easiest and the most efficacious.
3. The more complex the phenomena the more imperfect they are.
We shall perhaps be surprised to see Comte appealing to the idea of perfection. It seems that he ought to have excluded it as being something metaphysical. Further on we shall consider his theory of finality. At present let us only say that if he considers natural phenomena as imperfect, it is in the sense in which Helmholtz calls the eye a poor optical instrument. He simply states that certain ends, in fact, being realized by a natural arrangement of a group of phenomena, the same end might be better or more economically reached, by other arrangements that we can easily conceive. In this sense our solar system is imperfect, but less so than many living forms whose organism might present a much higher degree of advantageous adaptation. And yet these living forms are themselves less imperfect than societies subject as they are to all sorts of pathological alterations, as history clearly shows. It is remarkable that the most imperfect phenomena should precisely be the most modifiable, and also those whose study only became positive in the last stage.
II.
More or less complex, modifiable and imperfect, all phenomena are subject to laws. It is the supreme principle, the “fundamental dogma” of science and of positive philosophy. Comte thus enunciates it: “All phenomena whatever, inorganic or organic, physical or moral, individual or social, are all subjected in a continuous manner to rigorously invariable laws.”51
Undoubtedly this principle is not yet extended, by the majority of minds, to all phenomena. This is shown clearly enough by their mode of reasoning in ethics and in politics. But it is, however, implied in their general conception of nature. It thus assumes a universal character, which has caused it to be regarded by many philosophers as an innate, or at least a primitive notion, in the human mind. According to Comte, this is erroneous. Like John Stuart Mill, whom he expressly quotes on this point,52 he sees in this principle the result of a long, gradual induction, at the same time individual and collective. Except in the case of the most familiar phenomena, whose regularity is most striking, the human mind does not begin by believing in an invariable order. Even the mind’s conceptions, (theological and metaphysical), conceal the existence of laws, long after observation would have made it see them, were it freed from bias. It is true that the “first germs” of this principle exist as soon as human reason begins to be exercised, since the dominion of theological philosophy never could be absolute. But these germs are only developed very slowly, like the positive method and conceptions themselves.
The induction upon which this principle is founded only began to acquire solidity when it was definitely verified for a whole order of important phenomena, that is to say when mathematical astronomy had been founded. Phenomena of the highest importance, from the theoretical as well as from the practical point of view, could then be predicted with perfect certainty. The invariability of their laws had been placed beyond doubt. From that moment, the principle must have been extended by analogy, to the more complex orders of phenomena, even before their own laws could be known. But according to Comte this “vague logical anticipation” remained valueless and fruitless. It is of no use to conceive, in the abstract that a certain order of phenomena must be subject to laws. This empty conception cannot outweigh the theological and metaphysical beliefs, which have the force of habit in their favour. In order that the principle of laws should be really established in an order of phenomena, some laws must in fact have been discovered and demonstrated in it.
Consequently, while in the a priori doctrines the possibility of all science rests upon the principle of laws, in Comte’s doctrine, on the contrary, it is the progress of positive science which by degrees founds the principle, and which finally brings it to the universal form in which we find it to-day. Until the creation of sociology, this principle did not yet possess an effective universality, since the moral and social phenomena were not conceived as subject to invariable laws. But when the last conquest of the positive spirit is once accomplished, “this great principle at once acquires a decisive fulness, and may be formulated as applying universally to all phenomena.” Undoubtedly, in each order, we have only established for a few what henceforth we affirm for all phenomena without previous verification. But we think that laws, unknown to us, nevertheless exist. In this we yield to an “irresistible analogy,” which has never been proved to be false.
Thus, “the most fundamental dogma of the whole of positive philosophy, that is to say, the subjection of all real phenomena to invariable laws, only results with certainty from an immense induction, without really being deducible from any notion whatever.”53 This immense induction is a progressive sum of inductions which have taken place successively in each category of phenomena. It would not be absurd, strictly speaking, that a certain category should not be submitted, like the others to invariable laws. But, since sociology has been founded, we know that all are in fact so subjected.
The laws are known to us, sometimes by experience, sometimes by reasoning. This diversity of origin in no way influences either the certainty or the philosophical dignity of the laws. Each of the six fundamental sciences gives examples of these two distinct modes of advance which mutually complete each other. “There is not less genius in the discovery of Kepler than in that of Newton. The initial laws of mechanics and even of geometry rest solely upon observation. The logical perfection consists in confirming by one of these ways what must have been found by the other. But one of the two suffices when all the conditions required by the method are fulfilled.”54 How should the laws obtained by induction be regarded as less certain than the laws obtained by deduction, since the principle of laws itself rests upon an induction?
III.
In proportion as the several orders of phenomena are conceived as governed by invariable laws, the belief in final causes becomes weaker and tends to disappear. The final causes are imagined by the mind to explain certain combinations of natural phenomena. When the laws of these phenomena are known, this explanation becomes useless, it ceases to have currency. It shares the fate of the whole of theological and metaphysical philosophy, of which it is a part.
The doctrine of final causes is generally regarded as a constituent principle of religious systems. A special argument in favour of the existence of God has even been drawn from it. Comte remarks that it is more probably a consequence of these systems. So long as man believes in the continual action of the gods, or of God, in nature, he does not need the consideration of final causes upon which to found his belief. He does not even dream of it. Later on only, when the religious conception of the world has become weaker, when God has so far withdrawn from the world as to be no longer anything but a sovereign who reigns, but does not govern, then the need is felt to demonstrate His existence, and the order of nature becomes an argument. The consideration of final causes from this point of view is a symptom of the weakening of the theological spirit; it is thus pre-eminently a metaphysical doctrine.
Whatever may be the case, experience witnesses against it. Positive science does not lay down that the world must be conceived as the work of an all-powerful intelligence. For instance, the scientific knowledge of our solar system has shown in the most obvious manner, and in various ways, that the elements of this system were certainly not disposed in the most advantageous manner, and that science allowed us to conceive of a better arrangement.55 Astronomers may admire a natural finality in the organisation of animals; but the anatomists who know all its imperfections, fall back upon the arrangements of the stars. In what concerns animals, a blind admiration wonders even at evidently detrimental complications: it is the case with the eye, with the bladder, etc.56 But “it is an almost universal disposition of physiologists to draw, even from their ignorance, as many motives for the admiration of the profound wisdom of a mechanism which they declare they cannot understand.”
In truth, the natural order, so much extolled, is extremely imperfect, and we can without difficulty conceive a better one. The human works, says Comte, from the most simple mechanical appliances to the most sublime political constructions, are generally far superior either in expediency, or in simplicity, to everything that the most perfect natural economy can offer us.57 Our geometers and our physicians “sufficiently prepared” would do far better than nature, if they dared “to take the direct conception of a new animal mechanism as the object of an intellectual exercise.” This idea of artificial organisms pleases Comte and he often returns to it. He considers that fictions of this kind may be useful in biology to intercalate intermediaries between the several known organisms, in such a manner as to facilitate comparison in making the biological series more homogeneous and continuous.58 In fact this is what Broca attempted to do, when he endeavoured to connect man with the other primates by hypothetical anthropoids. Quite recently M. Delage has made use of a similar fiction in his TraitÉ de Zoologie.
Comte seldom misses an opportunity of smiling at the stupid admiration of those who believe that nature has done everything “for the best,” or that everything in it has been ordered by a providential wisdom. But we can surprise him also in the very act of admiration; not doubtless on the subject of astronomical or biological phenomena, but in the chapter which lies nearest to his heart, that of social facts. He writes, “we cannot experience too much respect and admiration when we see this universal natural disposition which is the primary basis of all society....”59 and elsewhere: “Can one really conceive, in the whole of natural phenomena, a more marvellous spectacle than this regular and continuous convergence of an immensity of individuals....”60
However, there is not here a contradiction. In reality, although Comte says that the consideration of final causes must be accepted altogether, or rejected altogether, he does not himself reject it as entirely as he seems at first to do.
What he formally rejects, is the finality understood in the theological or metaphysical manner: Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei. He does not admit that we can “explain” the natural order by a supernatural wisdom. But he in no way contests the finality which Kant called internal. This finality, or better, this reciprocal causality appears in living beings, where the whole and the parts are reciprocally end and means. The tree could not subsist without the leaves any more than the leaves without the tree. Comte expresses this idea in terms which are almost identical with those of Kant, although he did not know them. “We shall,” he says, “cease defining a living being by the collection of its organs, as if these could exist isolated.... In biology the general notion of the being, always precedes that of any of its parts whatever. In sociology, where partial interdependence is less intimate although wider, it would be a serious heresy to define humanity by man ... a fortiori in biology we ought not to conceive the whole from its parts.”61 As soon as we rise above the inorganic world, the first condition for the study of phenomena is the idea of their consensus, first in biology, and then in sociology. This consensus corresponds to Kant’s internal finality.
But the distinction between internal finality and external finality cannot be strictly maintained. We will never affirm that some beings were made in view of others. This would be in the highest degree a theological “explanation” of the first order. But from the positive point of view, we observe that, in order to subsist, organisms need not only special intimate structure, but further require a certain equilibrium of external conditions. At each moment their existence depends at once on their constitution and on the “milieu.” This word, which was destined to attain such popularity and the theory of the “milieu” which Taine has rendered no less popular, belong to Comte. Undoubtedly, the idea was suggested to him, on the one hand by Montesquieu and by his successors, and on the other by the labours of Lamarck and of the contemporary biologists. He also drew inspiration from Bichat’s celebrated Recherches sur la vie et la mort. But Bichat especially insisted upon the antagonism between the living being and the forces of the inorganic world which press upon him from all sides. Comte thinks, on the contrary, that the very existence of living beings is the proof of a sufficient harmony between their organism and the milieu. And what we cannot dispute is his merit in having generalised the idea specially applied by Montesquieu to social facts, and also specially applied by Lamarck and Bichat to the phenomena of life.
“I designate by this word “milieu,” says Comte, in excusing himself for the new meaning which he gives it, “not only the fluid in which the organism is immersed, but, in general, the totality of external circumstances of any kind whatever necessary to the existence of each determined organism.”62
Properly speaking then, Comte does not reject the doctrine of final causes; he only transforms it. He had declared this himself in his opuscule in 1822. “The doctrine of final causes has been converted by the physiologists into the principle of the conditions of existence.” Positive philosophy appropriates, “with the understanding of a suitable change,” the general ideas primitively invented by the theological and metaphysical philosophies. As the positive notion of the mathematical laws of phenomena arose out of the metaphysical conceptions of the Pythagoricians concerning the properties of numbers, so the scientific principle of the conditions of existence springs from the hypothesis of final causes.63
An example will allow us to realise this transformation in the act.
The stability of the solar system renders the existence of living species on the earth possible. A good example of finality it would seem. Nevertheless this stability is simply a necessary consequence, according to the mechanical laws of the world, of some circumstances characteristic of our system: extreme smallness of the planetary masses in comparison to the central mass, small eccentricity of their orbits, slight mutual inclination of their planes, etc. Since, in fact, we exist it must be that the system of which we form a part is arranged so as to allow of this existence.” The so-called final cause would then reduce itself here, as on all analogous occasions, to this childish remark: the only stars inhabited are those which are habitable. In a word, we return to the principle of the conditions of existence, which is the true positive transformation of the doctrine of final causes, and whose bearings and fertility are far superior.”64
In order to give the formula of this principle, we must have recourse to the general distinction established by de Blainville between the static point of view and the dynamic point of view.
Every active being, and in particular every living being, can be analysed from these two points of view. The static analysis considers its elements in their relations of simultaneous connexions. The dynamic analysis discovers the laws of their joint evolution. The first is the share of the anatomist, the second that of the physiologist. Now it is clear that these two analyses are complementary to one another, and are even separately unintelligible. For instance, the anatomist is constantly guided by physiological considerations. Conversely, without anatomical knowledge there is no positive physiology.
Thus, the statical analysis establishes the laws of coexistence, the dynamic analysis the laws of succession or of movement. The principle of the conditions of existence is nothing else than the direct and general conception of the necessary harmony of these two analyses, that is to say, of the agreement of these two orders of laws.65 If this harmony, in fact, was not realised, no living being, no natural system of phenomena could subsist. From the point of view of the object this principle accounts for the permanence of beings: from the point of view of the subject it expresses the possibility of science.
Why does Comte say that the importance and fertility of this principle are far superior to those of the doctrine of final causes? It is because this latter doctrine claims to “explain.” In referring the natural order to the wisdom of a Providence, it dispenses in some measure with scientific research, or at least it does not require it. The principle of the conditions of existence, on the contrary, is closely allied to the positive conception of natural phenomena. It only implies the existence of laws. It only establishes the continuity of the relations between these laws, a continuity verified by experience, since beings subsist and reproduce themselves. In a word, it allows us to connect the laws of succession with the laws of coexistence everywhere. Now, to connect is the essential function of science. By means of this principle not only the successive moments of any natural evolution whatever are understood as having solidarity with each other but the whole of this evolution becomes intelligible by its relation to the statical conditions to which it corresponds. And, in virtue of the relativity of science, or, if we prefer it, of the universal reciprocal action of all phenomena, the principle of the conditions of existence leads the human mind to a scientific investigation ever more exact and never completed.
This positive transformation of the doctrine of final causes had already been clearly sketched by the philosophers of the XVIII. century whom Comte knew very well, by Diderot, by Hume, by d’Holbach. Hume says, for instance,66 “It is useless to insist upon the uses of parts in animals or in plants, and on their curious adaptation one to another. I should much like to know how an animal could subsist without this adaptation. Do we not see that if it ceases he perishes at once, and that the matter of which he was composed takes some other shape?” And d’Holbach, “These wholes would not exist in the form which they bear, if their parts ceased to act as they do; that is to say, ceased to be arranged in such a way as to lend themselves to being mutually helpful to each other. To be surprised that the heart, the brain, the eyes, the arteries, etc., of an animal act as they do; or that a tree produces fruit, is to be surprised that a tree or an animal exists. These beings would not exist or would no longer be what they are, if they ceased to act as they do: this is what happens when they die.”67
Comte makes this criticism of the doctrine of final causes his own. But, faithful to his maxim, “We only destroy what we replace,” he claims to substitute a positive principle to this metaphysical doctrine, which preserves the elements in it which are compatible with the scientific method. It is the principle of the conditions of existence. In virtue of this principle, by the very fact that such an organ is part of such a living being, it necessarily co-operates in a determined although perhaps unknown manner, with the totality of the acts which make up its existence: an organ no more exists without a function than a function without an organ. But it in no way follows from this that all the organic functions are performed as perfectly as we could imagine them to be. For instance pathological analysis demonstrates that the disturbing action of each organ upon the whole of the economy is very far from being always compensated for by its utility in the normal state. “If, within certain limits, everything is necessarily arranged in such a way as to be able to exist, we should seek in vain, in the majority of effective arrangements, for proofs of a wisdom superior or even equal to human wisdom.”68
Extending these considerations to the whole of the phenomena known to us, Comte concludes in almost the same way as Cournot will later on. An order establishes itself in nature, since it subsists, since it is intelligible, since there are laws.69 Does not the very idea of a law induce at once the corresponding idea of a certain spontaneous order? But “this consequence is not more absolute than the principle from which it is derived.”70 The experience which reveals this order to us also shows us that it is imperfect, of an imperfection which grows with the complexity of phenomena. Every time that the necessary and sufficient conditions are realised for a natural system to be able to exist, this system exists in fact, however full of imperfections it may be in other respects. “Undoubtedly, an inevitable necessity which links together a series of events, and a premeditated plan which directs them, resemble each other very much so far as the consequences are concerned.”71 But, if the necessity is established, there is no need to suppose the plan. Now the principle of the conditions of existence, in showing that all that is “indispensable,” is at the same time “inevitable,” renders this supposition superfluous.
A double tendency makes itself felt in this theory. On the one hand Comte, faithful to the spirit of his philosophy, rejects all that claims to go beyond experience, that is to say the transcendental hypothesis of final causes and of optimism. On the other hand, he wishes to account for the order of nature, which is a fact. Now this order, all imperfect as it is, implies not only the existence of laws, but moreover a permanent harmony between these laws. “The present is full of the past, and big with the future.” The principle of the conditions of existence explains this permanence of order, at least as much as it needs to be explained from the positive point of view. For it states that everywhere, in fact, the dynamical laws are in harmony with the statical laws, and that “progress is a development of order.” The principle of the conditions of existence is no more a priori than the principle of laws. Like it it is founded upon an “immense induction.” Like it again, it only acquires its full power when social science is created, and positive philosophy established.
Should we not be tempted to see in this doctrine a kind of projection of an idealism such as that of Leibnitz on the lines of positive thought? Just as Leibnitz makes mechanism rest upon a deeper dynamism, so Comte completes the principle of laws by the principle of the conditions of existence. True, between these two doctrines there lies all the distance which separates the positive from the metaphysical spirit. But none the less both give symmetrical solutions of the same problem which correspond to one another, the one a priori the other a posteriori.
IV.
All natural laws, must be conceived as rigorously invariable, whether it be a question of mathematical or of sociological laws. If we could conceive, in any case, that under the influence of conditions exactly similar the phenomena should not remain perfectly identical, not only in kind, but also in degree, all scientific theory would at once become impossible.72 This principle is the very condition of the possibility of prevision, and consequently of positive science. Claude Bernard will call it “the absolute determinism of phenomena.” Comte admits no absolute: but he considers nevertheless that the invariability of natural laws does not permit of exception.
In the case of certain laws their invariability can be directly verified, since they come before us in a mathematical form. Such are, for instance, the mechanical, astronomical and physical laws. Others, on the contrary, such as the biological laws, refuse to be dealt with by numbers and cannot be reduced to equations. But this evidently comes from their complexity: “If it were possible rigorously to isolate each one of the simple causes which concur in producing the same physiological phenomenon, everything tends to show that under well determined circumstances, it would appear to be possessed of a kind of influence and of a quantity of action, as exactly fixed as we see it to be in universal gravitation.”73 Every elementary phenomenon has its curve.
If then in all cases we could go back to the elementary phenomena, we could undoubtedly also formulate their mathematical law. In this sense, mathematical analysis would apply to all the phenomena of the world without exception. But, nearly always, the decomposition of given phenomena into elementary phenomena is impossible to us. At any rate the work of synthesis or of re-composition taken in the reverse order is far beyond our mathematical powers. The only phenomena to which we apply the analysis without too much trouble are the most simple of all, the geometrical and mechanical phenomena. The difficulty grows very rapidly with the complication of astronomical, physical, and especially chemical phenomena. When we reach the realm of living nature, the elementary phenomena escape us altogether. They are given to us in a state of almost infinite complexity, and, in virtue of the biological consensus, closely bound up with others of no less complex a character. These phenomena are in themselves syntheses depending upon other syntheses all in a state of mutual influence and of constant instability. Then, although, in principle, it remains true that identical antecedents can only have identical consequents, in fact, because of the very great number of elementary actions which concur in the production of each phenomenon, there have perhaps never been, there perhaps never will be, two cases rigorously similar.
It follows that we must not confuse “the subordination of any events whatever to invariable laws with their irresistible necessary accomplishment.”74 Relatively single phenomena appear indeed to us to be produced with an irresistible necessity: for instance, the facts of gravitation. But complex phenomena, in virtue of the more and more varied combinations which their several necessary conditions admit of no longer present this character. They are more “modifiable” and less “irresistible.” In other words, as one considers more elevated, more complex, more “noble” categories of facts, the laws become removed from the type of mathematical necessity, and admit more of an ever increasing element of “contingency”?
The order of the world can then be conceived as a “modifiable fatality.”75 In the eyes of the greater number of present thinkers, says Comte, this formula will seem contradictory. This comes from old habits of mind which are not easily broken with. In the same way, as we have had a great deal of trouble in representing truth to ourselves otherwise than as immutable, so we are unwilling to conceive order otherwise than as necessary. During a long time the science of mathematics has been the only positive science. The idea of law formed itself in this science, that is to say according to the necessary relations which are demonstrated in it. It came to be afterwards transferred, just as it was, into the other orders of phenomena, as the positive spirit progressed. But orders of phenomena differ qualitatively from one another. All laws ought not to be conceived according to the single type of geometrical and algebraical laws. In order to obtain a complete idea of a natural law, we must not confine ourselves to the mathematical order, which is an “exception” in this respect. All the orders of phenomena must be considered. We then see that law must be defined “constancy in variety.”
In fact, “the normal type is never suited to any but a medium state, more ideal than real, around which effective existence ceaselessly oscillates, so long as the deviation does not go beyond the limits which are compatible with the duration of the system. Order, even isolated, is no more eternal than it is absolute.”76 In this passage, Comte is speaking of astronomical order, but the same consideration applies to all the systems or groups of phenomena. Every law is necessarily something abstract. Being indispensable to the intelligibility of the real, every law allows prevision and science to exist. But it is not an adequate expression of this reality, which never remains identical with itself.
Comte goes so far as to say that our requirement of precision in the study of natural laws must not be pushed too far. For the laws which it has been possible to establish within certain degrees of approximation vanish if this approximation is pushed further. Not that the phenomena cease to be subject to laws; but these laws becoming too complex, escape us. For instance, it has been possible to establish with our thermometers the laws of the variation of temperature of a body under certain conditions. With very much more sensitive thermometers the variations becomes incessant and very complicated. The known laws disappear without our being in a condition to establish others.77
The order which positive science shows us in nature is then very far from being absolute. It is, to speak truly, the outcome of the combined activity of our mind and of things. We cannot separate what belongs to each of these two factors, but it appears from what has just been said that the mind plays a great part, that the external relations are far more contingent than suits our blind instinct of universal connection.”78 Nevertheless the phenomena are not irreducible to order, since science and prevision remain possible. But this order, entirely relative in respect to our understanding is only established within certain limits. More powerful minds than ours would probably construct richer and more complex orders for themselves. For us, beyond a certain point of complexity our vision becomes confused and our logical requirements are no longer satisfied. Limits would thus seem to be placed upon scientific investigation, and these in the interest of science itself.
Finally we reach the last consequence of this theory founded upon experience, the principle of laws and the principle of the conditions of existence only insure a provisional order. Comte readily admits that it might not exist. “This order might become so irregular that it might even escape brains superior to ours. There is nothing to prevent us from imagining words outside our solar system, always given over to an inorganic and entirely disordered agitation, which would not even allow of a general law of gravitation.”79 This is the very hypothesis formulated by John Stuart Mill, in almost similar terms, and in which a kind of reductio ad absurdum of his own theory was thought to be found. It is, however, compatible with the existence of a science which does not claim to possess an absolute value. Moreover Comte at once adds, “Still, even if order should be found to be particular to our world, in fact, it would be in no way accidental in it, since it is the first condition for human existence.” In virtue of the principle of the conditions of existence, the presence of a being such as man implies the whole of the laws which govern our world.
V.
The laws which for us constitute the order of the world are of two kinds. Some are established by the positive method in each order of phenomena separately considered; the astronomical laws, physical laws, chemical laws, etc. They belong to the domain of science properly so-called. The others are apprehended when the mind leaves the special point of view of science, and places itself at the universal point of view of philosophy. They are found again in the different orders of phenomena, whose relations they express without compromising their respective independence. They represent them severally connected, or, according to Comte’s expression, as convergent. Comte calls these last encyclopÆdic laws. They tend to realise the unity which the mind claims, not in pursuing the chimerical reduction of all laws to a supreme law, but in showing that the systems of irreducible laws are nevertheless harmonious among themselves.
Generally speaking, these laws have been known for a long time, but only as special laws of such and such an order of phenomena. It belongs to positive philosophy to give them their encyclopÆdic character, that is to say, to make them universal. For instance, d’Alembert’s principle is known in mechanics as a law which connects questions of movement with questions of equilibrium. Philosophy finds a similar law in biology: (physiological questions are correlated to anatomical questions); and also in sociology (“progress is the development of order”). It then formulates the encyclopÆdic law which generalises these three laws, that is, the principle of the conditions of existence.
Similarly the three great laws of mechanics, known under the name of the laws of Kepler, of Galileo and of Newton, must be universalised and become encyclopÆdic for they are applicable to all the orders of phenomena.80 The law of Kepler, in the first place, expresses the spontaneous tendency of all natural phenomena to persevere indefinitely in their state, if no disturbing influence supervenes; a tendency whence are derived inertia in mechanics, habit in living bodies, and the conservative instinct in societies. The law of Galileo which reconciles every common movement with the various particular movements, applies to all the organic and inorganic phenomena. For, in any system, we can always ascertain the independence of the several active or passive mutual relations with regard to any action which is exactly common to the various parts, whatever may be their kind and degree. Finally the universal character of Newton’s law (reaction is equal to action), is evident at first sight. It is accidentally, not essentially, that these laws have at first been mechanical laws. They could have been equally attained by the study of biological or social phenomena. If the science of mechanics was the first to formulate them it is because it has for its object the less complicated phenomena.
A complete and rational system of encyclopÆdic laws would realise the “philosophia prima” which Bacon dimly foresaw. In the actual condition of the sciences this would probably be a rash undertaking. Comte attempted it in the fourth volume of the Politique positive.81 One can hardly say that the trial was a decisive one. It is true that at that moment Comte was already entirely taken up with religious preoccupations.
However, the encyclopÆdic laws are destined to play a part in the positive philosophy of nature, which may be compared, in some respects, with that of the categories in Aristotle’s philosophy. They are the most general forms under which the phenomena given in experience become objects of scientific thought for us. As in each class of phenomena we determine laws, principles of order and of harmony, so the encyclopÆdic laws make the order and the harmony of the different classes among themselves. They are, so to speak, the laws of laws. Through them the human mind which has already reached unity of method, may some day reach a certain unity of knowledge. But this unity will always differ by two essential characteristics from that which metaphysicians have pursued up to the present time: it will respect the irreducibleness of the various fundamental sciences, and it will remain relative, both by the conditions of the object and by those of the subject, upon which it equally depends.
Our conception of universal order “results from a necessary concurrence between that which is without us, and that which is within. The laws, that is to say the general facts, are never anything but hypotheses confirmed by observation. If harmony in no way existed outside us our mind would be entirely incapable of conceiving it, but in no case is it verified so much as we suppose it to be.”82 We neither make order nor perceive it entirely. By long and arduous labour the human intellect gradually disengages the concept of order out of the facts that come crowding within its reach. It is an imperfect, contingent, perishable order, in a word, an order, relative like the mind itself. It is order nevertheless, and a necessary condition for ethics as well as for science.
CHAPTER VI
SCIENCE (CONTINUED)—POSITIVE LOGIC
Logic, says Comte, almost in the terms of Descartes, is the sole portion of ancient philosophy which is capable of still presenting some appearance of utility.83 And does even this appearance correspond to a very solid reality?
If we distinguish, according to custom, formal logic from applied logic, Comte in his system will find no place for the former, which establishes a priori the principles and the mechanism of reasoning. As to the principles, which are the laws of the understanding, positive philosophy has shown that the only way to discover them is to study the products of the human intellect, that is to say, the development of the sciences. And it is again from these sciences that, through observation, the theory of reasoning must be drawn. Formal logic, as metaphysicians have constructed it, especially develops the dialectical faculty, that is to say, an aptitude more harmful than useful, for proving without finding.84 Descartes said the same, in speaking of the syllogism, that it serves more for explaining to others the things which we know, than to discover those which we ignore.
All the utility which we can attribute to the study of logic properly so-called is found again more extended, more varied, more complete, more luminous, in mathematical studies. The mechanism of reasoning is everywhere the same. Whatever may be the phenomena which are the objects of a science the nature of deduction and induction never changes in them. Thus in practising these forms of reasoning in the most simple and the most general phenomena, those whose science is most advanced, we learn to know them with the most entire evidence, and in all the generality of which they are capable. Nowhere is reasoning so exact, so rigorous as in mathematics. They accustom the mind not to feed upon false reasons, and it is in that school that men ought to learn the theory and the practice of reasoning.
But, if the old pure logic is thus replaced by mathematics, must we not at least preserve the general study of the processes used in the various sciences, which is called methodology? Has not Comte himself insisted upon the irreducibleness of the several orders of laws to one another, and in particular to the mathematical laws? Is not the legitimate object of logic to define the processes of investigation and of proof particular to each of the fundamental sciences?
Comte does not think so. This applied logic does not appear to him to be more indispensable than formal logic. In the first place, the former, in fact, supposes the latter. It proceeds from the same philosophical conception. In order to determine a priori, in a general way, the rules of the application of the mind to its various scientific objects, we should first have to possess a knowledge of the laws of the mind. But, according to Comte, this knowledge can only be obtained by the observation of the methods which the mind has indeed followed. Moreover, no art is taught abstractedly, not even the art of reasoning well, nor that of experimenting, of finding hypotheses, etc. It has never been sufficient to know the rules of versification in order to write true poetry. A deep knowledge of the rules of method will not lead to scientific discoveries.85 Whatever we learn of an art, it is practice that has taught us. Nothing here can replace time, natural disposition, and experience.
Methods then cannot be studied apart from the positive researches in which men of learning make use of them. Even supposing that in the far future, when the sciences are advanced, the methods and their applications could be taught by themselves, the study would run a great risk of yielding poor results.86 Up to the present time all that has been said of the method, considered in the abstract, reduces itself to vague generalities. When, in logic, we have thoroughly established that all our science of nature must be founded upon observation, that we must proceed sometimes from facts to principles, sometimes from principles to facts, and a few other similar aphorisms, we know far less of the method than the man who has studied a single one of the positive sciences somewhat deeply, even without any philosophical purpose. It is thus that Eclectic philosophers have imagined to make their psychology into a science, thinking they could understand and practice the positive method because they had read the Novum Organum and the Discours de la MÉthode. But did not Bacon, Pascal, Descartes, and the other great scientific leaders insist on the uselessness of abstract considerations about method? They never separated the rules they formulated from their application to positive research.
Comte himself, their successor and their heir, uses no other language. In his long study of the fundamental sciences he never fails to distinguish the contents of the science from its method, what he calls “the scientific point of view and the logical point of view.” But, while distinguishing them, he considers that they are correlated and closely allied among themselves. He no more conceives method as separated from the science which he studies, than science as separated from its method. Both constitute one intellectual reality seen under two aspects closely allied to one another.87 To conclude, traditional logic is fast disappearing. In its theoretical parts it is superannuated like the metaphysical philosophy whence it proceeds. In its applied parts it is barren if separated from the practice of the sciences.
II.
There is however a positive logic, and in it we can also distinguish a theoretical and a practical part.
The theoretical part deals with logical laws. These laws which, finally, govern the intellectual world, are invariable, and common not only to all time and places, but also to all subjects whatever without any distinction even between those which Comte calls real and chimerical. They are observed, fundamentally, even in dreams.88 But this universality of logical laws is not understood by him in the sense in which the rationalist philosophers understand it. Comte is only concerned with a permanence and continuity purely historical in character. The mind of man, like the rest of his nature remains identical with itself, through the diversity of epochs and situations. It evolves without changing fundamentally “without other differences than those of gradually developed maturity and experience.”
Ancient philosophy claimed to discover the intellectual laws by reflection, as if the mind could think and at the same time see itself thinking, reason and observe its reasoning Comte rejects this introspective method, which yields no scientific results. If we apply the method of positive investigation to the intellectual phenomena as to all the others, two ways only are open. We can look at it from the static point of view, that is to say, study the conditions upon which these phenomena depend, and refer the phenomena to them as we refer generally the function to its organ. In this sense the study of the intellectual phenomena belongs to biology. Or else, from the dynamic point of view, we can consider these phenomena in their evolution, by observing the successive phases through which they pass. And since the life of the individual is too short for this “progress” to be appreciable, it must be studied in the life of the species. So understood, the science of the intellectual laws comes within the sphere of sociology.
Now, higher biology which deals with moral and intellectual phenomena, has only just been founded by Cabanis and Gall. Comte discovered that it could not be constituted as a science without the help of sociology. It is then to this newly born study that the search after intellectual laws in every way belongs.
Positive logic abstains, as we see, from speculating upon the leading principles of knowledge, principles of identity, of contradiction of causality, etc. These kinds of principles are not objects of examination or of discussion. Comte upon this point is in full accord with the Scottish school. No positive science questions its own principles, for how can we submit the very principles of all reasoning to criticism? Nothing is less in accordance with the positive spirit than an attempt of this kind. It is simply metaphysical and has no chance of success.
The intellectual laws of which the research is positive are such as the law of the three states (which is the most general of all), or such, for instance, as these: the human mind always makes an effort to place its conceptions in accordance with its observations; in every case the human mind forms the simplest hypothesis, etc. These laws, which are derived from the nature of the human mind, and whose action has always been felt, could only be discovered and formulated quite recently. For biology and sociology, to which they are related, could not be constituted before the more simple fundamental sciences were sufficiently advanced. To reach a scientific knowledge of the intellectual laws, to found a “positive logic,” nothing less was needed than the long evolution whose term is marked by Comte’s philosophy.
Applied logic, or theory of method, also finds a new meaning in the positive doctrine. Comte does not fall into the mistake which he has criticised. He does not propose to teach an art ex professo, and he will not formulate the rules which positive research must follow in order to be productive. Here again Comte will found his doctrine upon the intellectual evolution of humanity.
In the first place, like the sciences, the positive methods are collective works, “the work of the species gradually developed in the long sequence of centuries.” Comte considers as impertinent the pretensions of some modern scientists, who pride themselves upon having invented the comparative method in biology. As if Aristotle had not already practised it! And Aristotle had not been the first to do so. The processes of the positive methods do not reveal themselves all at once, under a perfect and final form. They gradually come to light during a long period of groping. The human mind notices the processes which have succeeded in simple cases. It endeavours to generalize them, and tests them in new and slightly more complex cases. It seeks for the reason why in certain cases the end is reached, in others it is missed. Method is thus insensibly formed by a kind of practical induction. Its essential processes are, like the leading ideas in the sciences, “inspirations from universal wisdom.” The office of great men—and this is sufficient for them to earn our gratitude—is to recognise the value and the fecundity of these inspirations, to set them at work, and especially to endow them with an often indefinite extension by separating them from the concrete conditions in which they were at first manifested.
Thus positive philosophy, less ambitious than its predecessors, does not take upon itself to legislate upon method. But neither does it confine itself to the mere duty of making statements, that is to say to simply register the processes made use of in the sciences. Is not its proper function to represent in human knowledge the “universalizing mind” which in Comte’s language is synonymous with government? He himself calls the fifty-eighth lesson of the Cours de philosophie positive his Discours de la MÉthode.89 He rises above the necessarily peculiar position which belongs to specialists, and places himself at the central and universal point of view which is proper to the philosopher. Thence he embraces under one point of view, the entire hierarchy of the fundamental sciences. Out of this well-ordered whole, he watches as they arise, first the essence of the positive method, and then the relations of the various elements in this method to one another.
In its essence, the positive method is one, as science is one. For it ever tends towards the same end: the establishment of the invariable relations which constitute the effective laws of all observable events, “thus capable of being rationally foreseen from one another.” The positive method proceeds to this by means of a threefold abstraction. It first separates the practical requirements from theoretical knowledge, to be only concerned with the latter, it seeks for the laws of phenomena without troubling itself, at least provisionally, with any possible applications. It also puts aside Æsthetic considerations, which ought not to intervene in scientific investigation. Finally—and here is the condition for the very existence of science—the positive method always carefully distinguishes between the abstract and the concrete point of view. It studies not beings, but phenomena. Even in the simplest cases, in astronomy for instance, no general law can be established so long as bodies are considered in their concrete existence. The principal phenomenon has had to be detached, so to speak, so as to submit it alone to an abstract study, afterwards allowing us to return successfully to the consideration of more complex realities. This is what the ancients had known how to do in geometry; and this is what Comte himself has done in the most complex of all sciences, in sociology. Instead of stopping at the concrete reality of history, he determined, by a bold abstraction, the law of the essential movement in human society “leaving to subsequent labours the care of bringing apparent anomalies into line with it.”90
In the main, these general characteristics of the positive method bring it singularly near to the Cartesian method. Comte’s “Threefold gradual abstraction” seems indeed to have for its end, like Descartes’ analysis, to go back to what is simplest and easiest to know, and then to come down, by a synthetic and progressive advance, towards the reality which is given to us in experience. The one and the other of these methods witness, here, to an effort towards generalising the spirit of the mathematical method. Let us never forget, writes Comte, that the general spirit of positive philosophy was first formed by the culture of mathematics, and that we must necessarily go back so far, in order to know this spirit in its elementary purity. The mathematical processes and formulÆ are rarely capable of being applied to the effective study of natural phenomena, when we wish to go beyond the most extreme simplicity in the real conditions of the problems. But “the true mathematical spirit, so distinct from the algebraical spirit, with which it is too often confounded, is on the contrary, constantly of value.”91
We must therefore not take too much notice of Comte’s urging and bitterness, when he criticises the narrowness of mind and the “imphilosophisme” of geometers.92 Undoubtedly he never tires of safeguarding the higher sciences against the encroachments of mathematics, and of showing the impossibility of a philosophy founded exclusively upon their principles. But he none the less recognises that this science possesses the double privilege of having furnished historically, the first model of the positive method, and of presenting still to-day its finest and purest examples.
However, Comte, even more than Descartes, takes care not to transform the mathematical method into a universal method by a simple generalisation. Nothing would be more contrary to the positive spirit. For the development of this spirit the study of mathematics is a necessary introduction. It is, however, but an introduction. The use which mathematics can make of deduction, on account of the extreme simplicity of their subject produces a very false idea of the power of our understanding, and disposes us to reason more than to observe. Far from preparing us for the method which must be followed for the study of the other orders of natural phenomena, the exclusive habit of mathematics tends rather to draw us from it. In a word it is a dangerous error to take this “initial degree of sound logical education for the final degree.”93
In order to grasp the positive method in its entirety, we must not consider only mathematics, but the whole series of the fundamental sciences. This method, always fundamentally identical, takes particular determinations in adapting itself to each new order of phenomena. Each of these orders introduces, so to speak, the use of some of the principal processes of which the method is composed, and “it is always at their source that these notions of universal logic must be examined. Thus the mathematical science is the one which gives the best knowledge of the elementary conditions of positive science. In it all the artifices of the art of reasoning, from the most spontaneous to the most sublime are continually practised with far more variety and fecundity than anywhere else. Astronomy then teaches us, in its initial purity, the art of observation accompanied by that of forming hypotheses. It shows in what the rational provision of phenomena consists, and that science always ends in assimilation or in combination. Physics initiate us to the theory of experimenting, chemistry to the general art of nomenclatures, the science of organic bodies to the theory of classifications. Biology specially makes use of the comparative method, and finally with sociology appears the “transcendant” process which Comte calls the historical method.94
Positive logic extends to all the fundamental sciences the use of the processes at first peculiar to each one of them. Each great logical artifice, once studied in the portion of natural philosophy which shows its most spontaneous and most complete development, can afterwards be applied, with the necessary modifications, to the perfecting of the other sciences. For instance, the comparative method belongs in the first place to biology. But, when brought back to its principle and generalised, it becomes a precious instrument for sociology, for physics, and even for mathematics. In every science, the method is completed by the auxiliary use of the processes whose power and whose sphere of action have been made known by the other sciences. By these mutual loans, in each one of them, the positive method reaches its maximum of production.
To be cultivated in the most rational manner possible, the sciences must then be subject to the direction of a general system of positive philosophy, “the common basis and the uniform combining element of all truly scientific labours.”95 The scientific man must at the same time be a philosopher, since philosophy alone puts him in possession of all the resources of positive method. For instance, this philosophy will show the geometer that he must at least have a general knowledge of biology and of sociology. Biology will teach him the comparative method, of which he can make use when occasion offers, and sociology by showing him the history of his science in the general development of the human mind, will help him better to understand it. If the geometers had a more philosophical mind, their science would be better taught. The great conceptions of Descartes, of Leibnitz, of Lagrange, would be more intelligently explained and brought to light.
If it is useful for the geometer to have studied the other fundamental sciences, it is not less indispensable for other learned men to have gone through the study of mathematics. As an “initial” discipline, this science can be neglected by no one. It is the common school of positivity for all minds. It is therefore to be regretted that the scientific education of future physiologists should be mainly made up of literary studies and of a few notions of physics and chemistry. The more complex the phenomena whose laws they will have to seek, the more necessary will it be for them to have become familiarised in mathematics and in astronomy, with the precise idea of scientific truth. And, as a matter of fact, until this century, the study of the exact sciences had always been regarded as a preliminary condition for that of the natural sciences. Buffon and Lamarck in their day had still received this discipline. If it has been so difficult to constitute social science, it comes, among other reasons, from the lack of scientific education among those who, up to the present time, have wished to study social phenomena. Where, for instance, could economists have found the scientific idea of what constitutes natural laws, ignoring as most of them did not only biology which was being formed beside them, but even the sciences which had already reached a positive state?
The exclusive cultivation of a single science is always a danger for the intellect. Nevertheless, so long as the chief task of the positive spirit was to disorganise the system of beliefs which constituted theological and metaphysical philosophy, the speciality of the works and of the methods was an inconvenience of secondary importance. It mattered little that the discoveries of the astronomers, the physicians, the biologists should be more or less co-ordinated and directed by a universal positive method, so long as they did their work and prepared the future. But, when the positive spirit had to become organic instead of critical, when it had to substitute a new philosophy to the one which it had overthrown, then it was obliged to subordinate the special processes which it had made use of until then to a single universal method. Should the “scientific anarchy” have lasted, the progress of the positive spirit would undoubtedly have led to the discrediting of the metaphysical rÉgime, but without replacing it, and consequently without having done with it. By rejecting any new general discipline, modern scientific men would unknowingly tend to re-establish the system which they seemed to have shattered for ever.
In a word, the triumph of the positive method, to be final, presupposes the acceptance of the positive philosophy by all men of learning. The old logic was bound by the narrowest ties to the metaphysical doctrines which were then dominant. In the same way positive logic is bound up with positive philosophy. Speaking more precisely, it is an expression of this very philosophy.
III.
Is the general method of positive philosophy objective, or subjective, or both at once? As we know, this question has raised passionate discussion among positivists.96 Outside the school it has been solved by some historians as if Auguste Comte, at the end of his life, had gone back to a doctrine very different from the one set forth by him in the Cours de philosophie positive. It suffices, however, to distinguish, with him, two successive points of view, to see how the two methods, antagonistic in a certain sense, can, in another one, be very well reconciled.
If we only consider the process followed by our mind in the explanation of natural phenomena, that is to say the object of positive philosophy taken in the strict sense of the word, it is true that two opposite methods are found face to face. The subjective method goes from the consideration of man to that of the world, the objective method goes from the knowledge of the world to that of man. The first gives rise to theological and metaphysical philosophy, the latter to positive philosophy. The incompatibility of the two philosophies proceeds from that of the methods, which is irreducible. It allows us to say: “This will kill that.”97 In this sense, the final establishment of the objective method, which is completed by the foundation of sociology, implies the exclusion, also final, of the subjective method.
But “having reached its full maturity, true philosophy should inevitably tend to reconcile these two antagonistic methods,” wrote Comte in 1838, in the third volume of the Cours de philosophie positive, that is to say, long before the time of what has been wrongly called his second philosophy.98 This reconciliation will be accomplished by means of the distinction between the special point of view of the sciences, and the universal point of view of philosophy. The scientific investigation of the laws of natural phenomena can only be made by means of the objective method: Comte never varies in his thought on this point. But these sciences are but the parts in a greater whole, for which the subjective method alone is suitable.
Two arguments especially prove this, one belonging to the logical, the other to the moral and the religious order.
The supreme requirement of our intellect is unity. Shall we ever reach this unity by using the objective method in the sciences? Evidently not. Even in each order of phenomena separately considered we do not see how to reduce the laws which we know to a single law of a more general character. And what are the laws known to us compared with those which elude our search, and which perhaps may do so for ever? Considered in its object, each one of our sciences reaches, so to speak, to infinity, far beyond our limited horizon. If then, in order to satisfy us, a single conception of the world is necessary, we shall never obtain such a conception from the objective point of view. But if we change our point of view, if we refer the whole of the sciences to man, or better, to humanity, as a centre, we shall then be able to realise the unity which we seek. This is precisely what is made possible by sociology, by subordinating the hierarchy of the positive sciences to the final science of humanity.
To consider the other fundamental sciences as “indispensable preliminaries,”99 to represent the evolution which has brought them forth in turn as the very history of human progress; to verify the law of the three states in all our beliefs, and in all our knowledge; finally, to control all scientific research from the sociological point of view: this is what Comte understands by the conciliation of the two methods.
The whole development of positive science from mathematics to sociology, lies between the new use which is made of subjective method and that which was spontaneously made of it by theological philosophy. When theological philosophy considered the knowledge of man and that of the world as interdependent, the instinct which animated it was a just one. But it was imagining instead of observing. It represented the world as filled with “causes” analogous to the will of man and equally capricious. The new subjective method rests, on the contrary, upon the very results of the positive sciences, brought to a synthesis in sociology. It takes as established that the intellectual and moral phenomena depend upon the biological laws, and that the biological laws themselves are subordinate to the laws of the inorganic milieu. But, since the “final systematisation of all these laws”100 must always remain impossible from the objective point of view, the new subjective method undertakes it from the point of view of humanity as a centre.
We can thus distinguish two great periods in the intellectual advance of humanity. During the first, the positive spirit successively applies the scientific, that is to say objective, method, to higher and higher orders of phenomena. The foundation of sociology marks the term of this progress. Then the second period begins. The positive spirit from special has become universal, from analytical synthetical. It reacts upon the particular sciences, and henceforth makes use of the “regenerated” subjective method, to govern the whole of them.
From the moral and religious point of view, once sociology has been constituted, and positive philosophy has been established, the functions proper to religion appear. The intellect recognises that its end does not lie within itself, and that it is incapable of determining its own rule and aim. It submits to a directing authority, which will guide its efforts and fix their object. To act from affection, and to think in order to act. But if the mind understands that it is destined to be used in the service of humanity, it sees at the same time that in the complete positive doctrine, which contains religion, the objective method gives precedence to the subjective, or rather that they mutually support each other. If we were pure intellects we should probably always go from the world to man. But in us the intellect is only a means. Love is the principle, action is the end; and it is to man, finally, that our study of the world must be referred.
Towards the end of his life, Comte replaced the logic of the mind, “especially guided by artificial signs,” by the logic of the heart “founded upon the direct connection of the feelings.”101 We shall not here insist upon a conception which is closely allied to his religious system. We will only conclude that, from the philosophical point of view the two methods objective and subjective, in Comte’s thought, are easily reconciled, provided that both have been “systematically regenerated.” Now, the regeneration is obtained as soon as sociology is founded. On the one hand, as a matter of fact, it furnishes the sciences formed by the objective method with a principle of unity, since henceforth they are all subordinated to the single science of Humanity. And, on the other hand, the subjective method acquires the positivity which it lacked, for sociology has substituted to the arbitrary “individual subject,” the “universal subject,” that is to say again, Humanity.
