Every new system of philosophy, however original in appearance, is more or less directly related to the doctrines which have preceded it. But it is also connected with more general conditions in a manner no less close, if not so immediately obvious. It depends upon a whole set of social conditions. The influence of the religious, political, economical, intellectual phenomena, in a word of the contemporary milieu upon this system is as indisputable as its own influence upon the milieu. It is therefore not enough to study it as a self-sufficient whole. This whole which is in itself but a part, must be restored to its place within the greater whole which alone explains its essential characteristics.

This rule of historical method, which Comte likes to recall, applies very well to his own system. In order to reach as complete an understanding as possible of his doctrine, to appreciate exactly its general orientation, to understand the importance which the author attaches in it to this or that part, the study of the text will not suffice. We must further take into account the historical circumstances in which the doctrine found its birth, the general movement of contemporary ideas, and the manifold influences which have reacted upon the mind of the philosopher.

Now one great fact, above all others, dominates the period in which the positive philosophy appeared. It is the French Revolution, as Comte expressly states: without it, neither the theory of progress, nor consequently social science, nor consequently again positive philosophy would have been possible. Was it not, moreover, inevitable that this extraordinary social upheaval should by reflex action have determined a vast and prolonged movement in philosophical and political speculation? The effects of this reflex action varied according to the value and the originality of the minds which experienced them. But in the greatest as in the most mediocre we recognise infallibly certain common features. For instance, men and women, in the rising generation at the beginning of the XIX. century, never fail to put the same question to themselves: “What social institutions should be established after the Revolution?” and by this all understand not only the political form of government, but the very principles of social order: a problem which appeared as urgent from the practical point of view, as it was supreme from the theoretical point of view. It is this problem in various forms which preoccupies Chateaubriand as well as Fourier and Saint-Simon, and Joseph de Maistre as well as Cousin and Comte.

All agree upon the first point. We must “reconstruct.” An “organic” period must succeed the “critical” period which has just come to an end. According to Saint Simon’s striking expression, humanity is not made to inhabit ruins. The revolutionary storm had been so formidable, the din so deafening, the social back-wash so violent, that no one exactly measured the effect which had been produced. Many institutions which had only been shaken seemed to be overthrown. A good part of the old rÉgime had even gone through the crisis without being too greatly damaged, and had survived. But this fact, which was very well appreciated by the men of 1850, could not yet be discovered by the first generation of the century. It conscientiously believed that the old rÉgime had crumbled altogether, and that the task either of restoring it, or of again laying down the very bases of society belonged to it. In this the first generation remained faithful to the spirit of the Revolution, which had considered itself as an effort to institute an entirely new social and political system, a thought in which the civilised world had shared. Now, in spite of the labours of the revolutionary assemblies, in spite of the power and of the great talent which the Convention had at its command, this ambitious hope had not been realised. The question remained open after the Directoire and after the Empire. When the old rÉgime was supposed to have been destroyed, how was society to be “reorganised”?

Thus, at the opening of the XIX. century, philosophical speculation was at first to be directed towards the religious and social problems. Undoubtedly the influence of the uninterrupted advance of the positive sciences was also felt at the same time. A study of Auguste Comte’s system could hardly fail to recognise the fact. But, even with Comte, scientific interest, however active it may be, is subordinated to the social interest. What he asks of philosophy is the rational settlement of the bases of modern society. Thus, he means to discover the elements of a religion which can be substituted to Catholicism, whose mission he considers as at an end.

“The XIX. century,” Ranke has said, “is especially a century of restoration.” A deep saying, which exactly expresses one of the leading features in the historical physiognomy of this century. It is precisely thus that it was conceived by those who inaugurated it. Such indeed is the main tendency of the greater number of philosophical doctrines which have expressed its most intimate characteristics. Only, as is generally the case, this restoration absorbs and consolidates a large part of the results acquired during the crisis. At the same time new problems, raised especially by the development of industry in its larger aspects, made clear-sighted men feel that the revolutionary period, however desirable it might be to bring it to a close, was really only beginning.

II.

Like many of his contemporaries Auguste Comte thought himself singled out for the mission of formulating the principle of “social reorganisation.” But this is where he differs from them. Each of the reformers begins by proposing his own solution of the social problem, and all his efforts only tend to justify it. As this problem is the most urgent one in their eyes, it is also the only one which they have put directly to themselves. Now this method, according to Comte, is a bad one, and in following it they court certain failure. For a social problem is such that its solution cannot be obtained immediately; other problems, more theoretical in character, must be solved beforehand. It is therefore these which must first be dealt with, if we seek anything else than the lengthening of the history of political dreams and of social chimeras. “Institutions,” Comte says, “depend on morals, and morals, in their turn, depend on beliefs.” Every scheme of new institutions will therefore be useless so long as morals have not been “reorganised,” and so long as, to reach this end, a general system of opinions has not been founded, which are accepted by all minds as true, as was, for instance, the system of Catholic dogma in Europe in the Middle Ages. Therefore, either the social problem admits of no solution—and Comte does not stop at this pessimistic hypothesis,—or the solution sought for supposes that a new philosophy shall have been previously established. This is why Comte wishes to be at first only a philosopher. In 1824 he writes “I regard all discussions upon institutions as pure nonsense, until the spiritual reorganisation of society has been brought about, or at least is very far advanced.”1

Comte’s originality will therefore lie in taking from science and philosophy the principles upon which depends the social reorganisation, which is the real end of his efforts. While having the same aim as the reformers of his time, he will follow a different path. It is indeed a polity which he also claims to found, but this polity is positive: it rests upon ethics and philosophy both equally positive. Undoubtedly the polity is the raison d’Être of the system, which Comte has constructed for it. But, without the system, the Polity would remain arbitrary. It would lack authority and that which would make it legitimate. Philosophy is no less indispensable to the foundation of politics, than are politics to the completion and unification of philosophy.

Whence comes it that Comte has put this great problem, which preoccupied all the minds of his time, in a form which belongs to him alone? We cannot here enter into the detailed biographical study which would throw some light upon this question. Let us only recall that Comte was born in a Catholic Royalist family. From the age of thirteen, he tells us, he had broken with the political convictions and the religious beliefs of his own people. Perhaps, however, the trace of these beliefs was less completely effaced than he himself thought. During the whole of his life he professed the liveliest admiration for Catholicism. On his own confession he was especially inspired in this by Joseph de Maistre; but, if he so much appreciated the book du Pape, did not his great sympathy partly spring from impressions of childhood indelibly stamped upon a passionate and sensitive nature?

Whatever may be the case, the first subject which seriously occupied his mind was mathematics. Being admitted to the Ecole polytechnique a year before the usual age, he began to study the natural sciences. At the same time he “meditates” upon Montesquieu and Condorcet. He approaches philosophy properly so called by reading the Scottish philosophers, Ferguson, Adam Smith, Hume, and he sees very well that the last one is far above the others. Having left the Ecole polytechnique, he remains in Paris, and while giving lessons to earn his living, he completes his scientific education with Delambre, de Blainville, and the Baron ThÉnard. He reads assiduously Fontenelle, d’Alembert, Diderot, and especially Condorcet who has distilled and clarified the philosophy of the XVIII. century. While studying Descartes and the great mathematicians who came after him, he also follows attentively the labours of naturalists and of biologists, of Lamarck, for instance, of Cuvier, of Gall, of Cabanis, of Bichat, Broussais and of so many others. He understands the philosophical importance of these new sciences, as already pointed out by Diderot. But for all that he does not neglect historical and social studies. He has read the ideologists, among whom he especially esteemed Destutt de Tracy. Without giving up Montesquieu or Condorcet, he studies the traditionalists: M. de Bonald, this “energetic thinker” and, more than the others, Joseph de Maistre who made the deepest and most enduring impression upon his mind.

Before knowing Saint-Simon then—and his correspondence with Valat testifies to the fact—Comte already possessed a large portion of the materials for his future system. Up to this time his labours had borne upon two distinct orders of subjects. The one scientific proper (mathematics, physics and chemistry, natural sciences) the other more properly political (history, politics, and social questions).

In 1818 Comte meets Saint-Simon. He is attracted and surrenders himself almost unreservedly. For four years he works with Saint-Simon. He loves and venerates him as a master. He feeds upon his ideas, and collaborates in his labours and enterprises. He calls himself “pupil of M. Saint-Simon.” However, from 1822 he detaches himself from this greatly-admired master, and in 1824 the rupture is complete and final. What can have happened?

The grievances brought forward by Comte are only of secondary importance. As a matter of fact master and pupil were bound to separate sooner or later. There was a radical incompatibility between those two minds. Saint-Simon, marvellously inventive and original, throws out a multitude of new ideas and views, of which many will be fruitful. But he quickly affirms, and proves little. He has not the patience to continue working long at the same subject, or to probe it to the bottom in an orderly way. Comte, on the contrary, thinks with Descartes, that method is essential to science, and that “logical coherence” is the surest sign of truth. He could not long remain satisfied with Saint-Simon’s disconnected essays. He could even, without dishonesty, turn to account the brilliant but disorderly intuition in which his master abounds and believe that his own doctrine alone gave those disconnected essays scientific value, because his doctrine alone was in a position to systematise them and to connect them with their principles.

It would therefore seem that we can admit at the same time that Saint-Simon’s influence upon Comte was considerable, and, on the other hand, that Comte’s philosophical originality is no less certain. Saint-Simon’s influence would chiefly have consisted: 1. in suggesting to Comte a certain number of general ideas and of views of detail, especially for his philosophy of history; 2. in showing him how the two orders of labours which he had been following until then were to blend into a single one, through the creation of a science which would be social, and consequently of a polity which would be scientific. Would this synthesis of the two orders of studies which Comte had undertaken side by side have been produced in his mind, had he not known Saint-Simon? In any case it would have been produced more slowly. Let us at least leave Saint-Simon the credit which Comte himself granted him, that of having “started” his disciple upon the line best suited to his genius.

The intellectual intimacy between them could never be perfect. If Comte entered entirely into Saint-Simon’s ideas, (without adopting them all, however), in return there was an aspect in Comte’s thought which Saint-Simon scarcely discerned through the lack of a sufficiently strong scientific education. It is enough to see how he speaks of the law of universal attraction. Comte must have been scandalised by it. So, at the very moment when he submits with most enthusiasm and youthful confidence to Saint-Simon’s influence he does not neglect his special mathematical studies. “My labours,” he writes to Valat on the 28th of September, 1819, “are and will be in two orders, scientific and political. I should set little value upon the scientific studies, did I not continually think of their utility to the human race. As well then amuse myself in deciphering very complicated puzzles. I have a supreme aversion for scientific labours whose utility, either direct or remote, I do not see. But I also confess, in spite of all my philanthropy, that I should put far less eagerness into political labours, if they did not stimulate the intellect, if they did not bring my brain strongly into play, in a word: if they were not difficult.”2 A year later, in sending a parcel of political tracts to his friend, in which he distinguishes what is in his own manner and what is from Saint-Simon, he says that he is besides very eagerly occupied with mathematical work. He wants to take part in the competition opened by the Institut; and his ambition is soon to enter the Academie des Sciences.

From 1822, in the celebrated pamphlet entitled Plan des travaux scientifiques nÉcessaires pour rÉorganiser la sociÉtÉ, the synthesis between the two orders of labours is accomplished in Comte’s mind, thanks to the double discovery of the classification of the sciences and of the great law of social dynamics. We know that this work was, if not the principal reason, at least the occasion of the rupture between Comte and Saint-Simon. It is the moment which Comte himself considers to have been decisive in the history of his mind. The whole of his future doctrine was essentially contained in this pamphlet. The preface added by Saint-Simon shows that he did not understand its full bearings. Comte is henceforth his own master. At length he has found what for several years he had been seeking without being clearly conscious of it; and the rest of his life is now consecrated to the work which he has conceived and of which he has just outlined the plan. Since he has established a philosophical hierarchy of the sciences, whose summit is crowned by social physics, he has no further occasion to ask how he can conciliate his scientific labours with his political studies.

“In the interval of my great philosophical labours,” he writes on the 8th September, 1824, “I propose to publish a few more special works upon the fundamental points in mathematics, which I have long conceived, and which I have at last been able to connect with my general ideas of positive philosophy: so that I shall be free to give myself up to them without breaking through the unity of my thought, which is the great condition for the life of a thinker.”3 And in a very remarkable letter to de Blainville, on the 27th February, 1826, he explains in the clearest way the generating idea of his system. “My conception of politics as social physics, and the law which I have discovered upon the three successive states of the human mind are but one and the same thought, considered from the two distinct points of view of method and of science. That being established, I shall show that this single thought directly and completely satisfies the great actual social need, considered under its two aspects of theoretical need and practical need. I will therefore show that what on one hand tends to consolidate the future by re-establishing order and discipline among intellects, tends, on the other hand to regulate the present, as far as possible, by furnishing statesmen with rational lines to work upon.”4

Henceforth Comte’s life was to be but the methodical execution of his programme. In turn, with perfect regularity, he wrote and published the philosophy of the sciences and of history, the ethics, the positive polity and the positive religion. Does this mean that Comte’s thought remained stationary? Most certainly not. It evolved from 1822 to 1857. But this evolution followed a curve which an attentive observer might have sketched beforehand after having read the Plan des travaux scientifiques nÉcÉssaires pour rÉorganiser la sociÉtÉ. Comte had but one system, not two. From the opuscules of his twentieth year to the SynthÈse subjective of his last year, it is the development of one and the same conception.

III.

The unity of the doctrine has been disputed. Comte himself distinguished two successive “careers” in his life. In the first, he says, without affected modesty, he was Aristotle: in the second he will be St. Paul. The founder of the philosophy did but pave the way for the organiser of the religion. “I have systematically devoted my life to draw at last from real science the necessary basis of a sound philosophy, according to which I was afterwards to construct the true religion.”5

Many of Comte’s disciples, even some of the more illustrious, and at first more fervent, such as LittrÉ, refused to follow him in his “second career.” Their admiration for the philosopher could not persuade them to submit to the pontiff.

LittrÉ and his friends were undoubtedly free to follow Comte only up to a certain point, and, while accepting his philosophy, to reject his religion. If they had stopped there, Comte could but have blamed their want of logic and himself have disowned “those incomplete positivists, who are not more intelligent because they call themselves intellectual.” But it is they, on the contrary, who accused Comte of inconsistency and of self contradiction. Comte, they said, betrayed his own principles. The “subjective method” in his second career ruined the precious results he had obtained in the first by his objective method. In refusing to go beyond the Cours de philosophic positive they remained more faithful to Comte’s master-thought than Comte himself. In a word, they defended true positivism against its misguided founder.

Comte answered these attacks, which were all the more painful to him because they came from those whom he had long regarded as his faithful disciples and his best friends. In the course of this work it will appear that those attacks were unfounded.6 Comte’s two methods are not opposed to each other. They complete each other, as do also the two “careers” which they characterize.

It is true that during the last two years of his life an increasingly marked tinge of mysticism spread over his thought and his writings. His brief friendship with Mme. de Vaux, and the death of this “holy” friend had stirred very strong emotions within him, and these emotions with him were transformed into ideas which came to be incorporated into his system. At the same time he laboured to organise the Religion of Humanity. He claimed to secure for it an authority over souls at least equal to that which had been enjoyed by Catholicism at the period of its greatest power. The exaltation of his sentiments, the preoccupation of the new religion which was to be established, the ever-present consciousness of his sacerdotal mission, all this was necessarily bound to react upon the doctrine which he had founded in the preceding period.

Thus the philosophy of the sciences and of history is no longer presented to us in the same way in the Politique positive as it is in the Cours de philosophie positive. But it is designedly so. The difference in tone and the difference of method in the setting forth is explained, according to Comte, by the different object which he has in view in each of these works.7 Essentially, the philosophical doctrine has not varied. All we can grant to LittrÉ is that by the fact of its being presented from the religious, that is to say from the synthetic, point of view in the Politique positive, it undergoes an apparent alteration. If we only knew the doctrine through this work we should not get the perfectly clear view of it given in the Cours de philosophie positive. Comte himself often advises the reader of the Politique to refer to his “great fundamental treatise.”

But, on the other hand, in carefully reading the Cours, we find numerous indications of the future structure of the Politique positive. Comte might have been content with a reference to the Cours, to answer the objections of his dissenting disciples. He did better. He reprinted at the end of the fourth volume of his Politique positive six pamphlets written in his youth from 1818 to 1826. In them, not only is his philosophy already sketched in its main outlines with sufficient precision; but the idea that philosophy is a preliminary work, a simple prelude and that the essential work, the supreme end, is the positive religion which shall arise upon this philosophy—this idea is the very soul of these pamphlets. The proof is given. Upon the question of the unity of his doctrine Comte wins the case against LittrÉ.

IV.

In his correspondence with Stuart Mill which takes place between 1841 and 1846, that is to say which embraces the end of his first career and the beginning of the second, Comte has repeatedly explained how the two successive portions of his work are connected together, and in what they are distinct. It may not be useless to quote his own words. “The second half of my philosophical life,” he says, “must differ notably from the first, especially in that feeling must take, if not an obvious, at least a real part in it, one as great as that of the intellect. The great work of systematization which has been reserved for our century, must indeed embrace equally, both feelings and ideas as a whole. Truly it was the ideas which had first to be systematized, under pain of failing to bring about a complete regeneration by falling into a more or less vague mysticism. That is why my fundamental work had to appeal almost exclusively to the intellect. It was to be a work of research, and accessorily of discussion, destined to discover and to constitute the true universal principles, in rising by hierarchical degrees from the simplest scientific questions to the highest social speculations.”8 But this being done, Comte passed to the systematisation of the feelings, “a necessary sequel to that of the ideas, and an indispensable basis for that of the institutions.”

It is, therefore, an entirely new work. Comte can imagine without difficulty that it might have been reserved for another than himself. His personal mission might have been limited to the foundation of the philosophy which puts an end to the “mental anarchy.” The ethics and the religion which were to be established upon this philosophy, to put an end to moral and political anarchy, would, in this case, have been the work of one of his successors. Stubborn labour and good fortune allowed Comte to undertake this work himself. But even in 1845, he says how “under the holy influence of Mdme. de Vaux,” he had very clearly seen his two careers as distinct and as one, these two careers of which the second was to transform philosophy into religion, as the first had changed science into philosophy.

The object of the present work is to study Comte’s philosophy properly so called, leaving aside the transformation of this philosophy into religion. The choice which we thus make is not an arbitrary one, since, in order to justify it, we have the distinction formally established by Comte himself, when he admits that his philosophy and his religion might have been the work of two different persons.

It will perhaps be asked in what our position differs from that of LittrÉ, and of the “incomplete positivists.” By the difference, we shall answer, which separates the historical from the dogmatic point of view. It is from the latter point of view that LittrÉ and his friends reject the “systematisation of the feelings,” the subjective method and the religion of Humanity. It is as positivists that they connect themselves with the first half of the doctrine, and that they exclude the second half. But we are here working from the historical point of view, and the historian, while using his right to define the limits of his work has nothing to exclude from the doctrine which he sets forth. As a matter of fact far from claiming with LittrÉ that the second part of Comte’s work weakens and contradicts the first, we have recognised that they both form a whole of which he had drawn out the plan in his early writings, and that he was not wrong in taking as an epigraph for his Politique positive the fine words of the poet-philosopher: What is a great life? A thought of youth fulfilled in riper age.

But then, why only study the first of the two careers, why not respect the integrity of that whole which, according to us, LittrÉ ought not to have disregarded?—We do respect it, for we do not arbitrarily exclude from the doctrine any of the parts which Comte included in it. If we make the philosophy proper the sole object of this study, in it we shall ever have before our minds the idea of the greater whole in which Comte placed it. On this condition alone, our study will be accurate. But once this condition is fulfilled we do not consider that we exceed our right, in concentrating our effort upon the philosophy.

There are two different ways of conceiving the history of a doctrine. The historian may place himself exactly in the mental attitude of the philosopher whom he studies, and think again after him his leading ideas, as indeed he should do; but further, he can judge, just as the philosopher himself does, of the respective importance of problems, without allowing himself to distinguish what is secondary from what is essential. The historical work then assumes the shape of a “monography,” or of an “intellectual biography;” or else, while endeavouring to penetrate to the heart of the system, in order to grasp it in its principles, the historian may nevertheless place himself outside it and above it, and try to “situate” it in the general evolution of philosophy. Then the system is better understood in its entirety, since we can see its relations with the preceding, contemporary and following doctrines. At the same time it becomes possible to separate what is of enduring philosophical interest, from what was merely of secondary or momentary importance, although the author may have judged otherwise. To borrow from Comte a distinction which he often uses, the former of these methods is better suited to erudition, the latter to history.

Applied to the study of his doctrine, the first method would have us to consider positive philosophy with him as simply preparatory to the Religion of Humanity, which was the first and the last goal of his efforts. The writer should undoubtedly give a large place to this “prÉambule indispensable,” to this great fundamental work, in which Comte lays down the intellectual bases of his political and religious system. But he ought nevertheless to subordinate it to this system and place in the front rank the “social reorganisation,” the dogma, the worship and the rÉgime of the Religion of Humanity, the institution of a spiritual power, in fact the whole of that portion of Comte’s work in which he takes up again “the Catholic programme of the Middle Ages,” confident of fulfilling it better than Catholicism itself ever did.

Now it is not in this part of his work that Comte shows himself most original, and that his thought has been most fruitful. The problem of “social reorganisation” does not belong to him alone. Its presence is felt, so to speak, in the air at the time that Comte’s youth was passing away. The common aspirations of the generation which grew up with him were to re-establish order and to fix the conditions of progress, to determine the relations of Ethics to Politics, and to put a new religion in the place apparently left free by Catholicism. The Politique positive which claims to satisfy these aspirations, corresponds in Comte’s system (all proper allowance being made for the substance of the doctrines) to what the Saint Simon school had already attempted to do before 1830. It comes thirty years later than the previous attempts of the same kind, because Comte wanted to found his “social organisation” upon philosophy and morality, and because this speculative effort occupied the better part of his youth and of his maturity. But it originated in fact in the first third of the century as is proved by the pamphlets reprinted by Comte. When it appears between 1850 and 1857, a new generation brought up in other political and social circumstances gives it only passing attention. Other problems command attention more forcibly, and claim a more urgent solution. The philosophy of history no longer excites the same passionate interest. Men are less anxious to see the birth of a new religion, and Catholicism has proved that its vitality is still very strong.

Therefore neither Comte’s genius, nor the precautions which he thought he had taken to place his “social reorganisation” upon a rational basis, could shield it from the common fate which sooner or later overtakes all attempts similar to his own. Undoubtedly the Politique positive and the other works of Comte’s second career are full of just and deep views. Whatever may be the subject upon which a great mind has worked it is always interesting and profitable to see what the reflection of that mind has discovered in it. But, in fact, that portion of his work, which to him was the most important, is far from maintaining this position in the eyes of the historian.

By his Politique positive Comte only represents his generation. By his philosophy properly so called he is a “representative man” of his entire century. Is it necessary to prove this? The intellectual history of our age witnesses to it at every step. Of all the systems which found birth in France in the XIX. century, this one alone found a hearing beyond the frontiers and left a deep impression upon foreign thinkers. Comte’s philosophy was at first received in England and in Holland even with more sympathy than in France. John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, George Lewes, George Elliot and a number of English philosophers and writers drew more or less of their inspiration from it. To this day, it is defended by men of great talent in England. It is true that no German philosopher had the same personal relations with Comte as John Stuart Mill, but as a matter of fact, for thirty years the positive spirit has gradually gained ground in the German Universities. To be convinced of this, it is enough to see how metaphysics are set aside in them and to observe the lines on which the moral and social sciences are taught. In the Latin countries of the two hemispheres Comte’s influence has been exercised with even greater strength, in Spain, in Portugal, in South America; and North America has also its Positivist societies. In his life time, Comte had already found there some of his most devoted disciples. In France the principal “vehicles” of Positivist philosophy have been the works of two writers who, in their time, were those most beloved by the public; Renan and Taine, although they were not positivists, have perhaps done more for the diffusion of the ideas and method of Comte than LittrÉ and all the other positivists together.

It is true that Taine owes a great deal to Spinoza and to Hegel, and more still to Condillac. Among his contemporaries he seems to be especially connected with John Stuart Mill and Spencer. But through them it is from Comte that he proceeds, and there we find the origin of the greater number of his leading ideas. His conception of literary history, of criticism, of the philosophy of art, in a word, his effort to bring into the study of the moral sciences the method used in the natural sciences, all this is chiefly derived from Auguste Comte. The Histoire de la Litterature anglaise is, in a sense, an application of the positive theory according to which the evolution of the arts and literatures is governed by necessary laws which constitute its solidarity with that of morals, of institutions and of beliefs. The theory of the “moment” and of the “milieu” which is the chief one in Taine’s work was certainly not unknown in the XVIII. century. But it is Comte who generalised it by bringing Lamarck nearer to Montesquieu; it is he who taught Taine the general definition, at once biological and social, of the idea of the “milieu.”

Renan spoke of Comte with extreme severity, and not without some disdain. He owned, however, that later on Comte’s name would be one of the most representative ones of this century, and he had himself strongly felt his influence. We must certainly take into account all the other French and foreign sources from which this mind at once so supple and so large, drew inspiration. But is it not from Comte, as much as from Hegel, that he learnt to regard history as the “sacred science of humanity,” to expect from it what before was demanded from theology, to transform the ancient dogmas of Providence and of optimism into the belief in the positive idea of progress, and finally to conceive that truth and goodness are not immutable and immoveable realities, but are realised by degrees through the effort of successive generations?

These two examples will suffice to show the point of extreme diffusion which has been reached by the positive spirit.

This spirit is so intimately mingled with the general thought of our time that we scarcely notice it, just as we do not pay attention to the air we breathe. History, romance, and, even poetry have reflected its influence and, being charged with it, have contributed to its diffusion. Contemporary Sociology is the creation of Comte; scientific Psychology, in a certain degree has also sprung from him. From all these signs, it is not rash to conclude that positive philosophy expresses some of the most characteristic tendencies of the age.

We are therefore conforming to historical reality when we attach ourselves, in Comte’s work, to the philosophy which constitutes its most original, and up to the present time its most fruitful and living part. It matters little that he himself should only have considered it as a preliminary portion of his work. How often has the speculative effort made by a great thinker for the purpose of establishing practical conclusions proved to be of more enduring interest than those conclusions themselves!