AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM

BY

JOHN STUART MILL

1865. 

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PART I. 

THE COURS DE PHILOSOPHIE POSITIVE. 

For some time much has been said, in England and on the Continent, concerning "Positivism" and "the Positive Philosophy. " Those phrases, which during the life of the eminent thinker who introduced them hadmade their way into no writings or discussions but those of his very fewdirect disciples, have emerged from the depths and manifested themselveson the surface of the philosophy of the age. It is not very widely knownwhat they represent, but it is understood that they represent something. They are symbols of a recognised mode of thought, and one of sufficientimportance to induce almost all who now discuss the great problems ofphilosophy, or survey from any elevated point of view the opinions ofthe age, to take what is termed the Positivist view of things intoserious consideration, and define their own position, more or lessfriendly or hostile, in regard to it. Indeed, though the mode of thoughtexpressed by the terms Positive and Positivism is widely spread, thewords themselves are, as usual, better known through the enemies of thatmode of thinking than through its friends; and more than one thinker whonever called himself or his opinions by those appellations, andcarefully guarded himself against being confounded with those who did, finds himself, sometimes to his displeasure, though generally by atolerably correct instinct, classed with Positivists, and assailed as aPositivist. This change in the bearings of philosophic opinion commencedin England earlier than in France, where a philosophy of a contrary kindhad been more widely cultivated, and had taken a firmer hold on thespeculative minds of a generation formed by Royer-Collard, Cousin, Jouffroy, and their compeers. The great treatise of M. Comte wasscarcely mentioned in French literature or criticism, when it wasalready working powerfully on the minds of many British students andthinkers. But, agreeably to the usual course of things in France, thenew tendency, when it set in, set in more strongly. Those who callthemselves Positivists are indeed not numerous; but all French writerswho adhere to the common philosophy, now feel it necessary to begin byfortifying their position against "the Positivist school. " And the modeof thinking thus designated is already manifesting its importance by oneof the most unequivocal signs, the appearance of thinkers who attempt acompromise or _juste milieu_ between it and its opposite. The acutecritic and metaphysician M. Taine, and the distinguished chemist M. Berthelot, are the authors of the two most conspicuous of theseattempts. 

The time, therefore, seems to have come, when every philosophic thinkernot only ought to form, but may usefully express, a judgment respectingthis intellectual movement; endeavouring to understand what it is, whether it is essentially a wholesome movement, and if so, what is to beaccepted and what rejected of the direction given to it by its mostimportant movers. There cannot be a more appropriate mode of discussingthese points than in the form of a critical examination of thephilosophy of Auguste Comte; for which the appearance of a new editionof his fundamental treatise, with a preface by the most eminent, inevery point of view, of his professed disciples, M. Littré, affords agood opportunity. The name of M. Comte is more identified than any otherwith this mode of thought. He is the first who has attempted itscomplete systematization, and the scientific extension of it to allobjects of human knowledge. And in doing this he has displayed aquantity and quality of mental power, and achieved an amount of success, which have not only won but retained the high admiration of thinkers asradically and strenuously opposed as it is possible to be, to nearly thewhole of his later tendencies, and to many of his earlier opinions. Itwould have been a mistake had such thinkers busied themselves in thefirst instance with drawing attention to what they regarded as errors inhis great work. Until it had taken the place in the world of thoughtwhich belonged to it, the important matter was not to criticise it, butto help in making it known. To have put those who neither knew nor werecapable of appreciating the greatness of the book, in possession of itsvulnerable points, would have indefinitely retarded its progress to ajust estimation, and was not needful for guarding against any seriousinconvenience. While a writer has few readers, and no influence excepton independent thinkers, the only thing worth considering in him is whathe can teach us: if there be anything in which he is less wise than weare already, it may be left unnoticed until the time comes when hiserrors can do harm. But the high place which M. Comte has now assumedamong European thinkers, and the increasing influence of his principalwork, while they make it a more hopeful task than before to impress andenforce the strong points of his philosophy, have rendered it, for thefirst time, not inopportune to discuss his mistakes. Whatever errors hemay have fallen into are now in a position to be injurious, while thefree exposure of them can no longer be so. 

We propose, then, to pass in review the main principles of M. Comte'sphilosophy; commencing with the great treatise by which, in thiscountry, he is chiefly known, and postponing consideration of thewritings of the last ten years of his life, except for the occasionalillustration of detached points. 

When we extend our examination to these later productions, we shallhave, in the main, to reverse our judgment. Instead of recognizing, asin the Cours de Philosophic Positive, an essentially sound view ofphilosophy, with a few capital errors, it is in their general characterthat we deem the subsequent speculations false and misleading, while inthe midst of this wrong general tendency, we find a crowd of valuablethoughts, and suggestions of thought, in detail. For the present we putout of the question this signal anomaly in M. Comte's intellectualcareer. We shall consider only the principal gift which he has left tothe world, his clear, full, and comprehensive exposition, and in partcreation, of what he terms the Positive Philosophy: endeavouring tosever what in our estimation is true, from the much less which iserroneous, in that philosophy as he conceived it, and distinguishing, aswe proceed, the part which is specially his, from that which belongs tothe philosophy of the age, and is the common inheritance of thinkers. This last discrimination has been partially made in a late pamphlet, byMr Herbert Spencer, in vindication of his own independence of thought:but this does not diminish the utility of doing it, with a less limitedpurpose, here; especially as Mr Spencer rejects nearly all whichproperly belongs to M. Comte, and in his abridged mode of statement doesscanty justice to what he rejects. The separation is not difficult, evenon the direct evidence given by M. Comte himself, who, far from claimingany originality not really belonging to him, was eager to connect hisown most original thoughts with every germ of anything similar which heobserved in previous thinkers. 

The fundamental doctrine of a true philosophy, according to M. Comte, and the character by which he defines Positive Philosophy, is thefollowing:--We have no knowledge of anything but Phaenomena; and ourknowledge of phaenomena is relative, not absolute. We know not theessence, nor the real mode of production, of any fact, but only itsrelations to other facts in the way of succession or of similitude. These relations are constant; that is, always the same in the samecircumstances. The constant resemblances which link phaenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent andconsequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phaenomena are all weknow respecting them. Their essential nature, and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us. 

M. Comte claims no originality for this conception of human knowledge. He avows that it has been virtually acted on from the earliest period byall who have made any real contribution to science, and becamedistinctly present to the minds of speculative men from the time ofBacon, Descartes, and Galileo, whom he regards as collectively thefounders of the Positive Philosophy. As he says, the knowledge whichmankind, even in the earliest ages, chiefly pursued, being that whichthey most needed, was _fore_knowledge: "savoir, pour prevoir. " When theysought for the cause, it was mainly in order to control the effect or ifit was uncontrollable, to foreknow and adapt their conduct to it. Now, all foresight of phaenomena, and power over them, depend on knowledge oftheir sequences, and not upon any notion we may have formed respectingtheir origin or inmost nature. We foresee a fact or event by means offacts which are signs of it, because experience has shown them to be itsantecedents. We bring about any fact, other than our own muscularcontractions, by means of some fact which experience has shown to befollowed by it. All foresight, therefore, and all intelligent action, have only been possible in proportion as men have successfully attemptedto ascertain the successions of phaenomena. Neither foreknowledge, northe knowledge which is practical power, can be acquired by any othermeans. 

The conviction, however, that knowledge of the successions andco-existences of phaenomena is the sole knowledge accessible to us, could not be arrived at in a very early stage of the progress ofthought. Men have not even now left off hoping for other knowledge, norbelieving that they have attained it; and that, when attained, it is, insome undefinable manner, greatly more precious than mere knowledge ofsequences and co-existences. The true doctrine was not seen in its fullclearness even by Bacon, though it is the result to which all hisspeculations tend: still less by Descartes. It was, however, correctlyapprehended by Newton. [1]

But it was probably first conceived in its entire generality by Hume, who carries it a step further than Comte, maintaining not merely thatthe only causes of phaenomena which can be known to us are otherphaenomena, their invariable antecedents, but that there is no otherkind of causes: cause, as he interprets it, _means_ the invariableantecedent. This is the only part of Hume's doctrine which was contestedby his great adversary, Kant; who, maintaining as strenuously as Comtethat we know nothing of Things in themselves, of Noumena, of realSubstances and real Causes, yet peremptorily asserted their existence. But neither does Comte question this: on the contrary, all his languageimplies it. Among the direct successors of Hume, the writer who has beststated and defended Comte's fundamental doctrine is Dr Thomas Brown. Thedoctrine and spirit of Brown's philosophy are entirely Positivist, andno better introduction to Positivism than the early part of his Lectureshas yet been produced. Of living thinkers we do not speak; but the samegreat truth formed the groundwork of all the speculative philosophy ofBentham, and pre-eminently of James Mill: and Sir William Hamilton'sfamous doctrine of the Relativity of human knowledge has guided many toit, though we cannot credit Sir William Hamilton himself with havingunderstood the principle, or been willing to assent to it if he had. 

The foundation of M. Comte's philosophy is thus in no way peculiar tohim, but the general property of the age, however far as yet from beinguniversally accepted even by thoughtful minds. 

The philosophy called Positive is not a recent invention of M. Comte, but a simple adherence to the traditions of all the great scientificminds whose discoveries have made the human race what it is. M. Comtehas never presented it in any other light. But he has made the doctrinehis own by his manner of treating it. To know rightly what a thing is, we require to know, with equal distinctness, what it is not. To enterinto the real character of any mode of thought, we must understand whatother modes of thought compete with it. M. Comte has taken care that weshould do so. The modes of philosophizing which, according to him, dispute ascendancy with the Positive, are two in number, both of themanterior to it in date; the Theological, and the Metaphysical. 

We use the words Theological, Metaphysical, and Positive, because theyare chosen by M. Comte as a vehicle for M. Comte's ideas. Anyphilosopher whose thoughts another person undertakes to set forth, has a right to require that it should be done by means of his ownnomenclature. They are not, however, the terms we should ourselveschoose. In all languages, but especially in English, they excite ideasother than those intended. The words Positive and Positivism, in themeaning assigned to them, are ill fitted to take, root in English soil;while Metaphysical suggests, and suggested even to M. Comte, much thatin no way deserves to be included in his denunciation. The termTheological is less wide of the mark, though the use of it as a term ofcondemnation implies, as we shall see, a greater reach of negation thanneed be included in the Positive creed. Instead of the Theological weshould prefer to speak of the Personal, or Volitional explanation ofnature; instead of Metaphysical, the Abstractional or Ontological: andthe meaning of Positive would be less ambiguously expressed in theobjective aspect by Phaenomenal, in the subjective by Experiential. ButM. Comte's opinions are best stated in his own phraseology; several ofthem, indeed, can scarcely be presented in some of their bearingswithout it. 

The Theological, which is the original and spontaneous form of thought, regards the facts of the universe as governed not by invariable laws ofsequence, but by single and direct volitions of beings, real orimaginary, possessed of life and intelligence. In the infantile state ofreason and experience, individual objects are looked upon as animated. The next step is the conception of invisible beings, each of whomsuperintends and governs an entire class of objects or events. The lastmerges this multitude of divinities in a single God, who made the wholeuniverse in the beginning, and guides and carries on its phaenomena byhis continued action, or, as others think, only modifies them from timeto time by special interferences. 

The mode of thought which M. Comte terms Metaphysical, accounts forphaenomena by ascribing them, not to volitions either sublunary orcelestial, but to realized abstractions. In this stage it is no longera god that causes and directs each of the various agencies of nature:it is a power, or a force, or an occult quality, considered as realexistences, inherent in but distinct from the concrete bodies in whichthey reside, and which they in a manner animate. Instead of Dryadspresiding over trees, producing and regulating their phaenomena, everyplant or animal has now a Vegetative Soul, the [Greek: Threptikè phygè]of Aristotle. At a later period the Vegetative Soul has become a PlasticForce, and still later, a Vital Principle. Objects now do all that theydo because it is their Essence to do so, or by reason of an inherentVirtue. Phaenomena are accounted for by supposed tendencies andpropensities of the abstraction Nature; which, though regarded asimpersonal, is figured as acting on a sort of motives, and in a mannermore or less analogous to that of conscious beings. Aristotle affirms atendency of nature towards the best, which helps him to a theory of manynatural phaenomena. The rise of water in a pump is attributed toNature's horror of a vacuum. The fall of heavy bodies, and the ascent offlame and smoke, are construed as attempts of each to get to its_natural_ place. Many important consequences are deduced from thedoctrine that Nature has no breaks (non habet saltum). In medicine thecurative force (vis medicatrix) of Nature furnishes the explanation ofthe reparative processes which modern physiologists refer each to itsown particular agencies and laws. 

Examples are not necessary to prove to those who are acquainted with thepast phases of human thought, how great a place both the theological andthe metaphysical interpretations of phaenomena have historicallyoccupied, as well in the speculations of thinkers as in the familiarconceptions of the multitude. Many had perceived before M. Comte thatneither of these modes of explanation was final: the warfare againstboth of them could scarcely be carried on more vigorously than italready was, early in the seventeenth century, by Hobbes. Nor is itunknown to any one who has followed the history of the various physicalsciences, that the positive explanation of facts has substituted itself, step by step, for the theological and metaphysical, as the progress ofinquiry brought to light an increasing number of the invariable laws ofphaenomena. In these respects M. Comte has not originated anything, buthas taken his place in a fight long since engaged, and on the sidealready in the main victorious. The generalization which belongs tohimself, and in which he had not, to the best of our knowledge, been atall anticipated, is, that every distinct class of human conceptionspasses through all these stages, beginning with the theological, andproceeding through the metaphysical to the positive: the metaphysicalbeing a mere state of transition, but an indispensable one, from thetheological mode of thought to the positive, which is destined finallyto prevail, by the universal recognition that all phaemomena withoutexception are governed by invariable laws, with which no volitions, either natural or supernatural, interfere. This general theorem iscompleted by the addition, that the theological mode of thought hasthree stages, Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism: the successivetransitions being prepared, and indeed caused, by the gradual uprisingof the two rival modes of thought, the metaphysical and the positive, and in their turn preparing the way for the ascendancy of these; firstand temporarily of the metaphysical, finally of the positive. 

This generalization is the most fundamental of the doctrines whichoriginated with M. Comte; and the survey of history, which occupies thetwo largest volumes of the six composing his work, is a continuousexemplification and verification of the law. How well it accords withthe facts, and how vast a number of the greater historical phaenomena itexplains, is known only to those who have studied its exposition, wherealone it can be found--in these most striking and instructive volumes. As this theory is the key to M. Comte's other generalizations, all ofwhich arc more or less dependent on it; as it forms the backbone, if wemay so speak, of his philosophy, and, unless it be true, he hasaccomplished little; we cannot better employ part of our space than inclearing it from misconception, and giving the explanations necessary toremove the obstacles which prevent many competent persons from assentingto it. 

It is proper to begin by relieving the doctrine from a religiousprejudice. The doctrine condemns all theological explanations, andreplaces them, or thinks them destined to be replaced, by theories whichtake no account of anything but an ascertained order of phaenomena. Itis inferred that if this change were completely accomplished, mankindwould cease to refer the constitution of Nature to an intelligent willor to believe at all in a Creator and supreme Governor of the world. This supposition is the more natural, as M. Comte was avowedly of thatopinion. He indeed disclaimed, with some acrimony, dogmatic atheism, andeven says (in a later work, but the earliest contains nothing atvariance with it) that the hypothesis of design has much greaterverisimilitude than that of a blind mechanism. But conjecture, foundedon analogy, did not seem to him a basis to rest a theory on, in a maturestate of human intelligence. He deemed all real knowledge of acommencement inaccessible to us, and the inquiry into it an overpassingof the essential limits of our mental faculties. To this point, however, those who accept his theory of the progressive stages of opinion are notobliged to follow him. The Positive mode of thought is not necessarily adenial of the supernatural; it merely throws back that question to theorigin of all things. If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, bythe very conditions of the case, was supernatural; the laws of naturecannot account for their own origin. The Positive philosopher is free toform his opinion on the subject, according to the weight he attaches tothe analogies which are called marks of design, and to the generaltraditions of the human race. The value of these evidences is indeed aquestion for Positive philosophy, but it is not one upon which Positivephilosophers must necessarily be agreed. It is one of M. Comte'smistakes that he never allows of open questions. Positive Philosophymaintains that within the existing order of the universe, or rather ofthe part of it known to us, the direct determining cause of everyphaenomenon is not supernatural but natural. It is compatible with thisto believe, that the universe was created, and even that it iscontinuously governed, by an Intelligence, provided we admit that theintelligent Governor adheres to fixed laws, which are only modified orcounteracted by other laws of the same dispensation, and are nevereither capriciously or providentially departed from. Whoever regardsall events as parts of a constant order, each one being the invariableconsequent of some antecedent condition, or combination of conditions, accepts fully the Positive mode of thought: whether he acknowledges ornot an universal antecedent on which the whole system of nature wasoriginally consequent, and whether that universal antecedent isconceived as an Intelligence or not. 

There is a corresponding misconception to be corrected respecting theMetaphysical mode of thought. In repudiating metaphysics, M. Comte didnot interdict himself from analysing or criticising any of the abstractconceptions of the mind. He was not ignorant (though he sometimes seemedto forget) that such analysis and criticism are a necessary part of thescientific process, and accompany the scientific mind in all itsoperations. What he condemned was the habit of conceiving these mentalabstractions as real entities, which could exert power, producephaenomena, and the enunciation of which could be regarded as a theoryor explanation of facts. Men of the present day with difficulty believethat so absurd a notion was ever really entertained, so repugnant is itto the mental habits formed by long and assiduous cultivation of thepositive sciences. But those sciences, however widely cultivated, havenever formed the basis of intellectual education in any society. It iswith philosophy as with religion: men marvel at the absurdity of otherpeople's tenets, while exactly parallel absurdities remain in their own, and the same man is unaffectedly astonished that words can be mistakenfor things, who is treating other words as if they were things everytime he opens his mouth to discuss. No one, unless entirely ignorant ofthe history of thought, will deny that the mistaking of abstractions forrealities pervaded speculation all through antiquity and the middleages. The mistake was generalized and systematized in the famous Ideasof Plato. The Aristotelians carried it on. Essences, quiddities, virtuesresiding in things, were accepted as a _bonâ fide_ explanation ofphaenomena. Not only abstract qualities, but the concrete names ofgenera and species, were mistaken for objective existences. It wasbelieved that there were General Substances corresponding to all thefamiliar classes of concrete things: a substance Man, a substance Tree, a substance Animal, which, and not the individual objects so called, were directly denoted by those names. The real existence of UniversalSubstances was the question at issue in the famous controversy of thelater middle ages between Nominalism and Realism, which is one of theturning points in the history of thought, being its first struggle toemancipate itself from the dominion of verbal abstractions. The Realistswere the stronger party, but though the Nominalists for a timesuccumbed, the doctrine they rebelled against fell, after a shortinterval, with the rest of the scholastic philosophy. But whileuniversal substances and substantial forms, being the grossest kind ofrealized abstractions, were the soonest discarded, Essences, Virtues, and Occult Qualities long survived them, and were first completelyextruded from real existence by the Cartesians. In Descartes' conceptionof science, all physical phaenomena were to be explained by matter andmotion, that is, not by abstractions but by invariable physical laws:though his own explanations were many of them hypothetical, and turnedout to be erroneous. Long after him, however, fictitious entities (asthey are happily termed by Bentham) continued to be imagined as means ofaccounting for the more mysterious phaenomena; above all in physiology, where, under great varieties of phrase, mysterious _forces_ and_principles_ were the explanation, or substitute for explanation, of thephaenomena of organized beings. To modern philosophers these fictionsare merely the abstract names of the classes of phaenomena whichcorrespond to them; and it is one of the puzzles of philosophy, howmankind, after inventing a set of mere names to keep together certaincombinations of ideas or images, could have so far forgotten their ownact as to invest these creations of their will with objective reality, and mistake the name of a phaenomenon for its efficient cause. What wasa mystery from the purely dogmatic point of view, is cleared up by thehistorical. These abstract words are indeed now mere names ofphaenomena, but were not so in their origin. To us they denote only thephaenomena, because we have ceased to believe in what else they oncedesignated; and the employment of them in explanation is to usevidently, as M. Comte says, the naïf reproduction of the phaenomenonas the reason for itself: but it was not so in the beginning. Themetaphysical point of view was not a perversion of the positive, but atransformation of the theological. The human mind, in framing a class ofobjects, did not set out from the notion of a name, but from that of adivinity. The realization of abstractions was not the embodiment of aword, but the gradual disembodiment of a Fetish. 

The primitive tendency or instinct of mankind is to assimilate all theagencies which they perceive in Nature, to the only one of which theyare directly conscious, their own voluntary activity. Every object whichseems to originate power, that is, to act without being first visiblyacted upon, to communicate motion without having first received it, theysuppose to possess life, consciousness, will. This first rude conceptionof nature can scarcely, however, have been at any time extended to allphaenomena. The simplest observation, without which the preservation oflife would have been impossible, must have pointed out many uniformitiesin nature, many objects which, under given circumstances, acted exactlylike one another: and whenever this was observed, men's natural anduntutored faculties led them to form the similar objects into a class, and to think of them together: of which it was a natural consequence torefer effects, which were exactly alike, to a single will, rather thanto a number of wills precisely accordant. But this single will could notbe the will of the objects themselves, since they were many: it must bethe will of an invisible being, apart from the objects, and ruling themfrom an unknown distance. This is Polytheism. We are not aware that inany tribe of savages or negroes who have been observed, Fetichism hasbeen found totally unmixed with Polytheism, and it is probable that thetwo coexisted from the earliest period at which the human mind wascapable of forming objects into classes. Fetichism proper graduallybecomes limited to objects possessing a marked individuality. Aparticular mountain or river is worshipped bodily (as it is even now bythe Hindoos and the South Sea Islanders) as a divinity in itself, notthe mere residence of one, long after invisible gods have been imaginedas rulers of all the great classes of phaenomena, even intellectual andmoral, as war, love, wisdom, beauty, &c. The worship of the earth(Tellus or Pales) and of the various heavenly bodies, was prolonged intothe heart of Polytheism. Every scholar knows, though _littérateurs_ andmen of the world do not, that in the full vigour of the Greek religion, the Sun and Moon, not a god and goddess thereof, were sacrificed to asdeities--older deities than Zeus and his descendants, belonging to theearlier dynasty of the Titans (which was the mythical version of thefact that their worship was older), and these deities had a distinct setof fables or legends connected with them. The father of Phaëthon and thelover of Endymion were not Apollo and Diana, whose identification withthe Sungod and the Moongoddess was a late invention. Astrolatry, which, as M. Comte observes, is the last form of Fetichism, survived the otherforms, partly because its objects, being inaccessible, were not so soondiscovered to be in themselves inanimate, and partly because of thepersistent spontaneousness of their apparent motions. 

As far as Fetichism reached, and as long as it lasted, there was noabstraction, or classification of objects, and no room consequently forthe metaphysical mode of thought. But as soon as the voluntary agent, whose will governed the phaenomenon, ceased to be the physical objectitself, and was removed to an invisible position, from which he or shesuperintended an entire class of natural agencies, it began to seemimpossible that this being should exert his powerful activity from adistance, unless through the medium of something present on the spot. Through the same Natural Prejudice which made Newton unable to conceivethe possibility of his own law of gravitation without a subtle etherfilling up the intervening space, and through which the attraction couldbe communicated--from this same natural infirmity of the human mind, itseemed indispensable that the god, at a distance from the object, mustact through something residing in it, which was the immediate agent, thegod having imparted to the intermediate something the power whereby itinfluenced and directed the object. When mankind felt a need for namingthese imaginary entities, they called them the _nature_ of the object, or its _essence_, or _virtues_ residing in it, or by many otherdifferent names. These metaphysical conceptions were regarded asintensely real, and at first as mere instruments in the hands of theappropriate deities. But the habit being acquired of ascribing not onlysubstantive existence, but real and efficacious agency, to the abstractentities, the consequence was that when belief in the deities declinedand faded away, the entities were left standing, and a semblance ofexplanation of phaenomena, equal to what existed before, was furnishedby the entities alone, without referring them to any volitions. Whenthings had reached this point, the metaphysical mode of thought, hadcompletely substituted itself for the theological. 

Thus did the different successive states of the human intellect, even atan early stage of its progress, overlap one another, the Fetichistic, the Polytheistic, and the Metaphysical modes of thought coexisting evenin the same minds, while the belief in invariable laws, whichconstitutes the Positive mode of thought, was slowly winning its waybeneath them all, as observation and experience disclosed in one classof phaenomena after another the laws to which they are really subject. It was this growth of positive knowledge which principally determinedthe next transition in the theological conception of the universe, fromPolytheism to Monotheism. 

It cannot be doubted that this transition took place very tardily. Theconception of a unity in Nature, which would admit of attributing it toa single will, is far from being natural to man, and only findsadmittance after a long period of discipline and preparation, theobvious appearances all pointing to the idea of a government by manyconflicting principles. We know how high a degree both of materialcivilization and of moral and intellectual development preceded theconversion of the leading populations of the world to the belief in oneGod. The superficial observations by which Christian travellers havepersuaded themselves that they found their own Monotheistic belief insome tribes of savages, have always been contradicted by more accurateknowledge: those who have read, for instance, Mr Kohl's Kitchigami, knowwhat to think of the Great Spirit of the American Indians, who belongsto a well-defined system of Polytheism, interspersed with large remainsof an original Fetichism. We have no wish to dispute the matter withthose who believe that Monotheism was the primitive religion, transmitted to our race from its first parents in uninterruptedtradition. By their own acknowledgment, the tradition was lost by allthe nations of the world except a small and peculiar people, in whom itwas miraculously kept alive, but who were themselves continually lapsingfrom it, and in all the earlier parts of their history did not hold itat all in its full meaning, but admitted the real existence of othergods, though believing their own to be the most powerful, and to be theCreator of the world. A greater proof of the unnaturalness of Monotheismto the human mind before a certain period in its development, could notwell be required. The highest form of Monotheism, Christianity, haspersisted to the present time in giving partial satisfaction to themental dispositions that lead to Polytheism, by admitting into itstheology the thoroughly polytheistic conception of a devil. WhenMonotheism, after many centuries, made its way to the Greeks and Romansfrom the small corner of the world where it existed, we know how thenotion of daemons facilitated its reception, by making it unnecessaryfor Christians to deny the existence of the gods previously believed in, it being sufficient to place them under the absolute power of the newGod, as the gods of Olympus were already under that of Zeus, and as thelocal deities of all the subjugated nations had been subordinated byconquest to the divine patrons of the Roman State. 

In whatever mode, natural or supernatural, we choose to account for theearly Monotheism of the Hebrews, there can be no question that itsreception by the Gentiles was only rendered possible by the slowpreparation which the human mind had undergone from the philosophers. In the age of the Caesars nearly the whole educated and cultivated classhad outgrown the polytheistic creed, and though individually liable toreturns of the superstition of their childhood, were predisposed (suchof them as did not reject all religion whatever) to the acknowledgmentof one Supreme Providence. It is vain to object that Christianity didnot find the majority of its early proselytes among the educated class:since, except in Palestine, its teachers and propagators were mainly ofthat class--many of them, like St Paul, well versed in the mentalculture of their time; and they had evidently found no intellectualobstacle to the new doctrine in their own minds. We must not be deceivedby the recrudescence, at a much later date, of a metaphysical Paganismin the Alexandrian and other philosophical schools, provoked not byattachment to Polytheism, but by distaste for the political and socialascendancy of the Christian teachers. The fact was, that Monotheism hadbecome congenial to the cultivated mind: and a belief which has gainedthe cultivated minds of any society, unless put down by force, iscertain, sooner or later, to reach the multitude. Indeed the multitudeitself had been prepared for it, as already hinted, by the more and morecomplete subordination of all other deities to the supremacy of Zeus;from which the step to a single Deity, surrounded by a host of angels, and keeping in recalcitrant subjection an army of devils, was by nomeans difficult. 

By what means, then, had the cultivated minds of the Roman Empire beeneducated for Monotheism? By the growth of a practical feeling of theinvariability of natural laws. Monotheism had a natural adaptation tothis belief, while Polytheism naturally and necessarily conflicted withit. As men could not easily, and in fact never did, suppose that beingsso powerful had their power absolutely restricted, each to its specialdepartment, the will of any divinity might always be frustrated byanother: and unless all their wills were in complete harmony (whichwould itself be the most difficult to credit of all cases ofinvariability, and would require beyond anything else the ascendancyof a Supreme Deity) it was impossible that the course of any of thephaenomena under their government could be invariable. But if, on thecontrary, all the phaenomena of the universe were under the exclusiveand uncontrollable influence of a single will, it was an admissiblesupposition that this will might be always consistent with itself, andmight choose to conduct each class of its operations in an invariablemanner. In proportion, therefore, as the invariable laws of phaenomenarevealed themselves to observers, the theory which ascribed them all toone will began to grow plausible; but must still have appearedimprobable until it had come to seem likely that invariability was thecommon rule of all nature. The Greeks and Romans at the Christian erahad reached a point of advancement at which this supposition had becomeprobable. The admirable height to which geometry had already beencarried, had familiarized the educated mind with the conception of lawsabsolutely invariable. The logical analysis of the intellectualprocesses by Aristotle had shown a similar uniformity of law in therealm of mind. In the concrete external world, the most imposingphaenomena, those of the heavenly bodies, which by their power over theimagination had done most to keep up the whole system of ideas connectedwith supernatural agency, had been ascertained to take place in soregular an order as to admit of being predicted with a precision whichto the notions of those days must have appeared perfect. And though anequal degree of regularity had not been discerned in natural phaenomenagenerally, even the most empirical observation had ascertained so manycases of an uniformity _almost_ complete, that inquiring minds wereeagerly on the look-out for further indications pointing in the samedirection; and vied with one another in the formation of theories which, though hypothetical and essentially premature, it was hoped would turnout to be correct representations of invariable laws governing largeclasses of phaenomena. When this hope and expectation became general, they were already a great encroachment on the original domain of thetheological principle. Instead of the old conception, of eventsregulated from day to day by the unforeseen and changeable volitions ofa legion of deities, it seemed more and more probable that all thephaenomena of the universe took place according to rules which must havebeen planned from the beginning; by which conception the function of thegods seemed to be limited to forming the plans, and setting themachinery in motion: their subsequent office appeared to be reduced toa sinecure, or if they continued to reign, it was in the manner ofconstitutional kings, bound by the laws to which they had previouslygiven their assent. Accordingly, the pretension of philosophers toexplain physical phaenomena by physical causes, or to predict theiroccurrence, was, up to a very late period of Polytheism, regarded asa sacrilegious insult to the gods. Anaxagoras was banished for it, Aristotle had to fly for his life, and the mere unfounded suspicion ofit contributed greatly to the condemnation of Socrates. We are too wellacquainted with this form of the religious sentiment even now, to haveany difficulty in comprehending what must have been its violence then. It was inevitable that philosophers should be anxious to get rid of atleast _these_ gods, and so escape from the particular fables which stoodimmediately in their way; accepting a notion of divine government whichharmonized better with the lessons they learnt from the study of nature, and a God concerning whom no mythos, as far as they knew, had yet beeninvented. 

Again, when the idea became prevalent that the constitution of everypart of Nature had been planned from the beginning, and continued totake place as it had been planned, this was itself a striking feature ofresemblance extending through all Nature, and affording a presumptionthat the whole was the work, not of many, but of the same hand. It musthave appeared vastly more probable that there should be one indefinitelyforeseeing Intelligence and immovable Will, than hundreds and thousandsof such. The philosophers had not at that time the arguments which mighthave been grounded on universal laws not yet suspected, such as the lawof gravitation and the laws of heat; but there was a multitude, obviouseven to them, of analogies and homologies in natural phaenomena, whichsuggested unity of plan; and a still greater number were raised up bytheir active fancy, aided by their premature scientific theories, all ofwhich aimed at interpreting some phaenomenon by the analogy of otherssupposed to be better known; assuming, indeed, a much greater similarityamong the various processes of Nature, than ampler experience has sinceshown to exist. The theological mode of thought thus advanced fromPolytheism to Monotheism through the direct influence of the Positivemode of thought, not yet aspiring to complete speculative ascendancy. But, inasmuch as the belief in the invariability of natural laws wasstill imperfect even in highly cultivated minds, and in the merestinfancy in the uncultivated, it gave rise to the belief in one God, butnot in an immovable one. For many centuries the God believed in wasflexible by entreaty, was incessantly ordering the affairs of mankind bydirect volitions, and continually reversing the course of nature bymiraculous interpositions; and this is believed still, wherever theinvariability of law has established itself in men's convictions as ageneral, but not as an universal truth. 

In the change from Polytheism to Monotheism, the Metaphysical mode ofthought contributed its part, affording great aid to the up-hillstruggle which the Positive spirit had to maintain against theprevailing form, of the Theological. M. Comte, indeed, has considerablyexaggerated the share of the Metaphysical spirit in this mentalrevolution, since by a lax use of terms he credits the Metaphysical modeof thought with all that is due to dialectics and negative criticism--tothe exposure of inconsistencies and absurdities in the receivedreligions. But this operation is quite independent of the Metaphysicalmode of thought, and was no otherwise connected with it than in beingvery generally carried on by the same minds (Plato is a brilliantexample), since the most eminent efficiency in it does not necessarilydepend on the possession of positive scientific knowledge. But theMetaphysical spirit, strictly so called, did contribute largely to theadvent of Monotheism. The conception of impersonal entities, interposedbetween the governing deity and the phaenomena, and forming themachinery through which these are immediately produced, is notrepugnant, as the theory of direct supernatural volitions is, to thebelief in invariable laws. The entities not being, like the gods, framedafter the exemplar of men--being neither, like them, invested with humanpassions, nor supposed, like them, to have power beyond the phaenomenawhich are the special department of each, there was no fear of offendingthem by the attempt to foresee and define their action, or by thesupposition that it took place according to fixed laws. The populartribunal which condemned Anaxagoras had evidently not risen to themetaphysical point of view. Hippocrates, who was concerned only with aselect and instructed class, could say with impunity, speaking of whatwere called the god-inflicted diseases, that to his mind they wereneither more nor less god-inflicted than all others. The doctrine ofabstract entities was a kind of instinctive conciliation between theobserved uniformity of the facts of nature, and their dependence onarbitrary volition; since it was easier to conceive a single volition assetting a machinery to work, which afterwards went on of itself, than tosuppose an inflexible constancy in so capricious and changeable a thingas volition must then have appeared. But though the régime ofabstractions was in strictness compatible with Polytheism, it demandedMonotheism as the condition of its free development. The receivedPolytheism being only the first remove from Fetichism, its gods were tooclosely mixed up in the daily details of phaenomena, and the habit ofpropitiating them and ascertaining their will before any importantaction of life was too inveterate, to admit, without the strongest shockto the received system, the notion that they did not habitually rule byspecial interpositions, but left phaenomena in all ordinary cases to theoperation of the essences or peculiar natures which they had firstimplanted in them. Any modification of Polytheism which would have madeit fully compatible with the Metaphysical conception of the world, wouldhave been more difficult to effect than the transition to Monotheism, asMonotheism was at first conceived. 

We have given, in our own way, and at some length, this importantportion of M. Comte's view of the evolution of human thought, as asample of the manner in which his theory corresponds with and interpretshistorical facts, and also to obviate some objections to it, grounded onan imperfect comprehension, or rather on a mere first glance. Some, forexample, think the doctrine of the three successive stages ofspeculation and belief, inconsistent with the fact that they all threeexisted contemporaneously; much as if the natural succession of thehunting, the nomad, and the agricultural state could be refuted by thefact that there are still hunters and nomads. That the three states werecontemporaneous, that they all began before authentic history, and stillcoexist, is M. Comte's express statement: as well as that the advent ofthe two later modes of thought was the very cause which disorganized andis gradually destroying the primitive one. The Theological mode ofexplaining phaenomena was once universal, with the exception, doubtless, of the familiar facts which, being even then seen to be controllable byhuman will, belonged already to the positive mode of thought. The firstand easiest generalizations of common observation, anterior to the firsttraces of the scientific spirit, determined the birth of theMetaphysical mode of thought; and every further advance in theobservation of nature, gradually bringing to light its invariable laws, determined a further development of the Metaphysical spirit at theexpense of the Theological, this being the only medium through which theconclusions of the Positive mode of thought and the premises of theTheological could be temporarily made compatible. At a later period, when the real character of the positive laws of nature had come to be ina certain degree understood, and the theological idea had assumed, inscientific minds, its final character, that of a God governing bygeneral laws, the positive spirit, having now no longer need of thefictitious medium of imaginary entities, set itself to the easy task ofdemolishing the instrument by which it had risen. But though itdestroyed the actual belief in the objective reality of theseabstractions, that belief has left behind it vicious tendencies of thehuman mind, which are still far enough from being extinguished, andwhich we shall presently have occasion to characterize. 

The next point on which we have to touch is one of greater importancethan it seems. If all human speculation had to pass through the threestages, we may presume that its different branches, having always beenvery unequally advanced, could not pass from one stage to another at thesame time. There must have been a certain order of succession in whichthe different sciences would enter, first into the metaphysical, andafterwards into the purely positive stage; and this order M. Comteproceeds to investigate. The result is his remarkable conception of ascale of subordination of the sciences, being the order of the logicaldependence of those which follow on those which precede. It is not atfirst obvious how a mere classification of the sciences can be notmerely a help to their study, but itself an important part of a body ofdoctrine; the classification, however, is a very important part of M. Comte's philosophy. 

He first distinguishes between the abstract and the concrete sciences. The abstract sciences have to do with the laws which govern theelementary facts of Nature; laws on which all phaenomena actuallyrealized must of course depend, but which would have been equallycompatible with many other combinations than those which actually cometo pass. The concrete sciences, on the contrary, concern themselves onlywith the particular combinations of phaenomena which are found inexistence. For example; the minerals which compose our planet, or arefound in it, have been produced and are held together by the laws ofmechanical aggregation and by those of chemical union. It is thebusiness of the abstract sciences, Physics and Chemistry, to ascertainthese laws: to discover how and under what conditions bodies may becomeaggregated, and what are the possible modes and results of chemicalcombination. The great majority of these aggregations and combinationstake place, so far as we are aware, only in our laboratories; with thesethe concrete science, Mineralogy, has nothing to do. Its business iswith those aggregates, and those chemical compounds, which formthemselves, or have at some period been formed, in the natural world. Again, Physiology, the abstract science, investigates, by such means asare available to it, the general laws of organization and life. Thoselaws determine what living beings are possible, and maintain theexistence and determine the phaenomena of those which actually exist:but they would be equally capable of maintaining in existence plants andanimals very different from these. The concrete sciences, Zoology andBotany, confine themselves to species which really exist, or can beshown to have really existed: and do not concern themselves with themode in which even these would comport themselves under allcircumstances, but only under those which really take place. They setforth the actual mode of existence of plants and animals, the phaenomenawhich they in fact present: but they set forth all of these, and takeinto simultaneous consideration the whole real existence of eachspecies, however various the ultimate laws on which it depends, and towhatever number of different abstract sciences these laws may belong. The existence of a date tree, or of a lion, is a joint result of manynatural laws, physical, chemical, biological, and even astronomical. Abstract science deals with these laws separately, but considers each ofthem in all its aspects, all its possibilities of operation: concretescience considers them only in combination, and so far as they exist andmanifest themselves in the animals or plants of which we haveexperience. The distinctive attributes of the two are summed up by M. Comte in the expression, that concrete science relates to Beings, orObjects, abstract science to Events. [2]

The concrete sciences are inevitably later in their development than theabstract sciences on which they depend. Not that they begin later to bestudied; on the contrary, they are the earliest cultivated, since in ourabstract investigations we necessarily set out from spontaneous facts. But though we may make empirical generalizations, we can form noscientific theory of concrete phaenomena until the laws which govern andexplain them are first known; and those laws are the subject of theabstract sciences. In consequence, there is not one of the concretestudies (unless we count astronomy among them) which has received, up tothe present time, its final scientific constitution, or can be accounteda science, except in a very loose sense, but only materials for science:partly from insufficiency of facts, but more, because the abstractsciences, except those at the very beginning of the scale, have notattained the degree of perfection necessary to render real concretesciences possible. 

Postponing, therefore, the concrete sciences, as not yet formed, butonly tending towards formation, the abstract sciences remain to beclassed. These, as marked out by M. Comte, are six in number; and theprinciple which he proposes for their classification is admirably inaccordance with the conditions of our study of Nature. It might havehappened that the different classes of phaenomena had depended on lawsaltogether distinct; that in changing from one to another subject ofscientific study, the student left behind all the laws he previouslyknew, and passed under the dominion of a totally new set ofuniformities. The sciences would then have been wholly independent ofone another; each would have rested entirely on its own inductions, andif deductive at all, would have drawn its deductions from premisesexclusively furnished by itself. The fact, however, is otherwise. Therelation which really subsists between different kinds of phaenomena, enables the sciences to be arranged in such an order, that in travellingthrough them we do not pass out of the sphere of any laws, but merelytake up additional ones at each step. In this order M. Comte proposes toarrange them. He classes the sciences in an ascending series, accordingto the degree of complexity of their phaenomena; so that each sciencedepends on the truths of all those which precede it, with the additionof peculiar truths of its own. 

Thus, the truths of number are true of all things, and depend only ontheir own laws; the science, therefore, of Number, consisting ofArithmetic and Algebra, may be studied without reference to any otherscience. The truths of Geometry presuppose the laws of Number, and amore special class of laws peculiar to extended bodies, but require noothers: Geometry, therefore, can be studied independently of allsciences except that of Number. 

Rational Mechanics presupposes, and depends on, the laws of number andthose of extension, and along with them another set of laws, those ofEquilibrium and Motion. The truths of Algebra and Geometry nowise dependon these last, and would have been true if these had happened to be thereverse of what we find them: but the phaenomena of equilibrium andmotion cannot be understood, nor even stated, without assuming the lawsof number and extension, such as they actually are. The phaenomena ofAstronomy depend on these three classes of laws, and on the law ofgravitation besides; which last has no influence on the truths ofnumber, geometry, or mechanics. Physics (badly named in common Englishparlance Natural Philosophy) presupposes the three mathematicalsciences, and also astronomy; since all terrestrial phaenomena areaffected by influences derived from the motions of the earth and of theheavenly bodies. Chemical phaenomena depend (besides their own laws) onall the preceding, those of physics among the rest, especially on thelaws of heat and electricity; physiological phaenomena, on the laws ofphysics and chemistry, and their own laws in addition. The phaenomena ofhuman society obey laws of their own, but do not depend solely uponthese: they depend upon all the laws of organic and animal life, together with those of inorganic nature, these last influencing societynot only through their influence on life, but by determining thephysical conditions under which society has to be carried on. "Chacun deces degré's successifs exige des inductions qui lui sont propres; maiselles ne peuvent jamais devenir systématiques que sous l'impulsiondéductive resultée de tous les ordres moins compliqués. "[3]

Thus arranged by M. Comte in a series, of which each term represents anadvance in speciality beyond the term preceding it, and (whatnecessarily accompanies increased speciality) an increase ofcomplexity--a set of phaenomena determined by a more numerouscombination of laws; the sciences stand in the following order: 1st, Mathematics; its three branches following one another on the sameprinciple, Number, Geometry, Mechanics. 2nd, Astronomy. 3rd, Physics. 4th, Chemistry. 5th, Biology. 6th, Sociology, or the Social Science, thephaemomena, of which depend on, and cannot be understood without, theprincipal truths of all the other sciences. The subject matter andcontents of these various sciences are obvious of themselves, with theexception of Physics, which is a group of sciences rather than a singlescience, and is again divided by M. Comte into five departments:Barology, or the science of weight; Thermology, or that of heat;Acoustics, Optics, and Electrology. These he attempts to arrange on thesame principle of increasing speciality and complexity, but they hardlyadmit of such a scale, and M. Comte's mode of placing them varied atdifferent periods. All the five being essentially independent of oneanother, he attached little importance to their order, except thatbarology ought to come first, as the connecting link with astronomy, andelectrology last, as the transition to chemistry. 

If the best classification is that which is grounded on the propertiesmost important for our purposes, this classification will stand thetest. By placing the sciences in the order of the complexity of theirsubject matter, it presents them in the order of their difficulty. Eachscience proposes to itself a more arduous inquiry than those whichprecede it in the series; it is therefore likely to be susceptible, evenfinally, of a less degree of perfection, and will certainly arrive laterat the degree attainable by it. In addition to this, each science, toestablish its own truths, needs those of all the sciences anterior toit. The only means, for example, by which the physiological laws of lifecould have been ascertained, was by distinguishing, among themultifarious and complicated facts of life, the portion which physicaland chemical laws cannot account for. Only by thus isolating the effectsof the peculiar organic laws, did it become possible to discover whatthese are. It follows that the order in which the sciences succeed oneanother in the series, cannot but be, in the main, the historical orderof their development; and is the only order in which they can rationallybe studied. For this last there is an additional reason: since the morespecial and complete sciences require not only the truths of the simplerand more general ones, but still more their methods. The scientificintellect, both in the individual and in the race, must learn in themove elementary studies that art of investigation and those canons ofproof which are to be put in practice in the more elevated. No intellectis properly qualified for the higher part of the scale, without duepractice in the lower. 

Mr Herbert Spencer, in his essay entitled "The Genesis of Science, " andmore recently in a pamphlet on "the Classification of the Sciences, " hascriticised and condemned M. Comte's classification, and proposed a moreelaborate one of his own: and M. Littré, in his valuable biographicaland philosophical work on M. Comte ("Auguste Comte et la PhilosophiePositive"), has at some length criticised the criticism. Mr Spencer isone of the small number of persons who by the solidity andencyclopedical character of their knowledge, and their power ofco-ordination and concatenation, may claim to be the peers of M. Comte, and entitled to a vote in the estimation of him. But after giving to hisanimadversions the respectful attention due to all that comes from MrSpencer, we cannot find that he has made out any case. It is always easyto find fault with a classification. There are a hundred possible waysof arranging any set of objects, and something may almost always be saidagainst the best, and in favour of the worst of them. But the merits ofa classification depend on the purposes to which it is instrumental. Wehave shown the purposes for which M. Comte's classification is intended. Mr Spencer has not shown that it is ill adapted to those purposes: andwe cannot perceive that his own answers any ends equally important. Hischief objection is that if the more special sciences need the truths ofthe more general ones, the latter also need some of those of the former, and have at times been stopped in their progress by the imperfect stateof sciences which follow long after them in M. Comte's scale; so that, the dependence being mutual, there is a _consensus_, but not anascending scale or hierarchy of the sciences. That the earlier sciencesderive help from the later is undoubtedly true; it is part of M. Comte'stheory, and amply exemplified in the details of his work. When heaffirms that one science historically precedes another, he does not meanthat the perfection of the first precedes the humblest commencement ofthose which follow. Mr Spencer does not distinguish between theempirical stage of the cultivation of a branch of knowledge, and thescientific stage. The commencement of every study consists in gatheringtogether unanalyzed facts, and treasuring up such spontaneousgeneralizations as present themselves to natural sagacity. In this stageany branch of inquiry can be carried on independently of every other;and it is one of M. Comte's own remarks that the most complex, in ascientific point of view, of all studies, the latest in his series, thestudy of man as a moral and social being, since from its absorbinginterest it is cultivated more or less by every one, and pre-eminentlyby the great practical minds, acquired at an early period a greaterstock of just though unscientific observations than the more elementarysciences. It is these empirical truths that the later and more specialsciences lend to the earlier; or, at most, some extremely elementaryscientific truth, which happening to be easily ascertainable by directexperiment, could be made available for carrying a previous sciencealready founded, to a higher stage of development; a re-action of thelater sciences on the earlier which M. Comte not only fully recognized, but attached great importance to systematizing. [4]

But though detached truths relating to the more complex order ofphaenomena may be empirically observed, and a few of them evenscientifically established, contemporaneously with an early stage ofsome of the sciences anterior in the scale, such detached truths, as M. Littré justly remarks, do not constitute a science. What is known of asubject, only becomes a science when it is made a connected body oftruth; in which the relation between the general principles and thedetails is definitely made out, and each particular truth can berecognized as a case of the operation of wider laws. This point ofprogress, at which the study passes from the preliminary state of merepreparation, into a science, cannot be reached by the more complexstudies until it has been attained by the simpler ones. A certainregularity of recurrence in the celestial appearances was ascertainedempirically before much progress had been made in geometry; butastronomy could no more be a science until geometry was a highlyadvanced one, than the rule of three could have been practised beforeaddition and subtraction. The truths of the simpler sciences are a partof the laws to which the phaenomena of the more complex sciencesconform: and are not only a necessary element in their explanation, butmust be so well understood as to be traceable through complexcombinations, before the special laws which co-exist and co-operate withthem can be brought to light. This is all that M. Comte affirms, andenough for his purpose. [5] He no doubt occasionally indulges in moreunqualified expressions than can be completely justified, regarding thelogical perfection of the construction of his series, and its exactcorrespondence with the historical evolution of the sciences;exaggerations confined to language, and which the details of hisexposition often correct. But he is sufficiently near the truth, in bothrespects, for every practical purpose. [6] Minor inaccuracies must oftenbe forgiven even to great thinkers. Mr Spencer, in the very-writings inwhich he criticises M. Comte, affords signal instances of them. [7]

Combining the doctrines, that every science is in a less advanced stateas it occupies a higher place in the ascending scale, and that all thesciences pass through the three stages, theological, metaphysical, andpositive, it follows that the more special a science is, the tardier isit in effecting each transition, so that a completely positive state ofan earlier science has often coincided with the metaphysical state ofthe one next to it, and a purely theological state of those further on. This statement correctly represents the general course of the facts, though requiring allowances in the detail. Mathematics, for example, from the very beginning of its cultivation, can hardly at any time havebeen in the theological state, though exhibiting many traces of themetaphysical. No one, probably, ever believed that the will of a godkept parallel lines from meeting, or made two and two equal to four; orever prayed to the gods to make the square of the hypothenuse equal tomore or less than the sum of the squares of the sides. The most devoutbelievers have recognized in propositions of this description a class oftruths independent of the devine omnipotence. Even among the truthswhich popular philosophy calls by the misleading name of Contingent thefew which are at once exact and obvious were probably, from the veryfirst, excepted from the theological explanation. M. Comte observes, after Adam Smith, that we are not told in any age or country of a god ofWeight. It was otherwise with Astronomy: the heavenly bodies werebelieved not merely to be moved by gods, but to be gods themselves: andwhen this theory was exploded, there movements were explained bymetaphysical conceptions; such as a tendency of Nature to perfection, invirtue of which these sublime bodies, being left to themselves, move inthe most perfect orbit, the circle. Even Kepler was full of fancies ofthis description, which only terminated when Newton, by unveiling thereal physical laws of the celestial motions, closed the metaphysicalperiod of astronomical science. As M. Comte remarks, our power offoreseeing phaenomena, and our power of controlling them, are the twothings which destroy the belief of their being governed by changeablewills. In the case of phaenomena which science has not yet taught useither to foresee or to control, the theological mode of thought has notceased to operate: men still pray for rain, or for success in war, or toavert a shipwreck or a pestilence, but not to put back the stars intheir courses, to abridge the time necessary for a journey, or to arrestthe tides. Such vestiges of the primitive mode of thought linger in themore intricate departments of sciences which have attained a high degreeof positive development. The metaphysical mode of explanation, beingless antagonistic than the theological to the idea of invariable laws, is still slower in being entirely discarded. M. Comte finds remains ofit in the sciences which are the most completely positive, with thesingle exception of astronomy, mathematics itself not being, he thinks, altogether free from them: which is not wonderful, when we see at howvery recent a date mathematicians have been able to give the reallypositive interpretation of their own symbols. [8] We have already howeverhad occasion to notice M. Comte's propensity to use the termmetaphysical in cases containing nothing that truly answers to hisdefinition of the word. For instance, he considers chemistry as taintedwith the metaphysical mode of thought by the notion of chemicalaffinity. He thinks that the chemists who said that bodies combinebecause they have an affinity for each other, believed in a mysteriousentity residing in bodies and inducing them to combine. On any othersupposition, he thinks the statement could only mean that bodies combinebecause they combine. But it really meant more. It was the abstractexpression of the doctrine, that bodies have an invariable tendency tocombine with one thing in preference to another: that the tendencies ofdifferent substances to combine are fixed quantities, of which thegreater always prevails over the less, so that if A detaches B from C inone case it will do so in every other; which was called having a greaterattraction, or, more technically, a greater affinity for it. This wasnot a metaphysical theory, but a positive generalization, whichaccounted for a great number of facts, and would have kept its place asa law of nature, had it not been disproved by the discovery of cases inwhich though A detached B from C in some circumstances, C detached itfrom A in others, showing the law of elective chemical combination to bea less simple one than had at first been supposed. In this case, therefore, M. Comte made a mistake: and he will be found to have mademany similar ones. But in the science next after chemistry, biology, theempty mode of explanation by scholastic entities, such as a plasticforce, a vital principle, and the like, has been kept up even to thepresent day. The German physiology of the school of Oken, notwithstanding his acknowledged genius, is almost as metaphysical asHegel, and there is in France a quite recent revival of the Animism ofStahl. These metaphysical explanations, besides their inanity, didserious harm, by directing the course of positive scientific inquiryinto wrong channels. There was indeed nothing to prevent investigatingthe mode of action of the supposed plastic or vital force by observationand experiment; but the phrases gave currency and coherence to a falseabstraction and generalization, setting inquirers to look out for onecause of complex phaenomena which undoubtedly depended on many. 

According to M. Comte, chemistry entered into the positive stage withLavoisier, in the latter half of the last century (in a subsequenttreatise he places the date a generation earlier); and biology at thebeginning of the present, when Bichat drew the fundamental distinctionbetween nutritive or vegetative and properly animal life, and referredthe properties of organs to the general laws of the component tissues. The most complex of all sciences, the Social, had not, he maintained, become positive at all, but was the subject of an ever-renewed andbarren contest between the theological and the metaphysical modes ofthought. To make this highest of the sciences positive, and therebycomplete the positive character of all human speculations, was theprincipal aim of his labours, and he believed himself to haveaccomplished it in the last three volumes of his Treatise. But the termPositive is not, any more than Metaphysical, always used by M. Comte inthe same meaning. There never can have been a period in any science whenit was not in some degree positive, since it always professed to drawconclusions from experience and observation. M. Comte would have beenthe last to deny that previous to his own speculations, the worldpossessed a multitude of truths, of greater or less certainty, on socialsubjects, the evidence of which was obtained by inductive or deductiveprocesses from observed sequences of phaenomena. Nor could it be deniedthat the best writers on subjects upon which so many men of the highestmental capacity had employed their powers, had accepted as thoroughlythe positive point of view, and rejected the theological andmetaphysical as decidedly, as M. Comte himself. Montesquieu; evenMacchiavelli; Adam Smith and the political economists universally, bothin France and in England; Bentham, and all thinkers initiated byhim, --had a full conviction that social phaenomena conform to invariablelaws, the discovery and illustration of which was their great object asspeculative thinkers. All that can be said is, that those philosophersdid not get so far as M. Comte in discovering the methods best adaptedto bring these laws to light. It was not, therefore, reserved for M. Comte to make sociological inquiries positive. But what he really meantby making a science positive, is what we will call, with M. Littré, giving it its final scientific constitution; in other words, discoveringor proving, and pursuing to their consequences, those of its truthswhich are fit to form the connecting links among the rest: truths whichare to it what the law of gravitation is to astronomy, what theelementary properties of the tissues are to physiology, and we will add(though M. Comte did not) what the laws of association are topsychology. This is an operation which, when accomplished, puts an endto the empirical period, and enables the science to be conceived as aco-ordinated and coherent body of doctrine. This is what had not yetbeen done for sociology; and the hope of effecting it was, from hisearly years, the prompter and incentive of all M. Comte's philosophiclabours. 

It was with a view to this that he undertook that wonderfulsystematization of the philosophy of all the antecedent sciences, frommathematics to physiology, which, if he had done nothing else, wouldhave stamped him, in all minds competent to appreciate it, as one of theprincipal thinkers of the age. To make its nature intelligible to thosewho are not acquainted with it, we must explain what we mean by thephilosophy of a science, as distinguished from the science itself. Theproper meaning of philosophy we take to be, what the ancients understoodby it--the scientific knowledge of Man, as an intellectual, moral, andsocial being. Since his intellectual faculties include his knowingfaculty, the science of Man includes everything that man can know, sofar as regards his mode of knowing it: in other words, the wholedoctrine of the conditions of human knowledge. The philosophy of aScience thus comes to mean the science itself, considered not as to itsresults, the truths which it ascertains, but as to the processes bywhich the mind attains them, the marks by which it recognises them, andthe co-ordinating and methodizing of them with a view to the greatestclearness of conception and the fullest and readiest availibility foruse: in one word, the logic of the science. M. Comte has accomplishedthis for the first five of the fundamental sciences, with a successwhich can hardly be too much admired. We never reopen even the leastadmirable part of this survey, the volume on chemistry and biology(which was behind the actual state of those sciences when first written, and is far in the rear of them now), without a renewed sense of thegreat reach of its speculations, and a conviction that the way to acomplete rationalizing of those sciences, still very imperfectlyconceived by most who cultivate them, has been shown nowhere sosuccessfully as there. 

Yet, for a correct appreciation of this great philosophical achievement, we ought to take account of what has not been accomplished, as well asof what has. Some of the chief deficiencies and infirmities of M. Comte's system of thought will be found, as is usually the case, inclose connexion with its greatest successes. 

The philosophy of Science consists of two principal parts; the methodsof investigation, and the requisites of proof. The one points out theroads by which the human intellect arrives at conclusions, the other themode of testing their evidence. The former if complete would be anOrganon of Discovery, the latter of Proof. It is to the first of thesethat M. Comte principally confines himself, and he treats it with adegree of perfection hitherto unrivalled. Nowhere is there anythingcomparable, in its kind, to his survey of the resources which the mindhas at its disposal for investigating the laws of phaenomena; thecircumstances which render each of the fundamental modes of explorationsuitable or unsuitable to each class of phaenomena; the extensions andtransformations which the process of investigation has to undergo inadapting itself to each new province of the field of study; and theespecial gifts with which every one of the fundamental sciences enrichesthe method of positive inquiry, each science in its turn being the bestfitted to bring to perfection one process or another. These, and manycognate subjects, such as the theory of Classification, and the properuse of scientific Hypotheses, M. Comte has treated with a completenessof insight which leaves little to be desired. Not less admirable is hissurvey of the most comprehensive truths that had been arrived at by eachscience, considered as to their relation to the general sum of humanknowledge, and their logical value as aids to its further progress. Butafter all this, there remains a further and distinct question. We aretaught the right way of searching for results, but when a result hasbeen reached, how shall we know that it is true? How assure ourselvesthat the process has been performed correctly, and that our premises, whether consisting of generalities or of particular facts, really provethe conclusion we have grounded on them? On this question M. Comtethrows no light. He supplies no test of proof. As regards deduction, heneither recognises the syllogistic system of Aristotle and hissuccessors (the insufficiency of which is as evident as its utility isreal) nor proposes any other in lieu of it: and of induction he has nocanons whatever. He does not seem to admit the possibility of anygeneral criterion by which to decide whether a given inductive inferenceis correct or not. Yet he does not, with Dr Whewell, regard an inductivetheory as proved if it accounts for the facts: on the contrary, he setshimself in the strongest opposition to those scientific hypotheseswhich, like the luminiferous ether, are not susceptible of direct proof, and are accepted on the sole evidence of their aptitude for explainingphenomena. He maintains that no hypothesis is legitimate unless it issusceptible of verification, and that none ought to be accepted as trueunless it can be shown not only that it accords with the facts, but thatits falsehood would be inconsistent with them. He therefore needs a testof inductive proof; and in assigning none, he seems to give up asimpracticable the main problem of Logic properly so called. At thebeginning of his treatise he speaks of a doctrine of Method, apart fromparticular applications, as conceivable, but not needful: method, according to him, is learnt only by seeing it in operation, and thelogic of a science can only usefully be taught through the scienceitself. Towards the end of the work, he assumes a more decidedlynegative tone, and treats the very conception of studying Logicotherwise than in its applications as chimerical. He got on, in hissubsequent writings, to considering it as wrong. This indispensable partof Positive Philosophy he not only left to be supplied by others, butdid all that depended on him to discourage them from attempting it. 

This hiatus in M. Comte's system is not unconnected with a defect in hisoriginal conception of the subject matter of scientific investigation, which has been generally noticed, for it lies on the surface, and ismore apt to be exaggerated than overlooked. It is often said of him thathe rejects the study of causes. This is not, in the correct acceptation, true, for it is only questions of ultimate origin, and of Efficient asdistinguished from what are called Physical causes, that he rejects. Thecauses that he regards as inaccessible are causes which are notthemselves phaenomena. Like other people he admits the study of causes, in every sense in which one physical fact can be the cause of another. But he has an objection to the _word_ cause; he will only consent tospeak of Laws of Succession: and depriving himself of the use of a wordwhich has a Positive meaning, he misses the meaning it expresses. Hesees no difference between such generalizations as Kepler's laws, andsuch as the theory of gravitation. He fails to perceive the realdistinction between the laws of succession and coexistence whichthinkers of a different school call Laws of Phaenomena, and those ofwhat they call the action of Causes: the former exemplified by thesuccession of day and night, the latter by the earth's rotation whichcauses it. The succession of day and night is as much an invariablesequence, as the alternate exposure of opposite sides of the earth tothe sun. Yet day and night are not the causes of one another; why?Because their sequence, though invariable in our experience, is notunconditionally so: those facts only succeed each other, provided thatthe presence and absence of the sun succeed each other, and if thisalternation were to cease, we might have either day or night unfollowedby one another. There are thus two kinds of uniformities of succession, the one unconditional, the other conditional on the first: laws ofcausation, and other successions dependent on those laws. All ultimatelaws are laws of causation, and the only universal law beyond the paleof mathematics is the law of universal causation, namely, that everyphaenomenon has a phaenomenal cause; has some phaenomenon other thanitself, or some combination of phaenomena, on which it is invariably andunconditionally consequent. It is on the universality of this law thatthe possibility rests of establishing a canon of Induction. A generalproposition inductively obtained is only then proved to be true, whenthe instances on which it rests are such that if they have beencorrectly observed, the falsity of the generalization would beinconsistent with the constancy of causation; with the universality ofthe fact that the phaenomena of nature take place according toinvariable laws of succession. [9] It is probable, therefore, that M. Comte's determined abstinence from the word and the idea of Cause, hadmuch to do with his inability to conceive an Inductive Logic, bydiverting his attention from the only basis upon which it could befounded. 

We are afraid it must also be said, though shown only by slightindications in his fundamental work, and coming out in full evidenceonly in his later writings--that M. Comte, at bottom, was not sosolicitous about completeness of proof as becomes a positivephilosopher, and that the unimpeachable objectivity, as he would havecalled it, of a conception--its exact correspondence to the realities ofoutward fact--was not, with him, an indispensable condition of adoptingit, if it was subjectively useful, by affording facilities to the mindfor grouping phaenomena. This appears very curiously in his chapters onthe philosophy of Chemistry. He recommends, as a judicious use of "thedegree of liberty left to our intelligence by the end and purpose ofpositive science, " that we should accept as a convenient generalizationthe doctrine that all chemical composition is between two elements only;that every substance which our analysis decomposes, let us say into fourelements, has for its immediate constituents two hypotheticalsubstances, each compounded of two simpler ones. There would have beennothing to object to in this as a scientific hypothesis, assumedtentatively as a means of suggesting experiments by which its truth maybe tested. With this for its destination, the conception, would havebeen legitimate and philosophical; the more so, as, if confirmed, itwould have afforded an explanation of the fact that some substanceswhich analysis shows to be composed of the same elementary substancesin the same proportions, differ in their general properties, as forinstance, sugar and gum. [10] And if, besides affording a reason fordifference between things which differ, the hypothesis had afforded areason for agreement between things which agree; if the intermediatelink by which the quaternary compound was resolved into two binary ones, could have been so chosen as to bring each of them within the analogiesof some known class of binary compounds (which it is easy to supposepossible, and which in some particular instances actually happens);[11]the universality of binary composition would have been a successfulexample of an hypothesis in anticipation of a positive theory, to givea direction to inquiry which might end in its being either proved orabandoned. But M. Comte evidently thought that even though it shouldnever be proved--however many cases of chemical composition might alwaysremain in which the theory was still as hypothetical as at first--solong as it was not actually disproved (which it is scarcely in thenature of the case that it should ever be) it would deserve to beretained, for its mere convenience in bringing a large body ofphaenomena under a general conception. In a _résumé_ of the generalprinciples of the positive method at the end of the work, he claims, in express terms, an unlimited license of adopting "without any vainscruple" hypothetical conceptions of this sort; "in order to satisfy, within proper limits, our just mental inclinations, which always turn, with an instinctive predilection, towards simplicity, continuity, andgenerality of conceptions, while always respecting the reality ofexternal laws in so far as accessible to us" (vi. 639). "The mostphilosophic point of view leads us to conceive the study of natural lawsas destined to represent the external world so as to give as muchsatisfaction to the essential inclinations of our intelligence, as isconsistent with the degree of exactitude commanded by the aggregate ofour practical wants" (vi. 642). Among these "essential inclinations" heincludes not only our "instinctive predilection for order and harmony, "which makes us relish any conception, even fictitious, that helps toreduce phaenomena to system; but even our feelings of taste, "lesconvenances purement esthétiques, " which, he says, have a legitimatepart in the employment of the "genre de liberté" resté facultatif pournotre intelligence. " After the due satisfaction of our "most eminentmental inclinations, " there will still remain "a considerable margin ofindeterminateness, which should be made use of to give a directgratification to our _besoin_ of ideality, by embellishing ourscientific thoughts, without injury to their essential reality" (vi. 647). In consistency with all this, M. Comte warns thinkers against toosevere a scrutiny of the exact truth of scientific laws, and stamps with"severe reprobation" those who break down "by too minute aninvestigation" generalizations already made, without being able tosubstitute others (vi. 639): as in the case of Lavoisier's generaltheory of chemistry, which would have made that science moresatisfactory than at present to "the instinctive inclinations of ourintelligence" if it had turned out true, but unhappily it did not. Thesemental dispositions in M. Comte account for his not having found orsought a logical criterion of proof; but they are scarcely consistentwith his inveterate hostility to the hypothesis of the luminiferousether, which certainly gratifies our "predilection for order andharmony, " not to say our "besoin d'idéalite", in no ordinary degree. This notion of the "destination" of the study of natural laws is to ourminds a complete dereliction of the essential principles which form thePositive conception of science; and contained the germ of the perversionof his own philosophy which marked his later years. It might beinteresting, but scarcely worth while, to attempt to penetrate to thejust thought which misled M. Comte, for there is almost always a grainof truth in the errors of an original and powerful mind. There isanother grave aberration in M. Comte's view of the method of positivescience, which though not more unphilosophical than the last mentioned, is of greater practical importance. He rejects totally, as an invalidprocess, psychological observation properly so called, or in otherwords, internal consciousness, at least as regards our intellectualoperations. He gives no place in his series of the science ofPsychology, and always speaks of it with contempt. The study of mentalphaenomena, or, as he expresses it, of moral and intellectual functions, has a place in his scheme, under the head of Biology, but only as abranch of physiology. Our knowledge of the human mind must, he thinks, be acquired by observing other people. How we are to observe otherpeople's mental operations, or how interpret the signs of them withouthaving learnt what the signs mean by knowledge of ourselves, he does notstate. But it is clear to him that we can learn very little about thefeelings, and nothing at all about the intellect, by self-observation. Our intelligence can observe all other things, but not itself: we cannotobserve ourselves observing, or observe ourselves reasoning: and if wecould, attention to this reflex operation would annihilate its object, by stopping the process observed. 

There is little need for an elaborate refutation of a fallacy respectingwhich the only wonder is that it should impose on any one. Two answersmay be given to it. In the first place, M. Comte might be referred toexperience, and to the writings of his countryman M. Cardaillac and ourown Sir William Hamilton, for proof that the mind can not only beconscious of, but attend to, more than one, and even a considerablenumber, of impressions at once. [12] It is true that attention isweakened by being divided; and this forms a special difficulty inpsychological observation, as psychologists (Sir William Hamilton inparticular) have fully recognised; but a difficulty is not animpossibility. Secondly, it might have occurred to M. Comte that a factmay be studied through the medium of memory, not at the very moment ofour perceiving it, but the moment after: and this is really the mode inwhich our best knowledge of our intellectual acts is generally acquired. We reflect on what we have been doing, when the act is past, but whenits impression in the memory is still fresh. Unless in one of theseways, we could not have acquired the knowledge, which nobody denies usto have, of what passes in our minds. M. Comte would scarcely haveaffirmed that we are not aware of our own intellectual operations. Weknow of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time, orby memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge, and not(like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely by theirresults. This simple fact destroys the whole of M. Comte's argument. Whatever we are directly aware of, we can directly observe. 

And what Organon for the study of "the moral and intellectual functions"does M. Comte offer, in lieu of the direct mental observation which herepudiates? We are almost ashamed to say, that it is Phrenology! Not, indeed, he says, as a science formed, but as one still to be created;for he rejects almost all the special organs imagined by phrenologists, and accepts only their general division of the brain into the threeregions of the propensities, the sentiments, and the intellect, [13] andthe subdivision of the latter region between the organs of meditationand those of observation. Yet this mere first outline of anapportionment of the mental functions among different organs, he regardsas extricating the mental study of man from the metaphysical stage, andelevating it to the positive. The condition of mental science would besad indeed if this were its best chance of being positive; for the latercourse of physiological observation and speculation has not tended toconfirm, but to discredit, the phrenological hypothesis. And even ifthat hypothesis were true, psychological observation would still benecessary; for how is it possible to ascertain the correspondencebetween two things, by observation of only one of them? To establish arelation between mental functions and cerebral conformations, requiresnot only a parallel system of observations applied to each, but (as M. Comte himself, with some inconsistency, acknowledges) an analysis of themental faculties, "des diverses facultés élémentaires, " (iii. 573), conducted without any reference to the physical conditions, since theproof of the theory would lie in the correspondence between the divisionof the brain into organs and that of the mind into faculties, each shownby separate evidence. To accomplish this analysis requires directpsychological study carried to a high pitch of perfection; it beingnecessary, among other things, to investigate the degree in which mentalcharacter is created by circumstances, since no one supposes thatcerebral conformation does all, and circumstances nothing. Thephrenological study of Mind thus supposes as its necessary preparationthe whole of the Association psychology. Without, then, rejecting anyaid which study of the brain and nerves can afford to psychology (and ithas afforded, and will yet afford, much), we may affirm that M. Comtehas done nothing for the constitution of the positive method of mentalscience. He refused to profit by the very valuable commencements made byhis predecessors, especially by Hartley, Brown, and James Mill (ifindeed any of those philosophers were known to him), and left thepsychological branch of the positive method, as well as psychologyitself, to be put in their true position as a part of PositivePhilosophy by successors who duly placed themselves at the twofold pointof view of physiology and psychology, Mr Bain and Mr Herbert Spencer. This great mistake is not a mere hiatus in M. Comte's system, but theparent of serious errors in his attempt to create a Social Science. Heis indeed very skilful in estimating the effect of circumstances inmoulding the general character of the human race; were he not, hishistorical theory could be of little worth: but in appreciating theinfluence which circumstances exercise, through psychological laws, inproducing diversities of character, collective or individual, he issadly at fault. 

After this summary view of M. Comte's conception of Positive Philosophy, it remains to give some account of his more special and equallyambitious attempt to create the Science of Sociology, or, as heexpresses it, to elevate the study of social phaenomena to the positivestate. 

He regarded all who profess any political opinions as hitherto dividedbetween the adherents of the theological and those of the metaphysicalmode of thought: the former deducing all their doctrines from divineordinances, the latter from abstractions. This assertion, however, cannot be intended in the same sense as when the terms are applied tothe sciences of inorganic nature; for it is impossible that actsevidently proceeding from the human will could be ascribed to the agency(at least immediate) of either divinities or abstractions. No one everregarded himself or his fellow-man as a mere piece of machinery workedby a god, or as the abode of an entity which was the true author of whatthe man himself appeared to do. True, it was believed that the gods, orGod, could move or change human wills, as well as control theirconsequences, and prayers were offered to them accordingly, rather asable to overrule the spontaneous course of things, than as at eachinstant carrying it on. On the whole, however, the theological andmetaphysical conceptions, in their application to sociology, hadreference not to the production of phaenomena, but to the rule of duty, and conduct in life. It is this which was based, either on a divinewill, or on abstract mental conceptions, which, by an illusion of therational faculty, were invested with objective validity. On the onehand, the established rules of morality were everywhere referred to adivine origin. In the majority of countries the entire civil andcriminal law was looked upon as revealed from above; and it is to thepetty military communities which escaped this delusion, that man isindebted for being now a progressive being. The fundamental institutionsof the state were almost everywhere believed to have been divinelyestablished, and to be still, in a greater or less degree, of divineauthority. The divine right of certain lines of kings to rule, and evento rule absolutely, was but lately the creed of the dominant party inmost countries of Europe; while the divine right of popes and bishops todictate men's beliefs (and not respecting the invisible world alone) isstill striving, though under considerable difficulties, to rule mankind. When these opinions began to be out of date, a rival theory presenteditself to take their place. There were, in truth, many such theories, and to some of them the term metaphysical, in M. Comte's sense, cannotjustly be applied. All theories in which the ultimate standard ofinstitutions and rules of action was the happiness of mankind, andobservation and experience the guides (and some such there have been inall periods of free speculation), are entitled to the name Positive, whatever, in other respects, their imperfections may be. But these werea small minority. M. Comte was right in affirming that the prevailingschools of moral and political speculation, when not theological, havebeen metaphysical. They affirmed that moral rules, and even politicalinstitutions, were not means to an end, the general good, butcorollaries evolved from the conception of Natural Rights. This wasespecially the case in all the countries in which the ideas ofpublicists were the offspring of the Roman Law. The legislators ofopinion on these subjects, when not theologians, were lawyers: and theContinental lawyers followed the Roman jurists, who followed the Greekmetaphysicians, in acknowledging as the ultimate source of right andwrong in morals, and consequently in institutions, the imaginary law ofthe imaginary being Nature. The first systematizers of morals inChristian Europe, on any other than a purely theological basis, thewriters on International Law, reasoned wholly from these premises, andtransmitted them to a long line of successors. This mode of thoughtreached its culmination in Rousseau, in whose hands it became aspowerful an instrument for destroying the past, as it was impotent fordirecting the future. The complete victory which this philosophy gained, in speculation, over the old doctrines, was temporarily followed by anequally complete practical triumph, the French Revolution: when, havinghad, for the first time, a full opportunity of developing itstendencies, and showing what it could not do, it failed so conspicuouslyas to determine a partial reaction to the doctrines of feudalism andCatholicism. Between these and the political metaphysics (meta-politicsas Coleridge called it) of the Revolution, society has since oscillated;raising up in the process a hybrid intermediate party, termedConservative, or the party of Order, which has no doctrines of its own, but attempts to hold the scales even between the two others, borrowingalternately the arguments of each, to use as weapons against whicheverof the two seems at the moment most likely to prevail. 

Such, reduced to a very condensed form, is M. Comte's version of thestate of European opinion on politics and society. An Englishman'scriticism would be, that it describes well enough the general divisionof political opinion in France and the countries which follow her lead, but not in England, or the communities of English origin: in all ofwhich, divine right died out with the Jacobites, and the law of natureand natural rights have never been favourites even with the extremepopular party, who preferred to rest their claims on the historicaltraditions of their own country, and on maxims drawn from its law books, and since they outgrew this standard, almost always base them on generalexpediency. In England, the preference of one form of government toanother seldom turns on anything but the practical consequences which itproduces, or which are expected from it. M. Comte can point to little ofthe nature of metaphysics in English politics, except "la métaphysiqueconstitutionnelle, " a name he chooses to give to the conventionalfiction by which the occupant of the throne is supposed to be the sourcefrom whence all power emanates, while nothing can be further from thebelief or intention of anybody than that such should really be the case. Apart from this, which is a matter of forms and words, and has noconnexion with any belief except belief in the proprieties, the severestcriticism can find nothing either worse or better, in the modes ofthinking either of our conservative or of our liberal party, than aparticularly shallow and flimsy kind of positivism. The working classesindeed, or some portion of them, perhaps still rest their claim touniversal suffrage on abstract right, in addition to more substantialreasons, and thus far and no farther does metaphysics prevail in theregion of English politics. But politics is not the entire art of socialexistence: ethics is a still deeper and more vital part of it: and inthat, as much in England as elsewhere, the current opinions are stilldivided between the theological mode of thought and the metaphysical. What is the whole doctrine of Intuitive Morality, which reigns supremewherever the idolatry of Scripture texts has abated and the influence ofBentham's philosophy has not reached, but the metaphysical state ofethical science? What else, indeed, is the whole _a priori_ philosophy, in morals, jurisprudence, psychology, logic, even physical science, forit does not always keep its hands off that, the oldest domain ofobservation and experiment? It has the universal diagnostic of themetaphysical mode of thought, in the Comtean sense of the word; that oferecting a mere creation of the mind into a test or _norma_ of externaltruth, and presenting the abstract expression of the beliefs alreadyentertained, as the reason and evidence which justifies them. Of thosewho still adhere to the old opinions we need not speak; but when one ofthe most vigorous as well as boldest thinkers that English speculationhas yet produced, full of the true scientific spirit, Mr HerbertSpencer, places in the front of his philosophy the doctrine that theultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness ofits negative; when, following in the steps of Mr Spencer, an ableexpounder of positive philosophy like Mr Lewes, in his meritorious andby no means superficial work on Aristotle, after laying, very justly, the blame of almost every error of the ancient thinkers on theirneglecting to _verify_ their opinions, announces that there are twokinds of verification, the Real and the Ideal, the ideal test of truthbeing that its negative is unthinkable, and by the application of thattest judges that gravitation must be universal even in the stellarregions, because in the absence of proof to the contrary, "the idea ofmatter without gravity is unthinkable;"--when those from whom it wasleast to be expected thus set up acquired necessities of thought in theminds of one or two generations as evidence of real necessities in theuniverse, we must admit that the metaphysical mode of thought stillrules the higher philosophy, even in the department of inorganic nature, and far more in all that relates to man as a moral, intellectual, andsocial being. 

But, while M. Comte is so far in the right, we often, as alreadyintimated, find him using the name metaphysical to denote certainpractical conclusions, instead of a particular kind of theoreticalpremises. Whatever goes by the different names of the revolutionary, theradical, the democratic, the liberal, the free-thinking, the sceptical, or the negative and critical school or party in religion, politics, orphilosophy, all passes with him under the designation of metaphysical, and whatever he has to say about it forms part of his description of themetaphysical school of social science. He passes in review, one afteranother, what he deems the leading doctrines of the revolutionary schoolof politics, and dismisses them all as mere instruments of attack uponthe old social system, with no permanent validity as social truth. 

He assigns only this humble rank to the first of all the articles of theliberal creed, "the absolute right of free examination, or the dogma ofunlimited liberty of conscience. " As far as this doctrine only meansthat opinions, and their expression, should be exempt from _legal_restraint, either in the form of prevention or of penalty, M. Comte is afirm adherent of it: but the _moral_ right of every human being, howeverill-prepared by the necessary instruction and discipline, to erecthimself into a judge of the most intricate as well as the most importantquestions that can occupy the human intellect, he resolutely denies. "There is no liberty of conscience, " he said in an early work, "inastronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physiology, in the sensethat every one would think it absurd not to accept in confidence theprinciples established in those sciences by the competent persons. If itis otherwise in politics, the reason is merely because, the olddoctrines having gone by and the new ones not being yet formed, thereare not properly, during the interval, any established opinions. " Whenfirst mankind outgrew the old doctrines, an appeal from doctors andteachers to the outside public was inevitable and indispensable, sincewithout the toleration and encouragement of discussion and criticismfrom all quarters, it would have been impossible for any new doctrinesto grow up. But in itself, the practice of carrying the questions whichmore than all others require special knowledge and preparation, beforethe incompetent tribunal of common opinion, is, he contends, radicallyirrational, and will and ought to cease when once mankind have againmade up their minds to a system of doctrine. The prolongation of thisprovisional state, producing an ever-increasing divergence of opinions, is already, according to him, extremely dangerous, since it is only whenthere is a tolerable unanimity respecting the rule of life, that a realmoral control can be established over the self-interest and passions ofindividuals. Besides which, when every man is encouraged to believehimself a competent judge of the most difficult social questions, hecannot be prevented from thinking himself competent also to the mostimportant public duties, and the baneful competition for power andofficial functions spreads constantly downwards to a lower and lowergrade of intelligence. In M. Comte's opinion, the peculiarly complicatednature of sociological studies, and the great amount of previousknowledge and intellectual discipline requisite for them, together withthe serious consequences that may be produced by even, temporary errorson such subjects, render it necessary in the case of ethics andpolitics, still more than of mathematics and physics, that whateverlegal liberty may exist of questioning and discussing, the opinions ofmankind should really be formed for them by an exceedingly small numberof minds of the highest class, trained to the task by the most thoroughand laborious mental preparation: and that the questioning of theirconclusions by any one, not of an equivalent grade of intellect andinstruction, should be accounted equally presumptuous, and moreblamable, than the attempts occasionally made by sciolists to refute theNewtonian astronomy. All this is, in a sense, true: but we confess oursympathy with those who feel towards it like the man in the story, whobeing asked whether he admitted that six and five make eleven, refusedto give an answer until he knew what use was to be made of it. Thedoctrine is one of a class of truths which, unless completed by othertruths, are so liable to perversion, that we may fairly decline to takenotice of them except in connexion with some definite application. Injustice to M. Comte it should be said that he does not wish thisintellectual dominion to be exercised over an ignorant people. Par fromhim is the thought of promoting the allegiance of the mass to scientificauthority by withholding from them scientific knowledge. He holds it theduty of society to bestow on every one who grows up to manhood orwomanhood as complete a course of instruction in every department ofscience, from mathematics to sociology, as can possibly be made general:and his ideas of what is possible in that respect are carried to alength to which few are prepared to follow him. There is somethingstartling, though, when closely looked into, not Utopian or chimerical, in the amount of positive knowledge of the most varied kind which hebelieves may, by good methods of teaching, be made the commoninheritance of all persons with ordinary faculties who are born into theworld: not the mere knowledge of results, to which, except for thepractical arts, he attaches only secondary value, but knowledge also ofthe mode in which those results were attained, and the evidence on whichthey rest, so far as it can be known and understood by those who do notdevote their lives to its study. 

We have stated thus fully M. Comte's opinion on the most fundamentaldoctrine of liberalism, because it is the clue to much of his generalconception of politics. If his object had only been to exemplify by thatdoctrine the purely negative character of the principal liberal andrevolutionary schools of thought, he need not have gone so far: it wouldhave been enough to say, that the mere liberty to hold and express anycreed, cannot itself _be_ that creed. Every one is free to believe andpublish that two and two make ten, but the important thing is to knowthat they make four. M. Comte has no difficulty in making out an equallystrong case against the other principal tenets of what he calls therevolutionary school; since all that they generally amount to is, thatsomething ought not to be: which cannot possibly be the whole truth, andwhich M. Comte, in general, will not admit to be even part of it. Takefor instance the doctrine which denies to governments any initiative insocial progress, restricting them to the function of preserving order, or in other words keeping the peace: an opinion which, so far asgrounded on so-called rights of the individual, he justly regards aspurely metaphysical; but does not recognise that it is also widely heldas an inference from the laws of human nature and human affairs, andtherefore, whether true or false, as a Positive doctrine. Believing withM. Comte that there are no absolute truths in the political art, norindeed in any art whatever, we agree with him that the _laisser faire_doctrine, stated without large qualifications, is both unpractical andunscientific; but it does not follow that those who assert it are not, nineteen times out of twenty, practically nearer the truth than thosewho deny it. The doctrine of Equality meets no better fate at M. Comte'shands. He regards it as the erection into an absolute dogma of a mereprotest against the inequalities which came down from the middle ages, and answer no legitimate end in modern society. He observes, thatmankind in a normal state, having to act together, are necessarily, inpractice, organized and classed with some reference to their unequalaptitudes, natural or acquired, which demand that some should be underthe direction of others: scrupulous regard being at the same time had tothe fulfilment towards all, of "the claims rightfully inherent in thedignity of a human being; the aggregate of which, still veryinsufficiently appreciated, will constitute more and more the principleof universal morality as applied to daily use... A grand moralobligation, which has never been directly denied since the abolition ofslavery" (iv. 51). There is not a word to be said against thesedoctrines: but the practical question is one which M. Comte never evenentertains--viz. , when, after being properly educated, people are leftto find their places for themselves, do they not spontaneously classthemselves in a manner much more conformable to their unequal ordissimilar aptitudes, than governments or social institutions are likelyto do it for them? The Sovereignty of the People, again, --thatmetaphysical axiom which in France and the rest of the Continent has solong been the theoretic basis of radical and democratic politics, --heregards as of a purely negative character, signifying the right of thepeople to rid themselves by insurrection of a social order that hasbecome oppressive; but, when erected into a positive principle ofgovernment, which condemns indefinitely all superiors to "an arbitrarydependence upon the multitude of their inferiors, " he considers it as asort of "transportation to peoples of the divine right so muchreproached to kings" (iv. 55, 56). On the doctrine as a metaphysicaldogma or an absolute principle, this criticism is just; but there isalso a Positive doctrine, without any pretension to being absolute, which claims the direct participation of the governed in their owngovernment, not as a natural right, but as a means to important ends, under the conditions and with the limitations which those ends impose. The general result of M. Comte's criticism on the revolutionaryphilosophy, is that he deems it not only incapable of aiding thenecessary reorganization of society, but a serious impediment thereto, by setting up, on all the great interests of mankind, the mere negationof authority, direction, or organization, as the most perfect state, andthe solution of all problems: the extreme point of this aberration beingreached by Rousseau and his followers, when they extolled the savagestate, as an ideal from which civilization was only a degeneracy, moreor less marked and complete. 

The state of sociological speculation being such as has beendescribed--divided between a feudal and theological school, now effete, and a democratic and metaphysical one, of no value except for thedestruction of the former; the problem, how to render the social sciencepositive, must naturally have presented itself, more or less distinctly, to superior minds. M. Comte examines and criticises, for the most partjustly, some of the principal efforts which have been made by individualthinkers for this purpose. But the weak side of his philosophy comes outprominently in his strictures on the only systematic attempt yet made byany body of thinkers, to constitute a science, not indeed of socialphenomena generally, but of one great class or division of them. Wemean, of course, political economy, which (with a reservation in favourof the speculations of Adam Smith as valuable preparatory studies forscience) he deems unscientific, unpositive, and a mere branch ofmetaphysics, that comprehensive category of condemnation in which heplaces all attempts at positive science which are not in his opiniondirected by a right scientific method. Any one acquainted with thewritings of political economists need only read his few pages ofanimadversions on them (iv. 193 to 205), to learn how extremelysuperficial M. Comte can sometimes be. He affirms that they have addednothing really new to the original _aperçus_ of Adam Smith; when everyone who has read them knows that they have added so much as to havechanged the whole aspect of the science, besides rectifying and clearingup in the most essential points the _aperçus_ themselves. He lays analmost puerile stress, for the purpose of disparagement, on thediscussions about the meaning of words which are found in the best bookson political economy, as if such discussions were not an indispensableaccompaniment of the progress of thought, and abundant in the history ofevery physical science. On the whole question he has but one remark ofany value, and that he misapplies; namely, that the study of theconditions of national wealth as a detached subject is unphilosophical, because, all the different aspects of social phaenomena acting andreacting on one another, they cannot be rightly understood apart: whichby no means proves that the material and industrial phaenomena ofsociety are not, even by themselves, susceptible of usefulgeneralizations, but only that these generalizations must necessarily berelative to a given form of civilization and a given stage of socialadvancement. This, we apprehend, is what no political economist woulddeny. None of them pretend that the laws of wages, profits, values, prices, and the like, set down in their treatises, would be strictlytrue, or many of them true at all, in the savage state (for example), orin a community composed of masters and slaves. But they do think, withgood reason, that whoever understands the political economy of a countrywith the complicated and manifold civilization of the nations of Europe, can deduce without difficulty the political economy of any other stateof society, with the particular circumstances of which he is equallywell acquainted. [14] We do not pretend that political economy has neverbeen prosecuted or taught in a contracted spirit. As often as a study iscultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions. If a political economist is deficient in general knowledge, he willexaggerate the importance and universality of the limited class oftruths which he knows. All kinds of scientific men are liable to thisimputation, and M. Comte is never weary of urging it against them;reproaching them with their narrowness of mind, the petty scale of theirthoughts, their incapacity for large views, and the stupidity of thosethey occasionally attempt beyond the bounds of their own subjects. Political economists do not deserve these reproaches more than otherclasses of positive inquirers, but less than most. The principal errorof narrowness with which they are frequently chargeable, is that ofregarding, not any economical doctrine, but their present experience ofmankind, as of universal validity; mistaking temporary or local phasesof human character for human nature itself; having no faith in thewonderful pliability of the human mind; deeming it impossible, in spiteof the strongest evidence, that the earth can produce human beings of adifferent type from that which is familiar to them in their own age, oreven, perhaps, in their own country. The only security against thisnarrowness is a liberal mental cultivation, and all it proves is thata person is not likely to be a good political economist who is nothingelse. 

Thus far, we have had to do with M. Comte, as a sociologist, only in hiscritical capacity. We have now to deal with him as a constructor--theauthor of a sociological system. The first question is that of theMethod proper to the study. His view of this is highly instructive. 

The Method proper to the Science of Society must be, in substance, thesame as in all other sciences; the interrogation and interpretation ofexperience, by the twofold process of Induction and Deduction. But itsmode of practising these operations has features of peculiarity. Ingeneral, Induction furnishes to science the laws of the elementaryfacts, from which, when known, those of the complex combinations arethought out deductively: specific observation of complex phaenomenayields no general laws, or only empirical ones; its scientific functionis to verify the laws obtained by deduction. This mode of philosophizingis not adequate to the exigencies of sociological investigation. Insocial phaemomena the elementary facts are feelings and actions, and thelaws of these are the laws of human nature, social facts being theresults of human acts and situations. Since, then, the phaenomena of manin society result from his nature as an individual being, it might bethought that the proper mode of constructing a positive Social Sciencemust be by deducing it from the general laws of human nature, using thefacts of history merely for verification. Such, accordingly, has beenthe conception of social science by many of those who have endeavouredto render it positive, particularly by the school of Bentham. M. Comteconsiders this as an error. We may, he says, draw from the universallaws of human nature some conclusions (though even these, we think, rather precarious) concerning the very earliest stages of humanprogress, of which there are either no, or very imperfect, historicalrecords. But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena aredetermined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universalhuman nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations overthe present. The human beings themselves, on the laws of whose naturethe facts of history depend, are not abstract or universal buthistorical human beings, already shaped, and made what they are, byhuman society. This being the case, no powers of deduction could enableany one, starting from the mere conception of the Being Man, placed in aworld such as the earth may have been before the commencement of humanagency, to predict and calculate the phaenomena of his development suchas they have in fact proved. If the facts of history, empiricallyconsidered, had not given rise to any generalizations, a deductive studyof history could never have reached higher than more or less plausibleconjecture. By good fortune (for the case might easily have beenotherwise) the history of our species, looked at as a comprehensivewhole, does exhibit a determinate course, a certain order ofdevelopment: though history alone cannot prove this to be a necessarylaw, as distinguished from a temporary accident. Here, therefore, beginsthe office of Biology (or, as we should say, of Psychology) in thesocial science. The universal laws of human nature are part of the dataof sociology, but in using them we must reverse the method of thedeductive physical sciences: for while, in these, specific experiencecommonly serves to verify laws arrived at by deduction, in sociology itis specific experience which suggests the laws, and deduction whichverifies them. If a sociological theory, collected from historicalevidence, contradicts the established general laws of human nature; if(to use M. Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, anyvery decided natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction; if itsupposes that the reason, in average human beings, predominates over thedesires, or the disinterested desires over the personal; we may knowthat history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is false. Onthe other hand, if laws of social phaenomena, empirically generalizedfrom history, can when once suggested be affiliated to the known laws ofhuman nature; if the direction actually taken by the developments andchanges of human society, can be seen to be such as the properties ofman and of his dwelling-place made antecedently probable, the empiricalgeneralizations are raised into positive laws, and Sociology becomes ascience. 

Much has been said and written for centuries past, by the practical orempirical school of politicians, in condemnation of theories founded onprinciples of human nature, without an historical basis; and thetheorists, in their turn, have successfully retaliated on thepracticalists. But we know not any thinker who, before M. Comte, hadpenetrated to the philosophy of the matter, and placed the necessity ofhistorical studies as the foundation of sociological speculation on thetrue footing. From this time any political thinker who fancies himselfable to dispense with a connected view of the great facts of history, asa chain of causes and effects, must be regarded as below the level ofthe age; while the vulgar mode of using history, by looking in it forparallel cases, as if any cases were parallel, or as if a singleinstance, or even many instances not compared and analysed, could reveala law, will be more than ever, and irrevocably, discredited. 

The inversion of the ordinary relation between Deduction and Inductionis not the only point in which, according to M. Comte, the Method properto Sociology differs from that of the sciences of inorganic nature. Thecommon order of science proceeds from the details to the whole. Themethod of Sociology should proceed from the whole to the details. Thereis no universal principle for the order of study, but that of proceedingfrom the known to the unknown; finding our way to the facts at whateverpoint is most open to our observation. In the phaenomena of the socialstate, the collective phaenomenon is more accessible to us than theparts of which it is composed. This is already, in a great degree, trueof the mere animal body. It is essential to the idea of an organism, andit is even more true of the social organism than of the individual. Thestate of every part of the social whole at any time, is intimatelyconnected with the contemporaneous state of all the others. Religiousbelief, philosophy, science, the fine arts, the industrial arts, commerce, navigation, government, all are in close mutual dependence onone another, insomuch that when any considerable change takes place inone, we may know that a parallel change in all the others has precededor will follow it. The progress of society from one general state toanother is not an aggregate of partial changes, but the product of asingle impulse, acting through all the partial agencies, and cantherefore be most easily traced by studying them together. Could it evenbe detected in them separately, its true nature could not be understoodexcept by examining them in the _ensemble_. In constructing, therefore, a theory of society, all the different aspects of the socialorganization must be taken into consideration at once. 

Our space is not consistent with inquiring into all the limitations ofthis doctrine. It requires many of which M. Comte's theory takes noaccount. There is one, in particular, dependent on a scientific artificefamiliar to students of science, especially of the applications ofmathematics to the study of nature. When an effect depends on severalvariable conditions, some of which change less, or more slowly, thanothers, we are often able to determine, either by reasoning or byexperiment, what would be the law of variation of the effect if itschanges depended only on some of the conditions, the remainder beingsupposed constant. The law so found will be sufficiently near the truthfor all times and places in which the latter set of conditions do notvary greatly, and will be a basis to set out from when it becomesnecessary to allow for the variations of those conditions also. Most ofthe conclusions of social science applicable to practical use are ofthis description. M. Comte's system makes no room for them. We have seenhow he deals with the part of them which are the most scientific incharacter, the generalizations of political economy. 

There is one more point in the general philosophy of sociology requiringnotice. Social phaenomena, like all others, present two aspects, thestatical, and the dynamical; the phaenomena of equilibrium, and those ofmotion. The statical aspect is that of the laws of social existence, considered abstractedly from progress, and confined to what is common tothe progressive and the stationary state. The dynamical aspect is thatof social progress. The statics of society is the study of theconditions of existence and permanence of the social state. The dynamicsstudies the laws of its evolution. The first is the theory of the_consensus, _ or interdependence of social phaenomena. The second is thetheory of their filiation. 

The first division M. Comte, in his great work, treats in a much moresummary manner than the second; and it forms, to our thinking, theweakest part of the treatise. He can hardly have seemed even to himselfto have originated, in the statics of society, anything new, [15] unlesshis revival of the Catholic idea of a Spiritual Power may be soconsidered. The remainder, with the exception of detached thoughts, inwhich even his feeblest productions are always rich, is trite, while inour judgment far from being always true. 

He begins by a statement of the general properties of human nature whichmake social existence possible. Man has a spontaneous propensity to thesociety of his fellow-beings, and seeks it instinctively, for its ownsake, and not out of regard to the advantages it procures for him, which, in many conditions of humanity, must appear to him veryproblematical. Man has also a certain, though moderate, amount ofnatural benevolence. On the other hand, these social propensities are bynature weaker than his selfish ones; and the social state, being mainlykept in existence through the former, involves an habitual antagonismbetween the two. Further, our wants of all kinds, from the purelyorganic upwards, can only be satisfied by means of labour, nor doesbodily labour suffice, without the guidance of intelligence. But labour, especially when prolonged and monotonous, is naturally hateful, andmental labour the most irksome of all; and hence a second antagonism, which must exist in all societies whatever. The character of the societyis principally determined by the degree in which the better incentive, in each of these cases, makes head against the worse. In both thepoints, human nature is capable of great amelioration. The socialinstincts may approximate much nearer to the strength of the personalones, though never entirely coming up to it; the aversion to labour ingeneral, and to intellectual labour in particular, may be much weakened, and the predominance of the inclinations over the reason greatlydiminished, though never completely destroyed. The spirit of improvementresults from the increasing strength of the social instincts, combinedwith the growth of an intellectual activity, which guiding the personalpropensities, inspires each individual with a deliberate desire toimprove his condition. The personal instincts left to their ownguidance, and the indolence and apathy natural to mankind, are thesources which mainly feed the spirit of Conservation. The strugglebetween the two spirits is an universal incident of the social state. 

The next of the universal elements in human society is family life;which M. Comte regards as originally the sole, and always the principal, source of the social feelings, and the only school open to mankind ingeneral, in which unselfishness can be learnt, and the feelings andconduct demanded by social relations be made habitual. M. Comte takesthis opportunity of declaring his opinions on the proper constitution ofthe family, and in particular of the marriage institution. They are ofthe most orthodox and conservative sort. M. Comte adheres not only tothe popular Christian, but to the Catholic view of marriage in itsutmost strictness, and rebukes Protestant nations for having tamperedwith the indissolubility of the engagement, by permitting divorce. Headmits that the marriage institution has been, in various respects, beneficially modified with the advance of society, and that we may notyet have reached the last of these modifications; but strenuouslymaintains that such changes cannot possibly affect what he regards asthe essential principles of the institution--the irrevocability of theengagement, and the complete subordination of the wife to the husband, and of women generally to men; which are precisely the great vulnerablepoints of the existing constitution of society on this importantsubject. It is unpleasant to have to say it of a philosopher, but theincidents of his life which have been made public by his biographersafford an explanation of one of these two opinions: he had quarrelledwith his wife. [16] At a later period, under the influence ofcircumstances equally personal, his opinions and feelings respectingwomen were very much modified, without becoming more rational: in hisfinal scheme of society, instead of being treated as grown children, they were exalted into goddesses: honours, privileges, and immunities, were lavished on them, only not simple justice. On the other question, the irrevocability of marriage, M. Comte must receive credit forimpartiality, since the opposite doctrine would have better suited hispersonal convenience: but we can give him no other credit, for hisargument is not only futile but refutes itself. He says that withliberty of divorce, life would be spent in a constant succession ofexperiments and failures; and in the same breath congratulates himselfon the fact, that modern manners and sentiments have in the mainprevented the baneful effects which the toleration of divorce inProtestant countries might have been expected to produce. He did notperceive that if modern habits and feelings have successfully resistedwhat he deems the tendency of a less rigorous marriage law, it must bebecause modern habits and feelings are inconsistent with the perpetualseries of new trials which he dreaded. If there are tendencies in humannature which seek change and variety, there are others which demandfixity, in matters which touch the daily sources of happiness; and onewho had studied history as much as M. Comte, ought to have known thatever since the nomad mode of life was exchanged for the agricultural, the latter tendencies have been always gaining ground on the former. Allexperience testifies that regularity in domestic relations is almost indirect proportion to industrial civilization. Idle life, and militarylife with its long intervals of idleness, are the conditions to which, either sexual profligacy, or prolonged vagaries of imagination on thatsubject, are congenial. Busy men have no time for them, and have toomuch other occupation for their thoughts: they require that home shouldbe a place of rest, not of incessantly renewed excitement anddisturbance. In the condition, therefore, into which modern society haspassed, there is no probability that marriages would often be contractedwithout a sincere desire on both sides that they should be permanent. That this has been the case hitherto in countries where divorce waspermitted, we have on M. Comte's own showing: and everything leads us tobelieve that the power, if granted elsewhere, would in general be usedonly for its legitimate purpose--for enabling those who, by a blamelessor excusable mistake, have lost their first throw for domestichappiness, to free themselves (with due regard for all interestsconcerned) from the burthensome yoke, and try, under more favourableauspices, another chance. Any further discussion of these great socialquestions would evidently be incompatible with the nature and limits ofthe present paper. 

Lastly, a phaenomenon universal in all societies, and constantlyassuming a wider extension as they advance in their progress, is theco-operation of mankind one with another, by the division of employmentsand interchange of commodities and services; a communion which extendsto nations as well as individuals. The economic importance of thisspontaneous organization of mankind as joint workers with and for oneanother, has often been illustrated. Its moral effects, in connectingthem by their interests, and as a more remote consequence, by theirsympathies, are equally salutary. But there are some things to be saidon the other side. The increasing specialisation of all employments; thedivision of mankind into innumerable small fractions, each engrossed byan extremely minute fragment of the business of society, is not withoutinconveniences, as well moral as intellectual, which, if they could notbe remedied, would be a serious abatement from the benefits of advancedcivilization. The interests of the whole--the bearings of things on theends of the social union--are less and less present to the minds of menwho have so contracted a sphere of activity. The insignificant detailwhich forms their whole occupation--the infinitely minute wheel theyhelp to turn in the machinery of society--does not arouse or gratify anyfeeling of public spirit, or unity with their fellow-men. Their work isa mere tribute to physical necessity, not the glad performance of asocial office. This lowering effect of the extreme division of labourtells most of all on those who are set up as the lights and teachers ofthe rest. A man's mind is as fatally narrowed, and his feelings towardsthe great ends of humanity as miserably stunted, by giving all histhoughts to the classification of a few insects or the resolution of afew equations, as to sharpening the points or putting on the heads ofpins. The "dispersive speciality" of the present race of scientific men, who, unlike their predecessors, have a positive aversion to enlargedviews, and seldom either know or care for any of the interests ofmankind beyond the narrow limits of their pursuit, is dwelt on by M. Comte as one of the great and growing evils of the time, and the onewhich most retards moral and intellectual regeneration. To contendagainst it is one of the main purposes towards which he thinks theforces of society should be directed. The obvious remedy is a large andliberal general education, preparatory to all special pursuits: and thisis M. Comte's opinion: but the education of youth is not in hisestimation enough: he requires an agency set apart for obtruding uponall classes of persons through the whole of life, the paramount claimsof the general interest, and the comprehensive ideas that demonstratethe mode in which human actions promote or impair it. In other words, he demands a moral and intellectual authority, charged with the duty ofguiding men's opinions and enlightening and warning their consciences;a Spiritual Power, whose judgments on all matters of high moment shoulddeserve, and receive, the same universal respect and deference which ispaid to the united judgment of astronomers in matters astronomical. Thevery idea of such an authority implies that an unanimity has beenattained, at least in essentials, among moral and political thinkers, corresponding or approaching to that which already exists in the othersciences. There cannot be this unanimity, until the true methods ofpositive science have been applied to all subjects, as completely asthey have been applied to the study of physical science: to this, however, there is no real obstacle; and when once it is accomplished, the same degree of accordance will naturally follow. The undisputedauthority which astronomers possess in astronomy, will be possessed onthe great social questions by Positive Philosophers; to whom will belongthe spiritual government of society, subject to two conditions: thatthey be entirely independent, within their own sphere, of the temporalgovernment, and that they be peremptorily excluded from all share in it, receiving instead the entire conduct of education. 

This is the leading feature in M. Comte's conception of a regeneratedsociety; and however much this ideal differs from that which is impliedmore or less confusedly in the negative philosophy of the last threecenturies, we hold the amount of truth in the two to be about the same. M. Comte has got hold of half the truth, and the so-called liberal orrevolutionary school possesses the other half; each sees what the otherdoes not see, and seeing it exclusively, draws consequences from itwhich to the other appear mischievously absurd. It is, without doubt, the necessary condition of mankind to receive most of their opinions onthe authority of those who have specially studied the matters to whichthey relate. The wisest can act on no other rule, on subjects with whichthey are not themselves thoroughly conversant; and the mass of mankindhave always done the like on all the great subjects of thought andconduct, acting with implicit confidence on opinions of which they didnot know, and were often incapable of understanding, the grounds, but onwhich as long as their natural guides were unanimous they fully relied, growing uncertain and sceptical only when these became divided, andteachers who as far as they could judge were equally competent, professed contradictory opinions. Any doctrines which come recommendedby the nearly universal verdict of instructed minds will no doubtcontinue to be, as they have hitherto been, accepted without misgivingby the rest. The difference is, that with the wide diffusion ofscientific education among the whole people, demanded by M. Comte, theirfaith, however implicit, would not be that of ignorance: it would not bethe blind submission of dunces to men of knowledge, but the intelligentdeference of those who know much, to those who know still more. It isthose who have some knowledge of astronomy, not those who have none atall, who best appreciate how prodigiously more Lagrange or Laplace knewthan themselves. This is what can be said in favour of M. Comte. On thecontrary side it is to be said, that in order that this salutaryascendancy over opinion should be exercised by the most eminentthinkers, it is not necessary that they should be associated andorganized. The ascendancy will come of itself when the unanimity isattained, without which it is neither desirable nor possible. It isbecause astronomers agree in their teaching that astronomy is trusted, and not because there is an Academy of Sciences or a Royal Societyissuing decrees or passing resolutions. A constituted moral authoritycan only be required when the object is not merely to promulgate anddiffuse principles of conduct, but to direct the detail of theirapplication; to declare and inculcate, not duties, but each person'sduty, as was attempted by the spiritual authority of the middle ages. From this extreme application of his principle M. Comte does not shrink. A function of this sort, no doubt, may often be very usefully dischargedby individual members of the speculative class; but if entrusted to anyorganized body, would involve nothing less than a spiritual despotism. This however is what M. Comte really contemplated, though it wouldpractically nullify that peremptory separation of the spiritual from thetemporal power, which he justly deemed essential to a wholesome state ofsociety. Those whom an irresistible public opinion invested with theright to dictate or control the acts of rulers, though without the meansof backing their advice by force, would have all the real power of thetemporal authorities, without their labours or their responsibilities. M. Comte would probably have answered that the temporal rulers, havingthe whole legal power in their hands, would certainly not pay to thespiritual authority more than a very limited obedience: which amounts tosaying that the ideal form of society which he sets up, is only fit tobe an ideal because it cannot possibly be realized. 

That education should be practically directed by the philosophic class, when there is a philosophic class who have made good their claim to theplace in opinion hitherto filled by the clergy, would be natural andindispensable. But that all education should be in the hands of acentralized authority, whether composed of clergy or of philosophers, and be consequently all framed on the same model, and directed to theperpetuation of the same type, is a state of things which instead ofbecoming more acceptable, will assuredly be more repugnant to mankind, with every step of their progress in the unfettered exercise of theirhighest faculties. We shall see, in the Second Part, the evils withwhich the conception of the new Spiritual Power is pregnant, coming outinto full bloom in the more complete development which M. Comte gave tothe idea in his later years. 

After this unsatisfactory attempt to trace the outline of SocialStatics, M. Comte passes to a topic on which he is much more athome--the subject of his most eminent speculations; Social Dynamics, orthe laws of the evolution of human society. 

Two questions meet us at the outset: Is there a natural evolution inhuman affairs? and is that evolution an improvement? M. Comte resolvesthem both in the affirmative by the same answer. The natural progress ofsociety consists in the growth of our human attributes, comparatively toour animal and our purely organic ones: the progress of our humanitytowards an ascendancy over our animality, ever more nearly approachedthough incapable of being completely realized. This is the character andtendency of human development, or of what is called civilization; andthe obligation of seconding this movement--of working in the directionof it--is the nearest approach which M. Comte makes in this treatise toa general principle or standard of morality. 

But as our more eminent, and peculiarly human, faculties are of variousorders, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic, the question presentsitself, is there any one of these whose development is the predominantagency in the evolution of our species? According to M. Comte, the mainagent in the progress of mankind is their intellectual development. 

Not because the intellectual is the most powerful part of our nature, for, limited to its inherent strength, it is one of the weakest: butbecause it is the guiding part, and acts not with its own strengthalone, but with the united force of all parts of our nature which it candraw after it. In a social state the feelings and propensities cannotact with their full power, in a determinate direction, unless thespeculative intellect places itself at their head. The passions are, in the individual man, a more energetic power than a mere intellectualconviction; but the passions tend to divide, not to unite, mankind: itis only by a common belief that passions are brought to work together, and become a collective force instead of forces neutralizing oneanother. Our intelligence is first awakened by the stimulus of ouranimal wants and of our stronger and coarser desires; and these fora long time almost exclusively determine the direction in which ourintelligence shall work: but once roused to activity, it assumes moreand more the management of the operations of which stronger impulses arethe prompters, and constrains them to follow its lead, not by its ownstrength, but because in the play of antagonistic forces, the path itpoints out is (in scientific phraseology) the direction of leastresistance. Personal interests and feelings, in the social state, canonly obtain the maximum of satisfaction by means of co-operation, andthe necessary condition of co-operation is a common belief. All humansociety, consequently, is grounded on a system of fundamental opinions, which only the speculative faculty can provide, and which when provided, directs our other impulses in their mode of seeking their gratification. And hence the history of opinions, and of the speculative faculty, hasalways been the leading element in the history of mankind. 

This doctrine has been combated by Mr Herbert Spencer, in the pamphletalready referred to; and we will quote, in his own words, the theory hepropounds in opposition to it:--

/# "Ideas do not govern and overthrow the world; the world is governed or overthrown by feelings, to which ideas serve only as guides. The social mechanism does not rest finally upon opinions, but almost wholly upon character. Not intellectual anarchy, but moral antagonism, is the cause of political crises. All social phaenomena are produced by the totality of human emotions and beliefs, of which the emotions are mainly predetermined, while the beliefs are mainly post-determined. Men's desires are chiefly inherited; but their beliefs are chiefly acquired, and depend on surrounding conditions; and the most important surrounding conditions depend on the social state which the prevalent desires have produced. The social state at any time existing, is the resultant of all the ambitions, self-interests, fears, reverences, indignations, sympathies, &c. , of ancestral citizens and existing citizens. The ideas current in this social state must, on the average, lie congruous with the feelings of citizens, and therefore, on the average, with the social state these feelings have produced. Ideas wholly foreign to this social state cannot be evolved, and if introduced from without, cannot get accepted--or, if accepted, die out when the temporary phase of feeling which caused their acceptance ends. Hence, though advanced ideas, when once established, act upon society and aid its further advance, yet the establishment of such ideas depends on the fitness of society for receiving them. Practically, the popular character and the social state determine what ideas shall be current; instead of the current ideas determining the social state and the character. The modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to social relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social progress. "[17]#/

A great part of these statements would have been acknowledged as true byM. Comte, and belong as much to his theory as to Mr Spencer's. There-action of all other mental and social elements upon the intellectualnot only is fully recognized by him, but his philosophy of history makesgreat use of it, pointing out that the principal intellectual changescould not have taken place unless changes in other elements of societyhad preceded; but also showing that these were themselves consequencesof prior intellectual changes. It will not be found, on a fairexamination of what M. Comte has written, that he has overlooked any ofthe truth that there is in Mr Spencer's theory. He would not indeed havesaid (what Mr Spencer apparently wishes us to say) that the effectswhich can be historically traced, for example to religion, were notproduced by the belief in God, but by reverence and fear of him. Hewould have said that the reverence and fear presuppose the belief: thata God must be believed in before he can be feared or reverenced. Thewhole influence of the belief in a God upon society and civilization, depends on the powerful human sentiments which are ready to attachthemselves to the belief; and yet the sentiments are only a social forceat all, through the definite direction given to them by that or someother intellectual conviction; nor did the sentiments spontaneouslythrow up the belief in a God, since in themselves they were equallycapable of gathering round some other object. Though it is true thatmen's passions and interests often dictate their opinions, or ratherdecide their choice among the two or three forms of opinion, which theexisting condition of human intelligence renders possible, thisdisturbing cause is confined to morals, politics, and religion; and itis the intellectual movement in other regions than these, which is atthe root of all the great changes in human affairs. It was not humanemotions and passions which discovered the motion of the earth, ordetected the evidence of its antiquity; which exploded Scholasticism, and inaugurated the exploration of nature; which invented printing, paper, and the mariner's compass. Yet the Reformation, the English andFrench revolutions, and still greater moral and social changes yet tocome, are direct consequences of these and similar discoveries. Evenalchemy and astrology were not believed because people thirsted for goldand were anxious to pry into the future, for these desires are as strongnow as they were then: but because alchemy and astrology wereconceptions natural to a particular stage in the growth of humanknowledge, and consequently determined during that stage the particularmeans whereby the passions which always exist, sought theirgratification. To say that men's intellectual beliefs do not determinetheir conduct, is like saying that the ship is moved by the steam andnot by the steersman. The steam indeed is the motive power; thesteersman, left to himself, could not advance the vessel a single inch;yet it is the steersman's will and the steersman's knowledge whichdecide in what direction it shall move and whither it shall go. 

Examining next what is the natural order of intellectual progress amongmankind, M. Comte observes, that as their general mode of conceiving theuniverse must give its character to all their conceptions of detail, thedetermining fact in their intellectual history must be the naturalsuccession of theories of the universe; which, it has been seen, consists of three stages, the theological, the metaphysical, and thepositive. The passage of mankind through these stages, including thesuccessive modifications of the theological conception by the risinginfluence of the other two, is, to M. Comte's mind, the most decisivefact in the evolution of humanity. Simultaneously, however, there hasbeen going on throughout history a parallel movement in the purelytemporal department of things, consisting of the gradual decline of themilitary mode of life (originally the chief occupation of all freemen)and its replacement by the industrial. M. Comte maintains that thereis a necessary connexion and interdependence between this historicalsequence and the other: and he easily shows that the progress ofindustry and that of positive science are correlative; man's power tomodify the facts of nature evidently depending on the knowledge he hasacquired of their laws. We do not think him equally successful inshowing a natural connexion between the theological mode of thought andthe military system of society: but since they both belong to the sameage of the world--since each is, in itself, natural and inevitable, andthey are together modified and together undermined by the same cause, the progress of science and industry, M. Comte is justified inconsidering them as linked together, and the movement by which mankindemerge from them as a single evolution. 

These propositions having been laid down as the first principles ofsocial dynamics, M. Comte proceeds to verify and apply them by aconnected view of universal history. This survey nearly fills two largevolumes, above a third of the work, in all of which there is scarcely asentence that does not add an idea. We regard it as by far his greatestachievement, except his review of the sciences, and in some respectsmore striking even than that. We wish it were practicable in the compassof an essay like the present, to give even a faint conception of theextraordinary merits of this historical analysis. It must be read to beappreciated. Whoever disbelieves that the philosophy of history can bemade a science, should suspend his judgment until he has read thesevolumes of M. Comte. We do not affirm that they would certainly changehis opinion; but we would strongly advise him to give them a chance. 

We shall not attempt the vain task of abridgment, a few words are all wecan give to the subject. M. Comte confines himself to the main stream ofhuman progress, looking only at the races and nations that led the van, and regarding as the successors of a people not their actualdescendants, but those who took up the thread of progress after them. His object is to characterize truly, though generally, the successivestates of society through which the advanced guard of our species haspassed, and the filiation of these states on one another--how each grewout of the preceding and was the parent of the following state. A moredetailed explanation, taking into account minute differences and morespecial and local phaenomena, M. Comte does not aim at, though he doesnot avoid it when it falls in his path. Here, as in all his otherspeculations, we meet occasional misjudgments, and his historicalcorrectness in minor matters is now and then at fault; but we may wellwonder that it is not oftener so, considering the vastness of the field, and a passage in one of his prefaces in which he says of himself that he_rapidly_ amassed the materials for his great enterprise (vi. 34). Thisexpression in his mouth does not imply what it would in that of themajority of men, regard being had to his rare capacity of prolonged andconcentrated mental labour: and it is wonderful that he so seldom givescause to wish that his collection of materials had been less "rapid. "But (as he himself remarks) in an inquiry of this sort the vulgarestfacts are the most important. A movement common to all mankind--to allof them at least who do move--must depend on causes affecting them all;and these, from the scale on which they operate, cannot require abstruseresearch to bring them to light: they are not only seen, but best seen, in the most obvious, most universal, and most undisputed phaenomena. Accordingly M. Comte lays no claim to new views respecting the merefacts of history; he takes them as he finds them, builds almostexclusively on those concerning which there is no dispute, and onlytries what positive results can be obtained by combining them. Amongthe vast mass of historical observations which he has grouped andco-ordinated, if we have found any errors they are in things which donot affect his main conclusions. The chain of causation by which heconnects the spiritual and temporal life of each era with one anotherand with the entire series, will be found, we think, in all essentials, irrefragable. When local or temporary disturbing causes have to be takeninto the account as modifying the general movement, criticism has moreto say. But this will only become important when the attempt is made towrite the history or delineate the character of some given society on M. Comte's principles. 

Such doubtful statements, or misappreciations of states of society, aswe have remarked, are confined to cases which stand more or less apartfrom the principal line of development of the progressive societies. Forinstance, he makes greatly too much of what, with many other Continentalthinkers, he calls the Theocratic state. He regards this as a natural, and at one time almost an universal, stage of social progress, thoughadmitting that it either never existed or speedily ceased in the twoancient nations to which mankind are chiefly indebted for beingpermanently progressive. We hold it doubtful if there ever existed whatM. Comte means by a theocracy. There was indeed no lack of societies inwhich, the civil and penal law being supposed to have been divinelyrevealed, the priests were its authorized interpreters. But this is thecase even in Mussulman countries, the extreme opposite of theocracy. Bya theocracy we understand to be meant, and we understand M. Comte tomean, a society founded on caste, and in which the speculative, necessarily identical with the priestly caste, has the temporalgovernment in its hands or under its control. We believe that no suchstate of things ever existed in the societies commonly cited astheocratic. There is no reason to think that in any of them, the king, or chief of the government, was ever, unless by occasional usurpation, a member of the priestly caste. [18] It was not so in Israel, even in thetime of the Judges; Jephtha, for example, was a Gileadite, of the tribeof Manasseh, and a military captain, as all governors in such an age andcountry needed to be. Priestly rulers only present themselves in twoanomalous cases, of which next to nothing is known: the Mikados of Japanand the Grand Lamas of Thibet: in neither of which instances was thegeneral constitution of society one of caste, and in the latter of themthe priestly sovereignty is as nominal as it has become in the former. India is the typical specimen of the institution of caste--the only casein which we are certain that it ever really existed, for its existenceanywhere else is a matter of more or less probable inference in theremote past. But in India, where the importance of the sacerdotal orderwas greater than in any other recorded state of society, the king notonly was not a priest, but, consistently with the religious law, couldnot be one: he belonged to a different caste. The Brahmins were investedwith an exalted character of sanctity, and an enormous amount of civilprivileges; the king was enjoined to have a council of Brahmin advisers;but practically he took their advice or disregarded it exactly as hepleased. As is observed by the historian who first threw the light ofreason on Hindoo society, [19] the king, though in dignity, to judge bythe written code, he seemed vastly inferior to the Brahmins, had alwaysthe full power of a despotic monarch: the reason being that he had thecommand of the army, and the control of the public revenue. There is nocase known to authentic history in which either of these belonged to thesacerdotal caste. Even in the cases most favourable to them, thepriesthood had no voice in temporal affairs, except the "consultative"voice which M. Comte's theory allows to every spiritual power. Hiscollection of materials must have been unusually "rapid" in thisinstance, for he regards almost all the societies of antiquity, exceptthe Greek and Roman, as theocratic, even Gaul under the Druids, andPersia under Darius; admitting, however, that in these two countries, when they emerge into the light of history, the theocracy had alreadybeen much broken down by military usurpation. By what evidence he couldhave proved that it ever existed, we confess ourselves unable to divine. 

The only other imperfection worth noticing here, which we find in M. Comte's view of history, is that he has a very insufficientunderstanding of the peculiar phaenomena of English development; thoughhe recognizes, and on the whole correctly estimates, its exceptionalcharacter in relation to the general European movement. His failureconsists chiefly in want of appreciation of Protestantism; which, likealmost all thinkers, even unbelievers, who have lived and thoughtexclusively in a Catholic atmosphere, he sees and knows only on itsnegative side, regarding the Reformation as a mere destructive movement, stopped short in too early a stage. He does not seem to be aware thatProtestantism has any positive influences, other than the general onesof Christianity; and misses one of the most important facts connectedwith it, its remarkable efficacy, as contrasted with Catholicism, incultivating the intelligence and conscience of the individual believer. Protestantism, when not merely professed but actually taken into themind, makes a demand on the intelligence; the mind is expected to beactive, not passive, in the reception of it. The feeling of a directresponsibility of the individual immediately to God, is almost whollya creation of Protestantism. Even when Protestants were nearly aspersecuting as Catholics (quite as much so they never were); even whenthey held as firmly as Catholics that salvation depended on having thetrue belief, they still maintained that the belief was not to beaccepted from a priest, but to be sought and found by the believer, athis eternal peril if he failed; and that no one could answer to God forhim, but that he had to answer for himself. The avoidance of fatal errorthus became in a great measure a question of culture; and there was thestrongest inducement to every believer, however humble, to seek cultureand to profit by it. In those Protestant countries, accordingly, whoseChurches were not, as the Church of England always was, principallypolitical institutions--in Scotland, for instance, and the New EnglandStates--an amount of education was carried down to the poorest of thepeople, of which there is no other example; every peasant expounded theBible to his family (many to their neighbours), and had a mind practisedin meditation and discussion on all the points of his religious creed. The food may not have been the most nourishing, but we cannot be blindto the sharpening and strengthening exercise which such great topicsgave to the understanding--the discipline in abstraction and reasoningwhich such mental occupation brought down to the humblest layman, andone of the consequences of which was the privilege long enjoyed byScotland of supplying the greater part of Europe with professors for itsuniversities, and educated and skilled workmen for its practical arts. 

This, however, notwithstanding its importance, is, in a comprehensiveview of universal history, only a matter of detail. We find nofundamental errors in M. Comte's general conception of history. He issingularly exempt from most of the twists and exaggerations which we areused to find in almost all thinkers who meddle with speculations of thischaracter. Scarcely any of them is so free (for example) from theopposite errors of ascribing too much or too little influence toaccident, and to the qualities of individuals. The vulgar mistake ofsupposing that the course of history has no tendencies of its own, andthat great events usually proceed from small causes, or that kings, orconquerors, or the founders of philosophies and religions, can do withsociety what they please, no one has more completely avoided or moretellingly exposed. But he is equally free from the error of those whoascribe all to general causes, and imagine that neither casualcircumstances, nor governments by their acts, nor individuals of geniusby their thoughts, materially accelerate or retard human progress. Thisis the mistake which pervades the instructive writings of the thinkerwho in England and in our own times bore the nearest, though a veryremote, resemblance to M. Comte--the lamented Mr Buckle; who, had he notbeen unhappily cut off in an early stage of his labours, and before thecomplete maturity of his powers, would probably have thrown off anerror, the more to be regretted as it gives a colour to the prejudicewhich regards the doctrine of the invariability of natural laws asidentical with fatalism. Mr Buckle also fell into another mistake whichM. Comte avoided, that of regarding the intellectual as the onlyprogressive element in man, and the moral as too much the same at alltimes to affect even the annual average of crime. M. Comte shows, on thecontrary, a most acute sense of the causes which elevate or lower thegeneral level of moral excellence; and deems intellectual progress in noother way so beneficial as by creating a standard to guide the moralsentiments of mankind, and a mode of bringing those sentimentseffectively to bear on conduct. 

M. Comte is equally free from the error of considering any practicalrule or doctrine that can be laid down in politics as universal andabsolute. All political truth he deems strictly relative, implying asits correlative a given state or situation of society. This convictionis now common to him with all thinkers who are on a level with the age, and comes so naturally to any intelligent reader of history, that theonly wonder is how men could have been prevented from reaching itsooner. It marks one of the principal differences between the politicalphilosophy of the present time and that of the past; but M. Comteadopted it when the opposite mode of thinking was still general, andthere are few thinkers to whom the principle owes more in the way ofcomment and illustration. 

Again, while he sets forth the historical succession of systems ofbelief and forms of political society, and places in the strongest lightthose imperfections in each which make it impossible that any of themshould be final, this does not make him for a moment unjust to the menor the opinions of the past. He accords with generous recognition thegratitude due to all who, with whatever imperfections of doctrine oreven of conduct, contributed materially to the work of humanimprovement. In all past modes of thought and forms of society heacknowledged a useful, in many a necessary, office, in carrying mankindthrough one stage of improvement into a higher. The theological spiritin its successive forms, the metaphysical in its principal varieties, are honoured by him for the services they rendered in bringing mankindout of pristine savagery into a state in which more advanced modes ofbelief became possible. His list of heroes and benefactors of mankindincludes, not only every important name in the scientific movement, fromThales of Miletus to Fourier the mathematician and Blainville thebiologist, and in the aesthetic from Homer to Manzoni, but the mostillustrious names in the annals of the various religions andphilosophies, and the really great politicians in all states ofsociety. [20] Above all, he has the most profound admiration for theservices rendered by Christianity, and by the Church of the middle ages. His estimate of the Catholic period is such as the majority ofEnglishmen (from whom we take the liberty to differ) would deemexaggerated, if not absurd. The great men of Christianity, from St Paulto St Francis of Assisi, receive his warmest homage: nor does he forgetthe greatness even of those who lived and thought in the centuries inwhich the Catholic Church, having stopt short while the world had goneon, had become a hindrance to progress instead of a promoter of it; suchmen as Fénélon and St Vincent de Paul, Bossuet and Joseph de Maistre. A more comprehensive, and, in the primitive sense of the term, morecatholic, sympathy and reverence towards real worth, and every kind ofservice to humanity, we have not met with in any thinker. Men who wouldhave torn each other in pieces, who even tried to do so, if eachusefully served in his own way the interests of mankind, are allhallowed to him. 

Neither is his a cramped and contracted notion of human excellence, which cares only for certain forms of development. He not onlypersonally appreciates, but rates high in moral value, the creations ofpoets and artists in all departments, deeming them, by their mixedappeal to the sentiments and the understanding, admirably fitted toeducate the feelings of abstract thinkers, and enlarge the intellectualhorizon of people of the world. [21] He regards the law of progress asapplicable, in spite of appearances, to poetry and art as much as toscience and politics. The common impression to the contrary he ascribessolely to the fact, that the perfection of aesthetic creation requiresas its condition a consentaneousness in the feelings of mankind, whichdepends for its existence on a fixed and settled state of opinions:while the last five centuries have been a period not of settling, but ofunsettling and decomposing, the most general beliefs and sentiments ofmankind. The numerous monuments of poetic and artistic genius which themodern mind has produced even under this great disadvantage, are (hemaintains) sufficient proof what great productions it will be capableof, when one harmonious vein of sentiment shall once more thrill throughthe whole of society, as in the days of Homer, of Aeschylus, of Phidias, and even of Dante. 

After so profound and comprehensive a view of the progress of humansociety in the past, of which the future can only be a prolongation, itis natural to ask, to what use does he put this survey as a basis ofpractical recommendations? Such recommendations he certainly makes, though, in the present Treatise, they are of a much less definitecharacter than in his later writings. But we miss a necessary link;there is a break in the otherwise close concatenation of hisspeculations. We fail to see any scientific connexion between histheoretical explanation of the past progress of society, and hisproposals for future improvement. The proposals are not, as we mightexpect, recommended as that towards which human society has been tendingand working through the whole of history. It is thus that thinkers haveusually proceeded, who formed theories for the future, grounded onhistorical analysis of the past. Tocqueville, for example, and others, finding, as they thought, through all history, a steady progress in thedirection of social and political equality, argued that to smooth thistransition, and make the best of what is certainly coming, is the properemployment of political foresight. We do not find M. Comte supportinghis recommendations by a similar line of argument. They rest ascompletely, each on its separate reasons of supposed utility, as withphilosophers who, like Bentham, theorize on politics without anyhistorical basis at all. The only bridge of connexion which leads fromhis historical speculations to his practical conclusions, is theinference, that since the old powers of society, both in the region ofthought and of action, are declining and destined to disappear, leavingonly the two rising powers, positive thinkers on the one hand, leadersof industry on the other, the future necessarily belongs to these:spiritual power to the former, temporal to the latter. As a specimen ofhistorical forecast this is very deficient; for are there not the massesas well as the leaders of industry? and is not theirs also a growingpower? Be this as it may, M. Comte's conceptions of the mode in whichthese growing powers should be organized and used, are grounded onanything rather than on history. And we cannot but remark a singularanomaly in a thinker of M. Comte's calibre. After the ample evidence hehas brought forward of the slow growth of the sciences, all of whichexcept the mathematico-astronomical couple are still, as he justlythinks, in a very early stage, it yet appears as if, to his mind, themere institution of a positive science of sociology were tantamount toits completion; as if all the diversities of opinion on the subject, which set mankind at variance, were solely owing to its having beenstudied in the theological or the metaphysical manner, and as if whenthe positive method which has raised up real sciences on other subjectsof knowledge, is similarly employed on this, divergence would at oncecease, and the entire body of positive social inquirers would exhibitas much agreement in their doctrines as those who cultivate any of thesciences of inorganic life. Happy would be the prospects of mankind ifthis were so. A time such as M. Comte reckoned upon may come; unlesssomething stops the progress of human improvement, it is sure to come:but after an unknown duration of hard thought and violent controversy. The period of decomposition, which has lasted, on his own computation, from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the present, is not yetterminated: the shell of the old edifice will remain standing untilthere is another ready to replace it; and the new synthesis is barelybegun, nor is even the preparatory analysis completely finished. Onother occasions M. Comte is very well aware that the Method of a scienceis not the science itself, and that when the difficulty of discoveringthe right processes has been overcome, there remains a still greaterdifficulty, that of applying them. This, which is true of all sciences, is truest of all in Sociology. The facts being more complicated, anddepending on a greater concurrence of forces, than in any other science, the difficulty of treating them deductively is proportionally increased, while the wide difference between any one case and every other in someof the circumstances which affect the result, makes the pretence ofdirect induction usually no better than empiricism. It is therefore, outof all proportion, more uncertain than in any other science, whether twoinquirers equally competent and equally disinterested will take the sameview of the evidence, or arrive at the same conclusion. When to thisintrinsic difficulty is added the infinitely greater extent to whichpersonal or class interests and predilections interfere with impartialjudgment, the hope of such accordance of opinion among sociologicalinquirers as would obtain, in mere deference to their authority, theuniversal assent which M. Comte's scheme of society requires, must beadjourned to an indefinite distance. 

M. Comte's own theory is an apt illustration of these difficulties, since, though prepared for these speculations as no one had ever beenprepared before, his views of social regeneration even in therudimentary form in which they appear above-ground in this treatise (notto speak of the singular system into which he afterwards enlarged them)are such as perhaps no other person of equal knowledge and capacitywould agree in. Were those views as true as they are questionable, theycould not take effect until the unanimity among positive thinkers, towhich he looked forward, shall have been attained; since the mainspringof his system is a Spiritual Power composed of positive philosophers, which only the previous attainment of the unanimity in question couldcall into existence. A few words will sufficiently express the outlineof his scheme. A corporation of philosophers, receiving a modest supportfrom the state, surrounded by reverence, but peremptorily excluded notonly from all political power or employment, but from all riches, andall occupations except their own, are to have the entire direction ofeducation: together with, not only the right and duty of advising andreproving all persons respecting both their public and their privatelife, but also a control (whether authoritative or only moral is notdefined) over the speculative class itself, to prevent them from wastingtime and ingenuity on inquiries and speculations of no value to mankind(among which he includes many now in high estimation), and compel themto employ all their powers on the investigations which may be judged, atthe time, to be the most urgently important to the general welfare. Thetemporal government which is to coexist with this spiritual authority, consists of an aristocracy of capitalists, whose dignity and authorityare to be in the ratio of the degree of generality of their conceptionsand operations--bankers at the summit, merchants next, thenmanufacturers, and agriculturists at the bottom of the scale. Norepresentative system, or other popular organization, by way ofcounterpoise to this governing power, is ever contemplated. The checksrelied upon for preventing its abuse, are the counsels and remonstrancesof the Spiritual Power, and unlimited liberty of discussion and commentby all classes of inferiors. Of the mode in which either set ofauthorities should fulfil the office assigned to it, little is said inthis treatise: but the general idea is, while regulating as little aspossible by law, to make the pressure of opinion, directed by theSpiritual Power, so heavy on every individual, from the humblest to themost powerful, as to render legal obligation, in as many cases aspossible, needless. Liberty and spontaneity on the part of individualsform no part of the scheme. M. Comte looks on them with as greatjealousy as any scholastic pedagogue, or ecclesiastical director ofconsciences. Every particular of conduct, public or private, is to beopen to the public eye, and to be kept, by the power of opinion, in thecourse which the Spiritual corporation shall judge to be the most right. 

This is not a sufficiently tempting picture to have much chance ofmaking converts rapidly, and the objections to the scheme are tooobvious to need stating. Indeed, it is only thoughtful persons to whomit will be credible, that speculations leading to this result candeserve the attention necessary for understanding them. We propose inthe next Essay to examine them as part of the elaborate and coherentsystem of doctrine, which M. Comte afterwards put together for thereconstruction of society. Meanwhile the reader will gather, from whathas been said, that M. Comte has not, in our opinion, created Sociology. Except his analysis of history, to which there is much to be added, butwhich we do not think likely to be ever, in its general features, superseded, he has done nothing in Sociology which does not require tobe done over again, and better. Nevertheless, he has greatly advancedthe study. Besides the great stores of thought, of various and often ofeminent merit, with which he has enriched the subject, his conception ofits method is so much truer and more profound than that of any one whopreceded him, as to constitute an era in its cultivation. If it cannotbe said of him that he has created a science, it may be said truly thathe has, for the first time, made the creation possible. This is a greatachievement, and, with the extraordinary merit of his historicalanalysis, and of his philosophy of the physical sciences, is enough toimmortalize his name. But his renown with posterity would probably havebeen greater than it is now likely to be, if after showing the way inwhich the social science should be formed, he had not flattered himselfthat he had formed it, and that it was already sufficiently solid forattempting to build upon its foundation the entire fabric of thePolitical Art. 

 * * * * *

PART II. 

THE LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. [22]

The appended list of publications contain the materials for knowing andestimating what M. Comte termed his second career, in which the_savant_, historian, and philosopher of his fundamental treatise, cameforth transfigured as the High Priest of the Religion of Humanity. Theyinclude all his writings except the Cours de Philosophic Positive: forhis early productions, and the occasional publications of his later life, are reprinted as Preludes or Appendices to the treatises here enumerated, or in Dr Robinet's volume, which, as well as that of M. Littré, alsocontains copious extracts from his correspondence. 

In the concluding pages of his great systematic work, M. Comte hadannounced four other treatises as in contemplation: on Politics; on thePhilosophy of Mathematics; on Education, a project subsequently enlargedto include the systematization of Morals; and on Industry, or the actionof man upon external nature. Our list comprises the only two of thesewhich he lived to execute. It further contains a brief exposition of hisfinal doctrines, in the form of a Dialogue, or, as he terms it, aCatechism, of which a translation has been published by his principalEnglish adherent, Mr Congreve. There has also appeared very recently, under the title of "A General View of Positivism, " a translation by DrBridges, of the Preliminary Discourse in six chapters, prefixed to theSystème de Politique Positive. The remaining three books on our list arethe productions of disciples in different degrees. M. Littré, the onlythinker of established reputation who accepts that character, is adisciple only of the Cours de Philosophie Positive, and can see the weakpoints even in that. Some of them he has discriminated and discussedwith great judgment: and the merits of his volume, both as a sketch ofM. Comte's life and an appreciation of his doctrines, would well deservea fuller notice than we are able to give it here. M. De Blignières isa far more thorough adherent; so much so, that the reader of hissingularly well and attractively written condensation and popularizationof his master's doctrines, does not easily discover in what it fallsshort of that unqualified acceptance which alone, it would seem, couldfind favour with M. Comte. For he ended by casting off M. De Blignières, as he had previously cast off M. Littré, and every other person who, having gone with him a certain length, refused to follow him to the end. The author of the last work in our enumeration, Dr Robinet, is adisciple after M. Comte's own heart; one whom no difficulty stops, andno absurdity startles. But it is far from our disposition to speakotherwise than respectfully of Dr Robinet and the other earnest men, whomaintain round the tomb of their master an organized co-operation forthe diffusion of doctrines which they believe destined to regenerate thehuman race. Their enthusiastic veneration for him, and devotion to theends he pursued, do honour alike to them and to their teacher, and arean evidence of the personal ascendancy he exercised over those whoapproached him; an ascendancy which for a time carried away even M. Littré, as he confesses, to a length which his calmer judgment does notnow approve. 

These various writings raise many points of interest regarding M. Comte's personal history, and some, not without philosophic bearings, respecting his mental habits: from all which matters we shall abstain, with the exception of two, which he himself proclaimed with greatemphasis, and a knowledge of which is almost indispensable to anapprehension of the characteristic difference between his second careerand his first. It should be known that during his later life, and evenbefore completing his first great treatise, M. Comte adopted a rule, towhich he very rarely made any exception: to abstain systematically, notonly from newspapers or periodical publications, even scientific, butfrom all reading whatever, except a few favourite poets in the ancientand modern European languages. This abstinence he practised for the sakeof mental health; by way, as he said, of "_hygiène cérébrale_. " We arefar from thinking that the practice has nothing whatever to recommendit. For most thinkers, doubtless, it would be a very unwise one; but wewill not affirm that it may not sometimes be advantageous to a mind ofthe peculiar quality of M. Comte's--one that can usefully devote itselfto following out to the remotest developments a particular line ofmeditations, of so arduous a kind that the complete concentration of theintellect upon its own thoughts is almost a necessary condition ofsuccess. When a mind of this character has laboriously andconscientiously laid in beforehand, as M. Comte had done, an ample stockof materials, he may be justified in thinking that he will contributemost to the mental wealth of mankind by occupying himself solely inworking upon these, without distracting his attention by continuallytaking in more matter, or keeping a communication open with otherindependent intellects. The practice, therefore, may be legitimate; butno one should adopt it without being aware of what he loses by it. Hemust resign the pretension of arriving at the whole truth on thesubject, whatever it be, of his meditations. That he should effect this, even on a narrow subject, by the mere force of his own mind, building onthe foundations of his predecessors, without aid or correction from hiscontemporaries, is simply impossible. He may do eminent service byelaborating certain sides of the truth, but he must expect to find thatthere are other sides which have wholly escaped his attention. Howevergreat his powers, everything that he can do without the aid of incessantremindings from other thinkers, is merely provisional, and will requirea thorough revision. He ought to be aware of this, and accept it withhis eyes open, regarding himself as a pioneer, not a constructor. If hethinks that he can contribute most towards the elements of the finalsynthesis by following out his own original thoughts as far as they willgo, leaving to other thinkers, or to himself at a subsequent time, thebusiness of adjusting them to the thoughts by which they ought to beaccompanied, he is right in doing so. But he deludes himself if heimagines that any conclusions he can arrive at, while he practises M. Comte's rule of _hygiène cérébrale_, can possibly be definitive. 

Neither is such a practice, in a hygienic point of view, free from thegravest dangers to the philosopher's own mind. When once he haspersuaded himself that he can work out the final truth on any subject, exclusively from his own sources, he is apt to lose all measure orstandard by which to be apprized when he is departing from common sense. Living only with his own thoughts, he gradually forgets the aspect theypresent to minds of a different mould from his own; he looks at hisconclusions only from the point of view which suggested them, and fromwhich they naturally appear perfect; and every consideration which fromother points of view might present itself, either as an objection or asa necessary modification, is to him as if it did not exist. When hismerits come to be recognised and appreciated, and especially if heobtains disciples, the intellectual infirmity soon becomes complicatedwith a moral one. The natural result of the position is a giganticself-confidence, not to say self-conceit. That of M. Comte is colossal. Except here and there in an entirely self-taught thinker, who has nohigh standard with which to compare himself, we have met with nothingapproaching to it. As his thoughts grew more extravagant, hisself-confidence grew more outrageous. The height it ultimately attainedmust be seen, in his writings, to be believed. 

The other circumstance of a personal nature which it is impossible notto notice, because M. Comte is perpetually referring to it as the originof the great superiority which he ascribes to his later as compared withhis earlier speculations, is the "moral regeneration" which he underwentfrom "une angélique influence" and "une incomparable passion privée. " Heformed a passionate attachment to a lady whom he describes as unitingeverything which is morally with much that is intellectually admirable, and his relation to whom, besides the direct influence of her characterupon his own, gave him an insight into the true sources of humanhappiness, which changed his whole conception of life. This attachment, which always remained pure, gave him but one year of passionateenjoyment, the lady having been cut off by death at the end of thatshort period; but the adoration of her memory survived, and became, aswe shall see, the type of his conception of the sympathetic cultureproper for all human beings. The change thus effected in his personalcharacter and sentiments, manifested itself at once in his speculations;which, from having been only a philosophy, now aspired to become areligion; and from having been as purely, and almost rudely, scientificand intellectual, as was compatible with a character always enthusiasticin its admirations and in its ardour for improvement, became from thistime what, for want of a better name, may be called sentimental; butsentimental in a way of its own, very curious to contemplate. Inconsidering the system of religion, politics, and morals, which in hislater writings M. Comte constructed, it is not unimportant to bear inmind the nature of the personal experience and inspiration to which hehimself constantly attributed this phasis of his philosophy. But as weshall have much more to say against, than in favour of, the conclusionsto which he was in this manner conducted, it is right to declare that, from the evidence of his writings, we really believe the moral influenceof Madame Clotilde de Vaux upon his character to have been of theennobling as well as softening character which he ascribes to it. Makingallowance for the effects of his exuberant growth in self-conceit, weperceive almost as much improvement in his feelings, as deterioration inhis speculations, compared with those of the Philosophie Positive. Eventhe speculations are, in some secondary aspects, improved through thebeneficial effect of the improved feelings; and might have been more so, if, by a rare good fortune, the object of his attachment had beenqualified to exercise as improving an influence over him intellectuallyas morally, and if he could have been contented with something lessambitious than being the supreme moral legislator and religious pontiffof the human race. 

When we say that M. Comte has erected his philosophy into a religion, the word religion must not be understood in its ordinary sense. He madeno change in the purely negative attitude which he maintained towardstheology: his religion is without a God. In saying this, we have doneenough to induce nine-tenths of all readers, at least in our owncountry, to avert their faces and close their ears. To have no religion, though scandalous enough, is an idea they are partly used to: but tohave no God, and to talk of religion, is to their feelings at once anabsurdity and an impiety. Of the remaining tenth, a great proportion, perhaps, will turn away from anything which calls itself by the name ofreligion at all. Between the two, it is difficult to find an audiencewho can be induced to listen to M. Comte without an insurmountableprejudice. But, to be just to any opinion, it ought to be considered, not exclusively from an opponent's point of view, but from that of themind which propounds it. Though conscious of being in an extremely smallminority, we venture to think that a religion may exist without beliefin a God, and that a religion without a God may be, even to Christians, an instructive and profitable object of contemplation. 

What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to constitute a religion?There must be a creed, or conviction, claiming authority over the wholeof human life; a belief, or set of beliefs, deliberately adopted, respecting human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardlyacknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate. Moreover, there must be a sentiment connected with this creed, or capable of beinginvoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it in fact, the authorityover human conduct to which it lays claim in theory. It is a greatadvantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that this sentimentshould crystallize, as it were, round a concrete object; if possible areally existing one, though, in all the more important cases, onlyideally present. Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to thebeliever: but the condition may be fulfilled, if not in a mannerstrictly equivalent, by another object. It has been said that whoeverbelieves in "the Infinite nature of Duty, " even if he believe in nothingelse, is religious. M. Comte believes in what is meant by the infinitenature of duty, but ho refers the obligations of duty, as well as allsentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and real;the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the past, thepresent, and the future. This great collective existence, this "GrandEtre, " as he terms it, though the feelings it can excite are necessarilyvery different from those which direct themselves towards an ideallyperfect Being, has, as he forcibly urges, this advantage in respect tous, that it really needs our services, which Omnipotence cannot, in anygenuine sense of the term, be supposed to do: and M. Comte says, thatassuming the existence of a Supreme Providence (which he is as far fromdenying as from affirming), the best, and even the only, way in which wecan rightly worship or serve Him, is by doing our utmost to love andserve that other Great Being, whose inferior Providence has bestowed onus all the benefits that we owe to the labours and virtues of formergenerations. It may not be consonant to usage to call this a religion;but the term so applied has a meaning, and one which is not adequatelyexpressed by any other word. Candid persons of all creeds may be willingto admit, that if a person has an ideal object, his attachment and senseof duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his othersentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, thatperson has a religion: and though everyone naturally prefers his ownreligion to any other, all must admit that if the object of thisattachment, and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of ourfellow-creatures, this Religion of the Infidel cannot, in honesty andconscience, be called an intrinsically bad one. Many, indeed, may beunable to believe that this object is capable of gathering round itfeelings sufficiently strong: but this is exactly the point on which adoubt can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of M. Comte: and wejoin with him in contemning, as equally irrational and mean, theconception of human nature as incapable of giving its love and devotingits existence to any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternityof personal enjoyment. 

The power which may be acquired over the mind by the idea of the generalinterest of the human race, both as a source of emotion and as a motiveto conduct, many have perceived; but we know not if any one, before M. Comte, realized so fully as he has done, all the majesty of which thatidea is susceptible. It ascends into the unknown recesses of the past, embraces the manifold present, and descends into the indefinite andunforeseeable future, forming a collective Existence without assignablebeginning or end, it appeals to that feeling of the Infinite, which isdeeply rooted in human nature, and which seems necessary to theimposingness of all our highest conceptions. Of the vast unrolling webof human life, the part best known to us is irrevocably past; this wecan no longer serve, but can still love: it comprises for most of us thefar greater number of those who have loved us, or from whom we havereceived benefits, as well as the long series of those who, by theirlabours and sacrifices for mankind, have deserved to be held ineverlasting and grateful remembrance. As M. Comte truly says, thehighest minds, even now, live in thought with the great dead, far morethan with the living; and, next to the dead, with those ideal humanbeings yet to come, whom they are never destined to see. If we honour aswe ought those who have served mankind in the past, we shall feel thatwe are also working for those benefactors by serving that to which theirlives were devoted. And when reflection, guided by history, has taughtus the intimacy of the connexion of every age of humanity with everyother, making us see in the earthly destiny of mankind the playing outof a great drama, or the action of a prolonged epic, all the generationsof mankind become indissolubly united into a single image, combining allthe power over the mind of the idea of Posterity, with our best feelingstowards the living world which surrounds us, and towards thepredecessors who have made us what we are. That the ennobling power ofthis grand conception may have its full efficacy, we should, with M. Comte, regard the Grand Etre, Humanity, or Mankind, as composed, in thepast, solely of those who, in every age and variety of position, haveplayed their part worthily in life. It is only as thus restricted thatthe aggregate of our species becomes an object deserving our veneration. The unworthy members of it are best dismissed from our habitualthoughts; and the imperfections which adhered through life, even tothose of the dead who deserve honourable remembrance, should be nofurther borne in mind than is necessary not to falsify our conception offacts. On the other hand, the Grand Etre in its completeness ought toinclude not only all whom we venerate, but all sentient beings to whichwe owe duties, and which have a claim on our attachment. M. Comte, therefore, incorporates into the ideal object whose service is to be thelaw of our life, not our own species exclusively, but, in a subordinatedegree, our humble auxiliaries, those animal races which enter into realsociety with man, which attach themselves to him, and voluntarilyco-operate with him, like the noble dog who gives his life for his humanfriend and benefactor. For this M. Comte has been subjected to unworthyridicule, but there is nothing truer or more honourable to him in thewhole body of his doctrines. The strong sense he always shows of theworth of the inferior animals, and of the duties of mankind towardsthem, is one of the very finest traits of his character. 

We, therefore, not only hold that M. Comte was justified in the attemptto develope his philosophy into a religion, and had realized theessential conditions of one, but that all other religions are madebetter in proportion as, in their practical result, they are brought tocoincide with that which he aimed at constructing. But, unhappily, thenext thing we are obliged to do, is to charge him with making a completemistake at the very outset of his operations--with fundamentallymisconceiving the proper office of a rule of life. He committed theerror which is often, but falsely, charged against the whole class ofutilitarian moralists; he required that the test of conduct should alsobe the exclusive motive to it. Because the good of the human race is theultimate standard of right and wrong, and because moral disciplineconsists in cultivating the utmost possible repugnance to all conductinjurious to the general good, M. Comte infers that the good of othersis the only inducement on which we should allow ourselves to act; andthat we should endeavour to starve the whole of the desires which pointto our personal satisfaction, by denying them all gratification notstrictly required by physical necessities. The golden rule of morality, in M. Comte's religion, is to live for others, "vivre pour autrui. " Todo as we would be done by, and to love our neighbour as ourself, are notsufficient for him: they partake, he thinks, of the nature of personalcalculations. We should endeavour not to love ourselves at all. We shallnot succeed in it, but we should make the nearest approach to itpossible. Nothing less will satisfy him, as towards humanity, than thesentiment which one of his favourite writers, Thomas à Kempis, addressesto God: Amem te plus quam me, nec me nisi propter te. All education andall moral discipline should have but one object, to make altruism (aword of his own coming) predominate over egoism. If by this were onlymeant that egoism is bound, and should be taught, always to give way tothe well-understood interests of enlarged altruism, no one whoacknowledges any morality at all would object to the proposition. But M. Comte, taking his stand on the biological fact that organs arestrengthened by exercise and atrophied by disuse, and firmly convincedthat each of our elementary inclinations has its distinct cerebralorgan, thinks it the grand duty of life not only to strengthen thesocial affections by constant habit and by referring all our actions tothem, but, as far as possible, to deaden the personal passions andpropensities by desuetude. Even the exercise of the intellect isrequired to obey as an authoritative rule the dominion of the socialfeelings over the intelligence (du coeur sur l'esprit). The physical andother personal instincts are to be mortified far beyond the demands ofbodily health, which indeed the morality of the future is not to insistmuch upon, for fear of encouraging "les calculs personnels. " M. Comtecondemns only such austerities as, by diminishing the vigour of theconstitution, make us less capable of being useful to others. Anyindulgence, even in food, not necessary to health and strength, hecondemns as immoral. All gratifications except those of the affections, are to be tolerated only as "inevitable infirmities. " Novalis said ofSpinoza that he was a God-intoxicated man: M. Comte is amorality-intoxicated man. Every question with him is one of morality, and no motive but that of morality is permitted. 

The explanation of this we find in an original mental twist, very commonin French thinkers, and by which M. Comte was distinguished beyond themall. He could not dispense with what he called "unity. " It was for thesake of Unity that a religion was, in his eyes, desirable. Not in themere sense of Unanimity, but in a far wider one. A religion must besomething by which to "systematize" human life. His definition of it, inthe "Catéchisme, " is "the state of complete unity which distinguishesour existence, at once personal and social, when all its parts, bothmoral and physical, converge habitually to a common destination.... Such a harmony, individual and collective, being incapable of completerealization in an existence so complicated as ours, this definition ofreligion characterizes the immovable type towards which tends more andmore the aggregate of human efforts. Our happiness and our merit consistespecially in approaching as near as possible to this unity, of whichthe gradual increase constitutes the best measure of real improvement, personal or social. " To this theme he continually returns, and arguesthat this unity or harmony among all the elements of our life is notconsistent with the predominance of the personal propensities, sincethese drag us in different directions; it can only result from thesubordination of them all to the social icelings, which may be made toact in a uniform direction by a common system of convictions, and whichdiffer from the personal inclinations in this, that we all naturallyencourage them in one another, while, on the contrary, social life is aperpetual restraint upon the selfish propensities. 

The _fons errorum_ in M. Comte's later speculations is this inordinatedemand for "unity" and "systematization. " This is the reason why it doesnot suffice to him that all should be ready, in case of need, topostpone their personal interests and inclinations to the requirementsof the general good: he demands that each should regard as vicious anycare at all for his personal interests, except as a means to the good ofothers--should be ashamed of it, should strive to cure himself of it, because his existence is not "systematized, " is not in "complete unity, "as long as he cares for more than one thing. The strangest part of thematter is, that this doctrine seems to M. Comte to be axiomatic. Thatall perfection consists in unity, he apparently considers to be a maximwhich no sane man thinks of questioning. It never seems to enter intohis conceptions that any one could object _ab initio_, and ask, why thisuniversal systematizing, systematizing, systematizing? Why is itnecessary that all human life should point but to one object, and becultivated into a system of means to a single end? May it not be thefact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under therules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when eachmakes the good of the rest his only subject, and allows himself nopersonal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of hisfaculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfullysubmitted to when high purposes require it, but is it the idealperfection of human existence? M. Comte sees none of these difficulties. The only true happiness, he affirms, is in the exercise of theaffections. He had found it so for a whole year, which was enough toenable him to get to the bottom of the question, and to judge whether hecould do without everything else. Of course the supposition was not tobe heard of that any other person could require, or be the better for, what M. Comte did not value. "Unity" and "systematization" absolutelydemanded that all other people should model themselves after M. Comte. It would never do to suppose that there could be more than one road tohuman happiness, or more than one ingredient in it. 

The most prejudiced must admit that this religion without theology isnot chargeable with relaxation of moral restraints. On the contrary, itprodigiously exaggerates them. It makes the same ethical mistake as thetheory of Calvinism, that every act in life should be done for the gloryof God, and that whatever is not a duty is a sin. It does not perceivethat between the region of duty and that of sin there is an intermediatespace, the region of positive worthiness. It is not good that personsshould be bound, by other people's opinion, to do everything that theywould deserve praise for doing. There is a standard of altruism to whichall should be required to come up, and a degree beyond it which is notobligatory, but meritorious. It is incumbent on every one to restrainthe pursuit of his personal objects within the limits consistent withthe essential interests of others. What those limits are, it is theprovince of ethical science to determine; and to keep all individualsand aggregations of individuals within them, is the proper office ofpunishment and of moral blame. If in addition to fulfilling thisobligation, persons make the good of others a direct object ofdisinterested exertions, postponing or sacrificing to it even innocentpersonal indulgences, they deserve gratitude and honour, and are fitobjects of moral praise. So long as they are in no way compelled to thisconduct by any external pressure, there cannot be too much of it; but anecessary condition is its spontaneity; since the notion of a happinessfor all, procured by the self-sacrifice of each, if the abnegation isreally felt to be a sacrifice, is a contradiction. Such spontaneity byno means excludes sympathetic encouragement; but the encouragementshould take the form of making self-devotion pleasant, not that ofmaking everything else painful. The object should be to stimulateservices to humanity by their natural rewards; not to render the pursuitof our own good in any other manner impossible, by visiting it with thereproaches of other and of our own conscience. The proper office ofthose sanctions is to enforce upon every one, the conduct necessary togive all other persons their fair chance: conduct which chiefly consistsin not doing them harm, and not impeding them in anything which withoutharming others does good to themselves. To this must of course be added, that when we either expressly or tacitly undertake to do more, we arebound to keep our promise. And inasmuch as every one, who avails himselfof the advantages of society, leads others to expect from him all suchpositive good offices and disinterested services as the moralimprovement attained by mankind has rendered customary, he deservesmoral blame if, without just cause, he disappoints that expectation. Through this principle the domain of moral duty is always widening. When what once was uncommon virtue becomes common virtue, it comes to benumbered among obligations, while a degree exceeding what has growncommon, remains simply meritorious. 

M. Comte is accustomed to draw most of his ideas of moral cultivationfrom the discipline of the Catholic Church. Had he followed thatguidance in the present case, he would have been less wide of the mark. For the distinction which we have drawn was fully recognized by thesagacious and far-sighted men who created the Catholic ethics. It iseven one of the stock reproaches against Catholicism, that it has twostandards of morality, and does not make obligatory on all Christiansthe highest rule of Christian perfection. It has one standard which, faithfully acted up to, suffices for salvation, another and a higherwhich when realized constitutes a saint. M. Comte, perhapsunconsciously, for there is nothing that he would have been moreunlikely to do if he had been aware of it, has taken a leaf out of thebook of the despised Protestantism. Like the extreme Calvinists, herequires that all believers shall be saints, and damns then (after hisown fashion) if they are not. 

Our conception of human life is different. We do not conceive life to beso rich in enjoyments, that it can afford to forego the cultivation ofall those which address themselves to what M. Comte terms the egoisticpropensities. On the contrary, we believe that a sufficientgratification of these, short of excess, but up to the measure whichrenders the enjoyment greatest, is almost always favourable to thebenevolent affections. The moralization of the personal enjoyments wedeem to consist, not in reducing them to the smallest possible amount, but in cultivating the habitual wish to share them with others, and withall others, and scorning to desire anything for oneself which isincapable of being so shared. There is only one passion or inclinationwhich is permanently incompatible with this condition--the love ofdomination, or superiority, for its own sake; which implies, and isgrounded on, the equivalent depression of other people. As a rule ofconduct, to be enforced by moral sanctions, we think no more should beattempted than to prevent people from doing harm to others, or omittingto do such good as they have undertaken. Demanding no more than this, society, in any tolerable circumstances, obtains much more; for thenatural activity of human nature, shut out from all noxious directions, will expand itself in useful ones. This is our conception of the moralrule prescribed by the religion of Humanity. But above this standardthere is an unlimited range of moral worth, up to the most exaltedheroism, which should be fostered by every positive encouragement, though not converted into an obligation. It is as much a part of ourscheme as of M. Comte's, that the direct cultivation of altruism, andthe subordination of egoism to it, far beyond the point of absolutemoral duty, should be one of the chief aims of education, bothindividual and collective. We even recognize the value, for this end, ofascetic discipline, in the original Greek sense of the word. We thinkwith Dr Johnson, that he who has never denied himself anything which isnot wrong, cannot be fully trusted for denying himself everything whichis so. We do not doubt that children and young persons will one day beagain systematically disciplined in self-mortification; that they willbe taught, as in antiquity, to control their appetites, to bravedangers, and submit voluntarily to pain, as simple exercises ineducation. Something has been lost as well as gained by no longer givingto every citizen the training necessary for a soldier. Nor can any painstaken be too great, to form the habit, and develop the desire, of beinguseful to others and to the world, by the practice, independently ofreward and of every personal consideration, of positive virtue beyondthe bounds of prescribed duty. No efforts should be spared to associatethe pupil's self-respect, and his desire of the respect of others, withservice rendered to Humanity; when possible, collectively, but at allevents, what is always possible, in the persons of its individualmembers. There are many remarks and precepts in M. Comte's volumes, which, as no less pertinent to our conception of morality than to his, we fully accept. For example; without admitting that to make "calculspersonnels" is contrary to morality, we agree with him in the opinion, that the principal hygienic precepts should be inculcated, not solely orprincipally as maxims of prudence, but as a matter of duty to others, since by squandering our health we disable ourselves from rendering toour fellow-creatures the services to which they are entitled. As M. Comte truly says, the prudential motive is by no means fully sufficientfor the purpose, even physicians often disregarding their own precepts. The personal penalties of neglect of health are commonly distant, aswell as more or less uncertain, and require the additional and moreimmediate sanction of moral responsibility. M. Comte, therefore, in thisinstance, is, we conceive, right in principle; though we have not thesmallest doubt that he would have gone into extreme exaggeration inpractice, and would have wholly ignored the legitimate liberty of theindividual to judge for himself respecting his own bodily conditions, with due relation to the sufficiency of his means of knowledge, andtaking the responsibility of the result. 

Connected with the same considerations is another idea of M. Comte, which has great beauty and grandeur in it, and the realization of which, within the bounds of possibility, would be a cultivation of the socialfeelings on a most essential point. It is, that every person who livesby any useful work, should be habituated to regard himself not as anindividual working for his private benefit, but as a public functionary;and his wages, of whatever sort, as not the remuneration orpurchase-money of his labour, which should be given freely, but as theprovision made by society to enable him to carry it on, and to replacethe materials and products which have been consumed in the process. M. Comte observes, that in modern industry every one in fact works muchmore for others than for himself, since his productions are to beconsumed by others, and it is only necessary that his thoughts andimagination should adapt themselves to the real state of the fact. Thepractical problem, however, is not quite so simple, for a strong sensethat he is working for others may lead to nothing better than feelinghimself necessary to them, and instead of freely giving his commodity, may only encourage him to put a high price upon it. What M. Comte reallymeans is that we should regard working for the benefit of others as agood in itself; that we should desire it for its own sake, and not forthe sake of remuneration, which cannot justly be claimed for doing whatwe like: that the proper return for a service to society is thegratitude of society: and that the moral claim of any one in regard tothe provision for his personal wants, is not a question of _quid proquo_ in respect to his co-operation, but of how much the circumstancesof society permit to be assigned to him, consistently with the justclaims of others. To this opinion we entirely subscribe. The roughmethod of settling the labourer's share of the produce, the competitionof the market, may represent a practical necessity, but certainly not amoral ideal. Its defence is, that civilization has not hitherto beenequal to organizing anything better than this first rude approach to anequitable distribution. Rude as it is, we for the present go less wrongby leaving the thing to settle itself, than by settling it artificiallyin any mode which has yet been tried. But in whatever manner thatquestion may ultimately be decided, the true moral and social idea ofLabour is in no way affected by it. Until labourers and employersperform the work of industry in the spirit in which soldiers performthat of an army, industry will never be moralized, and military lifewill remain, what, in spite of the anti-social character of its directobject, it has hitherto been--the chief school of moral co-operation. 

Thus far of the general idea of M. Comte's ethics and religion. We mustnow say something of the details. Here we approach the ludicrous side ofthe subject: but we shall unfortunately have to relate other things farmore really ridiculous. 

There cannot be a religion without a _cultus. _ We use this term for wantof any other, for its nearest equivalent, worship, suggests a differentorder of ideas. We mean by it, a set of systematic observances, intendedto cultivate and maintain the religious sentiment. Though M. Comtejustly appreciates the superior efficacy of acts, in keeping up andstrengthening the feeling which prompts them, over any mode whatever ofmere expression, he takes pains to organize the latter also with greatminuteness. He provides an equivalent both for the private devotions, and for the public ceremonies, of other faiths. The reader will besurprised to learn, that the former consists of prayer. But prayer, asunderstood by M. Comte, does not mean asking; it is a mere outpouring offeeling; and for this view of it he claims the authority of theChristian mystics. It is not to be addressed to the Grand Etre, tocollective Humanity; though he occasionally carries metaphor so far asto style this a goddess. The honours to collective Humanity are reservedfor the public celebrations. Private adoration is to be addressed to itin the persons of worthy individual representatives, who may be eitherliving or dead, but must in all cases be women; for women, being the_sexe aimant_, represent the best attribute of humanity, that whichought to regulate all human life, nor can Humanity possibly besymbolized in any form but that of a woman. The objects of privateadoration are the mother, the wife, and the daughter, representingseverally the past, the present, and the future, and calling into activeexercise the three social sentiments, veneration, attachment, andkindness. We are to regard them, whether dead or alive, as our guardianangels, "les vrais anges gardiens. " If the last two have never existed, or if, in the particular case, any of the three types is too faulty forthe office assigned to it, their place may be supplied by some othertype of womanly excellence, even by one merely historical. Be the objectliving or dead, the adoration (as we understand it) is to be addressedonly to the idea. The prayer consists of two parts; a commemoration, followed by an effusion. By a commemoration M. Comte means an effort ofmemory and imagination, summoning up with the utmost possible vividnessthe image of the object: and every artifice is exhausted to render theimage as life-like, as close to the reality, as near an approach toactual hallucination, as is consistent with sanity. This degree ofintensity having been, as far as practicable, attained, the effusionfollows. Every person should compose his own form of prayer, whichshould be repeated not mentally only, but orally, and may be addedto or varied for sufficient cause, but never arbitrarily. It may beinterspersed with passages from the best poets, when they presentthemselves spontaneously, as giving a felicitous expression to theadorer's own feeling. These observances M. Comte practised to the memoryof his Clotilde, and he enjoins them on all true believers. They are tooccupy two hours of every day, divided into three parts; at rising, inthe middle of the working hours, and in bed at night. The first, whichshould be in a kneeling attitude, will commonly be the longest, and thesecond the shortest. The third is to be extended as nearly as possibleto the moment of falling asleep, that its effect may be felt indisciplining even the dreams. 

The public _cultus_ consists of a series of celebrations or festivals, eighty-four in the year, so arranged that at least one occurs in everyweek. They are devoted to the successive glorification of Humanityitself; of the various ties, political and domestic, among mankind; ofthe successive stages in the past evolution of our species; and of theseveral classes into which M. Comte's polity divides mankind. M. Comte'sreligion has, moreover, nine Sacraments; consisting in the solemnconsecration, by the priests of Humanity, with appropriate exhortations, of all the great transitions in life; the entry into life itself, andinto each of its successive stages: education, marriage, the choice of aprofession, and so forth. Among these is death, which receives the nameof transformation, and is considered as a passage from objectiveexistence to subjective--to living in the memory of ourfellow-creatures. Having no eternity of objective existence to offer, M. Comte's religion gives it all he can, by holding out the hope ofsubjective immortality--of existing in the remembrance and in theposthumous adoration of mankind at large, if we have done anything todeserve remembrance from them; at all events, of those whom we lovedduring life; and when they too are gone, of being included in thecollective adoration paid to the Grand Etre. People are to be taught tolook forward to this as a sufficient recompense for the devotion of awhole life to the service of Humanity. Seven years after death, comesthe last Sacrament: a public judgment, by the priesthood, on the memoryof the defunct. This is not designed for purposes of reprobation, but ofhonour, and any one may, by declaration during life, exempt himself fromit. If judged, and found worthy, he is solemnly incorporated with theGrand Etre, and his remains are transferred from the civil to thereligious place of sepulture: "le bois sacré" qui doit entourer chaquetemple de l'Humanité. "

This brief abstract gives no idea of the minuteness of M. Comte'sprescriptions, and the extraordinary height to which he carries themania for regulation by which Frenchmen are distinguished amongEuropeans, and M. Comte among Frenchmen. It is this which throws anirresistible air of ridicule over the whole subject. There is nothingreally ridiculous in the devotional practices which M. Comte recommendstowards a cherished memory or an ennobling ideal, when they comeunprompted from the depths of the individual feeling; but there issomething ineffably ludicrous in enjoining that everybody shall practisethem three times daily for a period of two hours, not because hisfeelings require them, but for the premeditated, purpose of getting hisfeelings up. The ludicrous, however, in any of its shapes, is aphaenomenon with which M. Comte seems to have been totally unacquainted. There is nothing in his writings from which it could be inferred that heknew of the existence of such things as wit and humour. The only writerdistinguished for either, of whom he shows any admiration, is Molière, and him he admires not for his wit but for his wisdom. We notice thiswithout intending any reflection on M. Comte; for a profound convictionraises a person above the feeling of ridicule. But there are passages inhis writings which, it really seems to us, could have been written by noman who had ever laughed. We will give one of these instances. Besidesthe regular prayers, M. Comte's religion, like the Catholic, has need offorms which can be applied to casual and unforeseen occasions. These, hesays, must in general be left to the believer's own choice; but hesuggests as a very suitable one the repetition of "the fundamentalformula of Positivism, " viz. , "l'amour pour principe, l'ordre pour base, et le progrès pour but. " Not content, however, with an equivalent forthe Paters and Aves of Catholicism, he must have one for the sign of thecross also; and he thus delivers himself:[23] "Cette expansion peut êtreperfectionnée par des signes universels.... Afin de mieux développerl'aptitude nécessaire de la formule positiviste à représenter toujoursla condition humaine, il convient ordinairement de l'énoncer en touchantsuccessivement les principaux organes que la théorie cérébrale assigne àses trois éléments. " This _may_ be a very appropriate mode of expressingone's devotion to the Grand Etre: but any one who had appreciated itseffect on the profane reader, would have thought it judicious to keep itback till a considerably more advanced stage in the propagation of thePositive Religion. 

As M. Comte's religion has a _cultus_, so also it has a clergy, who arethe pivot of his entire social and political system. Their nature andoffice will be best shown by describing his ideal of political societyin its normal state, with the various classes of which it is composed. 

The necessity of a Spiritual Power, distinct and separate from thetemporal government, is the essential principle of M. Comte's politicalscheme; as it may well be, since the Spiritual Power is the onlycounterpoise he provides or tolerates, to the absolute dominion of thecivil rulers. Nothing can exceed his combined detestation and contemptfor government by assemblies, and for parliamentary or representativeinstitutions in any form. They are an expedient, in his opinion, onlysuited to a state of transition, and even that nowhere but in England. The attempt to naturalize them in France, or any Continental nation, heregards as mischievous quackery. Louis Napoleon's usurpation isabsolved, is made laudable to him, because it overthrew a representativegovernment. Election of superiors by inferiors, except as arevolutionary expedient, is an abomination in his sight. Publicfunctionaries of all kinds should name their successors, subject to theapprobation of their own superiors, and giving public notice of thenomination so long beforehand as to admit of discussion, and the timelyrevocation of a wrong choice. But, by the side of the temporal rulers, he places another authority, with no power to command, but only toadvise and remonstrate. The family being, in his mind as in that ofFrenchmen generally, the foundation and essential type of all society, the separation of the two powers commences there. The spiritual, ormoral and religious power, in a family, is the women of it. Thepositivist family is composed of the "fundamental couple, " theirchildren, and the parents of the man, if alive. The whole government ofthe household, except as regards the education of the children, residesin the man; and even over that he has complete power, but should forbearto exert it. The part assigned to the women is to improve the manthrough his affections, and to bring up the children, who, until the ageof fourteen, at which scientific instruction begins, are to be educatedwholly by their mother. That women may be better fitted for thesefunctions, they are peremptorily excluded from all others. No woman isto work for her living. Every woman is to be supported by her husband orher male relations, and if she has none of these, by the State. She isto have no powers of government, even domestic, and no property. Herlegal rights of inheritance are preserved to her, that her feelings ofduty may make her voluntarily forego them. There are to be no marriageportions, that women may no longer be sought in marriage from interestedmotives. Marriages are to be rigidly indissoluble, except for a singlecause. It is remarkable that the bitterest enemy of divorce among allphilosophers, nevertheless allows it, in a case which the laws ofEngland, and of other countries reproached by him with toleratingdivorce, do not admit: namely, when one of the parties has beensentenced to an infamizing punishment, involving loss of civil rights. It is monstrous that condemnation, even for life, to a felon'spunishment, should leave an unhappy victim bound to, and in the wife'scase under the legal authority of, the culprit. M. Comte could feel forthe injustice in this special case, because it chanced to be theunfortunate situation of his Clotilde. Minor degrees of unworthiness mayentitle the innocent party to a legal separation, but without the powerof re-marriage. Second marriages, indeed, are not permitted by thePositive Religion. There is to be no impediment to them by law, butmorality is to condemn them, and every couple who are marriedreligiously as well as civilly are to make a vow of eternal widowhood, "le veuvage éternel. " This absolute monogamy is, in M. Comte's opinion, essential to the complete fusion between two beings, which is theessence of marriage; and moreover, eternal constancy is required by theposthumous adoration, which is to be continuously paid by the survivorto one who, though objectively dead, still lives "subjectively. " Thedomestic spiritual power, which resides in the women of the family, ischiefly concentrated in the most venerable of them, the husband'smother, while alive. It has an auxiliary in the influence of age, represented by the husband's father, who is supposed to have passed theperiod of retirement from active life, fixed by M. Comte (for he fixeseverything) at sixty-three; at which age the head of the family gives upthe reins of authority to his son, retaining only a consultative voice. 

This domestic Spiritual Power, being principally moral, and confined toa private life, requires the support and guidance of an intellectualpower exterior to it, the sphere of which will naturally be wider, extending also to public life. This consists of the clergy, orpriesthood, for M. Comte is fond of borrowing the consecratedexpressions of Catholicism to denote the nearest equivalents which hisown system affords. The clergy are the theoretic or philosophical class, and are supported by an endowment from the State, voted periodically, but administered by themselves. Like women, they are to be excluded fromall riches, and from all participation in power (except the absolutepower of each over his own household). They are neither to inherit, norto receive emolument from any of their functions, or from their writingsor teachings of any description, but are to live solely on their smallsalaries. This M. Comte deems necessary to the completedisinterestedness of their counsel. To have the confidence of themasses, they must, like the masses, be poor. Their exclusion frompolitical and from all other practical occupations is indispensable forthe same reason, and for others equally peremptory. Those occupationsare, he contends, incompatible with the habits of mind necessary tophilosophers. A practical position, either private or public, chains themind to specialities and details, while a philosopher's business is withgeneral truths and connected views (vues d'ensemble). These, again, require an habitual abstraction from details, which unfits the mind forjudging well and rapidly of individual cases. The same person cannot beboth a good theorist and a good practitioner or ruler, thoughpractitioners and rulers ought to have a solid theoretic education. Thetwo kinds of function must be absolutely exclusive of one another: toattempt them both, is inconsistent with fitness for either. But as menmay mistake their vocation, up to the age of thirty-five they areallowed to change their career. 

To the clergy is entrusted the theoretic or scientific instruction ofyouth. The medical art also is to be in their hands, since no one is fitto be a physician who does not study and understand the whole man, moralas well as physical. M. Comte has a contemptuous opinion of the existingrace of physicians, who, he says, deserve no higher name than that ofveterinaires, since they concern themselves with man only in his animal, and not in his human character. In his last years, M. Comte (as we learnfrom Dr Robinet's volume) indulged in the wildest speculations onmedical science, declaring all maladies to be one and the same disease, the disturbance or destruction of "l'unité cérébrale. " The otherfunctions of the clergy are moral, much more than intellectual. They arethe spiritual directors, and venerated advisers, of the active orpractical classes, including the political. They are the mediators inall social differences; between the labourers, for instance, and theiremployers. They are to advise and admonish on all important violationsof the moral law. Especially, it devolves on them to keep the rich andpowerful to the performance of their moral duties towards theirinferiors. If private remonstrance fails, public denunciation is tofollow: in extreme cases they may proceed to the length ofexcommunication, which, though it only operates through opinion, yet ifit carries opinion with it, may, as M. Comte complacently observes, beof such powerful efficacy, that the richest man may be driven to producehis subsistence by his own manual labour, through the impossibility ofinducing any other person to work for him. In this as in all othercases, the priesthood depends for its authority on carrying with it themass of the people--those who, possessing no accumulations, live on thewages of daily labour; popularly but incorrectly termed the workingclasses, and by French writers, in their Roman law phraseology, proletaires. These, therefore, who are not allowed the smallestpolitical rights, are incorporated into the Spiritual Power, of whichthey form, after women and the clergy, the third element. 

It remains to give an account of the Temporal Power, composed of therich and the employers of labour, two classes who in M. Comte's systemare reduced to one, for he allows of no idle rich. A life made up ofmere amusement and self-indulgence, though not interdicted by law, is tobe deemed so disgraceful, that nobody with the smallest sense of shamewould choose to be guilty of it. Here, we think, M. Comte has lighted ona true principle, towards which the tone of opinion in modern Europe ismore and more tending, and which is destined to be one of theconstitutive principles of regenerated society. We believe, for example, with him, that in the future there will be no class of landlords livingat ease on their rents, but every landlord will be a capitalist trainedto agriculture, himself superintending and directing the cultivation ofhis estate. No one but he who guides the work, should have the controlof the tools. In M. Comte's system, the rich, as a rule, consist of the"captains of industry:" but the rule is not entirely without exception, for M. Comte recognizes other useful modes of employing riches. Inparticular, one of his favourite ideas is that of an order of Chivalry, composed of the most generous and self-devoted of the rich, voluntarilydedicating themselves, like knights-errant of old, to the redressing ofwrongs, and the protection of the weak and oppressed. He remarks, thatoppression, in modern life, can seldom reach, or even venture to attack, the life or liberty of its victims (he forgets the case of domestictyranny), but only their pecuniary means, and it is therefore by thepurse chiefly that individuals can usefully interpose, as they formerlydid by the sword. The occupation, however, of nearly all the rich, willbe the direction of labour, and for this work they will be educated. Reciprocally, it is in M. Comte's opinion essential, that all directorsof labour should be rich. Capital (in which he includes land) should beconcentrated in a few holders, so that every capitalist may conduct themost extensive operations which one mind is capable of superintending. This is not only demanded by good economy, in order to take the utmostadvantage of a rare kind of practical ability, but it necessarilyfollows from the principle of M. Comte's scheme, which regards acapitalist as a public functionary. M. Comte's conception of therelation of capital to society is essentially that of Socialists, but hewould bring about by education and opinion, what they aim at effectingby positive institution. The owner of capital is by no means to considerhimself its absolute proprietor. Legally he is not to be controlled inhis dealings with it, for power should be in proportion toresponsibility: but it does not belong to him for his own use; he ismerely entrusted by society with a portion of the accumulations made bythe past providence of mankind, to be administered for the benefit ofthe present generation and of posterity, under the obligation ofpreserving them unimpaired, and handing them down, more or lessaugmented, to our successors. He is not entitled to dissipate them, ordivert them from the service of Humanity to his own pleasures. Nor hashe a moral right to consume on himself the whole even of his profits. Heis bound in conscience, if they exceed his reasonable wants, to employthe surplus in improving either the efficiency of his operations, or thephysical and mental condition of his labourers. The portion of his gainswhich he may appropriate to his own use, must be decided by himself, under accountability to opinion; and opinion ought not to look verynarrowly into the matter, nor hold him to a rigid reckoning for anymoderate indulgence of luxury or ostentation; since under the greatresponsibilities that will be imposed on him, the position of anemployer of labour will be so much less desirable, to any one in whomthe instincts of pride and vanity are not strong, than the "heureuseinsouciance" of a labourer, that those instincts must be to a certaindegree indulged, or no one would undertake the office. With thislimitation, every employer is a mere administrator of his possessions, for his work-people and for society at large. If he indulges himselflavishly, without reserving an ample remuneration for all who areemployed under him, he is morally culpable, and will incur sacerdotaladmonition. This state of things necessarily implies that capital shouldbe in few hands, because, as M. Comte observes, without great riches, the obligations which society ought to impose, could not be fulfilledwithout an amount of personal abnegation that it would be hopeless toexpect. If a person is conspicuously qualified for the conduct of anindustrial enterprise, but destitute of the fortune necessary forundertaking it, M. Comte recommends that he should be enriched bysubscription, or, in cases of sufficient importance, by the State. Smalllanded proprietors and capitalists, and the middle classes altogether, he regards as a parasitic growth, destined to disappear, the best of thebody becoming large capitalists, and the remainder proletaires. Societywill consist only of rich and poor, and it will be the business of therich to make the best possible lot for the poor. The remuneration of thelabourers will continue, as at present, to be a matter of voluntaryarrangement between them and their employers, the last resort on eitherside being refusal of co-operation, "refus de concours, " in other words, a strike or a lock-out; with the sacerdotal order for mediators in caseof need. But though wages are to be an affair of free contract, theirstandard is not to be the competition of the market, but the applicationof the products in equitable proportion between the wants of thelabourers and the wants and dignity of the employer. As it is one of M. Comte's principles that a question cannot be usefully proposed withoutan attempt at a solution, he gives his ideas from the beginning as towhat the normal income of a labouring family should be. They are on sucha scale, that until some great extension shall have taken place in thescientific resources of mankind, it is no wonder he thinks it necessaryto limit as much as possible the number of those who are to be supportedby what is left of the produce. In the first place the labourer'sdwelling, which is to consist of seven rooms, is, with all that itcontains, to be his own property: it is the only landed property he isallowed to possess, but every family should be the absolute owner of allthings which are destined for its exclusive use. Lodging being thusindependently provided for, and education and medical attendance beingsecured gratuitously by the general arrangements of society, the pay ofthe labourer is to consist of two portions, the one monthly, and offixed amount, the other weekly, and proportioned to the produce of hislabour. The former M. Comte fixes at 100 francs (£4) for a month of 28days; being £52 a year: and the rate of piece-work should be such as tomake the other part amount to an average of seven francs (5_s_. _6d_. )per working day. 

Agreeably to M. Comte's rule, that every public functionary shouldappoint his successor, the capitalist has unlimited power oftransmitting his capital by gift or bequest, after his own death orretirement. In general it will be best bestowed entire upon one person, unless the business will advantageously admit of subdivision. He willnaturally leave it to one or more of his sons, if sufficientlyqualified; and rightly so, hereditary being, in M. Comte's opinion, preferable to acquired wealth, as being usually more generouslyadministered. But, merely as his sons, they have no moral right to it. M. Comte here recognizes another of the principles, on which we believethat the constitution of regenerated society will rest. He maintains (asothers in the present generation have done) that the father owes nothingto his son, except a good education, and pecuniary aid sufficient for anadvantageous start in life: that he is entitled, and may be morallybound, to leave the bulk of his fortune to some other properly selectedperson or persons, whom he judges likely to make a more beneficial useof it. This is the first of three important points, in which M. Comte'stheory of the family, wrong as we deem it in its foundations, is inadvance of prevailing theories and existing institutions. The second isthe re-introduction of adoption, not only in default of children, but tofulfil the purposes, and satisfy the sympathetic wants, to which suchchildren as there are may happen to be inadequate. The third is a mostimportant point--the incorporation of domestics as substantive membersof the family. There is hardly any part of the present constitution ofsociety more essentially vicious, and morally injurious to both parties, than the relation between masters and servants. To make this a reallyhuman and a moral relation, is one of the principal desiderata in socialimprovement. The feeling of the vulgar of all classes, that domesticservice has anything in it peculiarly mean, is a feeling than whichthere is none meaner. In the feudal ages, youthful nobles of the highestrank thought themselves honoured by officiating in what is now called amenial capacity, about the persons of superiors of both sexes, for whomthey felt respect: and, as M. Comte observes, there are many familieswho can in no other way so usefully serve Humanity, as by ministering tothe bodily wants of other families, called to functions which requirethe devotion of all their thoughts. "We will add, by way of supplementto M. Comte's doctrine, that much of the daily physical work of ahousehold, even in opulent families, if silly notions of degradation, common to all ranks, did not interfere, might very advantageously beperformed by the family itself, at least by its younger members; to whomit would give healthful exercise of the bodily powers, which has now tobe sought in modes far less useful, and also a familiar acquaintancewith the real work of the world, and a moral willingness to take theirshare of its burthens, which, in the great majority of the better-offclasses, do not now get cultivated at all. 

We have still to speak of the directly political functions of the rich, or, as M. Comte terms them, the patriciate. The entire politicalgovernment is to be in their hands. First, however, the existing nationsare to be broken up into small republics, the largest not exceeding thesize of Belgium, Portugal, or Tuscany; any larger nationalities beingincompatible with the unity of wants and feelings, which is required, not only to give due strength to the sentiment of patriotism (alwaysstrongest in small states), but to prevent undue compression; for noterritory, M. Comte thinks, can without oppression be governed from adistant centre. Algeria, therefore, is to be given up to the Arabs, Corsica to its inhabitants, and France proper is to be, before the endof the century, divided into seventeen republics, corresponding to thenumber of considerable towns: Paris, however, (need it be said?)succeeding to Rome as the religious metropolis of the world. Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, are to be separated from England, which is ofcourse to detach itself from all its transmarine dependencies. In eachstate thus constituted, the powers of government are to be vested in atriumvirate of the three principal bankers, who are to take the foreign, home, and financial departments respectively. How they are to conductthe government and remain bankers, does not clearly appear; but it mustbe intended that they should combine both offices, for they are toreceive no pecuniary remuneration for the political one. Their power isto amount to a dictatorship (M. Comte's own word): and he is hardlyjustified in saying that he gives political power to the rich, since hegives it over the rich and every one else, to three individuals of thenumber, not even chosen by the rest, but named by their predecessors. Asa check on the dictators, there is to be complete freedom of speech, writing, printing, and voluntary association; and all important acts ofthe government, except in cases of emergency, are to be announcedsufficiently long beforehand to ensure ample discussion. This, and theinfluences of the Spiritual Power, are the only guarantees providedagainst misgovernment. When we consider that the complete dominion ofevery nation of mankind is thus handed over to only four men--for theSpiritual Power is to be under the absolute and undivided control of asingle Pontiff for the whole human race--one is appalled at the pictureof entire subjugation and slavery, which is recommended to us as thelast and highest result of the evolution of Humanity. But the conceptionrises to the terrific, when we are told the mode in which the singleHigh Priest of Humanity is intended to use his authority. It is the mostwarning example we know, into what frightful aberrations a powerful andcomprehensive mind may be led by the exclusive following out of a singleidea. 

The single idea of M. Comte, on this subject, is that the intellectshould be wholly subordinated to the feelings; or, to translate themeaning out of sentimental into logical language, that the exercise ofthe intellect, as of all our other faculties, should have for its soleobject the general good. Every other employment of it should beaccounted not only idle and frivolous, but morally culpable. Beingindebted wholly to Humanity for the cultivation to which we owe ourmental powers, we are bound in return to consecrate them wholly to herservice. Having made up his mind that this ought to be, there is with M. Comte but one step to concluding that the Grand Pontiff of Humanity musttake care that it shall be; and on this foundation he organizes anelaborate system for the total suppression of all independent thought. He does not, indeed, invoke the arm of the law, or call for anyprohibitions. The clergy are to have no monopoly. Any one else maycultivate science if he can, may write and publish if he can findreaders, may give private instruction if anybody consents to receive it. But since the sacerdotal body will absorb into itself all but those whomit deems either intellectually or morally unequal to the vocation, allrival teachers will, as he calculates, be so discredited beforehand, that their competition will not be formidable. Within the body itself, the High Priest has it in his power to make sure that there shall be noopinions, and no exercise of mind, but such as he approves; for he alonedecides the duties and local residence of all its members, and can eveneject them from the body. Before electing to be under this rule, we feela natural curiosity to know in what manner it is to be exercised. Humanity has only yet had one Pontiff, whose mental qualifications forthe post are not likely to be often surpassed, M. Comte himself. It isof some importance to know what are the ideas of this High Priest, concerning the moral and religious government of the human intellect. 

One of the doctrines which M. Comte most strenuously enforces in hislater writings is, that during the preliminary evolution of humanity, terminated by the foundation of Positivism, the free development of ourforces of all kinds was the important matter, but that from this timeforward the principal need is to regulate them. Formerly the danger wasof their being insufficient, but henceforth, of their being abused. Letus express, in passing, our entire dissent from this doctrine. Whoeverthinks that the wretched education which mankind as yet receive, callsforth their mental powers (except those of a select few) in a sufficientor even tolerable degree, must be very easily satisfied: and the abuseof them, far from becoming proportionally greater as knowledge andmental capacity increase, becomes rapidly less, provided always that thediffusion of those qualities keeps pace with their growth. The abuse ofintellectual power is only to be dreaded, when society is dividedbetween a few highly cultivated intellects and an ignorant and stupidmultitude. But mental power is a thing which M. Comte does not want--orwants infinitely less than he wants submission and obedience. Of all theingredients of human nature, he continually says, the intellect mostneeds to be disciplined and reined-in. It is the most turbulent "le plusperturbateur, " of all the mental elements; more so than even the selfishinstincts. Throughout the whole modern transition, beginning withancient Greece (for M. Comte tells us that we have always been in astate of revolutionary transition since then), the intellect has been ina state of systematic insurrection against "le coeur. " Themetaphysicians and literati (lettrés), after helping to pull down theold religion and social order, are rootedly hostile to the constructionof the new, and desiring only to prolong the existing scepticism andintellectual anarchy, which secure to them a cheap social ascendancy, without the labour of earning it by solid scientific preparation. Thescientific class, from whom better might have been expected, are, ifpossible, worse. Void of enlarged views, despising all that is too largefor their comprehension, devoted exclusively each to his specialscience, contemptuously indifferent to moral and political interests, their sole aim is to acquire an easy reputation, and in France (throughpaid Academies and professorships) personal lucre, by pushing theirsciences into idle and useless inquiries (speculations oiseuses), of novalue to the real interests of mankind, and tending to divert thethoughts from them. One of the duties most incumbent on opinion and onthe Spiritual Power, is to stigmatize as immoral, and effectuallysuppress, these useless employments of the speculative faculties. Allexercise of thought should be abstained from, which has not somebeneficial tendency, some actual utility to mankind. M. Comte, ofcourse, is not the man to say that it must be a merely material utility. If a speculation, though it has no doctrinal, has a logical value--if itthrows any light on universal Method--it is still more deserving ofcultivation than if its usefulness was merely practical: but, either asmethod or as doctrine, it must bring forth fruits to Humanity, otherwiseit is not only contemptible, but criminal. 

That there is a portion of truth at the bottom of all this, we should bethe last to deny. No respect is due to any employment of the intellectwhich does not tend to the good of mankind. It is precisely on a levelwith any idle amusement, and should be condemned as waste of time, ifcarried beyond the limit within which amusement is permissible. Andwhoever devotes powers of thought which could render to Humanityservices it urgently needs, to speculations and studies which it coulddispense with, is liable to the discredit attaching to a well-groundedsuspicion of caring little for Humanity. But who can affirm positivelyof any speculations, guided by right scientific methods, on subjectsreally accessible to the human faculties, that they are incapable ofbeing of any use? Nobody knows what knowledge will prove to be of use, and what is destined to be useless. The most that can be said is thatsome kinds are of more certain, and above all, of more present utilitythan others. How often the most important practical results have beenthe remote consequence of studies which no one would have expected tolead to them! Could the mathematicians, who, in the schools ofAlexandria, investigated the properties of the ellipse, have foreseenthat nearly two thousand years afterwards their speculations wouldexplain the solar system, and a little later would enable ships safelyto circumnavigate the earth? Even in M. Comte's opinion, it is well formankind that, in those early days, knowledge was thought worth pursuingfor its own sake. Nor has the "foundation of Positivism, " we imagine, sofar changed the conditions of human existence, that it should now becriminal to acquire, by observation and reasoning, a knowledge of thefacts of the universe, leaving to posterity to find a use for it. Evenin the last two or three years, has not the discovery of new metals, which may prove important even in the practical arts, arisen from one ofthe investigations which M. Comte most unequivocally condemns as idle, the research into the internal constitution of the sun? How few, moreover, of the discoveries which have changed the face of the world, either were or could have been arrived at by investigations aimingdirectly at the object! Would the mariner's compass ever have been foundby direct efforts for the improvement of navigation? Should we havereached the electric telegraph by any amount of striving for a means ofinstantaneous communication, if Franklin had not identified electricitywith lightning, and Ampère with magnetism? The most apparentlyinsignificant archaeological or geological fact, is often found to throwa light on human history, which M. Comte, the basis of whose socialphilosophy is history, should be the last person to disparage. Thedirection of the entrance to the three great Pyramids of Ghizeh, byshowing the position of the circumpolar stars at the time when they werebuilt, is the best evidence we even now have of the immense antiquity ofEgyptian civilization. [24] The one point on which M. Comte's doctrinehas some colour of reason, is the case of sidereal astronomy: so littleknowledge of it being really accessible to us, and the connexion of thatlittle with any terrestrial interests being, according to all our meansof judgment, infinitesimal. It is certainly difficult to imagine how anyconsiderable benefit to humanity can be derived from a knowledge of themotions of the double stars: should these ever become important to us itwill be in so prodigiously remote an age, that we can afford to remainignorant of them until, at least, all our moral, political, and socialdifficulties have been settled. Yet the discovery that gravitationextends even to those remote regions, gives some additional strength tothe conviction of the universality of natural laws; and the habitualmeditation on such vast objects and distances is not without anaesthetic usefulness, by kindling and exalting the imagination, theworth of which in itself, and even its re-action on the intellect, M. Comte is quite capable of appreciating. He would reply, however, thatthere are better means of accomplishing these purposes. In the samespirit he condemns the study even of the solar system, when extended toany planets but those which are visible to the naked eye, and whichalone exert an appreciable gravitative influence on the earth. Even theperturbations he thinks it idle to study, beyond a mere generalconception of them, and thinks that astronomy may well limit its domainto the motions and mutual action of the earth, sun, and moon. He looksfor a similar expurgation of all the other sciences. In one passage heexpressly says that the greater part of the researches which are reallyaccessible to us are idle and useless. He would pare down the dimensionsof all the sciences as narrowly as possible. He is continually repeatingthat no science, as an abstract study, should be carried further than isnecessary to lay the foundation for the science next above it, and soultimately for moral science, the principal purpose of them all. Anyfurther extension of the mathematical and physical sciences should bemerely "episodic;" limited to what may from time to time be demanded bythe requirements of industry and the arts; and should be left to theindustrial classes, except when they find it necessary to apply to thesacerdotal order for some additional development of scientific theory. This, he evidently thinks, would be a rare contingency, most physicaltruths sufficiently concrete and real for practice being empirical. Accordingly in estimating the number of clergy necessary for France, Europe, and our entire planet (for his forethought extends thus far), he proportions it solely to their moral and religious attributions(overlooking, by the way, even their medical); and leaves nobody withany time to cultivate the sciences, except abortive candidates for thepriestly office, who having been refused admittance into it forinsufficiency in moral excellence or in strength of character, may bethought worth retaining as "pensioners" of the sacerdotal order, onaccount of their theoretic abilities. 

It is no exaggeration to say, that M. Comte gradually acquired a realhatred for scientific and all purely intellectual pursuits, and was benton retaining no more of them than was strictly indispensable. Thegreatest of his anxieties is lest people should reason, and seek toknow, more than enough. He regards all abstraction and all reasoning asmorally dangerous, by developing an inordinate pride (orgueil), andstill more, by producing dryness (scheresse). Abstract thought, he says, is not a wholesome occupation for more than a small number of humanbeings, nor of them for more than a small part of their time. Art, whichcalls the emotions into play along with and more than the reason, is theonly intellectual exercise really adapted to human nature. It isnevertheless indispensable that the chief theories of the variousabstract sciences, together with the modes in which those theories werehistorically and logically arrived at, should form a part of universaleducation: for, first, it is only thus that the methods can be learnt, by which to attain the results sought by the moral and social sciences:though we cannot perceive that M. Comte got at his own moral and socialresults by those processes. Secondly, the principal truths of thesubordinate sciences are necessary to the systematization (stillsystematization!) of our conceptions, by binding together our notions ofthe world in a set of propositions, which are coherent, and are asufficiently correct representation of fact for our practical wants. Thirdly, a familiar knowledge of the invariable laws of naturalphaenomena is a great elementary lesson of submission, which, he isnever weary of saying, is the first condition both of morality and ofhappiness. For these reasons, he would cause to be taught, from the ageof fourteen to that of twenty-one, to all persons, rich and poor, girlsor youths, a knowledge of the whole series of abstract sciences, such asnone but the most highly instructed persons now possess, and of a farmore systematic and philosophical character than is usually possessedeven by them. (N. B. --They are to learn, during the same years, Greek andLatin, having previously, between the ages of seven and fourteen, learntthe five principal modern languages, to the degree necessary forreading, with due appreciation, the chief poetical compositions ineach. ) But they are to be taught all this, not only without encouraging, but stifling as much as possible, the examining and questioning spirit. The disposition which should be encouraged is that of receiving all onthe authority of the teacher. The Positivist faith, even in itsscientific part, is _la foi démontrable_, but ought by no means to be_la foi toujours démontrée_. The pupils have no business to beover-solicitous about proof. The teacher should not even present theproofs to them in a complete form, or as proofs. The object ofinstruction is to make them understand the doctrines themselves, perceive their mutual connexion, and form by means of them a consistentand _systematized_ conception of nature. As for the demonstrations, itis rather desirable than otherwise that even theorists should forgetthem, retaining only the results. Among all the aberrations ofscientific men, M. Comte thinks none greater than the pedantic anxietythey show for complete proof, and perfect rationalization of scientificprocesses. It ought to be enough that the doctrines afford anexplanation of phaenomena, consistent with itself and with known facts, and that the processes are justified by their fruits. This over-anxietyfor proof, he complains, is breaking down, by vain scruples, theknowledge which seemed to have been attained; witness the present stateof chemistry. The demand of proof for what has been accepted byHumanity, is itself a mark of "distrust, if not hostility, to thesacerdotal order" (the naïveté of this would be charming, if it were notdeplorable), and is a revolt against the traditions of the human race. So early had the new High Priest adopted the feelings and taken up theinheritance of the old. One of his favourite aphorisms is the strangeone, that the living are more and more governed by the dead. As is notuncommon with him, he introduces the dictum in one sense, and uses it inanother. What he at first means by it, is that as civilization advances, the sum of our possessions, physical and intellectual, is due in adecreasing proportion to ourselves, and in an increasing one to ourprogenitors. The use he makes of it is, that we should submit ourselvesmore and more implicitly to the authority of previous generations, andsuffer ourselves less and less to doubt their judgment, or test by ourown reason the grounds of their opinions. The unwillingness of the humanintellect and conscience, in their present state of "anarchy, " to signtheir own abdication, lie calls "the insurrection of the living againstthe dead. " To this complexion has Positive Philosophy come at last!

Worse, however, remains to be told. M. Comte selects a hundred volumesof science, philosophy, poetry, history, and general knowledge, which hedeems a sufficient library for every positivist, even of the theoreticorder, and actually proposes a systematic holocaust of books ingeneral--it would almost seem of all books except these. Even that towhich he shows most indulgence, poetry, except the very best, is toundergo a similar fate, with the reservation of select passages, on theground that, poetry being intended to cultivate our instinct of idealperfection, any kind of it that is less than the best is worse thannone. This imitation of the error, we will call it the crime, of theearly Christians--and in an exaggerated form, for even they destroyedonly those writings of pagans or heretics which were directed againstthemselves--is the one thing in M. Comte's projects which merits realindignation. When once M. Comte has decided, all evidence on the otherside, nay, the very historical evidence on which he grounded hisdecision, had better perish. When mankind have enlisted under hisbanner, they must burn their ships. There is, though in a less offensiveform, the same overweening presumption in a suggestion he makes, thatall species of animals and plants which are useless to man should besystematically rooted out. As if any one could presume to assert thatthe smallest weed may not, as knowledge advances, be found to have someproperty serviceable to man. When we consider that the united power ofthe whole human race cannot reproduce a species once eradicated--thatwhat is once done, in the extirpation of races, can never be repaired;one can only be thankful that amidst all which the past rulers ofmankind have to answer for, they have never come up to the measure ofthe great regenerator of Humanity; mankind have not yet been under therule of one who assumes that he knows all there is to be known, and thatwhen he has put himself at the head of humanity, the book of humanknowledge may be closed. 

Of course M. Comte does not make this assumption consistently. He doesnot imagine that he actually possesses all knowledge, but only that heis an infallible judge what knowledge is worth possessing. He does notbelieve that mankind have reached in all directions the extreme limitsof useful and laudable scientific inquiry. He thinks there is a largescope for it still, in adding to our power over the external world, butchiefly in perfecting our own physical, intellectual, and moral nature. He holds that all our mental strength should be economized, for thepursuit of this object in the mode leading most directly to the end. With this view, some one problem should always be selected, the solutionof which would be more important than any other to the interests ofhumanity, and upon this the entire intellectual resources of thetheoretic mind should be concentrated, until it is either resolved, orhas to be given up as insoluble: after which mankind should go on toanother, to be pursued with similar exclusiveness. The selection of thisproblem of course rests with the sacerdotal order, or in other words, with the High Priest. We should then see the whole speculative intellectof the human race simultaneously at work on one question, by orders fromabove, as a French minister of public instruction once boasted that amillion of boys were saying the same lesson during the same half-hour inevery town and village of France. The reader will be anxious to know, how much better and more wisely the human intellect will be appliedunder this absolute monarchy, and to what degree this system ofgovernment will be preferable to the present anarchy, in which everytheorist does what is intellectually right in his own eyes. M. Comte hasnot left us in ignorance on this point. He gives us ample means ofjudging. The Pontiff of Positivism informs us what problem, in hisopinion, should be selected before all others for this united pursuit. 

What this problem is, we must leave those who are curious on the subjectto learn from the treatise itself. When they have done so, they will bequalified to form their own opinion of the amount of advantage which thegeneral good of mankind would be likely to derive, from exchanging thepresent "dispersive speciality" and "intellectual anarchy" for thesubordination of the intellect to the _coeur_, personified in a HighPriest, prescribing a single problem for the undivided study of thetheoretic mind. 

We have given a sufficient general idea of M. Comte's plan for theregeneration of human society, by putting an end to anarchy, and"systematizing" human thought and conduct under the direction offeeling. But an adequate conception will not have been formed of theheight of his self-confidence, until something more has been told. Be itknown, then, that M. Comte by no means proposes this new constitution ofsociety for realization in the remote future. A complete plan ofmeasures of transition is ready prepared, and he determines the year, before the end of the present century, in which the new spiritual andtemporal powers will be installed, and the regime of our maturity willbegin. He did not indeed calculate on converting to Positivism, withinthat time, more than a thousandth part of all the heads of families inWestern Europe and its offshoots beyond the Atlantic. But he fixes thetime necessary for the complete political establishment of Positivism atthirty-three years, divided into three periods, of seven, five, andtwenty-one years respectively. At the expiration of seven, the directionof public education in France would be placed in M. Comte's hands. Infive years more, the Emperor Napoleon, or his successor, will resign hispower to a provisional triumvirate, composed of three eminentproletaires of the positivist faith; for proletaires, though not fit forpermanent rule, are the best agents of the transition, being the mostfree from the prejudices which are the chief obstacle to it. Theserulers will employ the remaining twenty-one years in preparing societyfor its final constitution; and after duly installing the SpiritualPower, and effecting the decomposition of France into the seventeenrepublics before mentioned, will give over the temporal government ofeach to the normal dictatorship of the three bankers. A man may bedeemed happy, but scarcely modest, who had such boundless confidence inhis own powers of foresight, and expected so complete a triumph of hisown ideas on the reconstitution of society within the possible limits ofhis lifetime. If he could live (he said) to the age of Pontenelle, or ofHobbes, or even of Voltaire, he should see all this realized, or as goodas realized. He died, however, at sixty, without leaving any disciplesufficiently advanced to be appointed his successor. There is now aCollege, and a Director, of Positivism; but Humanity no longer possessesa High Priest. 

What more remains to be said may be despatched more summarily. Itsinterest is philosophic rather than practical. In his four volumes of"Politique Positive, " M. Comte revises and reelaborates the scientificand historical expositions of his first treatise. His object is tosystematize (again to systematize) knowledge from the human orsubjective point of view, the only one, he contends, from which a realsynthesis is possible. For (he says) the knowledge attainable by us ofthe laws of the universe is at best fragmentary, and incapable ofreduction to a real unity. An objective synthesis, the dream ofDescartes and the best thinkers of old, is impossible. The laws of thereal world are too numerous, and the manner of their working into oneanother too intricate, to be, as a general rule, correctly traced andrepresented by our reason. The only connecting principle in ourknowledge is its relation to our wants, and it is upon that we mustfound our systematization. The answer to this is, first, that there isno necessity for an universal synthesis; and secondly, that the samearguments may be used against the possibility of a complete subjective, as of a complete objective systematization. A subjective synthesis mustconsist in the arrangement and co-ordination of all useful knowledge, onthe basis of its relation to human wants and interests. But those wantsand interests are, like the laws of the universe, extremelymultifarious, and the order of preference among them in all theirdifferent gradations (for it varies according to the degree of each)cannot be cast into precise general propositions. M. Comte's subjectivesynthesis consists only in eliminating from the sciences everything thathe deems useless, and presenting as far as possible every theoreticalinvestigation as the solution of a practical problem. To this, however, he cannot consistently adhere; for, in every science, the theoretictruths are much more closely connected with one another than with thehuman purposes which they eventually serve, and can only be made tocohere in the intellect by being, to a great degree, presented as ifthey were truths of pure reason, irrespective of any practicalapplication. 

There are many things eminently characteristic of M. Comte's secondcareer, in this revision of the results of his first. Under the head ofBiology, and for the better combination of that science with Sociologyand Ethics, he found that he required a new system of Phrenology, beingjustly dissatisfied with that of Gall and his successors. Accordingly heset about constructing one _è priori_, grounded on the best enumerationand classification he could make of the elementary faculties of ourintellectual, moral, and animal nature; to each of which he assigned anhypothetical place in the skull, the most conformable that he could tothe few positive facts on the subject which he considered asestablished, and to the general presumption that functions which reactstrongly on one another must have their organs adjacent: leaving thelocalities avowedly to be hereafter verified, by anatomical andinductive investigation. There is considerable merit in this attempt, though it is liable to obvious criticisms, of the same nature as his ownupon Gall. But the characteristic thing is, that while presenting allthis as hypothesis waiting for verification, he could not have taken itstruth more completely for granted if the verification had been made. Inall that he afterwards wrote, every detail of his theory of the brain isas unhesitatingly asserted, and as confidently built upon, as any otherdoctrine of science. This is his first great attempt in the "SubjectiveMethod, " which, originally meaning only the subordination of the pursuitof truth to human uses, had already come to mean drawing truth itselffrom the fountain of his own mind. He had become, on the one hand, almost indifferent to proof, provided he attained theoretic coherency, and on the other, serenely confident that even the guesses whichoriginated with himself could not but come out true. 

There is one point in his later view of the sciences, which appears tous a decided improvement on his earlier. He adds to the six fundamentalsciences of his original scale, a seventh under the name of Morals, forming the highest step of the ladder, immediately after Sociology:remarking that it might, with still greater propriety, be termedAnthropology, being the science of individual human nature, a study, when rightly understood, more special and complicated than even that ofSociety. For it is obliged to take into consideration the diversities ofconstitution and temperament (la réaction cérébrale des viscèresvégétatifs) the effects of which, still very imperfectly understood, arehighly important in the individual, but in the theory of society may beneglected, because, differing in different persons, they neutralize oneanother on the large scale. This is a remark worthy of M. Comte in hisbest days; and the science thus conceived is, as he says, the truescientific foundation of the art of Morals (and indeed of the art ofhuman life), which, therefore, may, both philosophically anddidactically, be properly combined with it. 

His philosophy of general history is recast, and in many respectschanged; we cannot but say, greatly for the worse. He gives much greaterdevelopment than before to the Fetishistic, and to what he terms theTheocratic, periods. To the Fetishistic view of nature he evinces apartiality, which appears strange in a Positive philosopher. But thereason is that Fetish-worship is a religion of the feelings, and not atall of the intelligence. He regards it as cultivating universal love: asa practical fact it cultivates much rather universal fear. He looks uponFetishism as much more akin to Positivism than any of the forms ofTheology, inasmuch as these consider matter as inert, and moved only byforces, natural and supernatural, exterior to itself: while Fetishismresembles Positivism in conceiving matter as spontaneously active, anderrs only by not distinguishing activity from life. As if thesuperstition of the Fetishist consisted only in believing that theobjects which produce the phaenomena of nature involuntarily, producethem voluntarily. The Fetishist thinks not merely that his Fetish isalive, but that it can help him in war, can cure him of diseases, cangrant him prosperity, or afflict him with all the contrary evils. Therein consists the lamentable effect of Fetishism--its degrading andprostrating influence on the feelings and conduct, its conflict with allgenuine experience, and antagonism to all real knowledge of nature. 

M. Comte had also no small sympathy with the Oriental theocracies, as hecalls the sacerdotal castes, who indeed often deserved it by their earlyservices to intellect and civilization; by the aid they gave to theestablishment of regular government, the valuable though empiricalknowledge they accumulated, and the height to which they helped to carrysome of the useful arts. M. Comte admits that they became oppressive, and that the prolongation of their ascendancy came to be incompatiblewith further improvement. But he ascribes this to their having arrogatedto themselves the temporal government, which, so far as we have anyauthentic information, they never did. The reason why the sacerdotalcorporations became oppressive, was because they were organized: becausethey attempted the "unity" and "systematization" so dear to M. Comte, and allowed no science and no speculation, except with their leave andunder their direction. M. Comte's sacerdotal order, which, in hissystem, has all the power that ever they had, would be oppressive in thesame manner; with no variation but that which arises from the alteredstate of society and of the human mind. 

M. Comte's partiality to the theocracies is strikingly contrasted withhis dislike of the Greeks, whom as a people he thoroughly detests, fortheir undue addiction to intellectual speculation, and considers to havebeen, by an inevitable fatality, morally sacrificed to the formation ofa few great scientific intellects, --principally Aristotle, Archimedes, Apollonius, and Hipparchus. Any one who knows Grecian history as it cannow be known, will be amazed at M. Comte's travestie of it, in which thevulgarest historical prejudices are accepted and exaggerated, toillustrate the mischiefs of intellectual culture left to its ownguidance. 

There is no need to analyze further M. Comte's second view of universalhistory. The best chapter is that on the Romans, to whom, because theywere greater in practice than in theory, and for centuries workedtogether in obedience to a social sentiment (though only that of theircountry's aggrandizement), M. Comte is as favourably affected, as he isinimical to all but a small selection of eminent thinkers among theGreeks. The greatest blemish in this chapter is the idolatry of JuliusCaesar, whom M. Comte regards as one of the most illustrious charactersin history, and of the greatest practical benefactors of mankind. Caesarhad many eminent qualities, but what he did to deserve such praise weare at a loss to discover, except subverting a free government: thatmerit, however, with M. Comte, goes a great way. It did not, in hisformer days, suffice to rehabilitate Napoleon, whose name and memory heregarded with a bitterness highly honourable to himself, and whosecareer he deemed one of the greatest calamities in modern history. Butin his later writings these sentiments are considerably mitigated: heregards Napoleon as a more estimable "dictator" than Louis Philippe, andthinks that his greatest error was re-establishing the Academy ofSciences! That this should be said by M. Comte, and said of Napoleon, measures the depth to which his moral standard had fallen. 

The last volume which he published, that on the Philosophy ofMathematics, is in some respects a still sadder picture of intellectualdegeneracy than those which preceded it. After the admirable résumé ofthe subject in the first volume of his first great work, we expectedsomething of the very highest order when he returned to the subject fora more thorough treatment of it. But, being the commencement of aSynthèse Subjective, it contains, as might be expected, a great dealthat is much more subjective than mathematical. Nor of this do wecomplain: but we little imagined of what nature this subjective matterwas to be. M. Comte here joins together the two ideas, which, of allthat he has put forth, are the most repugnant to the fundamentalprinciples of Positive Philosophy. One of them is that on which we havejust commented, the assimilation between Positivism and Fetishism. Theother, of which we took notice in a former article, was the "libertéfacultative" of shaping our scientific conceptions to gratify thedemands not solely of objective truth, but of intellectual and aestheticsuitability. It would be an excellent thing, M. Comte thinks, if sciencecould be deprived of its _sécheresse_, and directly associated withsentiment. Now it is impossible to prove that the external world, andthe bodies composing it, are not endowed with feeling, and voluntaryagency. It is therefore highly desirable that we should educateourselves into imagining that they are. Intelligence it will not do toinvest them with, for some distinction must be maintained between simpleactivity and life. But we may suppose that they feel what is done tothem, and desire and will what they themselves do. Even intelligence, which we must deny to them in the present, may be attributed to them inthe past. Before man existed, the earth, at that time an intelligentbeing, may have exerted "its physico-chemical activity so as to improvethe astronomical order by changing its principal coefficients. Ourplanet may be supposed to have rendered its orbit less excentric, andthereby more habitable, by planning a long series of explosions, analogous to those from which, according to the best hypotheses, cometsproceed. Judiciously reproduced, similar shocks may have rendered theinclination of the earth's axis better adapted to the future wants ofthe Grand Etre. _A fortiori_ the Earth may have modified its own figure, which is only beyond our intervention because our spiritual ascendancyhas not at its disposal a sufficient material force. " The like may beconceived as having been done by each of the other planets, in concert, possibly, with the Earth and with one another. "In proportion as eachplanet improved its own condition, its life exhausted itself by excessof innervation; but with the consolation of rendering its self-devotionmore efficacious, when the extinction of its special functions, firstanimal, and finally vegetative, reduced it to the universal attributesof feeling and activity. "[25] This stuff, though he calls it fiction, hesoon after speaks of as belief (croyance), to be greatly recommended, asat once satisfying our natural curiosity, and "perfecting our unity"(again unity!) "by supplying the gaps in our scientific notions withpoetic fictions, and developing sympathetic emotions and aestheticinspirations: the world being conceived as aspiring to second mankind inameliorating the universal order under the impulse of the Grand Etre. "And he obviously intends that we should be trained to make thesefantastical inventions permeate all our associations, until we areincapable of conceiving the world and Nature apart from them, and theybecome equivalent to, and are in fact transformed into, real beliefs. 

Wretched as this is, it is singularly characteristic of M. Comte's latermode of thought. A writer might be excused for introducing into anavowed work of fancy this dance of the planets, and conception of ananimated Earth. If finely executed, he might even be admired for it. Noone blames a poet for ascribing feelings, purposes, and humanpropensities to flowers. Because a conception might be interesting, andperhaps edifying, in a poem, M. Comte would have it imprinted on theinmost texture of every human mind in ordinary prose. If the imaginationwere not taught its prescribed lesson equally with the reason, wherewould be Unity? "It is important that the domain of fiction shouldbecome as _systematic_ as that of demonstration, in order that theirmutual harmony may be conformable to their respective destinations, bothequally directed towards the continual increase of _unity_, personal andsocial. "[26]

Nor is it enough to have created the Grand Fétiche (so he actuallyproposes to call the Earth), and to be able to include it and allconcrete existence in our adoration along with the Grand Etre. It isnecessary also to extend Positivist Fetishism to purely abstractexistence; to "animate" the laws as well as the facts of nature. It isnot sufficient to have made physics sentimental, mathematics must bemade so too. This does not at first seem easy; but M. Comte finds themeans of accomplishing it. His plan is, to make Space also an object ofadoration, under the name of the Grand Milieu, and consider it as therepresentative of Fatality in general. "The final _unity_ disposes us tocultivate sympathy by developing our gratitude to whatever serves theGrand Etre. It must dispose us to venerate the Fatality on which reposesthe whole aggregate of our existence. " We should conceive this Fatalityas having a fixed seat, and that seat must be considered to be Space, which should be conceived as possessing feeling, but not activity orintelligence. And in our abstract speculations we should imagine all ourconceptions as located in free Space. Our images of all sorts, down toour geometrical diagrams, and even our ciphers and algebraic symbols, should always be figured to ourselves as written in space, and not onpaper or any other material substance. M. Comte adds that they should beconceived as green on a white ground. 

We cannot go on any longer with this. In spite of it all, the volume onmathematics is full of profound thoughts, and will be very suggestive tothose who take up the subject after M. Comte. What deep meaning thereis, for example, in the idea that the infinitesimal calculus is aconception analogous to the corpuscular hypothesis in physics; whichlast M. Comte has always considered as a logical artifice; not anopinion respecting matters of fact. The assimilation, as it seems to us, throws a flood of light on both conceptions; on the physical one stillmore than the mathematical. We might extract many ideas of similar, though none perhaps of equal, suggestiveness. But mixed with these, whatpitiable _niaiseries_! One of his great points is the importance of the"moral and intellectual properties of numbers. " He cultivates asuperstitious reverence for some of them. The first three are sacred, _les nombres sacrés_: One being the type of all Synthesis, Two of allCombination, which he now says _is_ always binary (in his first treatisehe only said that we may usefully represent it to ourselves as beingso), and Three of all Progression, which not only requires three terms, but as he now maintains, never ought to have any more. To these sacrednumbers all our mental operations must be made, as far as possible, toadjust themselves. Next to them, he has a great partiality for thenumber seven; for these whimsical reasons: "Composed of two progressionsfollowed by a synthesis, or of one progression between two couples, thenumber seven, coming next after the sum of the three sacred numbers, determines the largest group which we can distinctly imagine. Reciprocally, it marks the limit of the divisions which we can directlyconceive in a magnitude of any kind. " The number seven, therefore, mustbe foisted in wherever possible, and among other things, is to be madethe basis of numeration, which is hereafter to be septimal instead ofdecimal: producing all the inconvenience of a change of system, not onlywithout getting rid of, but greatly aggravating, the disadvantages ofthe existing one. But then, he says, it is absolutely necessary that thebasis of numeration should be a prime number. All other people think itabsolutely necessary that it should not, and regard the present basis asonly objectionable in not being divisible enough. But M. Comte's puerilepredilection for prime numbers almost passes belief. His reason is thatthey are the type of irreductibility: each of them is a kind of ultimatearithmetical fact. This, to any one who knows M. Comte in his lateraspects, is amply sufficient. Nothing can exceed his delight in anythingwhich says to the human mind, Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. Ifprime numbers are precious, doubly prime numbers are doubly so; meaningthose which are not only themselves prime numbers, but the number whichmarks their place in the series of prime numbers is a prime number. Still greater is the dignity of trebly prime numbers; when the numbermarking the place of this second number is also prime. The numberthirteen fulfils these conditions: it is a prime number, it is theseventh prime number, and seven is the fifth prime number. Accordinglyhe has an outrageous partiality to the number thirteen. Though one ofthe most inconvenient of all small numbers, he insists on introducing iteverywhere. 

These strange conceits are connected with a highly characteristicexample of M. Comte's frenzy for regulation. He cannot bear thatanything should be left unregulated: there ought to be no such thing ashesitation; nothing should remain arbitrary, for _l'arbitraire_ isalways favourable to egoism. Submission to artificial prescriptions isas indispensable as to natural laws, and he boasts that under the reignof sentiment, human life may be made equally, and even more, regularthan the courses of the stars. But the great instrument of exactregulation for the details of life is numbers: fixed numbers, therefore, should be introduced into all our conduct. M. Comte's first applicationof this system was to the correction of his own literary style. Complaint had been made, not undeservedly, that in his first great work, especially in the latter part of it, the sentences and paragraphs werelong, clumsy, and involved. To correct this fault, of which he wasaware, he imposed on himself the following rules. No sentence was toexceed two lines of his manuscript, equivalent to five of print. Noparagraph was to consist of more than seven sentences. He furtherapplied to his prose writing the rule of French versification whichforbids a _hiatus_(the concourse of two vowels), not allowing it tohimself even at the break between two sentences or two paragraphs; nordid he permit himself ever to use the same word twice, either in thesame sentence or in two consecutive sentences, though belonging todifferent paragraphs: with the exception of the monosyllabicauxiliaries. [27] All this is well enough, especially the first twoprecepts, and a good way of breaking through a bad habit. But M. Comtepersuaded himself that any arbitrary restriction, though in no wayemanating from, and therefore necessarily disturbing, the natural orderand proportion of the thoughts, is a benefit in itself, and tends toimprove style. If it renders composition vastly more difficult, herejoices at it, as tending to confine writing to superior minds. Accordingly, in the Synthèse Subjective, he institutes the following"plan for all compositions of importance. " "Every volume really capableof forming a distinct treatise" should consist of "seven chapters, besides the introduction and the conclusion; and each of these should becomposed of three parts. " Each third part of a chapter should be dividedinto "seven sections, each composed of seven groups of sentences, separated by the usual break of line. Normally formed, the sectionoffers a central group of seven sentences, preceded and followed bythree groups of five: the first section of each part reduces to threesentences three of its groups, symmetrically placed; the last sectiongives seven sentences to each of its extreme groups. These rules ofcomposition make prose approach to the regularity of poetry, whencombined with my previous reduction of the maximum length of a sentenceto two manuscript or five printed lines, that is, 250 letters. ""Normally constructed, great poems consist of thirteen cantos, decomposed into parts, sections, and groups like my chapters, saving thecomplete equality of the groups and of the sections. " "This differenceof structure between volumes of poetry and of philosophy is moreapparent than real, for the introduction and the conclusion of a poemshould comprehend six of its thirteen cantos, " leaving, therefore, thecabalistic numeber seven for the body of the poem. And all thisregulation not being sufficiently meaningless, fantastic, andoppressive, he invents an elaborate system for compelling each of hissections and groups to begin with a letter of the alphabet, determinedbeforehand, the letters being selected so as to compose words having"a synthetic or sympathetic signification, " and as close a relation aspossible to the section or part to which they are appropriated. 

Others may laugh, but we could far rather weep at this melancholydecadence of a great intellect. M. Comte used to reproach his earlyEnglish admirers with maintaining the "conspiracy of silence" concerninghis later performances. The reader can now judge whether such reticenceis not more than sufficiently explained by tenderness for his fame, anda conscientious fear of bringing undeserved discredit on the noblespeculations of his early career. 

M. Comte was accustomed to consider Descartes and Leibnitz as hisprincipal precursors, and the only great philosophers (among manythinkers of high philosophic capacity) in modern times. It was to theirminds that he considered his own to bear the nearest resemblance. Thoughwe have not so lofty an opinion of any of the three as M. Comte had, wethink the assimilation just: thes were, of all recorded thinkers, thetwo who bore most resemblance to M. Comte. They were like him inearnestness, like him, though scarcely equal to him, in confidence inthemselves; they had the same extraordinary power of concatenation andco-ordination; they enriched human knowledge with great truths and greatconceptions of method; they were, of all great scientific thinkers, themost consistent, and for that reason often the most absurd, because theyshrank from no consequences, however contrary to common sense, to whichtheir premises appeared to lead. Accordingly their names have come downto us associated with grand thoughts, with most important discoveries, and also with some of the most extravagantly wild and ludicrously absurdconceptions and theories which ever were solemnly propounded bythoughtful men. "We think M. Comte as great as either of thesephilosophers, and hardly more extravagant. Were we to speak our wholemind, we should call him superior to them: though not intrinsically, yetby the exertion of equal intellectual power in a more advanced state ofhuman preparation; but also in an age less tolerant of palpableabsurdities, and to which those he has committed, if not in themselvesgreater, at least appear more ridiculous. 

THE END. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See the Chapter on Efficient Causes in Reid's "Essays on the ActivePowers, " which is avowedly grounded on Newton's ideas. 

[2] Mr Herbert Spencer, who also distinguishes between abstract andconcrete sciences, employs the terms in a different sense from thatexplained above. He calls a science abstract when its truths are merelyideal; when, like the truths of geometry, they are not exactly true ofreal things--or, like the so-called law of inertia (the persistence indirection and velocity of a motion once impressed) are "involved" inexperience but never actually seen in it, being always more or lesscompletely frustrated. Chemistry and biology he includes, on thecontrary, among concrete sciences, because chemical combinations anddecompositions, and the physiological action of tissues, do actuallytake place (as our senses testify) in the manner in which the scientificpropositions state them to take place. We will not discuss the logicalor philological propriety of either use of the terms abstract andconcrete, in which twofold point of view very few of the numerousacceptations of these words are entirely defensible: but of the twodistinctions M. Comte's answers to by far the deepest and most vitaldifference. Mr Spencer's is open to the radical objection, that itclassifies truths not according to their subject-matter or their mutualrelations, but according to an unimportant difference in the manner inwhich we come to know them. Of what consequence is it that the law ofinertia (considered as an exact truth) is not generalized from ourdirect perceptions, but inferred by combining with the movements whichwe see, those which we should see if it were not for the disturbingcauses? In either case we are equally certain that it _is_ an exacttruth: for every dynamical law is perfectly fulfilled even when it seemsto be counteracted. There must, we should think, be many truths inphysiology (for example) which are only known by a similar indirectprocess; and Mr Spencer would hardly detach these from the body of thescience, and call them abstract and the remainder concrete. 

[3] Système de Politique Positive, ii. 36. 

[4] The strongest case which Mr Spencer produces of a scientificallyascertained law, which, though belonging to a later science, wasnecessary to the scientific formation of one occupying an earlier placein M. Comte's series, is the law of the accelerating force of gravity;which M. Comte places in Physics, but without which the Newtonian theoryof the celestial motions could not have been discovered, nor could evennow be proved. This fact, as is judiciously remarked by M. Littré, isnot valid against the plan of M. Comte's classification, but discloses aslight error in the detail. M. Comte should not have placed the laws ofterrestrial gravity under Physics. They are part of the general theoryof gravitation, and belong to astronomy. Mr Spencer has hit one of theweak points in M. Comte's scientific scale; weak however only becauseleft unguarded. Astronomy, the second of M. Comte's abstract sciences, answers to his own definition of a concrete science. M. Comte howeverwas only wrong in overlooking a distinction. There _is_ an abstractscience of astronomy, namely, the theory of gravitation, which wouldequally agree with and explain the facts of a totally different solarsystem from the one of which our earth forms a part. The actual facts ofour own system, the dimensions, distances, velocities, temperatures, physical constitution, &c. , of the sun, earth, and planets, are properlythe subject of a concrete science, similar to natural history; but theconcrete is more inseparably united to the abstract science than in anyother case, since the few celestial facts really accessible to us arenearly all required for discovering and proving the law of gravitationas an universal property of bodies, and have therefore an indispensableplace in the abstract science as its fundamental data. 

[5] The only point at which the general principle of the series fails inits application, is the subdivision of Physics; and there, as thesubordination of the different branches scarcely exists, their order isof little consequence. Thermology, indeed, is altogether an exception tothe principle of decreasing generality, heat, as Mr Spencer truly saysbeing as universal as gravitation. But the place of Thermology is markedout, within certain narrow limits, by the ends of the classification, though not by its principle. The desideratum is, that every scienceshould precede those which cannot be scientifically constitute orrationally studied until it is known. It is as a means to this end, thatthe arrangement of the phaenomena in the order of their dependence onone another is important. Now, though heat is as universal a phaenomenonas any which external nature presents, its laws do not affect, in anymanner important to us, the phaenomena of Astronomy, and operate in theother branches of Physics only as slight modifying agencies, theconsideration of which may be postponed to a rather advanced stage. Butthe phaenomena of Chemistry and Biology depend on them often for theirvery existence. The ends of the classification require therefore thatThermology should precede Chemistry and Biology, but do not demand thatit should be thrown farther back. On the other hand, those same ends, inanother point of view, require that it should be subsequent toAstronomy, for reasons not of doctrine but of method: Astronomy beingthe best school of the true art of interpreting Nature, by whichThermology profits like other sciences, but which it was ill adapted tooriginate. 

[6] The philosophy of the subject is perhaps nowhere so well expressedas in the "Système de Politique Positive" (iii. 41). "Conçu logiquement, l'ordre suivant lequel nos principales théories accomplissentl'évolution fondamentale résulte nécessairement de leur dépendencemutuelle. Toutes les sciences peuvent, sans doute, être ébauchées à lafois: leur usage pratique exige même cette culture simultanée. Maiselle ne peut concerner que les inductions propres à chaque classe despéculations. Or cet essor inductif ne saurait fournir des principessuffisants qu'envers les plus simples études. Partout ailleurs, ils nepeuvent être établis qu'en subordonnant chaque genre d'inductionsscientifiques à l'ensemble des déductions emanées des domaines moinscompliqués, et dès-lors moins dépendants. Ainsi nos diverses théoriesreposent dogmatiquement les unes sur les autres, suivant un ordreinvariable, qui doit régler historiquement leur avénement décisif, lesplus indépendantes ayant toujours dû se développer plus tôt. "

[7] "Science, " says Mr Spencer in his "Genesis, " "while purely inductiveis purely qualitative.... All quantitative prevision is reacheddeductively; induction can achieve only qualitative prevision. " Now, ifwe remember that the very first accurate quantitative law of physicalphaenomena ever established, the law of the accelerating force ofgravity, was discovered and proved by Galileo partly at least byexperiment; that the quantitative laws on which the whole theory of thecelestial motions is grounded, were generalized by Kepler from directcomparison of observations; that the quantitative law of thecondensation of gases by pressure, the law of Boyle and Mariotte, wasarrived at by direct experiment; that the proportional quantities inwhich every known substance combines chemically with every other, wereascertained by innumerable experiments, from which the general law ofchemical equivalents, now the ground of the most exact quantitativeprevisions, was an inductive generalization; we must conclude that MrSpencer has committed himself to a general proposition, which a veryslight consideration of truths perfectly known to him would have shownto be unsustainable. 

Again, in the very pamphlet in which Mr Spencer defends himself againstthe supposition of being a disciple of M. Comte ("The Classification ofthe Sciences, " p. 37), he speaks of "M. Comte's adherent, Mr Buckle. "Now, except in the opinion common to both, that history may be made asubject of science, the speculations of these two thinkers are not onlydifferent, but run in different channels, M. Comte applying himselfprincipally to the laws of evolution common to all mankind, Mr Bucklealmost exclusively to the diversities: and it may be affirmed withoutpresumption, that they neither saw the same truths, nor fell into thesame errors, nor defended their opinions, either true or erroneous, bythe same arguments. Indeed, it is one of the surprising things in thecase of Mr Buckle as of Mr Spencer, that being a man of kindred genius, of the same wide range of knowledge, and devoting himself tospeculations of the same kind, he profited so little by M. Comte. 

These oversights prove nothing against the general accuracy of MrSpencer's acquirements. They are mere lapses of inattention, such asthinkers who attempt speculations requiring that vast multitudes offacts should be kept in recollection at once, can scarcely hope alwaysto avoid. 

[8] We refer particularly to the mystical metaphysics connected with thenegative sign, imaginary quantities, infinity and infinitesimals, &c, all cleared up and put on a rational footing in the highly philosophicaltreatises of Professor De Morgan. 

[9] Those who wish to see this idea followed out, are referred to "ASystem of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. " It is not irrelevant tostate that M. Comte, soon after the publication of that work, expressed, both in a letter (published in M. Littré's volume) and in print, hishigh approval of it (especially of the Inductive part) as a realcontribution to the construction of the Positive Method. But we cannotdiscover that he was indebted to it for a single idea, or that itinfluenced, in the smallest particular, the course of his subsequentspeculations. 

[10] The force, however, of this last consideration has been muchweakened by the progress of discovery since M. Comte left off studyingchemistry; it being now probable that most if not all substances, evenelementary, are susceptible of _allotropic_ forms; as in the case ofoxygen and ozone, the two forms of phosphorus, &c. 

[11] Thus; by considering prussic acid as a compound of hydrogen andcyanogen rather than of hydrogen and the elements of cyanogen (carbonand nitrogen), it is assimilated to a whole class of acid compoundsbetween hydrogen and other substances, and a reason is thus found forits agreeing in their acid properties. 

[12] According to Sir William Hamilton, as many as six; but numericalprecision in such matters is out of the question, and it is probablethat different minds have the power in different degrees. 

[13] Or, as afterwards corrected by him, the appetites and emotions, theactive capacities, and the intellectual faculties; "le coeur, " "lecaractère, " and "l'esprit. "

[14] M. Littré, who, though a warm admirer, and accepting the positionof a disciple of M. Comte, is singularly free from his errors, makes theequally ingenious and just remark, that Political Economy corresponds insocial science to the theory of the nutritive functions in biology, which M. Comte, with all good physiologists, thinks it not onlypermissible but a great and fundamental improvement to treat, in thefirst place, separately, as the necessary basis of the higher branchesof the science: although the nutritive functions can no more bewithdrawn _in fact_ from the influence of the animal and humanattributes, than the economical phaenomena of society from that of thepolitical and moral. 

[15] Indeed his claim to be the creator of Sociology does not extend tothis branch of the science; on the contrary, he, in a subsequent work, expressly declares that the real founder of it was Aristotle, by whomthe theory of the conditions of social existence was carried as fartowards perfection as was possible in the absence of any theory ofProgress. Without going quite this length, we think it hardly possibleto appreciate too highly the merit of those early efforts, beyond whichlittle progress had been made, until a very recent period, either inethical or in political science. 

[16] It is due to them both to say, that he continued to express, inletters which have been published, a high opinion of her, both morallyand intellectually; and her persistent and strong concern for hisinterests and his fame is attested both by M. Littré and by his owncorrespondence. 

[17] "Of the Classification of the Sciences, " pp. 37, 38. 

[18] In the case of Egypt we admit that there may be cited against usthe authority of Plato, in whose Politicus it is said that the king ofEgypt must be a member of the priestly caste, or if by usurpation amember of any other caste acquired the sovereignty he must be initiatedwith the sacerdotal order. But Plato was writing of a state of thingswhich already belonged to the past; nor have we any assurance that hisinformation on Egyptian institutions was authentic and accurate. Had theking been necessarily or commonly a member of the priestly order, it ismost improbable that the careful Herodotus, of whose comprehensive workan entire book was devoted to a minute account of Egypt and itsinstitutions, and who collected his information from Egyptian priests inthe country itself, would have been ignorant of a part so important, andtending so much to exalt the dignity of the priesthood, who were muchmore likely to affirm it falsely to Plato than to withhold the knowledgeof it if true from Heredotus. Not only is Herodotus silent respectingany such law or custom, but he thinks it needful to mention that in oneparticular instance the king (by name Sethôs) was a priest, which hewould scarcely have done if this had been other than an exceptionalcase. It is likely enough that a king of Egypt would learn the hieraticcharacter, and would not suffer any of the mysteries of law or religionwhich were in the keeping of the priests to be withheld from him; andthis was very probably all the foundation which existed for theassertion of the Eleatic stranger in Plato's dialogue. 

[19] Mill, History of British India, book ii. Chap. Iii. 

[20] At a somewhat later period M. Comte drew up what he termed aPositivist Calendar, in which every day was dedicated to some benefactorof humanity (generally with the addition of a similar but minorluminary, to be celebrated in the room of his principal each bissextileyear). In this no kind of human eminence, really useful, is omitted, except that which is merely negative and destructive. On this principle(which is avowed) the French _philosophes_ as such are excluded, thoseonly among them being admitted who, like Voltaire and Diderot, hadclaims to admission on other grounds: and the Protestant religiousreformers are left out entirely, with the curious exception of GeorgeFox--who is included, we presume, in consideration of his Peaceprinciples. 

[21] He goes still further and deeper in a subsequent work. "L'artramène doucement à la réalite les contemplations trop abstraites duthéoricien, tandis qu'il pousse noblement le praticien aux speculationsdésinteressées. " Système de Politique Positive, i. 287. 

[22] 1. _Système de Politique Positive, ou Traité de Sociologie, instituant la Religion de l'Humanité_. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1851--1854. 

2. _Catéchisme Positiviste, ou Sommaire Exposition de la ReligionUniverselle, en onze Entretiens Systématiques entre une Femme et unPrêtre de l'Humanité_. 1 vol. 12mo. Paris: 1852. 

3. _Appel aux Conservateurs_. Paris: 1855 (brochure). 

4. _Synthèse Subjective, ou Système Universel des Conceptions propresà l'Etat Normal de l'Humanité_. Tome Premier, contenant le Système deLogique Positive, ou Traité de Philosophie Mathématique. 8vo. Paris:1856. 

5. _Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive_. Par E. LITTRE. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris: 1863. 

6. _Exposition Abrégée et Populaire de la Philosophie et de la ReligionPositives_. PAR CÉLESTIN DE BLIGNIÈRES, ancien élève de l'EcolePolytechnique. 1 vol. 12mo. Paris: 1857. 

7. _Notice sur l'Oeuvre et sur la Vie d'Auguste Comte_. Par le DOCTEURROBINET, son Médecin, et l'un de ses treize Exécuteurs Testamentaires. 1vol. 8vo. Paris: 1860. 

[23] Système de Politique Positive, iv. 100. 

[24] See Sir John Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, § 319. 

[25] Synthèse Subjective, pp. 10, 11. 

[26] Synthèse Subjective, pp. 11, 12.