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+Project Gutenberg's Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3), by John Morley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3)
+       Essay 10: Auguste Comte
+
+Author: John Morley
+
+Release Date: June 4, 2009 [EBook #29033]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRITICAL MISCELLANIES (3 OF 3) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Richard J. Shiffer and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this
+text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant
+spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to
+correct an obvious error is noted at the end of this ebook.]
+
+
+
+
+  CRITICAL
+  MISCELLANIES
+
+
+  BY
+
+
+  JOHN MORLEY
+
+
+  VOL. III.
+
+
+  Essay 10: Auguste Comte
+
+
+  London
+  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+  NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+  1904
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+AUGUSTE COMTE.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+  Introduction                                                     337
+
+  Influence of Saint Simon                                         340
+
+  Marriage                                                         343
+
+  Serious illness                                                  345
+
+  Official work                                                    347
+
+  Completion of _Positive Philosophy_                              349
+
+  J. S. Mill                                                       350
+
+  Question of Subsidy                                              352
+
+  Money                                                            353
+
+  Literary method                                                  354
+
+  _Hygiene cerebrale_                                              356
+
+  Madame de Vaux                                                   356
+
+  _Positive Polity_                                                358
+
+  Death                                                            359
+
+  Comte's philosophic consistency                                  360
+
+  Early writings                                                   361
+
+  Law of the Three States                                          363
+
+  Classification of sciences                                       366
+
+  The double key of Positive Philosophy                            368
+
+  Criticism on Comte's classification                              369
+
+  Sociological conceptions                                         371
+
+  Method                                                           371
+
+  Decisive importance of intellectual development                  373
+
+  Historical elucidations                                          374
+
+  Their value and popularity                                       374
+
+  Social dynamics in the _Positive Polity_                         375
+
+  The Positivist system                                            376
+
+  The key to social regeneration                                   377
+
+  The Religion of Humanity                                         377
+
+  The Great Being                                                  378
+
+  Remarks on the Religion                                          378
+
+  The worship and discipline                                       380
+
+  The priesthood                                                   381
+
+  Women                                                            382
+
+  Conclusion                                                       383
+
+
+
+
+AUGUSTE COMTE.[1]
+
+
+Comte is now generally admitted to have been the most eminent and
+important of that interesting group of thinkers whom the overthrow of
+old institutions in France turned towards social speculation. Vastly
+superior as he was to men like De Maistre on the one hand, and to men
+like Saint Simon or Fourier on the other, as well in scientific
+acquisitions as in mental capacity, still the aim and interest of all
+his thinking was also theirs, namely, the renovation of the conditions
+of the social union. If, however, we classify him, not thus according
+to aim, but according to method, then he takes rank among men of a
+very different type from these. What distinguishes him in method from
+his contemporaries is his discernment that the social order cannot be
+transformed until all the theoretic conceptions that belong to it have
+been rehandled in a scientific spirit, and maturely gathered up into a
+systematic whole along with the rest of our knowledge. This presiding
+doctrine connects Comte with the social thinkers of the eighteenth
+century,--indirectly with Montesquieu, directly with Turgot, and more
+closely than either with Condorcet, of whom he was accustomed to speak
+as his philosophic father.
+
+    [1] Reprinted by the kind permission of Messrs. A. and C. Black
+        from the new edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+Isidore-Auguste-Marie-Francois-Xavier Comte was born in January 1798,
+at Montpellier, where his father was a receiver-general of taxes for
+the district. He was sent for his earliest instruction to the school
+of the town, and in 1814 was admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique. His
+youth was marked by a constant willingness to rebel against merely
+official authority; to genuine excellence, whether moral or
+intellectual, he was always ready to pay unbounded deference. That
+strenuous application which was one of his most remarkable gifts in
+manhood showed itself in his youth, and his application was backed or
+inspired by superior intelligence and aptness. After he had been two
+years at the Ecole Polytechnique he took a foremost part in a mutinous
+demonstration against one of the masters; the school was broken up,
+and Comte like the other scholars was sent home. To the great
+dissatisfaction of his parents, he resolved to return to Paris (1816),
+and to earn his living there by giving lessons in mathematics.
+Benjamin Franklin was the youth's idol at this moment. 'I seek to
+imitate the modern Socrates,' he wrote to a school friend, 'not in
+talents, but in way of living. You know that at five and twenty he
+formed the design of becoming perfectly wise, and that he fulfilled
+his design. I have dared to undertake the same thing, though I am not
+yet twenty.' Though Comte's character and aims were as far removed as
+possible from Franklin's type, neither Franklin nor any man that ever
+lived could surpass him in the heroic tenacity with which, in the face
+of a thousand obstacles, he pursued his own ideal of a vocation.
+
+For a moment circumstances led him to think of seeking a career in
+America, but a friend who preceded him thither warned him of the
+purely practical spirit that prevailed in the new country. 'If
+Lagrange were to come to the United States, he could only earn his
+livelihood by turning land surveyor.' So Comte remained in Paris,
+living as he best could on something less than L80 a year, and hoping,
+when he took the trouble to break his meditations upon greater things
+by hopes about himself, that he might by and by obtain an appointment
+as mathematical master in a school. A friend procured him a situation
+as tutor in the house of Casimir Perier. The salary was good, but the
+duties were too miscellaneous, and what was still worse, there was an
+end of the delicious liberty of the garret. After a short experience
+of three weeks Comte returned to neediness and contentment. He was not
+altogether without the young man's appetite for pleasure; yet when he
+was only nineteen we find him wondering, amid the gaieties of the
+carnival of 1817, how a gavotte or a minuet could make people forget
+that thirty thousand human beings around them had barely a morsel to
+eat. Hardship in youth has many drawbacks, but it has the immense
+advantage over academic ease of making the student's interest in men
+real, and not merely literary.
+
+Towards 1818 Comte became associated as friend and disciple with a man
+who was destined to exercise a very decisive influence upon the turn
+of his speculation. Henry, count of Saint Simon, was second cousin of
+the famous duke of Saint Simon, the friend of the Regent, and author
+of the most important set of memoirs in a language that is so
+incomparably rich in memoirs. He was now nearly sixty, and if he had
+not gained a serious reputation, he had at least excited the curiosity
+and interest of his contemporaries by the social eccentricities of his
+life, by the multitude of his schemes and devices, and by the
+fantastic ingenuity of his political ideas. Saint Simon's most
+characteristic faculty was an exuberant imagination, working in the
+sphere of real things. Scientific discipline did nothing for him; he
+had never undergone it, and he never felt its value. He was an artist
+in social construction; and if right ideas, or the suggestion of right
+ideas, sometimes came into his head, about history, about human
+progress, about a stable polity, such ideas were not the products of
+trains of ordered reasoning; they were the intuitional glimpses of the
+poet, and consequently as they professed to be in real matter, even
+the right ideas were as often as not accompanied by wrong ones.
+
+The young Comte, now twenty, was enchanted by the philosophic veteran.
+In after years he so far forgot himself as to write of Saint Simon as
+a depraved quack, and to deplore his connection with him as purely
+mischievous. While the connection lasted he thought very differently.
+Saint Simon is described as the most estimable and lovable of men, and
+the most delightful in his relations; he is the worthiest of
+philosophers. Even after the association had come to an end, and at
+the very moment when Comte was congratulating himself on having thrown
+off the yoke, he honestly admits that Saint Simon's influence has been
+of powerful service in his philosophic education. 'I certainly,' he
+writes to his most intimate friend, 'am under great personal
+obligations to Saint Simon; that is to say, he helped in a powerful
+degree to launch me in the philosophical direction that I have now
+definitely marked out for myself, and that I shall follow without
+looking back for the rest of my life.' Even if there were no such
+unmistakable expressions as these, the most cursory glance into Saint
+Simon's writings is enough to reveal the thread of connection between
+the ingenious visionary and systematic thinker. We see the debt, and
+we also see that when it is stated at the highest possible, nothing
+has really been taken either from Comte's claims as a powerful
+original thinker, or from his immeasurable pre-eminence over Saint
+Simon in intellectual grasp and vigour and coherence. As high a degree
+of originality may be shown in transformation as in invention, as
+Moliere and Shakespeare have proved in the region of dramatic art. In
+philosophy the conditions are not different. _Il faut prendre son
+bien ou on le trouve._
+
+It is no detriment to Comte's fame that some of the ideas which he
+recombined and incorporated in a great philosophic structure had their
+origin in ideas that were produced almost at random in the incessant
+fermentation of Saint Simon's brain. Comte is in no true sense a
+follower of Saint Simon, but it was undoubtedly Saint Simon who
+launched him, to take Comte's own word, by suggesting to his strong
+and penetrating mind the two starting-points of what grew into the
+Comtist system--first, that political phenomena are as capable of
+being grouped under laws as other phenomena; and second, that the true
+destination of philosophy must be social, and the true object of the
+thinker must be the reorganisation of the moral, religious, and
+political systems. We can readily see what an impulse these
+far-reaching conceptions would give to Comte's meditations. There were
+conceptions of less importance than these, in which it is impossible
+not to feel that it was Saint Simon's wrong or imperfect idea that put
+his young admirer on the track to a right and perfected idea. The
+subject is not worthy of further discussion. That Comte would have
+performed some great intellectual achievement, if Saint Simon had
+never been born, is certain. It is hardly less certain that the great
+achievement which he did actually perform was originally set in motion
+by Saint Simon's conversation, though it was afterwards directly
+filiated with the fertile speculations of Turgot and Condorcet. Comte
+thought almost as meanly of Plato as he did of Saint Simon, and he
+considered Aristotle the prince of all true thinkers; yet their vital
+difference about Ideas did not prevent Aristotle from calling Plato
+master.
+
+After six years the differences between the old and the young
+philosopher grew too marked for friendship. Comte began to fret under
+Saint Simon's pretensions to be his director. Saint Simon, on the
+other hand, perhaps began to feel uncomfortably conscious of the
+superiority of his disciple. The occasion of the breach between them
+(1824) was an attempt on Saint Simon's part to print a production of
+Comte's as if it were in some sort connected with Saint Simon's
+schemes of social reorganisation. Comte was never a man to quarrel by
+halves, and not only was the breach not repaired, but long afterwards
+Comte, as we have said, with painful ungraciousness took to calling
+the encourager of his youth by very hard names.
+
+In 1825 Comte married. His marriage was one of those of which
+'magnanimity owes no account to prudence,' and it did not turn out
+prosperously. His family were strongly Catholic and royalist, and they
+were outraged by his refusal to have the marriage performed other than
+civilly. They consented, however, to receive his wife, and the pair
+went on a visit to Montpellier. Madame Comte conceived a dislike to
+the circle she found there, and this was the too early beginning of
+disputes which lasted for the remainder of their union. In the year of
+his marriage we find Comte writing to the most intimate of his
+correspondents:--'I have nothing left but to concentrate my whole
+moral existence in my intellectual work, a precious but inadequate
+compensation; and so I must give up, if not the most dazzling, still
+the sweetest part of my happiness.' We cannot help admiring the
+heroism which cherishes great ideas in the midst of petty miseries,
+and intrepidly throws all squalid interruptions into the background
+which is their true place. Still, we may well suppose that the sordid
+cares that come with want of money made a harmonious life none the
+more easy. Comte tried to find pupils to board with him, but only one
+pupil came, and he was soon sent away for lack of companions. 'I would
+rather spend an evening,' wrote the needy enthusiast, 'in solving a
+difficult question, than in running after some empty-headed and
+consequential millionaire in search of a pupil.' A little money was
+earned by an occasional article in _Le Producteur_, in which he began
+to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing in his mind.
+He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was hoped would
+bring money as well as fame, and which were to be the first dogmatic
+exposition of the Positive Philosophy. A friend had said to him, 'You
+talk too freely, your ideas are getting abroad, and other people use
+them without giving you the credit; put your ownership on record.' The
+lectures were intended to do this among other things, and they
+attracted hearers so eminent as Humboldt the cosmologist, as Poinsot
+the geometer, as Blainville the physiologist.
+
+Unhappily, after the third lecture of the course, Comte had a severe
+attack of cerebral derangement, brought on by intense and prolonged
+meditation, acting on a system that was already irritated by the
+chagrin of domestic failure. He did not recover his health for more
+than a year, and as soon as convalescence set in he was seized by so
+profound a melancholy at the disaster which had thus overtaken him,
+that he threw himself into the Seine. Fortunately he was rescued, and
+the shock did not stay his return to mental soundness. One incident of
+this painful episode is worth mentioning. Lamennais, then in the
+height of his Catholic exaltation, persuaded Comte's mother to insist
+on her son being married with the religious ceremony, and as the
+younger Madame Comte apparently did not resist, the rite was duly
+performed, in spite of the fact that the unfortunate man was at the
+time neither more nor less than raving mad. To such shocking
+conspiracies against common sense and decency does ecclesiastical
+zealotry bring even good men like Lamennais. On the other hand,
+philosophic assailants of Comtism have not always resisted the
+temptation to recall the circumstance that its founder was once out of
+his mind,--an unworthy and irrelevant device, that cannot be excused
+even by the provocation of Comte's own occasional acerbity. As has
+been justly said, if Newton once suffered a cerebral attack without on
+that account forfeiting our veneration for the _Principia_, Comte may
+have suffered in the same way, and still not have forfeited our
+respect for what is good in the systems of Positive Philosophy and
+Positive Polity.
+
+In 1828 the lectures were renewed, and in 1830 was published the first
+volume of the _Course of Positive Philosophy_. The sketch and ground
+plan of this great undertaking had appeared in 1826. The sixth and
+last volume was published in 1842. The twelve years covering the
+publication of the first of Comte's two elaborate works were years of
+indefatigable toil, and they were the only portion of his life in
+which he enjoyed a certain measure, and that a very modest measure, of
+material prosperity. In 1833 he was appointed examiner of the boys in
+the various provincial schools who aspired to enter the Ecole
+Polytechnique at Paris. This and two other engagements as a teacher of
+mathematics secured him an income of some L400 a year. He made M.
+Guizot, then Louis Philippe's minister, the important proposal to
+establish a chair of general history of the sciences. If there are
+four chairs, he argued, devoted to the history of philosophy, that is
+to say, the minute study of all sorts of dreams and aberrations
+through the ages, surely there ought to be at least one to explain the
+formation and progress of our real knowledge? This wise suggestion,
+which still remains to be acted upon, was at first welcomed, according
+to Comte's own account, by Guizot's philosophic instinct, and then
+repulsed by his 'metaphysical rancour.'
+
+Meanwhile Comte did his official work conscientiously, sorely as he
+grudged the time which it took from the execution of the great object
+of his thoughts. We cannot forbear to transcribe one delightful and
+touching trait in connection with this part of Comte's life. 'I hardly
+know if even to you,' he writes in the expansion of domestic
+confidence to his wife, 'I dare disclose the sweet and softened
+feeling that comes over me when I find a young man whose examination
+is thoroughly satisfactory. Yes, though you may smile, the emotion
+would easily stir me to tears if I were not carefully on my guard.'
+Such sympathy with youthful hope; in union with the industry and
+intelligence that are the only means of bringing the hope to
+fulfilment, shows that Comte's dry and austere manner veiled the fires
+of a generous social emotion. It was this which made the overworked
+student take upon himself the burden of delivering every year from
+1831 to 1848 a course of gratuitous lectures on astronomy for a
+popular audience. The social feeling that inspired this disinterested
+act showed itself in other ways. He suffered the penalty of
+imprisonment rather than serve in the national guard; his position was
+that though he would not take arms against the new monarchy of July,
+yet being a republican he would take no oath to defend it. The only
+amusement that Comte permitted himself was a visit to the opera. In
+his youth he had been a playgoer, but he shortly came to the
+conclusion that tragedy is a stilted and bombastic art, and after a
+time comedy interested him no more than tragedy. For the opera he had
+a genuine passion, which he gratified as often as he could, until his
+means became too narrow to afford even that single relaxation.
+
+Of his manner and personal appearance we have the following account
+from one who was his pupil:--'Daily as the clock struck eight on the
+horologe of the Luxembourg, while the ringing hammer on the bell was
+yet audible, the door of my room opened, and there entered a man,
+short, rather stout, almost what one might call sleek, freshly shaven,
+without vestige of whisker or moustache. He was invariably dressed in
+a suit of the most spotless black, as if going to a dinner party; his
+white neckcloth was fresh from the laundress's hands, and his hat
+shining like a racer's coat. He advanced to the arm-chair prepared for
+him in the centre of the writing-table, laid his hat on the left-hand
+corner; his snuff-box was deposited on the same side beside the quire
+of paper placed in readiness for his use, and dipping the pen twice
+into the ink-bottle, then bringing it to within an inch of his nose,
+to make sure it was properly filled, he broke silence: "We have said
+that the chord AB," etc. For three quarters of an hour he continued
+his demonstration, making short notes as he went on, to guide the
+listener in repeating the problem alone; then, taking up another
+cahier which lay beside him, he went over the written repetition of
+the former lesson. He explained, corrected, or commented till the
+clock struck nine; then, with the little finger of the right hand
+brushing from his coat and waistcoat the shower of superfluous snuff
+which had fallen on them, he pocketed his snuff-box, and resuming his
+hat, he as silently as when he came in made his exit by the door which
+I rushed to open for him.'
+
+In 1842, as we have said, the last volume of the _Positive Philosophy_
+was given to the public. Instead of that contentment which we like to
+picture as the reward of twelve years of meritorious toil devoted to
+the erection of a high philosophic edifice, the author of this great
+contribution found himself in the midst of a very sea of small
+troubles. And they were troubles of that uncompensated kind that
+harass without elevating, and waste a man's spirit without softening
+or enlarging it. First, the jar of temperament between Comte and his
+wife had become so unbearable that they separated (1842). It is not
+expedient for strangers to attempt to allot blame in such cases, for
+it is impossible for strangers to know all the deciding circumstances.
+We need only say that in spite of one or two disadvantageous facts in
+her career which do not concern the public, Madame Comte seems to have
+uniformly comported herself towards her husband with an honourable
+solicitude for his wellbeing. Comte made her an annual allowance, and
+for some years after the separation they corresponded on friendly
+terms. Next in the list of the vexations that greeted Comte on
+emerging from the long tunnel of philosophising was a lawsuit with his
+publisher. The publisher had impertinently inserted in the sixth
+volume a protest against a certain foot-note, in which Comte had used
+some hard words about M. Arago. Comte threw himself into the suit with
+an energy worthy of Voltaire, and he won it. Third, and worst of all,
+he had prefixed a preface to the sixth volume, in which he
+deliberately went out of his way to rouse the active enmity of the
+very men on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of
+examiner for the Polytechnic School. The result of this perversity was
+that by and by he lost the appointment, and with it one half of his
+very modest income. This was the occasion of an episode, which is of
+more than merely personal interest.
+
+Before 1842 Comte had been in correspondence with our distinguished
+countryman, J. S. Mill. Mr. Mill had been greatly impressed by Comte's
+philosophic ideas; he admits that his own _System of Logic_ owes many
+valuable thoughts to Comte, and that, in the portion of that work
+which treats of the logic of the moral sciences, a radical improvement
+in the conceptions of logical method was derived from the _Positive
+Philosophy_. Their correspondence, which was extremely full and
+copious, and which we may hope will one day be made accessible to the
+public, turned principally upon the two great questions of the
+equality between men and women, and of the expediency and
+constitution of a sacerdotal or spiritual order. When Comte found
+himself straitened, he confided the entire circumstances to his
+English friend. As might be supposed by those who know the
+affectionate anxiety with which Mr. Mill regarded the welfare of any
+one whom he believed to be doing good work in the world, he at once
+took pains to have Comte's loss of income made up to him, until Comte
+should have had time to repair that loss by his own endeavour. Mr.
+Mill persuaded Grote, Molesworth, and Raikes Currie to advance the sum
+of L240. At the end of the year (that is in 1845) Comte had taken no
+steps to enable himself to dispense with the aid of the three
+Englishmen. Mr. Mill applied to them again, but with the exception of
+Grote, who sent a small sum, they gave Comte to understand that they
+expected him to earn his own living. Mr. Mill had suggested to Comte
+that he should write articles for the English periodicals, and
+expressed his own willingness to translate any such articles from the
+French. Comte at first fell in with the plan, but he speedily
+surprised and disconcerted Mr. Mill by boldly taking up the position
+of 'high moral magistrate,' and accusing the three defaulting
+contributors of a scandalous falling away from righteousness and a
+high mind. Mr. Mill was chilled by these pretensions; they struck him
+as savouring of a totally unexpected charlatanry; and the
+correspondence came to an end. For Comte's position in the argument
+one feels that there is much to be said. If you have good reason for
+believing that a given thinker is doing work that will destroy the
+official system of science or philosophy, and if you desire its
+destruction, then you may fairly be asked to help to provide for him
+the same kind of material freedom that is secured to the professors
+and propagators of the official system by the state or by the
+universities. And if it is a fine thing for a man to leave money
+behind him in the shape of an endowment for the support of a
+scientific teacher of whom he has never heard, why should it not be
+just as natural and as laudable to give money, while he is yet alive,
+to a teacher whom he both knows and approves of? On the other hand,
+Grote and Molesworth might say that, for anything they could tell,
+they would find themselves to be helping the construction of a system
+of which they utterly disapproved. And, as things turned out, they
+would have been perfectly justified in this serious apprehension. To
+have done anything to make the production of the _Positive Polity_
+easier would have been no ground for anything but remorse to any of
+the three. It is just to Comte to remark that he always assumed that
+the contributors to the support of a thinker should be in all
+essentials of method and doctrine that thinker's disciples; aid from
+indifferent persons he counted irrational and humiliating. But is an
+endowment ever a blessing to the man who receives it? The question is
+difficult to answer generally; in Comte's case there is reason in the
+doubts felt by Madame Comte as to the expediency of relieving the
+philosopher from the necessity of being in plain and business-like
+relations with indifferent persons for a certain number of hours in
+the week. Such relations do as much as a doctrine to keep egoism
+within decent bounds, and they must be not only a relief, but a
+wholesome corrective to the tendencies of concentrated thinking on
+abstract subjects.
+
+What finally happened was this. From 1845 to 1848 Comte lived as best
+he could, as well as made his wife her allowance, on an income of L200
+a year. We need scarcely say that he was rigorously thrifty. His
+little account books of income and outlay, with every item entered
+down to a few hours before his death, are accurate and neat enough to
+have satisfied an ancient Roman householder. In 1848, through no fault
+of his own, his salary was reduced to L80. M. Littre and others, with
+Comte's approval, published an appeal for subscriptions, and on the
+money thus contributed Comte subsisted for the remaining nine years of
+his life. By 1852 the subsidy produced as much as L200 a year. It is
+worth noticing, after the story we have told, that Mr. Mill was one of
+the subscribers, and that M. Littre continued his assistance after he
+had been driven from Comte's society by his high pontifical airs. We
+are sorry not to be able to record any similar trait of magnanimity on
+Comte's part. His character, admirable as it is for firmness, for
+intensity, for inexorable will, for iron devotion to what he thought
+the service of mankind, yet offers few of those softening qualities
+that make us love good men and pity bad ones. He is of the type of
+Brutus or of Cato--a model of austere fixity of purpose, but
+ungracious, domineering, and not quite free from petty bitterness.
+
+If you seek to place yourself in sympathy with Comte it is best to
+think of him only as the intellectual worker, pursuing in uncomforted
+obscurity the laborious and absorbing task to which he had given up
+his whole life. His singularly conscientious fashion of elaborating
+his ideas made the mental strain more intense than even so exhausting
+a work as the abstract exposition of the principles of positive
+science need have been, if he had followed a more self-indulgent plan.
+He did not write down a word until he had first composed the whole
+matter in his mind. When he had thoroughly meditated every sentence,
+he sat down to write, and then, such was the grip of his memory, the
+exact order of his thoughts came back to him as if without an effort,
+and he wrote down precisely what he had intended to write, without the
+aid of a note or a memorandum, and without check or pause. For
+example, he began and completed in about six weeks a chapter in the
+_Positive Philosophy_ (vol. v. ch. lv.), which would fill forty of the
+large pages of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Even if his subject had
+been merely narrative or descriptive, this would be a very
+satisfactory piece of continuous production. When we reflect that the
+chapter in question is not narrative, but an abstract exposition of
+the guiding principles of the movements of several centuries, with
+many threads of complex thought running along side by side all
+through the speculation, then the circumstances under which it was
+reduced to literary form are really astonishing. It is hardly possible
+for a critic to share the admiration expressed by some of Comte's
+disciples for his style. We are not so unreasonable as to blame him
+for failing to make his pages picturesque or thrilling; we do not want
+sunsets and stars and roses and ecstasy; but there is a certain
+standard for the most serious and abstract subjects. When compared
+with such philosophic writing as Hume's, Diderot's, Berkeley's, then
+Comte's manner is heavy, laboured, monotonous, without relief and
+without light. There is now and then an energetic phrase, but as a
+whole the vocabulary is jejune; the sentences are overloaded; the
+pitch is flat. A scrupulous insistence on making his meaning clear led
+to an iteration of certain adjectives and adverbs, which at length
+deaden the effect beyond the endurance of all but the most resolute
+students. Only the profound and stimulating interest of much of the
+matter prevents one from thinking of Rivarol's ill-natured remark upon
+Condorcet, that he wrote with opium on a page of lead. The general
+effect is impressive, not by any virtues of style, for we do not
+discern one, but by reason of the magnitude and importance of the
+undertaking, and the visible conscientiousness and the grasp with
+which it is executed. It is by sheer strength of thought, by the
+vigorous perspicacity with which he strikes the lines of cleavage of
+his subject, that he makes his way into the mind of the reader; in the
+presence of gifts of this power we need not quarrel with an ungainly
+style.
+
+Comte pursued one practice which ought to be mentioned in connection
+with his personal history, the practice of what he styled _hygiene
+cerebrale_. After he had acquired what he considered to be a
+sufficient stock of material, and this happened before he had
+completed the _Positive Philosophy_, he abstained deliberately and
+scrupulously from reading newspapers, reviews, scientific
+transactions, and everything else whatever, except two or three poets
+(notably Dante) and the _Imitatio Christi_. It is true that his
+friends kept him informed of what was going on in the scientific
+world. Still this partial divorce of himself from the record of the
+social and scientific activity of his time, though it may save a
+thinker from the deplorable evils of dispersion, moral and
+intellectual, accounts in no small measure for the exaggerated egoism,
+and the absence of all feeling for reality, which marked Comte's later
+days.
+
+Only one important incident in Comte's life now remains to be spoken
+of. In 1845 he made the acquaintance of Madame Clotilde de Vaux, a
+lady whose husband had been sent to the galleys for life, and who was
+therefore, in all but the legal incidents of her position, a widow.
+Very little is known about her qualities. She wrote a little piece
+which Comte rated so preposterously as to talk about George Sand in
+the same sentence; it is in truth a flimsy performance, though it
+contains one or two gracious thoughts. There is true beauty in the
+saying--_'It is unworthy of a noble nature to diffuse its pain.'_
+Madame de Vaux's letters speak well for her good sense and good
+feeling, and it would have been better for Comte's later work if she
+had survived to exert a wholesome restraint on his exaltation. Their
+friendship had only lasted a year when she died (1846), but the period
+was long enough to give her memory a supreme ascendency in Comte's
+mind. Condillac, Joubert, Mill, and other eminent men have shown what
+the intellectual ascendency of a woman can be. Comte was as
+inconsolable after Madame de Vaux's death as D'Alembert after the
+death of Mademoiselle L'Espinasse. Every Wednesday afternoon he made a
+reverential pilgrimage to her tomb, and three times every day he
+invoked her memory in words of passionate expansion. His disciples
+believe that in time the world will reverence Comte's sentiment about
+Clotilde de Vaux, as it reveres Dante's adoration of Beatrice--a
+parallel that Comte himself was the first to hit upon. It is no doubt
+the worst kind of cynicism to make a mock in a realistic vein of any
+personality that has set in motion the idealising thaumaturgy of the
+affections. Yet we cannot help feeling that it is a grotesque and
+unseemly anachronism to apply in grave prose, addressed to the whole
+world, those terms of saint and angel which are touching and in their
+place amid the trouble and passion of the great mystic poet. Only an
+energetic and beautiful imagination, together with a mastery of the
+rhythm and swell of impassioned speech, can prevent an invitation to
+the public to hearken to the raptures of intense personal attachment
+from seeming ludicrous and almost indecent. Whatever other gifts Comte
+may have had--and he had many of the rarest kind,--poetic imagination
+was not among them, any more than poetic or emotional expression was
+among them. His was one of those natures whose faculty of deep feeling
+is unhappily doomed to be inarticulate, and to pass away without the
+magic power of transmitting itself.
+
+Comte lost no time, after the completion of his _Course of Positive
+Philosophy_, in proceeding with the _System of Positive Polity_, to
+which the earlier work was designed to be a foundation. The first
+volume was published in 1851, and the fourth and last in 1854. In
+1848, when the political air was charged with stimulating elements, he
+founded the Positive Society, with the expectation that it might grow
+into a reunion as powerful over the new revolution as the Jacobin Club
+had been in the revolution of 1789. The hope was not fulfilled, but a
+certain number of philosophic disciples gathered round Comte, and
+eventually formed themselves, under the guidance of the new ideas of
+the latter half of his life, into a kind of church. In the years 1849,
+1850, and 1851, Comte gave three courses of lectures at the Palais
+Royal. They were gratuitous and popular, and in them he boldly
+advanced the whole of his doctrine, as well as the direct and
+immediate pretensions of himself and his system. The third course
+ended in the following uncompromising terms--'In the name of the Past
+and of the Future, the servants of Humanity--both its philosophical
+and its practical servants--come forward to claim as their due the
+general direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at
+length a real Providence in all departments,--moral, intellectual, and
+material. Consequently they exclude once for all from political
+supremacy all the different servants of God--Catholic, Protestant, or
+Deist--as being at once behindhand and a cause of disturbance.' A few
+weeks after this invitation a very different person stepped forward to
+constitute himself a real Providence.
+
+In 1852 Comte published the _Catechism of Positivism_. In the preface
+to it he took occasion to express his approval of Louis Napoleon's
+_coup d'etat_ of the 2d of December,--'a fortunate crisis which has
+set aside the parliamentary system, and instituted a dictatorial
+republic.' Whatever we may think of the political sagacity of such a
+judgment, it is due to Comte to say that he did not expect to see his
+dictatorial republic transformed into a dynastic empire, and, next,
+that he did expect from the Man of December freedom of the press and
+of public meeting. His later hero was the Emperor Nicholas, 'the only
+statesman in Christendom,'--as unlucky a judgment as that which placed
+Dr. Francia in the Comtist Calendar.
+
+In 1857 he was attacked by cancer, and died peaceably on the 5th of
+September of that year. The anniversary is always celebrated by
+ceremonial gatherings of his French and English followers, who then
+commemorate the name and the services of the founder of their
+religion. Comte was under sixty when he died. We cannot help
+reflecting that one of the worst of all the evils connected with the
+shortness of human life is the impatience that it breeds in some of
+the most ardent and enlightened minds to hurry on the execution of
+projects, for which neither the time nor the spirit of their author is
+fully ripe.
+
+In proceeding to give an outline of Comte's system, we shall consider
+the _Positive Polity_ as the more or less legitimate sequel of the
+_Positive Philosophy_, notwithstanding the deep gulf which so eminent
+a critic as Mr. Mill insisted upon fixing between the earlier and the
+later work.[2] There may be, as we think there is, the greatest
+difference in their value, and the temper is not the same, nor the
+method. But the two are quite capable of being regarded, and for the
+purposes of an account of Comte's career ought to be regarded, as an
+integral whole. His letters when he was a young man of one and twenty,
+and before he had published a word, show how strongly present the
+social motive was in his mind, and in what little account he should
+hold his scientific works, if he did not perpetually think of their
+utility for the species. 'I feel,' he wrote, 'that such scientific
+reputation as I might acquire would give more value, more weight, more
+useful influence to my political sermons.' In 1822 he published a
+_Plan of the Scientific Works necessary to Reorganise Society_. In
+this opuscule he points out that modern society is passing through a
+great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing movements,--the
+first, a disorganising movement owing to the break-up of old
+institutions and beliefs; the second, a movement towards a definite
+social state, in which all means of human prosperity will receive
+their most complete development and most direct application. How is
+this crisis to be dealt with? What are the undertakings necessary in
+order to pass successfully through it towards an organic state? The
+answer to this is that there are two series of works. The first is
+theoretic or spiritual, aiming at the development of a new principle
+of co-ordinating social relations and the formation of the system of
+general ideas which are destined to guide society. The second work is
+practical or temporal; it settles the distribution of power and the
+institutions that are most conformable to the spirit of the system
+which has previously been thought out in the course of the theoretic
+work. As the practical work depends on the conclusions of the
+theoretical, the latter must obviously come first in order of
+execution.
+
+    [2] The English reader is specially well placed for
+        satisfying such curiosity as he may have about Comte's
+        philosophy. Miss Martineau condensed the six volumes of the
+        _Philosophie Positive_ into two volumes of excellent English
+        (1853); Comte himself gave them a place in the Positivist
+        Library. The _Catechism_ was translated by Dr. Congreve in
+        1858. The _Politique Positive_ has been reproduced in English
+        (Longmans, 1875-1877) by the conscientious labour of Comte's
+        London followers. This translation is accompanied by a
+        careful running analysis and explanatory summary of contents,
+        which make the work more readily intelligible than the
+        original. For criticisms, the reader may be referred to Mr.
+        Mill's _Auguste Comte and Positivism_; Dr. Bridges's reply to
+        Mr. Mill, _The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrines_ (1866);
+        Mr. Herbert Spencer's essay on the Genesis of Science, and
+        pamphlet on _The Classification of the Sciences_; Professor
+        Huxley's 'Scientific Aspects of Positivism,' in his _Lay
+        Sermons_; Dr. Congreve's _Essays Political, Social, and
+        Religious_ (1874); Mr. Fiske's _Outlines of Cosmic
+        Philosophy_ (1874); Mr. Lewes's _History of Philosophy_, vol.
+        ii.
+
+In 1826 this was pushed further in a most remarkable piece called
+_Considerations on the Spiritual Power_--the main object of which is
+to demonstrate the necessity of instituting a spiritual power,
+distinct from the temporal power and independent of it. In examining
+the conditions of a spiritual power proper for modern times, he
+indicates in so many terms the presence in his mind of a direct
+analogy between his proposed spiritual power and the functions of the
+Catholic clergy at the time of its greatest vigour and most complete
+independence,--that is to say, from about the middle of the eleventh
+century until towards the end of the thirteenth. He refers to De
+Maistre's memorable book, _Du Pape_, as the most profound, accurate,
+and methodical account of the old spiritual organisation, and starts
+from that as the model to be adapted to the changed intellectual and
+social conditions of the modern time. In the _Positive Philosophy_,
+again (vol. v. p. 344), he distinctly says that Catholicism,
+reconstituted as a system on new intellectual foundations, would
+finally preside over the spiritual reorganisation of modern society.
+Much else could easily be quoted to the same effect. If unity of
+career, then, means that Comte from the beginning designed the
+institution of a spiritual power and the systematic reorganisation of
+life, it is difficult to deny him whatever credit that unity may be
+worth, and the credit is perhaps not particularly great. Even the
+re-adaptation of the Catholic system to a scientific doctrine was
+plainly in his mind thirty years before the final execution of the
+_Positive Polity_, though it is difficult to believe that he foresaw
+the religious mysticism in which the task was to land him. A great
+analysis was to precede a great synthesis, but it was the synthesis on
+which Comte's vision was centred from the first. Let us first sketch
+the nature of the analysis. Society is to be reorganised on the base
+of knowledge. What is the sum and significance of knowledge? That is
+the question which Comte's first master-work professes to answer.
+
+The _Positive Philosophy_ opens with the statement of a certain law of
+which Comte was the discoverer, and which has always been treated both
+by disciples and dissidents as the key to his system. This is the Law
+of the Three States. It is as follows. Each of our leading
+conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through
+three different phases; there are three different ways in which the
+human mind explains phenomena, each way following the other in order.
+These three stages are the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the
+Positive. Knowledge, or a branch of knowledge, is in the Theological
+state, when it supposes the phenomena under consideration to be due
+to immediate volition, either in the object or in some supernatural
+being. In the Metaphysical state, for volition is substituted abstract
+force residing in the object, yet existing independently of the
+object; the phenomena are viewed as if apart from the bodies
+manifesting them; and the properties of each substance have attributed
+to them an existence distinct from that substance. In the Positive
+state inherent volition or external volition and inherent force or
+abstraction personified have both disappeared from men's minds, and
+the explanation of a phenomenon means a reference of it, by way of
+succession or resemblance, to some other phenomenon,--means the
+establishment of a relation between the given fact and some more
+general fact. In the Theological and Metaphysical state men seek a
+cause or an essence; in the Positive they are content with a law. To
+borrow an illustration from an able English disciple of Comte:--'Take
+the phenomenon of the sleep produced by opium. The Arabs are content
+to attribute it to the "will of God." Moliere's medical student
+accounts for it by a _soporific principle_ contained in the opium. The
+modern physiologist knows that he cannot account for it at all. He can
+simply observe, analyse, and experiment upon the phenomena attending
+the action of the drug, and classify it with other agents analogous in
+character' (_Dr. Bridges_).
+
+The first and greatest aim of the Positive Philosophy is to advance
+the study of society into the third of the three stages,--to remove
+social phenomena from the sphere of theological and metaphysical
+conceptions, and to introduce among them the same scientific
+observation of their laws which has given us physics, chemistry,
+physiology. Social physics will consist of the conditions and
+relations of the facts of society, and will have two departments,--one
+statical, containing the laws of order; the other dynamical,
+containing the laws of progress. While men's minds were in the
+theological state, political events, for example, were explained by
+the will of the gods, and political authority based on divine right.
+In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to retain our instance,
+political authority was based on the sovereignty of the people, and
+social facts were explained by the figment of a falling away from a
+state of nature. When the positive method has been finally extended to
+society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these social
+facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into relations
+with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old sense of
+the word, men will only examine the conditions of social existence.
+When that stage has been reached not merely the greater part, but the
+whole, of our knowledge will be impressed with one character--the
+character, namely, of positivity or scientificalness; and all our
+conceptions in every part of knowledge will be thoroughly homogeneous.
+The gains of such a change are enormous. The new philosophical unity
+will now in its turn regenerate all the elements that went to its own
+formation. The mind will pursue knowledge without the wasteful jar and
+friction of conflicting methods and mutually hostile conceptions;
+education will be regenerated; and society will reorganise itself on
+the only possible solid base--a homogeneous philosophy.
+
+The _Positive Philosophy_ has another object besides the demonstration
+of the necessity and propriety of a science of society. This object is
+to show the sciences as branches from a single trunk,--is to give to
+science the ensemble or spirit of generality hitherto confined to
+philosophy, and to give to philosophy the rigour and solidity of
+science. Comte's special object is a study of social physics, a
+science that before his advent was still to be formed; his second
+object is a review of the methods and leading generalities of all the
+positive sciences already formed, so that we may know both what system
+of inquiry to follow in our new science, and also where the new
+science will stand in relation to other knowledge.
+
+The first step in this direction is to arrange scientific method and
+positive knowledge in order, and this brings us to another cardinal
+element in the Comtist system, the classification of the sciences. In
+the front of the inquiry lies one main division, that, namely, between
+speculative and practical knowledge. With the latter we have no
+concern. Speculative or theoretic knowledge is divided into abstract
+and concrete. The former is concerned with the laws that regulate
+phenomena in all conceivable cases; the latter is concerned with the
+application of these laws. Concrete science relates to objects or
+beings; abstract science to events. The former is particular or
+descriptive; the latter is general. Thus, physiology is an abstract
+science; but zoology is concrete. Chemistry is abstract; mineralogy is
+concrete. It is the method and knowledge of the abstract sciences that
+the Positive Philosophy has to reorganise in a great whole.
+
+Comte's principle of classification is that the dependence and order
+of scientific study follows the dependence of the phenomena. Thus, as
+has been said, it represents both the objective dependence of the
+phenomena and the subjective dependence of our means of knowing them.
+The more particular and complex phenomena depend upon the simpler and
+more general. The latter are the more easy to study. Therefore science
+will begin with those attributes of objects which are most general,
+and pass on gradually to other attributes that are combined in greater
+complexity. Thus, too, each science rests on the truths of the
+sciences that precede it, while it adds to them the truths by which it
+is itself constituted. Comte's series or hierarchy is arranged as
+follows:--(1) Mathematics (that is, number, geometry, and mechanics),
+(2) Astronomy, (3) Physics, (4) Chemistry, (5) Biology, (6) Sociology.
+Each of the members of this series is one degree more special than the
+member before it, and depends upon the facts of all the members
+preceding it, and cannot be fully understood without them. It follows
+that the crowning science of the hierarchy, dealing with the
+phenomena of human society, will remain longest under the influence of
+theological dogmas and abstract figments, and will be the last to pass
+into the positive stage. You cannot discover the relations of the
+facts of human society without reference to the conditions of animal
+life; you cannot understand the conditions of animal life without the
+laws of chemistry; and so with the rest.
+
+This arrangement of the sciences and the Law of the Three States are
+together explanatory of the course of human thought and knowledge.
+They are thus the double key of Comte's systematisation of the
+philosophy of all the sciences from mathematics to physiology, and his
+analysis of social evolution, which is the basis of sociology. Each
+science contributes its philosophy. The co-ordination of all these
+partial philosophies produces the general Positive Philosophy.
+'Thousands had cultivated science, and with splendid success; not one
+had conceived the philosophy which the sciences when organised would
+naturally evolve. A few had seen the necessity of extending the
+scientific method to all inquiries, but no one had seen how this was
+to be effected.... The Positive Philosophy is novel as a philosophy,
+not as a collection of truths never before suspected. Its novelty is
+the organisation of existing elements. Its very principle implies the
+absorption of all that great thinkers had achieved; while
+incorporating their results it extended their methods.... What
+tradition brought was the results; what Comte brought was the
+organisation of these results. He always claimed to be the founder of
+the Positive Philosophy. That he had every right to such a title is
+demonstrable to all who distinguish between the positive sciences and
+the philosophy which co-ordinated the truths and methods of these
+sciences into a doctrine' (_G. H. Lewes_).
+
+We may interrupt our short exposition here to remark that Comte's
+classification of the sciences has been subjected to a vigorous
+criticism by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Spencer's two chief points are
+these:--(1) He denies that the principle of the development of the
+sciences is the principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that
+there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined
+by increasing generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds
+that any grouping of the sciences in a succession gives a radically
+wrong idea of their genesis and their interdependence; no true
+filiation exists; no science develops itself in isolation; no one is
+independent, either logically or historically. M. Littre, by far the
+most eminent of the scientific followers of Comte, concedes a certain
+force to Mr. Spencer's objections, and makes certain secondary
+modifications in the hierarchy in consequence, while still cherishing
+his faith in the Comtist theory of the sciences. Mr. Mill, while
+admitting the objections as good, if Comte's arrangement pretended to
+be the only one possible, still holds that arrangement as tenable for
+the purpose with which it was devised. Mr. Lewes asserts against Mr.
+Spencer that the arrangement in a series is necessary, on grounds
+similar to those which require that the various truths constituting a
+science should be systematically co-ordinated, although in nature the
+phenomena are intermingled.
+
+The first three volumes of the _Positive Philosophy_ contain an
+exposition of the partial philosophies of the five sciences that
+precede sociology in the hierarchy. Their value has usually been
+placed very low by the special followers of the sciences concerned;
+they say that the knowledge is second-hand, is not coherent, and is
+too confidently taken for final. The Comtist replies that the task is
+philosophic, and is not to be judged by the minute accuracies of
+science. In these three volumes Comte took the sciences roughly as he
+found them. His eminence as a man of science must be measured by his
+only original work in that department,--the construction, namely, of
+the new science of society. This work is accomplished in the last
+three volumes of the _Positive Philosophy_ and the second and third
+volumes of the _Positive Polity_. The Comtist maintains that even if
+these five volumes together fail in laying down correctly and finally
+the lines of the new science, still they are the first solution of a
+great problem hitherto unattempted. 'Modern biology has got beyond
+Aristotle's conception; but in the construction of the biological
+science, not even the most unphilosophical biologist would fail to
+recognise the value of Aristotle's attempt. So for sociology.
+Subsequent sociologists may have conceivably to remodel the whole
+science, yet not the less will they recognise the merit of the first
+work which has facilitated their labours' (_Congreve_).
+
+We shall now briefly describe Comte's principal conceptions in
+sociology, his position in respect to which is held by himself, and by
+others, to raise him to the level of Descartes or Leibnitz. Of course
+the first step was to approach the phenomena of human character and
+social existence with the expectation of finding them as reducible to
+general laws as the other phenomena of the universe, and with the hope
+of exploring these laws by the same instruments of observation and
+verification as had done such triumphant work in the case of the
+latter. Comte separates the collective facts of society and history
+from the individual phenomena of biology; then he withdraws these
+collective facts from the region of external volition, and places them
+in the region of law. The facts of history must be explained, not by
+providential interventions, but by referring them to conditions
+inherent in the successive stages of social existence. This conception
+makes a science of society possible. What is the method? It comprises,
+besides observation and experiment (which is, in fact, only the
+observation of abnormal social states), a certain peculiarity of
+verification. We begin by deducing every well-known historical
+situation from the series of its antecedents. Thus we acquire a body
+of empirical generalisations as to social phenomena, and then we
+connect the generalisations with the positive theory of human nature.
+A sociological demonstration lies in the establishment of an
+accordance between the conclusions of historical analysis and the
+preparatory conceptions of biological theory. As Mr. Mill puts
+it:--'If a sociological theory, collected from historical evidence,
+contradicts the established general laws of human nature; if (to use
+M. Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, any very
+decided natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction; if it
+supposes that the reason, in average human beings, predominates over
+the desires or the disinterested desires over the personal,--we may
+know that history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is
+false. On the other hand, if laws of social phenomena, empirically
+generalised from history, can, when once suggested, be affiliated to
+the known laws of human nature; if the direction actually taken by the
+developments and changes of human society can be seen to be such as
+the properties of man and of his dwelling-place made antecedently
+probable, the empirical generalisations are raised into positive laws,
+and sociology becomes a science.' The result of this method is an
+exhibition of the events of human experience in co-ordinated series
+that manifest their own graduated connection.
+
+Next, as all investigation proceeds from that which is known best to
+that which is unknown or less well known, and as, in social states, it
+is the collective phenomenon that is more easy of access to the
+observer than its parts, therefore we must consider and pursue all
+the elements of a given social state together and in common. The
+social organisation must be viewed and explored as a whole. There is a
+nexus between each leading group of social phenomena and other leading
+groups; if there is a change in one of them, that change is
+accompanied by a corresponding modification of all the rest. 'Not only
+must political institutions and social manners on the one hand, and
+manners and ideas on the other, be always mutually connected; but
+further, this consolidated whole must be always connected by its
+nature with the corresponding state of the integral development of
+humanity, considered in all its aspects of intellectual, moral and
+physical activity' (_Comte_).
+
+Is there any one element which communicates the decisive impulse to
+all the rest,--any predominating agency in the course of social
+evolution? The answer is that all the other parts of social existence
+are associated with, and drawn along by, the contemporary condition of
+intellectual development. The Reason is the superior and preponderant
+element which settles the direction in which all the other faculties
+shall expand. 'It is only through the more and more marked influence
+of the reason over the general conduct of man and of society that the
+gradual march of our race has attained that regularity and persevering
+continuity which distinguish it so radically from the desultory and
+barren expansion of even the highest animal orders, which share, and
+with enhanced strength, the appetites, the passions, and even the
+primary sentiments of man.' The history of intellectual development,
+therefore, is the key to social evolution, and the key to the history
+of intellectual development is the Law of the Three States.
+
+Among other central thoughts in Comte's explanation of history are
+these:--The displacement of theological by positive conceptions has
+been accompanied by a gradual rise of an industrial _regime_ out of
+the military _regime;_--the great permanent contribution of
+Catholicism was the separation which it set up between the temporal
+and the spiritual powers;--the progress of the race consists in the
+increasing preponderance of the distinctively human elements over the
+animal elements;--the absolute tendency of ordinary social theories
+will be replaced by an unfailing adherence to the relative point of
+view, and from this it follows that the social state, regarded as a
+whole, has been as perfect in each period as the co-existing condition
+of humanity and its environment would allow.
+
+The elaboration of these ideas in relation to the history of the
+civilisation of the most advanced portion of the human race occupies
+two of the volumes of the _Positive Philosophy_, and has been accepted
+by competent persons of very different schools as a masterpiece of
+rich, luminous, and far-reaching suggestion. Whatever additions it may
+receive, and whatever corrections it may require, this analysis of
+social evolution will continue to be regarded as one of the great
+achievements of human intellect. The demand for the first of Comte's
+two works has gone on increasing in a significant degree. It was
+completed, as we have said, in 1842. A second edition was published in
+1864; a third some years afterwards; and while we write (1876) a
+fourth is in the press. Three editions within twelve years of a work
+of abstract philosophy in six considerable volumes are the measure of
+a very striking influence. On the whole, we may suspect that no part
+of Comte's works has had so much to do with this marked success as his
+survey and review of the course of history.
+
+The third volume of the later work, the _Positive Polity_, treats of
+social dynamics, and takes us again over the ground of historic
+evolution. It abounds with remarks of extraordinary fertility and
+comprehensiveness; but it is often arbitrary; its views of the past
+are strained into coherence with the statical views of the preceding
+volume; and so far as concerns the period to which the present writer
+happens to have given special attention, it is usually slight and
+sometimes random. As it was composed in rather less than six months,
+and as the author honestly warns us that he has given all his
+attention to a more profound co-ordination, instead of working out the
+special explanations more fully, as he had promised, we need not be
+surprised if the result is disappointing to those who had mastered the
+corresponding portion of the _Positive Philosophy_. Comte explains the
+difference between his two works. In the first his 'chief object was
+to discover and demonstrate the laws of progress, and to exhibit in
+one unbroken sequence the collective destinies of mankind, till then
+invariably regarded as a series of events wholly beyond the reach of
+explanation, and almost depending on arbitrary will. The present work,
+on the contrary, is addressed to those who are already sufficiently
+convinced of the certain existence of social laws, and desire only to
+have them reduced to a true and conclusive system.'
+
+What that system is it would take far more space than we can afford to
+sketch even in outline. All we can do is to enumerate some of its main
+positions. They are to be drawn not only from the _Positive Polity_,
+but from two other works,--the _Positivist Catechism: a Summary
+Exposition of the Universal Religion, in Twelve Dialogues between a
+Woman and a Priest of Humanity_; and second, _The Subjective
+Synthesis_ (1856), which is the first and only volume of a work upon
+mathematics announced at the end of the _Positive Philosophy_. The
+system for which the _Positive Philosophy_ is alleged to have been the
+scientific preparation contains a Polity and a Religion; a complete
+arrangement of life in all its aspects, giving a wider sphere to
+Intellect, Energy, and Feeling than could be found in any of the
+previous organic types,--Greek, Roman, or Catholic-feudal. Comte's
+immense superiority over such prae-Revolutionary Utopians as the Abbe
+Saint Pierre, no less than over the group of post-revolutionary
+Utopians, is especially visible in his firm grasp of the cardinal
+truth that the improvement of the social organism can only be
+effected by a moral development, and never by any changes in mere
+political mechanism, or any violences in the way of an artificial
+redistribution of wealth. A moral transformation must precede any real
+advance. The aim, both in public and private life, is to secure to the
+utmost possible extent the victory of the social feeling over
+self-love, or Altruism over Egoism. This is the key to the
+regeneration of social existence, as it is the key to that unity of
+individual life which makes all our energies converge freely and
+without wasteful friction towards a common end. What are the
+instruments for securing the preponderance of Altruism? Clearly they
+must work from the strongest element in human nature, and this element
+is Feeling or the Heart. Under the Catholic system the supremacy of
+Feeling was abused, and the intellect was made its slave. Then
+followed a revolt of Intellect against Sentiment. The business of the
+new system will be to bring back the Intellect into a condition, not
+of slavery, but of willing ministry to the Feelings. The subordination
+never was, and never will be, effected except by means of a religion,
+and a religion, to be final, must include a harmonious synthesis of
+all our conceptions of the external order of the universe. The
+characteristic basis of a religion is the existence of a Power without
+us, so superior to ourselves as to command the complete submission of
+our whole life. This basis is to be found in the Positive stage, in
+Humanity, past, present, and to come, conceived as the Great Being.
+
+     A deeper study of the great universal order reveals to us at
+     length the ruling power within it of the true Great Being, whose
+     destiny it is to bring that order continually to perfection by
+     constantly conforming to its laws, and which thus best represents
+     to us that system as a whole. This undeniable Providence, the
+     supreme dispenser of our destinies, becomes in the natural course
+     the common centre of our affections, our thoughts, and our
+     actions. Although this Great Being evidently exceeds the utmost
+     strength of any, even of any collective, human force, its
+     necessary constitution and its peculiar function endow it with
+     the truest sympathy towards all its servants. The least amongst
+     us can and ought constantly to aspire to maintain and even to
+     improve this Being. This natural object of all our activity, both
+     public and private, determines the true general character of the
+     rest of our existence, whether in feeling or in thought; which
+     must be devoted to love, and to know, in order rightly to serve,
+     our Providence, by a wise use of all the means which it furnishes
+     to us. Reciprocally this continued service, while strengthening
+     our true unity, renders us at once both happier and better.
+
+The exaltation of Humanity into the throne occupied by the Supreme
+Being under monotheistic systems made all the rest of Comte's
+construction easy enough. Utility remains the test of every
+institution, impulse, act; his fabric becomes substantially an arch of
+utilitarian propositions, with an artificial Great Being inserted at
+the top to keep them in their place. The Comtist system is
+utilitarianism crowned by a fantastic decoration. Translated into the
+plainest English, the position is as follows: 'Society can only be
+regenerated by the greater subordination of politics to morals, by the
+moralisation of capital, by the renovation of the family, by a higher
+conception of marriage, and so on. These ends can only be reached by a
+heartier development of the sympathetic instincts. The sympathetic
+instincts can only be developed by the Religion of Humanity.' Looking
+at the problem in this way, even a moralist who does not expect
+theology to be the instrument of social revival, might still ask
+whether the sympathetic instincts will not necessarily be already
+developed to their highest point, before people will be persuaded to
+accept the religion, which is at bottom hardly more than sympathy
+under a more imposing name. However that may be, the whole
+battle--into which we shall not enter--as to the legitimateness of
+Comtism as a religion turns upon this erection of Humanity into a
+Being. The various hypotheses, dogmas, proposals, as to the family, to
+capital, etc. are merely propositions measurable by considerations of
+utility and a balance of expediencies. Many of these proposals are of
+the highest interest, and many of them are actually available; but
+there does not seem to be one of them of an available kind which could
+not equally well be approached from other sides, and even incorporated
+in some radically antagonistic system. Adoption, for example, as a
+practice for improving the happiness of families and the welfare of
+society, is capable of being weighed, and can in truth only be weighed
+by utilitarian considerations, and has been commended by men to whom
+the Comtist religion is naught. The singularity of Comte's
+construction, and the test by which it must be tried, is the transfer
+of the worship and discipline of Catholicism to a system in which 'the
+conception of God is superseded' by the abstract idea of Humanity,
+conceived as a kind of Personality.
+
+And when all is said, the invention does not help us. We have still to
+settle what _is_ for the good of Humanity, and we can only do that in
+the old-fashioned way. There is no guidance in the conception. No
+effective unity can follow from it, because you can only find out the
+right and wrong of a given course by summing up the advantages and
+disadvantages, and striking a balance, and there is nothing in the
+Religion of Humanity to force two men to find the balance on the same
+side. The Comtists are no better off than other utilitarians in
+judging policy, events, conduct.
+
+The particularities of the worship, its minute and truly ingenious
+re-adaptation of sacraments, prayers, reverent signs, down even to the
+invocation of a new Trinity, need not detain us. They are said, though
+it is not easy to believe, to have been elaborated by way of Utopia.
+If so, no Utopia has ever yet been presented in a style so little
+calculated to stir the imagination, to warm the feelings, to soothe
+the insurgency of the reason. It is a mistake to present a great body
+of hypotheses--if Comte meant them for hypotheses--in the most
+dogmatic and peremptory form to which language can lend itself. And
+there is no more extraordinary thing in the history of opinion than
+the perversity with which Comte has succeeded in clothing a
+philosophic doctrine, so intrinsically conciliatory as his, in a
+shape that excites so little sympathy and gives so much provocation.
+An enemy defined Comtism as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity, to which
+an able champion retorted by calling it Catholicism _plus_ Science.
+Hitherto Comte's Utopia has pleased the followers of the Catholic,
+just as little as those of the scientific spirit.
+
+The elaborate and minute systematisation of life, proper to the
+religion of Humanity, is to be directed by a priesthood. The priests
+are to possess neither wealth nor material power; they are not to
+command, but to counsel; their authority is to rest on persuasion, not
+on force. When religion has become positive and society industrial,
+then the influence of the church upon the state becomes really free
+and independent, which was not the case in the Middle Age. The power
+of the priesthood rests upon special knowledge of man and nature; but
+to this intellectual eminence must also be added moral power and a
+certain greatness of character, without which force of intellect and
+completeness of attainment will not receive the confidence they ought
+to inspire. The functions of the priesthood are of this kind:--To
+exercise a systematic direction over education; to hold a consultative
+influence over all the important acts of actual life, public and
+private; to arbitrate in cases of practical conflict; to preach
+sermons recalling those principles of generality and universal harmony
+which our special activities dispose us to ignore; to order the due
+classification of society. To perform the various ceremonies
+appointed by the founder of the religion. The authority of the
+priesthood is to rest wholly on voluntary adhesion, and there is to be
+perfect freedom of speech and discussion; though, by the way, we
+cannot forget Comte's detestable congratulations to the Czar Nicholas
+on the 'wise vigilance' with which he kept watch over the importation
+of Western books.
+
+From his earliest manhood Comte had been powerfully impressed by the
+necessity of elevating the condition of women (see remarkable passage
+in his letters to M. Valat, pp. 84-87). His friendship with Madame de
+Vaux had deepened the impression, and in the reconstructed society
+women are to play a highly important part. They are to be carefully
+excluded from public action, but they are to do many more important
+things than things political. To fit them for their functions, they
+are to be raised above material cares, and they are to be thoroughly
+educated. The family, which is so important an element of the Comtist
+scheme of things, exists to carry the influence of woman over man to
+the highest point of cultivation. Through affection she purifies the
+activity of man. 'Superior in power of affection, more able to keep
+both the intellectual and the active powers in continual subordination
+to feeling, women are formed as the natural intermediaries between
+Humanity and man. The Great Being confides specially to them its moral
+Providence, maintaining through them the direct and constant
+cultivation of universal affection, in the midst of all the
+distractions of thought or action, which are for ever withdrawing men
+from its influence.... Beside the uniform influence of every woman on
+every man, to attach him to Humanity, such is the importance and the
+difficulty of this ministry that each of us should be placed under the
+special guidance of one of these angels, to answer for him, as it
+were, to the Great Being. This moral guardianship may assume three
+types,--the mother, the wife, and the daughter; each having several
+modifications, as shown in the concluding volume. Together they
+form the three simple modes of solidarity, or unity with
+contemporaries,--obedience, union, and protection,--as well as the
+three degrees of continuity between ages, by uniting us with the past,
+the present, and the future. In accordance with my theory of the
+brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic
+instincts,--veneration, attachment, and benevolence.
+
+How the positive method of observation and verification of real facts
+has landed us in this, and much else of the same kind, is extremely
+hard to guess. Seriously to examine an encyclopaedic system, that
+touches life, society, and knowledge at every point, is evidently
+beyond the compass of such an article as this. There is in every
+chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would
+need a long chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss. There is at
+least one biological speculation of astounding audacity that could be
+examined in nothing less than a treatise. Perhaps we have said enough
+to show that after performing a great and real service to thought,
+Comte almost sacrificed his claims to gratitude by the invention of a
+system that, as such, and independently of detached suggestions, is
+markedly retrograde. But the world has strong self-protecting
+qualities. It will take what is available in Comte, while forgetting
+that in his work which is as irrational in one way as Hegel is in
+another.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+The transcriber made the following changes to the text to correct
+obvious errors:
+
+  1. p. 347, "delighful" changed to "delightful"
+  2. p. 382, "'Superior in power of ..." no ending single quote
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3), by John Morley
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