BOOKS.
COMTE'S POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.* THE " Cours de Philosophie Positive" is at once a compendious cyclopmdia of science and an exhibition of scientific method. It defines rigorously the characteristics of the several orders of phe- nomena with which the particular sciences are concerned, arranges them in an ascending scale of complexity and specialty beginning with mathematics and ending with social physics or sociology, and assigns to each science its proper method in accordance with the na- ture of the phenomena to be investigated. The connexion between the sciences thus arranged is, that the laws of each preceding order of phenomena are operative in that which succeeds, but in combina- tion with a new order of laws, the study of which constitutes the advanced science. As might be supposed, the sciences have histori- cally developed themselves in accordance with this arrangement, the simpler and more general first, the more complex and special afterwards. Thus we obtain not only a lucid and rational classi- fication, but a logical genealogy and an historical law of evolu- tion, forming a sure basis for education and a luminous indica- tion of future progress. An arrangement so simple in its prin- ciple, so fruitful in its results, one may well be astonished at hay.i ing had so many ages to wait for. It is, however, unquestionable that, though half-formed suggestions of such a classification are here and there to be found, and though Hegel in particular, proceeding on a totally different method, has reached an arrange- ment that superficially resembles M. Comte's, yet to the latter be- longs the honour of having thoroughly worked out the conception, of having rigorously determined and decisively constituted the fili- ation, of having exhibited the relations between phenomena and method, and finally of having accurately conceived and initiated the crowning science of sociology, with its two departments of social statics and social dynamics, dealing the one with the conditions of the stability of human societies, the other with the laws of their pr tigress. Because it is not merely a cyclopmdia of scientific facts, but exhibition of the methods of human knowledge and of the relations between its different branches, M. Comte calls his work philosophy; and because it limits itself to what can be proved, he terms it positive philosophy. That, during the twenty years since the appearance of the first volume of the original work, it has powerfully influenced the thoughts and writings of the most exact minds engaged in specu- lation in this country, will be doubtful to no one who compares the books published on the general principles and mutual relations of science before and since its appearance. That it has given a far more special and directing impulse to those writers than most of them have been or would be willing publicly to avow, is Miss Martineau's opinion, and one of her motives—a highly honour- able one—for presenting a translation of the original work to the English public.. The motive assigned by Miss Martineau for this assumed reluctance to credit Comte with his due share of influence, is one likely enough to have prevailed with all English writers who were not very far above the common level in moral courage, or very far below it in insolent bravado and conceited contempt for the opinions and sympathies of their countrymen. For M. Comte's book, besides being, as we have described it, a treatise on science and scientific methods, is also a fierce polemic against theology and metaphysics, with all the no- tions and sentiments that have their roots in them, all the beliefs and hopes which are considered, among us, if not the foundations, at least indispensable supports of morality. M. Comte scornfully denounces theism andlitheism as equally unwarrantable intrusions into a province beyond the faculties, and barren for the needs of man ; he treats our hope of a life beyond the grave as a childish chimera; mind he scouts as a metaphysical entity, on a level with the "occult causes" of the schoolmen ; Him whom other men worship as the source and sustainer of their own lives, and of all the powers at work around them, he treats as a poor old dethroned Fetish—a roi fainéant, kept up, like the descendant of the Great Mogul, from unmeaning habit of accustomed reverence, or the idle prejudices and selfish interests of metaphysicians and theo- logians--a useless ceremonial, from which all power has been transferred to positive laws, and all glory to their discoverers. In the universe of man and the worlds he resolves to see only a vast consensus of forces, an infinite whirl and rush of phenomena, of which we can learn by observation the uniform coexistences and sequences, but know not, nor need to know, whence they flashed into being, what power sustains them, or what their mighty move- ments mean. What appears, we may and should investigate—to what is, we have no access, no ascertainable relation. M. Comte aims, in fact, not simply at renovating science by reforming its general conceptions and completing its range, but at rigidly • The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. Freely translated and condensed DI Harriet Martineau. In two volumes. Published by Chapman.
limiting human beliefs and speculations, and on the basis of demonstrable knowledge of phenomena constituting a reformed order of practical life and society. It was long ago said by one of our most brilliant living wits, " There is no God, and Miss Martineau is his prophet"; and it therefore excites no surprise that the same pretensions, which are supposed to have deterred other English writers from acknowledging their obligation to the French philosopher, should have induced her to undertake the laborious task of translating and condensing his six bulky volumes into two. She sees in his strict limitation of the human faculties to phenomenal knowledge—in his treatment of all that cannot be demonstrated by sensible experience as chimeras—a means not otherwise procurable of remedying the intellectual anarchy of her country, of reinstating firm beliefs and impregnable principles in religion, morals, and politics, and so putting a final check upon the spread of weak and inconsistent practice, general faintness of heart and uncertainty of mind. For she too thinks that all the old beliefs and philosophies were but leading-strings and baby-jumpers for our race ; that they have long encumbered the movements of the growing boy, and must be cleared off—sent abroad, perhaps, for the aborigines of Australia and Terra del Fuego, who have yet to pass through the phases of Western Europe, though the dura- tion of the crisis may be materially abridged for them by the in- fluence of the nations which have preceded them in. the course of human evolution.
It is these pretensions of the positive philosophy, with which alone we profess to deal, because it is of these alone that there can be any dispute amongst competent persons. If observation of phenomena is our sole source of knowledge, no one questions but that the "inductive canons " are the guides to accurate observa- tion and the rules of safe generalization. The assumption is, how- ever, somewhat extensive ; and M. Comte nowhere attempts to demonstrate this fundamental position of his system, unless it is demonstration to assert that theology and metaphysics have been barren speculations, whereas positive science has gone on from age to age extending its domain and adding to men's practical and demonstrable knowledge. This, however, our space will not allow us to discuss. Nor can we do more even with respect to these pretensions than to speak of some prelimi- nary considerations which lie in the way of their admission. As a series of treatises on the various sciences, M. Comte's work might be full of errors of detail without much impairing its value as a philosophic classification ; and in fact, with respect to all but the simple sciences, even if it had been without blemish at the time of its publication, years are so rapidly developing our know- ledge that it could have retained its perfection only a short time. As a treatise on method, it falls so far short of Mr. J. S. Mill's Logic in exhaustive treatment and in clear terse style, and has besides been so ably criticized by him in various parts of that admirable work, that it is superfluous to point out its special de- fects to the English student of philosophy. In spite of antiquated details and of special defects, however, the work will always re- tain a most distinguished place in the history of opinion ; and to it must the student resort who shall hereafter wish to see the form which the science of social physics acquired in the hands of its first rigorously positive investigator. We have simply to in- quire what its great claims are to supply the place of those theo- logical and metaphysical beliefs and sentiments which it proposes to supersede—what support it can lend to moral principles and noble conduct, equivalent to the aids of which it would deprive us.
It is not unlikely that a preliminary objection would ordinarily be taken against the pretensions of positivism to exclude all other motives to action, and other grounds of assurance, in the fact that except for the simpler sciences, from geometry to chemistry— physiology rapidly advancing to meet them—it is as yet in its in- fancy, and has no body of doctrine to substitute for what it dis- places. A positivist would answer to this, that conscious ig- norance is better than chimerical fancies, which not only them- selves mislead, but prevent the growth of true doctrine ; that we are possessed of empirical laws as to physical life, individual con- duct, and social organization, by which to direct experiments and guide practice with more or less approximation to truth ; and that, scientific conceptions and scientific methods once instituted, a body of doctrine will accumulate with a rapidly accelerating ratio. A more fundamental objection is, that after leaving physiology, we get into a region of phenomena where Will plays a leading part, and, quite apart from all consideration of theistic interference, in- troduces a disturbing element that ba es the previsions of science by destroying the uniformity in the connexion of the phe- nomena of conduct. Whatever theory, however, be held about the human will, whatever phrases be preferred to express our con- sciousness of its mode of operation, it is undeniable that an
act of determination is uniformly preceded by a predominant de- sire in conformity with that act. The question therefore really is, can the succession of our desires be reduced to uniform laws ? Given the character and the circumstances of a man, is it possible to determine what desires will direct his action ? The popular, or rather the metaphysical voice, denies this possibility ; but, we think, more in the interest of certain other theories—such for instance, as human responsibility—than because facts compel this denial. For if this determination of human actions be really im- possible under the assumed conditions,—in other words, if human actions are capricious and arbitrary in any other sense than arises from the complexity and incalculable nature of the motives which determine them,—what is the meaning of education, of moral and social influences, of any legislation but what is penal, or indeed even of penal legislation P Plainly, all these agencies rest for their validity upon the commonly-believed fact that motives in- fluence conduct; that one train of motives ever acting upon a hu- man being of given tendencies induces conduct different from an- other train of motives. Religion itself, what is it but a fresh and higher presentation of motives—truths revealed to influence human conduct, which other known truths are not capable of influencing in the same direction to the same degree ? It is true that nothing appears at first sight more variable, more capricious, less subject to any uniformities of sequence, than the phenomena of human conduct : but then, it is to be remembered that the determining conditions of human con- duct are infinitely various and complex. For this reason, Mr. Mill has carefully guarded against the extravagant supposition that the future acts of men and of societies can, in the highest possibilities of social science, be foreseen like the phenomena of the heavenly bodies; and has limited the utmost attainment of that science to determine that given circumstances have a ten- dency to alter given characters in ascertainable degrees and direc- tions, or that under given circumstances given characters will act in a determinate manner. Nor has M. Comte carried his speculations to a more extravagant pitch than this; which seems, after all said, to be nothing more than the enunciation with scientific precision of a belief we all act upon every day of our lives, and on which most of the institutions of society—s. e. all which have a moral or educational aim—are founded.
Putting aside, then, these two objections, which lie, the one against the present claims, the other against the possibility, of social science —and supposing such a science not only to the ex- tent indicated possible, not only constituted in conception and me- thod, but so far constructed as that the tendencies of men and of societies under given circumstances shall be rigorously demon- strated,—our inquiry is, whether such knowledge is adequate to supply the forces necessary to maintain individuals and societies in a right course of conduct. We assume the conditions known un- der which the human being may be trained to any given line of conduct ; but how do we determine the line of conduct to be en- forced on men and on societies? The phenomena of human action being, in virtue of their complexity, eminently modifiable, have we from positivism any principle on which to found our modifying' interference, any end by which to shape our education, our social organization, our legislation ? Comte bases on the past history of human evolution a brilliant generalization of the phases of specu- lative opinion through which mankind has passed or must pass, and indicates the coexistent social and political phenomena which belong to each phase. In every department of speculation that has run its course, mankind 'has passed through three stages, or modes of viewing the phenomena whose explanation is sought,— the theologio, in which all action in the world is referred to a vo- lition in or above the objects moved; the metaphysic, in which the action is referred to mysterious entities supposed to reside in objects moving, and which are in fact nothing but abstract con- ceptions of the phenomena themselves; and finally the positive, in which no explanation is sought beyond the classification of the phenomenon along with similar phenomena, and the ascertainment of its precedent conditions. This bare statement can give not the faintest conception of the value of the generalization—if only es- timated as an hypothetical approximation to a true law—in study- ing universal history. But M. Comte authoritatively lays it down as demonstrated to be the leading law of human evolution, since all other social phenomena follow its phases. If we are not satisfied with his proofs, —if we object that the first links in the chain of evidence are altogether wanting, and that the hypothesis is based upon no exhaustive analysis even of the facts which history has re- corded,—we are cavalierly informed that social science requires the establishment of such a law, and established therefore it is and shall be. This law of evolution being then established to M. Comte's satis- faction, and for the sake of argument to ours also, how does it sup- ply the guiding principle we are in quest of to regulate the future course of that evolution, so far as our modifying power may ex- tend? Here M. Comte becomes altogether obscure and contradictory. It seems sufficient to him to know the law of the phases through which belief has passed in reference to certain departments of science, and is, in his opinion, to pass in all branches of know- ledge and speculation. The other social phenomena being depend- ent on or at least following the changes of speculative opinion, their law is known too. But we are as far off as ever from any guide for individual conduct, or for the action of society. It may be that M. Comte thinks it superfluous, having indicated a law of hufnan progression, to do more than hint that we are to obey it, and become positive as quickly as we may; and that this once in course of accomplishment, the social movement will proceed harmo- niously in its normal course, bringing felicity the highest at- tainable to individuals and to societies. But even this very vague injunction, to make positivism our aim and guiding principle of conduct, has after all not even the slight practical bearing which at first sight it seems to have. For we are over and over again assured by M. Comte, that the general course of human evolution is beyond human control; that only secondary modifications as to speed and minor indirect influences of the main movement are within our power. Indeed, the whole course of his demonstration from his- tory shows this, inasmuch as the evolution has proceeded into the third and final stage not only without conscious effort of men so to direct it, but against their continuous effort to thwart it and turn it to another direction. If, then, only secondary modifica- tions and indirect fluctuations and regurgitations of the main cur- rent are within our influence to control and regulate, of what possible use can it be to inform us only of the main law of evolution, with whose course we have nothing to do but to ac- knowledge it and submit.to it ? It is just of the things within our power that we have need to know, in order to regulate our conduct. A man wishing to build a house must indeed obey the law of universal gravitation, but it will help him little practically to have that law enunciated with the most con- vincing pomp of historical proof and the most rigid mathe- matical precision. We are obliged to conclude, then, that posi- tivism in M. Comte's hands, while pretending to take upon itself the regulation of human conduct, fails to furnish a guiding prin- ciple for either individuals or societies. It sends us to sea with an admirable chart of the tides, currents, and winds ; instructs us how eminently modifiable these forces are by the rudder ; but de- clines to provide us with a compass, or to say anything about the port for which we have to steer. All that can be done in such a case is to lie on one's back and look at the stars, or exercise an em- pirical prudence in selecting snob a course as fancy or foresight may suggest. To drop metaphor, we must still have recourse to our celestial guides, or to our internal monitions, in our voyage along the stormy sea of life; for M. Comte provides us with no satisfactory substitutes.
But morality implies not only a fixed aim, a principle of action to maintain steadiness amid the conflicts of contending motives ; it equally demands ruling influences that are adequate to maintain obedience to the principle of action, persistence towards the aim. Suppose, then, society constituted on a positive basis, its principle of existence undisputed, what motives could the system present to the members of society, young and old, to compel obedience to its regulations ? of what forces would its moral police find themselves possessed ? They would have the advantage to begin with of a uniform state of belief, moulding all social influences and institutions, and so by its indirect as well as direct effects tending to cheek that intellectual discord and uncertainty from which so much of our social and individual weakness proceeds ; an enormous force, not to be easily overesti- mated—liable, however, we must remember, to be rudely broken in upon by speculations of a contrary character, so long as any field remained open for such speculations : and to the young citi- zens of the Positive society the Unknown would still remain open, and dreams and reminiscences could scarcely fail to float in from that region, and fall as fruitful seeds on spirits impatient, as ex- perience tells us human spirits ever will be, of the limitations of certain knowledge. So that even for positivism there is no gua- rantee against the inroads of metaphysics and mysticism. But, be that worth what it may as an argument, the direct moral force of positive teaching would lie in the demonstration of the issues of conduct on society at large and on the individuals acting—in the strength and vivacity of the personal and general affections ; of course, rewards and punishments might be as effectual as with us at present. In fact, with the exception indicated above, and that only amounts to difference of degree, the motives of positivism are all in force now; and added to them are all those sentiments, hopes, and fears, that spring from a belief in God and a con- fidence of life beyond the grave. We can speak of self-interest, of love of country, of attachment to friends and relations, of the closer ties of family and love between man and woman, of the charms of knowledge, of the influences of art, of the sym- pathies inspired by generous actions, as well as the positivist. But we can speak too of a personal Being of infinite love, purity, and power, to whom we are responsible, and who we are taught to believe watches our course with a tender interest, for which no name is sufficiently expressive but those which denote the
dearest earthly relationships. We cans of a life here- after, and are taught to believe that the terakmation of character is of infinite importance compared with all other issues of conduct, because character is eternal, and what is done and thought here bears fruit of weal or wo beyond the limits of time. Even these mighty moral forces are continually found insufficient to keep us up to our imperfect sense of duty, to make us ever regard that highest social law which says "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." What, then, has positivism to offer as a corrective to selfish pas- sions and shortsighted lust of present gratification, that can do in the place of these? We assumed vastly too much when we con ceded to this system that the affections will flourish with the same vigour if the belief of man's immortality is destroyed ; yet these, again, are among our strongest purifying influences—strongest to refine, strongest to free from selfishness. So it appears that this system not only fails to provide an aim for the action of man and of society, but if an aim were conceded to it, has no moral force to keep men steady, no counteracting power to the notorious selfish- ness and sensuality against which we have to be ever on our guard. But if all else prospered with the positive philosophy—if de- monstration compelled us to admit its law of historical evolution— if it provided aims and motives to individual or social conduct— there remains one objection fatal, in our opinion, to its presump- tions. It professes the power to elevate human life to heights of felicity and knowledge of which we as yet only.dream—that it will bring round the golden year for which poets have tuned their most stirring songs and prophets yearned upon their watch-towers : and could it perform all its votaries promise, what would be the inevit- able result ? Undoubtedly that, the lovelier and the richer life grew—the higher in dignity, the firmer in purpose, the fuller of grand results—the fiercer would rise the longing for immortality; the more would the men and women of the " crowning race" shrink back appalled with horror from the thought of personal anni- hilation. By this contradiction the scheme stands condemned in the moral judgment. Probably, were it to become the creed of the world, it would be condemned not by such contradiction, but by belying the promises of its author, and by degrading and sen- sualizing human life till man would care as little about death as a dog does, or rather seek it as soon as his sensual faculties were so impaired that life yielded less physical pleasure than pain. If a practical test of the positive creed be wanted, there is one ready at hand. Let any one follow to the grave the wife, the child, the parent he has loved and lost, and seek to .comfort himself by the reflection that the loved one is absorbed in the grand titre—in the totality of organized life existing through all time in the universe. No ! whatever speculative difficulties may beset and bewilder us when intellect is busy, and feeling and action suspended fot a while, we shall all be glad, when bereavement and sorrow cast their shadows over our path, to take refuge in the faith of our childhood ; and the words of our burial-service, " Blessed are • the dead that die in the Lord," will fall upon the ear with an assurance all the more sure from the doubts with which we have struggled, and the clouds of speculation that have hid the great moral verities for a time from our overstrained eyes.
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