Part 13

One can scarcely refrain from a smile when he contemplates these dreams reduced to the form of system, ignoring every sentiment of reality, and expounded with the confidence of fanaticism in the name of a science called Positive. Here it is that we find the fixed and dominant idea that pervaded and compromised the whole life of M. Auguste Comte. Whoever did not accept his doctrine and his system, was for him either a retrogradist full of prejudice, or an ignoramus without scientific education, or an interested and jealous enemy. Whoever, on the other hand, lent himself to his views on any point, or for any time, however short, became in the eyes of M. Comte his conquest and his property, his philosophical serf, as it were, bound to his master by the tenure of duty, and the render of services from which he could never hope to enfranchise himself, without the risk of being treated upon the instant as a deserter or a rebel, and of seeing at once broken the closest and most approved bonds of intimacy and friendship. {276} He had so entire a confidence in his own intellectual superiority, and in the rights which it conferred, that he expressed it sometimes with a _näiveté_ amounting almost to idolatry. One day, believing that he had won over to his ideas M. Armand Marrast, then the editor of the _National_, he wrote thus to his wife: "Marrast no longer feels any repugnance in admitting the indispensable fact of my intellectual superiority; he is in this respect, in my opinion, especially influenced by Mill, whom he holds, and with reason, in high account. To speak plainly and in general terms, I believe that, at the point at which I have now arrived, I have no occasion to do more than to continue to exist; the kind of preponderance which I covet cannot, henceforth, fail to devolve upon me." [Footnote 46]

[Footnote 46: Letter of the 3d December, 1842: "Auguste Comte et la philosophic positive;" p. 324.]

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Shortly after the date of this letter, M. Comte was separated from his wife and embroiled with Mr. Mill himself, who had not, as the former fancied, fulfilled toward him all the duties of an accepted and loyal disciple.

I pass from the fixed idea of the man to the false idea of his system; it appears over and over again at each step in the "Cours de philosophie positive" of M. Auguste Comte, [Footnote 47] and in the imposing biography consecrated to his memory by his most accomplished disciple, M. Littré. [Footnote 48]

[Footnote 47: Six volumes 8vo., published in the interval from 1830 to 1842 inclusive.]

[Footnote 48: Auguste Comte et la philosophic positive. 8vo. 1863.]

I extract from different parts of these volumes the passages in which the fundamental doctrine is most clearly expressed:

"Positive philosophy is the whole body of human knowledge. Human knowledge is the result of the study of the forces belonging to matter, and of the conditions or laws governing those forces." [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: Ibid., p. 42.]

"The fundamental character of positive philosophy is, that it regards all phenomena as subjected to invariable natural laws, and considers as absolutely inaccessible to us, and as having no sense for us, every inquiry into what is termed either primary or final causes." [Footnote 50]

[Footnote 50: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Auguste Comte, vol. i, p. 14.]

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"The scientific path, in which I have, ever since I began to think, continued to walk, the labors that I obstinately pursue to elevate social theories to the rank of physical science are evidently, radically, and absolutely opposed to everything that has a religious or metaphysical tendency." [Footnote 51]

[Footnote 51: Auguste Comte et la philosophic positive, by M. Littré, p. 194.]

"My positive philosophy is incompatible with every theological or metaphysical philosophy, and consequently equally so with every corresponding system of policy." [Footnote 52]

[Footnote 52: Ibid., p. 210.]

"M. Comte," says M. Littré, "made it a duty to speak in public without any reticence, to deduce his positive truths, and to confront them with the conceptions of Theology and of Metaphysics. . . . 'Religiosity' is in his eyes not only a weakness, but an avowal of want of power." [Footnote 53]

[Footnote 53: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littré, pp. 198-255.]

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"The 'positive state' is that state of the mind in which it conceives that phenomena are governed by constant laws, from which prayer and adoration can demand nothing, but to which intelligence and science may address their demands; so that, by familiarizing himself with those laws more and more, and by conforming to them more and more, man acquires an ever-growing empire over nature and over himself, which empire is the sum of all civilization. The 'theological state,' on the contrary, is that state of the mind which conceives that phenomena are the results of volition, or, if the social development has arrived at Monotheism, that they are the results of a single, all-wise, and all-powerful will. This providence, essentially collective where Polytheism is supposed, essentially single in the case of Monotheism, governs the world, dispenses its good and its evil, lays its finger upon human events, and regards the destiny of each individual man. {280} Such is the contrast between the two doctrines. ... Profiting by the instruction of the illustrious De Maistre, our French priests at last comprehended that ultramontanism was the only logical consequence deducible from their essential principles. The more the positive school defines the real character of its progress, the more must we see this retrograde concentration also develop itself; which will involve at some later epoch Deists themselves, as Positivism proceeds to gain complete ascendancy; an ascendancy, in other respects, far more likely to be furthered than retarded by such coordination of its adversaries, for this will tend to give at last to the struggles of philosophy a decisive character; but the Positivists will alone succeed in prevailing (at least as far as speculative doctrines are concerned) over the coalition of all the philosophical forces of the ancient school, whether metaphysical or theological." [Footnote 54]

[Footnote 54: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littré, pp. 370, 434. ]

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M. Comte had even more aversion for Metaphysics than for Theology. He took particular offense at the contemporary spiritualistic school, and the scientific psychology of MM. Royer, Collard, Maine de Biran, Cousin, and Jouffroy.

"In no view," said he, "is there any room for this illusory psychology; this final transformation of a theology, which men strive, nowadays, so idly to reanimate; for--without troubling itself either with the physiological study of our intellectual organs, or with the observation of those rational processes, which in effect direct our different scientific researches--Psychology pretends to arrive at the discovery of the fundamental laws of the human mind by contemplating that very mind--that is to say, by making complete abstraction both of causes and of effects." [Footnote 55]

[Footnote 55: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Auguste Comte, vol. i, p. 34.]

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Even while absolutely rejecting Theology, M. Comte treated it with more esteem than Metaphysics.

"We are," he said, "too disposed, nowadays, to ignore the immense benefits due to religious influence. The positive philosophy, however paradoxical it may be to claim for it such a peculiarity, is virtually the only philosophy capable of worthily appreciating all the participation of the spirit of religion in the whole grand development of humanity. Is it not directly evident that, as by an invincible organic necessity, moral efforts have almost always to combat to some degree or other the most energetic impulses of our nature; the theological spirit was imperatively called upon to furnish to social discipline that general basis which was quite indispensable at a time when human foresight, whether of men in masses or of men as individuals, was certainly far too limited to offer any sufficient _point d'appui_ to influences purely rational?"

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... "When the positive philosophy shall have acquired that character of universality which it is still without, it will be capable of replacing entirely, with all its native superiority, that theological philosophy and that metaphysical philosophy of which this universality is in these days the sole real peculiarity, and which, deprived of this motive for preference, will have for our successors nothing but an historical existence." [Footnote 56]

[Footnote 56: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Comte, vol. v, p. 73; vol. i, p. 23.]

I do not pause to notice in how many respects this language is superficial, confused, and incoherent. I only draw attention to the fundamental idea which it manifests--matter, the forces of matter, and its laws; these are the sole objects of human knowledge, the sole domain of the human mind. Aware of, and embarrassed by the objections which the idea has from the beginning of time excited, M. Littré has striven to rid himself of them by an admission, sincere no doubt, like everything that he thinks, and everything that he says, but full in its turn of confusion and incoherence.

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"The positive philosophy," says he, "is at once a system which comprehends all that is known of the world of man and of society, and also a general method, containing in itself all the ways by which men have come to learn all these things. What is beyond, whether, materially speaking, that space without limit, or intellectually that concatenation of never-ending causes, all this is absolutely inaccessible to the human mind. By inaccessible is not meant null or non-existent. Immensity in matter, as in intellect, is connected by a close band with what we know, and it is only by such an alliance that it becomes an idea positive in itself, and of the same order; what I mean is, that by so touching and bordering what we know, immensity appears under the double character of reality and of inaccessibility. It is an ocean which dashes upon our shores, and for which we have nor bark nor sail, but the clear vision of which is as salutary as it is formidable." [Footnote 57]

[Footnote 57: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littré, p. 519.]

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The vision so admitted by M. Littré is not clear, and neither is it salutary; but vague, and without result. The imagery does not destroy the system which it seeks to vail from us. Every religious belief, every spiritual doctrine, God and the human soul, are discarded by Positivism, and treated as arbitrary and transitory hypotheses, which, however they may have conduced to the development of humanity, ought now to be rejected by human reason, just as the foot may throw down the ladder which has enabled it to mount to the summit. To call things by their proper names, Positivism is Materialism and Atheism, with more or less explicitness, confidently or hesitatingly, accepted as the last term of human science, and when hard pressed, taking refuge in the darkness of skepticism.

What are the foundations upon which Positivism rests? What facts, what proofs, does M. Auguste Comte adduce in support of his principles, that matter, its forces, and its laws, constitute the sole object of human knowledge, the sole domain of the human mind?

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He appeals to two arguments--the one metaphysical, the other historical; the one derived from the mind of man itself, the other from the history of humanity.

I cannot here follow M. Comte in his long and complex explanation of the two orders of proofs to which he appeals in support of his system; what I shall say will, I think, suffice to demonstrate that neither can stand any serious examination.

As a metaphysician--for metaphysician he must permit himself to be called, since he makes use of metaphysics, whatever his antipathy for philosophers who bear that name;--as metaphysician, I repeat, M. Auguste Comte belongs to the sensualistic school, He thinks with Locke and Condillac, that man deduces all his ideas and all his knowledge from impressions received by him from the outer world, and from the reflections which he makes upon those impressions. {287} He takes, therefore, as his starting point, the maxim of that school which proclaims that "there is nothing in the intelligence which has not first been in the sense." Nevertheless, whether by an act of proper and remarkable sagacity, or struck by the reply of Leibnitz, "unless the intelligence itself," he admits that sensation does not account for all that passes and develops itself in the mind of the observer of the external world. "If," he says, "on the one side every positive theory must necessarily be founded upon observation, it is, on the other side, equally plain that to apply itself to the task of observation, our mind has need of some 'theory.' If, in contemplating the phenomena, we do not immediately attach them to certain principles, not only would it be impossible for us to combine these isolated observations, so as to draw any fruit therefrom; but we should be entirely incapable of retaining them, and in most cases the facts would remain before our eyes unnoticed. {288} The need at all times of some 'theory' whereby to associate facts, combined with the evident impossibility of the human mind at its origin forming 'theories' out of observations, is a fact which it is impossible to ignore." [Footnote 58]

[Footnote 58: Cours de philosophic positive, par M. Auguste Comte, vol. i. p. 8.]

This fact, thus proved by M. Comte himself; this necessary part of the human mind, indispensable to enable it to acquire knowledge of the external world; this "theory," anterior to all observation, which man requires for the purpose himself of observing, what are they else than those universal and necessary principles proclaimed by the spiritualistic school, and to which I recently referred?--principles inherent in the human mind, which it applies as from its own stores in taking cognizance of the external world, and by virtue of which, just as one mounts a river up to its source, man mounts and mounts up to God, and up to the relations of man with God.

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But, admitting the same fact, M. Comte does not explain it in this way. This "theory;" these principles anterior to external observation, and which the mind absolutely requires in order to be able to observe, are, according to him, pure inventions of the human mind itself, temporary instruments which the mind creates and employs in its labors until it can obtain better. "Between," says he, "two difficulties, pressed on the one hand by the necessity of observing in order to form 'theories,' and on the other by the no less imperious necessity of creating 'theories' in order to be able to deliver itself up to a series of coherent observations, the human mind at its birth would find itself shut in by a vicious circle from which it would never have had any means of escaping, had it not succeeded in opening a natural issue by the spontaneous development of theological conceptions, which presented a point to which his efforts might be concentrated, and which might furnish aliment for his activity. {290} It is, in effect, very remarkable, that questions the most radically inaccessible to our capacities, the intimate nature of being, the origin and the end of all phenomena, should be precisely those which the intelligence propounds to itself, as of paramount importance in that primitive condition, all the other problems really admitting of solution being almost regarded as unworthy of serious meditation. The reason of this it is not difficult to discover, for experience alone could have given us the measure of our strength; and if man had not begun by entertaining an exaggerated opinion of that strength, it would never have been capable of acquiring all the development of which it is susceptible. So much does our organization exact." [Footnote 59]

[Footnote 59: Cours de philosophie positive, par M. Auguste Comte, vol. i, pp. 9, 10.]

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Strange error of a man, whose supreme pretension it is to found all human knowledge upon the observation of facts! At his very first step, at the first difficulty which he encounters, M. Comte observes inexactly and incompletely, does not see in the facts all that the facts contain, and only explains them by assigning to the human mind, in its primitive and spontaneous operations, a hypothesis, the hypothesis of "theological conceptions." God, and man's relations with God, is a human invention, destined to support man at the commencement of his career as an intelligent being, and to occupy provisionally the place of science!

The source of this misapprehension, the capital error of Positivism in its metaphysical argument, is, that it ignores the nature and the limits of science.

The famous "enthymême" of Descartes, "I think, therefore I am," is a pleonasm. As soon as the human being says to itself "I," the human being affirms its own existence, and distinguishes itself from that external world whence it derives impressions of which it is not the author. {292} In this primary fact are revealed the two primary objects of human knowledge: on the one side the human being himself, the individual person that feels and perceives, that feels himself and perceives himself; on the other side, the external world that is felt and perceived: the subject and the object, (the _moi_ and the _non-moi_.) Such is the twofold field, at the beginning of his intellectual existence, opened to the knowing faculty of man.

In each of these fields, whether the human being makes himself or whether he makes the external world the object of his contemplation, he proceeds by the same method; he considers particular facts, classes these under more general facts which serve as their summary, and recognizes laws that govern them, these laws being themselves facts. When this method of observation and of generalization is applied to the outer world, understanding by that world the human body also, it gives birth to the sciences of physics and of physiology. {293} When such method is applied to the human being, regarded as distinct from the body in which he lives and by which he acts, it gives birth to the science of psychology, logic, and morals. It is not here my intention to propose a classification of the sciences, but only to determine the domain of science properly so called--that is to say, the field in which the human mind by observation gets directly at facts and at the laws of facts.

Philosophers, in their study of man and of the world, do not sufficiently consult language, the general language, the common language, that instinctive expression of the activity of the human mind. I interrogate our native language upon the question which now occupies me, and I find it reflecting the greatest light. It has, to express the results of the intellectual process which takes place in man, when regarded as the spectator of the universe and of himself, many different words: "connaître," "savoir," "croire," "connaissance," "science," "croyance," "foi." {294} These are not mere different names to express the same idea and the same fact, they are signs of different facts and of diverse states of the human soul. If we interrogate the languages of civilized nations, ancient or modern, we find in all of them, with more or less abundance, precision or subtlety, a similar variety of terms corresponding to a similar diversity of facts.

Talleyrand said once in the chamber of Peers, "There is somebody who has more intellect than Napoleon, more intellect than Voltaire; that somebody is the Public." I also say, there is a more profound observer than Bacon, a greater philosopher than Kant; it is mankind. Mankind is right when it distinguishes in its languages knowledge from science and from belief, science from belief and from faith. Bossuet wrote a book entitled "De la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même;" the idea would never have occurred to him of entitling it "De la science de Dieu et de soi-même;" it would have shocked his good sense as much as his piety. {295} The child believes the smile and the speech of its mother; in its belief there is certainly no scientific appreciation (no science) of the relations which unite it to its mother, and of the reasons which make it believe in her. Knowledge, science, belief, and faith, are facts essentially distinct, although all equally natural to the human soul; and it is impossible to confound them, to take one for the other, to annul one in favor of the other, or to attempt to reduce them to one term, without ignoring realities, and falling into enormous errors.

Such has been the constant error of M. Auguste Comte, and such is the radical vice of Positivism. M. Comte ignores the natural and permanent diversity in the intellectual states through which a man may pass in his ardent pursuit of truth. He refuses here to recognize any state as legitimate and definitive except the scientific state. He regards intuitive knowledge and instinctive belief as preparatory and transitory states, states without any rational authority; as, in short, simple steps on the way to that scientific state which alone sets man in possession of the truth. {296} Positivism is thus led to extend the pretensions of science beyond its proper domain, that is, beyond the finite world, its facts and its laws; and as science finds itself incapable of observing and of defining infinity, Positivism is, perforce, reduced either to deny infinity, or to declare infinity absolutely inaccessible to the human mind, and so to pass it over in silence.

This negation discovers another immense error of the school and of its chief. Convinced, and with reason, that the observation of facts is the natural and constant process of the human understanding in its labor after knowledge, M. Auguste Comte has ill understood, and incompletely understood, the results of this labor. He failed to perceive that it was observation itself, carried on and accomplished by the process, no less natural and no less legitimate, of induction, which was revealing to the mind its peculiar facts and its peculiar laws, as well as the facts and the laws of the external world, within which that mind is placed. {297} M. Comte ended by ignoring or denying the elements _à priori_ of human knowledge; that is to say, the universal and necessary principles by which man raises himself to God, and has relations with God. Thus M. Comte mutilates the human mind, because he fails to observe it and to recognize it in its entirety.

He is impelled by his system to another and still more serious mutilation of human nature. After having declared matter, its forces and its laws, to be the single object of human knowledge, and these laws to be inherent in matter, eternal and invariable, what is to be said of human liberty? What place is to be assigned to human liberty in this world, in which it is powerless to create anything or to change anything, and in which there exists no power from which it can demand anything or obtain anything? {298} Evidently, in such a system human liberty is a chimera, an idle luxury of human nature; man, with all his faculties, has nothing to do but to study matter carefully, its forces and its laws, to adapt himself to them, and to make the best use he can of them, with a view to his welfare and to the satisfaction of his desires. Fatalism is the law of man as of the world within which he lives!