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J
THE
POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY
OF
AUGUSTE COMTE.
FBKBLT TSAKBLATED AND COKDBKBED
BT
HARRIET MARTINEAU
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOLUME n.
LONDON : JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STBAND.
MSOCCLm.
^ 6r. /'. 4^c7.
VBIVTBD BT
JOHN BOWASD TAYLOB, LITTLB QVEBN BTBSST,
Lxircoiv't nnr vzsldb.
CONTENTS.
BOOK VI. SOCIAL PHYSICS.
CHAPTER I.
irSOESBITT Aim OPPOBTXnfEKBSB OF TUIS WW SGIEirGI.
Page
Proposal of the subject 2
Conditioiis of Order and Pkx>gress ..••... 8
The theological polity 5
Criterion of social doctrine 6
Failure of the Theological polity ....... 7
llie Metaphysical polity 10
BeoomeB obstmctire 12
Dogina of Liberty of Conscience 13
Dogma of Equality 16
Dogma of the Sovereignty of the People 17
Dogma of National Independence 18
Inconsistency of the Metaphysical doctrine 18
Notion of a state of Natore 19
Adhesion to the worn-out 20
Becorrence to war 21
Principle of Political Centralization 22
The Stationary doctrine 25
Dangers of the critical period 28
Intellectual anarchy 28
Destraction of public morality 80
PriTate morality . • . . 81
Political corruption 84
Low aims of political questions ..••... 36
Fatal to Progress 87
Fatal to Order 88
▼OL« n. b
Vl CONTENTS.
Incompetence of political leaden 39
Advent of the Positive Philosopliy .41
Logical coherence of the doctrine 4S
Its effect on Order 44
Its effect on Progress ^ 4S
Anarchical tendencies of the scientific class 50
Conclusion 51 '
CHAPTEE n.
PRINCIPAL PHILOSOPEIOAX ATTEMPTS TO CONSTITUTE A
SOCIAL SCIENCS.
History of Social Science 52
Aristotle's " Politics" 55
Montesquieu 56
Condorcet 58
Political economy 60
Growth of historical study 65
. . CHAPTEE ni.
CHABACTSBISTICS OF THE POSITIVE METHOD IN ITS APPLICA- TION TO SOCIAL PHENOMENA.
. « • •
Infantile ptate of social science 68
The Belative supers.eding the Absolute 69
Presumptuous character of the existing political spirit . . .71
Prevision of sojcial phenomena 73
Spirit of Sociali Sciepce 74
Statical study « .75
Social Organization , 76
Political and social qpncurrence 77
Interconnection of 1^ social organism 79
Ordfr of statical study 82
Dynamical study . 83
Social continuity ..... 83
Produced by natural laws 84
Notion of Human perfectibility . . .87
Limits of ^pohtical aption 89
Social phenomena^ modifiable . 90
Order of modifying influences •••.... 92
Means of Inve^tigaUon in Social Science 95
CONTENTS. Vll
Direct Means . . 96
Ohserration 96
Experiment 100
Comparison . . . ' 101
Comparison, with, inferior a9imals 102
Compi^rison of cQ-existing states, of society . . . . . 103
Comparison, of OQnsecutiTe states . . . . 105
Promise of p^ foarth method of investigation . . . . . 110
, . . . CHAPTER IV.
BSLATIO^ OF SOOIOLOOY TO THE OTHER DEPA.BTMEKTS OP
P08ITITE PHILOSOPHY.
Belation to Biology * 112
Selation to'InoTganicphiloBophy 115
Man's action on the external world ' . ' . ' . . 118
Necessary Education ' . * 119
Mathematical prrparation ' . ' . ' 119
Pretended theory of chances 120
Reaction of Sociology 121
As to doctrine •.•.•.•..' 122
As to Method .'...'.' 123
SpecobitiTe rank of S^iology 125
CHAPTER V.
SOCIJLL STATICS, OB THIQORT OF THE BPONTANEOITS OBDER OF
HUMAir SOCIETY.
Three aspects 127
1. The Indiridnol 127
2. The Family 132
Hie Sexual. relation ... 134
The Psrentol relation. 137
3. Society 140
Distribation of employments ....... 142
Inconreniences . 143
Bssis of the tme theory of government 144
Elementary subordination 145
Tendency qf society to gOYemment 147
TIU CONTENTS.
CHAPTEB VL
SOCIAL BTNAHICB; OB THEOBT OT THE NATITBAL PB0GBS88 07
HITMAN SOOIXTT.
Soientdfio view of Human Progression • . . • . 149
Course of Man's social development 160
Bate of progress 161
JBtmui 163
Duration of human life . • 162
Increase of Population 164
The order of evolution .••••••• 166
Law of the Three Periods 168
The Theological period 169
Intellectual influence of the Theological philosophy . 161
Social influences of the Theological philosophy .... 164
Institution of a speculative class 166
The Positive stage 167
Atteinpted union of the two philosophies 168
The Metaphysical Period 171
Co-existence of the three Periods in the same mind . • • 173
Corresponding material development ...... 173
Primitive military life 174
Primitive Slavery 176
The Military rigime provisional 176
A£Snity between the Theological and Military rigime . . 176
Affinity between the Positive and Industrial spirit . . • 178
Intermediate r/yiJiM 180
CHAPTEB VII.
FBSFABATION 01* THE HISTOBICAIi QUESTION. — 7IB8T THEOLOGI- CAL PHASE : ITETICHIBM. — BEOnniriir& OF THE THEOLOGICAL
AITD MILITABY SYSTEM.
Limitations of the analysis 181
Abstract treatment of History 183
Abstract inquiry into laws • 184
Co-ezistence of successive states 186
Fetichism 186
Starting-point of the human race 186
Belation of Fetichism to Morals 190
To Language • . • . • 190
CONTSNTS. IX
A
Pag
To Intellect . . 191
To Society. . . 192
Astrolatiy . . . .193
Belation of Feticbisia to human knowledge .... 194
To ^a fine arts 195
To Industry 195
Political influence 197
Institation of Agriculture ........ 199
Protection to products 200
Transition to Polytheism 202
The Metaphysical spirit traceable 205
CHAPTER Vni.
< a «
5EC02n) PHASE! POLYTHEISM. — DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEOLO- GICAL AND MILITABT SYSTEM.
True sense of Polytheism 208
Its operation on ihe human Mind 209
Polytheistic Science 210
Polytheistic Art . . . .213
Polytheistic Industry . . 220
Social attributes ^f Polytheism 221
Polity of Polytheism 221
Worship 223
Cirilijjation by War . . . * . • 223
Sacerdotal sanctions 225
Two characteristics of the polity 226
Slavery 226
Concentration of spiritual and temporal power .... 228
Morality of. Polytheism 231
Moral efiects of Shtrery 231
Subordination of morality to polity 232
Personal morality 234
Social morality 234
Domestic morality 235
Three phases of Polytheism 236
"Die Egyptian, or theocratic 237
Caste 237
The Greek, or intellectual . . . . . .241
Science • 243
Ihilosophy 245
b 3
CONTSNT8.
The iKomaa, or Military 246
Conquest 248
Morality 248
Intellectual development ...••••• 249
Preparation for monotheiam ^ • . ^ 260
The Jews .253
CHAPTEE IX.
AGE OF H0N0THET8H. — MODITIOATIOK OF THE THEOLOGICAL AKI)
lilLITABT BTBTSIC.
Catholiciamy the form 256
Principle of political rule 257
The great problem 260
Separation of apiritual and temporal power 261
Function of each 263
The speculatiTe class 263
The CathoUc system 264
Ecclesiastical organization 266
Elective principle 266
Monastic Institutions 267
Special education of the clergy 267
Bestriction of inspiration 268
Ecclesiastical celibacy . . . , 269
Temporal sovereignty of the Popes 270
Educational function 272
Dogmatic conditions 274
Dogma of exclusive salvation 275
Of the Fall of Man 276
OfPurgatory 276
Of Christ's divinity 276
Of the Eeal Presence 277
Worship 277
Significance of controversies 277
Temporal organization of the rigime 278
The Germanic invasions 278
Bise of Defensive system . 279
Of territorial independence 280
Slavery converted into serfage ....... 281
Intervention of the Church throughout 281
Institution of chivalry 283
^
CONTENTS. XI
Page
Operation of the Feadal syBtem ' 284
Moral aspect of the r^ffime • 284
Bise of Morality oyer Polity 285
Sonree of moral inflnence of Catholicism 286
Moral types 289
Fenonji morality under CatholiciBm 290
Domeatio . • . 291
Social 292
InteUectoalaapect of the r^(7»fli« 294
riuloaophy 295
Sdeno^ 296
Art 297
Industry 298
Phnrisional nature of the r^^ime . 299
Division between Natural and Moral philosophy .... 300
The Metaphysical spirit 300
Temporal decline 302
Conclusion 303
CHAPTER X.
lUTAPHTBICAIi BTATB, AJSD CBITIOAL PSBIOB OF MODEBK SOCEETT.
Conduct of the inquiry 304
Necessity of a transitional state 306
Its commencement 306
Division of the critical period 308
Causes of spontaneous decline 308
Decline under negative doctrine 310
Chancter of the proyisional philosophy 311
Christian period of the doctrine 812
Deistical period 312
Organs of the doctrine 314
Scholasticism 315
The Legists 316
Period of spontaneous spiritual decline -317
Spontaneous temporal decline 319
Time character of the Eeformation 321
The Jesuits 323
final decay of Catholidsm 324
Yiees of Protestantism 326
Temponl dictatorship 326
XU CONTENTS.
PtC»
Boyal and Aristocratic 327
Brise of Ministerial function 329
Military decline 330
Hise of Diplomatic fiinction 332
Intellectual influence of Protestantism 333
Catholic share in Protestant results 336
Jansenism ; Quietism 336
Moral Influence of ProtestantlBm 337
Three stages of dissolution 339
Lutheranism 339
Calvinism 339
Socinianism 339
Quakerism . 340
Political revolutions of Protestantism 340
Holland; England; America ...... 340, 341
Attendant errora 342
Subjection of spiritual power 342
Moral. changes under Protestantism 344
Stage of full development of the Critical doctrine . . . 345
Protestantism opposed to progress 346
The negative philosophy 347
Three periods of the negative philosophy 349
Systematized 350
Hobbes 350
Its intellectual character 350
Its moral character 351
Its political character 352
Its propagation 353
School of Voltaire 356
Its political action 358
School of Eousseau 358
The Economists 360
Attendant evils 360
CHAPTER XI.
BISK OF THE ELEHEKTS OF THE POSITIVE STATE. — PEEPABATION
FOB SOCIAL BEOBQAXIZATION.
Date of modem history 363
Kise of new elements 364
Philosophical order of employments 365
Classifications . . . 366
CONTENTS. Xm
Fiig0
Order of 80006881011 367
Ths Industbial Moyxmbht 369
Bbrth of political Hberty 373
CliBncteii8tic8 of the Indiutrial morement 374
Penonal effect 374
Domestic effect ; • . 376
Sodal effect 376
Indastnal policy 378
Bdation to Catholicinn 379
Bebtion to the temporal aathoiity 879
AdminiBtration 880
Iliiee periods 880
Plud armies 881
Biae of paUic credit • 881
Political alliances 382
Kechanical inrentions 382
Hie Compass ; Fire-arms ; Printing 382, 383
Maritime discovery 385
Second period 386
Colonial system 387
SlaTery 388
Third period 389
Finslsabordinationof the Military spirit 389
Spread of Industry 390
Thb Ihtslxactual Moybmsht 392
The asihetic development 392
iBteUectual Originality 394
Belationof Arttolndnstiy 396
Critical character of Art 398
Belrograde character 399
Belationof Art to politics 401
Spread of Art 404
The scientific derelopment 406
Nevrhirth of science 406
Belation to Monotheism 407
Astrcdogy; Alchemy 410
Fixit modem phase of progress 412
Seeond phase 413
Filiation of discoveries 416
Belation of scienoe to old philosophy 415
Galileo 416
Sodal relations of science 417
XIV CONTENTS.
I
Third phase . 4.18
Bektionfl of Discoveriea 419
Stage of speciality . . 420
The philosophical deYelopment 421
Eeasoix and Faith . . . . . . . . . • • • 4^1
Bacon and Pescartes . . . . • • 424
Political philosophy ... . • • 427
The Scotch School 428
Political philosophy . . . 428
Idea of Progression • • 429
Gaps to be supplied . ... .... . . . 430
Inlndostxy 430
InArt 433
In Philosophy 432
In Science . . . 433
Existing needs 433
CHAPTER XII.
BETIEW OF THE EEVOLrTIOI^ABT CBI8I8.— ^ASCtBTAnnCENT OF THE EINAL TENDENCY OF MODEBN BOCIETT.
France first revolutionized . . . . . . • • 434
Precursory events .•.••• 435
First stage.*— The Constituent Assembly 43Q,
Second stage. — The National Convention 437
Alliance of foes • . . . . • 438
Constitutional attempt . . ■ 441
Military ascendancy . • 441
Napoleon Bonaparte ...••• • • • • 443
Restoration of the Bourbons 444
Fall of the Bourbons ... 446
The next reign . . . • 446
Extension of the movement . . . • • • • • 447
Completion of the Theological decay 448
Decay of the Military system 450
Recent Industrial progress . 463
Recent ^Esthetic progress 464
Recent Scientific progress 465
Abuses 467
Recent Philosophical progress . . • • • • * • 4^2
The law of evolution ...•'••••• 465
CONTENTS.
XV
Pago
Specolatiye preparadon .-.'.< 466
The spiritual authority . . - . . * . - . . 467
Its Educational function ..-.'.*. 473
Regeneration of Moralit^r .-..'..'. 474
International duty . .'.... . 475
Baaisof Aaaent - . 477
The Temporal authority • 478
Public and private function . * . . « . . 479
Principle of co-ordination . • . ... . 480
Speculative daaaea highest . . 481
The Practical classes 482
PriTileges and oompenaationB • . • . • 482
Practical privacy .-..•.•.•.•.•. . 484
Phustical freedom 485
Popular claims 485
Beciprocal effects 487
Pftparatoiy stage * 488
Promotion of Order and Progress 489
National participation 491
France; Italy; Germany; England; Spain 492-494
Co-operation of Thinkers . . ' . * 495
Summary of results imder the Sociological theory 495
CHAPTEB Xin.
FIKAL E8TIMATS OF TH£ POSI!]^rV£ METHOD
Principle of Unity Which element shall prevail FiTBt general Conclusion The Mathematical elemenli The Sociological element Solves antagonisms Spirit of the Method. . Nature of the Method Inquiiy into hiws Accordance with common ^ense Conception of Natural laws Logical method , .
Scientific method
• • •
Stability of opinions . . Destination of the Method .
. 497
. 498
. 498
. 500
. 503
. 507
. 510
. 511
. 511
. 512
. 513
. 516
. 517
. 519
. 520
XYl CONTENTS.
The Individual 520
TheSace 621
SpeculatiTe life • 522
Practiciil life 528
liberty of metliod 524
Extension of the positiye method 525
Abstract of concrete Science 526
Belations of phases 528
Malliematics •••••.••.. 528
Astronomy 529
Physics and Chemistry 530
Biology 531
Sociology • • • • • 532
CHAPTBE XIV.
•
B8TIHATE OF THX BBSXTLTB OIP POBITIYX DOOTBimS IK ITS
PBEPABATOBT STAOB.
The Mathematical element 536
Application to Sociology 637
The Astronomical element 539
The Physical 540
The Chemical 542
The Biological 543
The Sociological . . , . 545
CHAPTEE XV.
ESTIMATE OP THE EIKAL ACTION OF THE P08ITITE PHILOSOPHY.
The scientific action 649
Abstract speculation 550
Concrete research 651
The moral action 662
Personal morality ^ 653
Domestic morality 664
Social morality 554
Political action 666
Double goyemment 666
The flDsthetic action 669
The Five Nations 661
^^H^^p«VPi««^iViH«m!
THE
POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY
OP
AUGUSTE COMTE.
BOOK YI.
SOCIAL PHYSICS.
■♦■
CHAPTER I.
NECESSITY AND OPPORTUNENESS OE THIS NEW SCIENCE.
In the five foregoing parts of this work, our investigation proceeded on an ascertained and undisputed scientific basis ; and our business was to exhibit the progress made in each science ; to free it from entanglement with the ancient philo- sophy ; and to show what frirther improvements might be an- ticipated. Our task is a diflerent, and a much harder one, in the case of the sixth and last science that I am about to treat of. The theories of Social science are still, even in the minds of the best thinkers, completely implicated with the theologico- metaphysical philosophy ; and are even supposed to be, by a &tal separation firom nil other science, condemned to remain 80 involved for ever. The philosophical procedure which I have undertaken to carry through becomes more difficult and bold, from this point onwards, without at all changing its natmre or object ; and it must so far present a new character as it must henceforth be employed in creating a wholly new order of scientific conceptions, instead of jud^ng, arranging, and improving such as already existed.
VOL. II. B
2 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
It is not to be expected that this new science can be at once raised to a level mth eve^ the most imperfect of those which we have been reviewing. All that can be rationally proposed in our day is to recognize the character of positivity in social as in all other science, and to ascertain the chief bases on which it is founded ; but this is enough, as I hope to show, to satisfy our most urgent intellectual necessities, and even the most imperative needs of immediate social practice. In its scientific connection with the rest of this work, all that I can hope to do is to exhibit the general considerations of the case,
so as to resolve the intellectual anarchy which ^^JJ°^?J^^ is the main source of our moral anarchy first,
and then of the political, which I shall treat of only through its originating causes. The extreme novelty of such a doctrine and method renders it neceasaiy, before entering upon the immediate subject, to set forth the im- portance of such a procedure, and the Utility of the chief attempts which have been indirectly made to investigate social science. However unquestionable may be the need of such science, and the obligation to discover it, the best minds have not yet attained a point of view fix,m which they can estimate its depth and breadth and true position. In its nascent state every science is implicated with its corresponding art; and remains implicated with it, as we have seen, the longer in pro- portion to the complexity of the phenomena concerned. If biological science, which is more advanced than social, is still too closely connected with the medical art, as we have seen that it is, we cannot be surprised that men are insensible to the value of all social speculations which are not immediately connected with practical affairs. We cannot be surprised at any obstinacy in repelling them, as long as it is supposed that by rejecting them, society is preserved from chimerical and mischievous schemes : though experience has abundantly shown that the precaution has never availed, and that it does not now prevent our being daily invaded by the most illusoiy proposals on social matters. It is in deference to as much as is reasonable in this apprehension that I propose to state, first, how the institution of a science of Social Physics bears upon the principal needs and grievances of society, in its present deplorable state of anarchy. Such a representation may per- haps convince men worthy of the name of statesmen that there is a real and eminent utility in labours of this kind.
EXISTING STATE OF SOCIETY. 3
worthy of the anxious attention of men who profess to devote themselves to the task of resolving the alarming revolutionary constitution of modem societies.
Prom the point of view to which we have been raised by our study of the preceding sciences^ we are able to survey the social situation of our own time in its fullest extent and broadest light ; and what we see is that there is a deep and widely-spr^ anarchy of the whole intellectual system^ which has been in this state of disturbance during the long inter-* regnum^ resulting from the decline of the theologico-metaphy- dod philosophy. At the present time^ the old philosophy is in a state of imbecility ; while the development of the positive philosophy^ though always proceeding, has not yet been bold, broad, and genex^ enough to comprehend the mental govern- ment of the human race. We must go back through that inter- regnum to understand truly the present floating and contra- dictory state of aU great social ideas, and to percdve how society is to be delivered from the peril of dissolution, and brought under a new organization, more consistent and moro progressive than that which once rested on the theological philosophy. When we have duly observed the powerlessness of conflicting political schools, we shall see the necessity of introducing an entirely new spirit into the organization of society^ by which these useless and passionate struggles may be put an end to, and society led out of the revolutionary state in which it has been tossed about for three centuries past.
The ancients used to suppose Order and Pro- Conditions of gross to be irreconcilable : but both are indispen- Order and sable conditions in a state of modem civilization ; ^^fi?"»»- and their combination is at once the grand difficulty and the main resource of every genuine political system. No real order can be established, and still less can it last, if it is not fiilly compatible with progress : and no great progress can be ac- complished if it does not tend to the consolidation of order. Any conception which is so devoted to one of these needs as to prejndioe the other, is suro of rojection, sooner or later, as mistaking the nature of the political problem. Therofore, in positive social science, the chief featuro must be the union of these two conditions, which wiU be two aspects, constant and insqiarable, of the same principle. Throughout the whole vange of science, thus far, we have seen that the conditions
B 2
4 POSITIVB PHILOSOPHY.
of combination and of progress are originally identical : and I trust we sliall see, after looking into social science in the same way, that ideas of Order and Progress are, in Social Physics, as rigorously inseparable as the ideas of Organization and Life in Biology ; fiK)m whence indeed they are, in a scientific view, evidently derived.
The misfortune of our actual state is that the two ideas are set up in radical opposition to each other, — the retrograde spirit having directed all efforts in favour of Order, and anarchical doctrine having arrogated to itself the charge of Social Progress ; and, in this state of things, the reproaches exchanged between the respective parties are only too well merited by both. In this vicious circle is society now con- fined ; and the only issue from it is by the undisputed prepon- derance of a doctrine equally progressive and hierarchical. The observations which I have to make on this subject are applicable to all European societies, which have, in fact, all undergone a common disoi^anization, though in different de- grees, and with various modifications, and which cannot be separately reorganized, however they may be for a time re- strained ; but I shall keep the French nation chiefly in view, not only because the revolutionary state has been most con- spicuous in them, but because they are, in all important re- spects, better prepared, in spite of appearances, than any other, for a Irue reorganization.
Among the infinite variety of political ideas which appear to be striving in society, there are in fact only two orders, the mingling of which in various proportions occasions the appa- rent midtiplicity : and of these two, the one is really only the negation of the other. If we wish to understand our own condition, we must look at it as the result and last term of the general conflict undertaken, for three centuries past, for the gradual demolition of the old political system. So regard- ing it, we see that whereas, for above half a century, the irre- mediable decay of the old system has proved the necessity of founding a new one, we have not been sufficiently aware of the need to have formed an original and direct conception, adequate to the purpose ; so that our theoretical ideas have remained inferior to our practical necessities, which, in a healthy state of the social organism, they habitually antici- pate, to prepare for their regular and peaceable satisfaction. Though the political movement could not but have changed.
ANTAGONISM OF PRINCIPLES. 5
its nature^ from that time forward^ becoming organic instead of critical^ yet, for want of a basis in science, it has proceeded on the same old ideas that had actuated the past straggle ; and we have witnessed the spectacle of defenders and assailants alike endeavouring to convert their old weapons of war into instraments of reoiganization, without suspecting the inevit- able failure which must ensue to both parties. Such is the state that we find ourselves in now. All ideas of order in the political world are derived from the old doctrine of the theo- logical and military system, r^arded especially in its catholic and feudal constitution : a doctrine which from our point of view in this work, represents the theological state of social science : and, in the same way, all ideas of progress are still derived from the purely n^ative philosophy which, issuing from protestantism, assumed its final form and development in the last century, and which, appUed to social afiairs, con- stitutes the metaphysical state of politics. The difierent dasses of society range themselves on the one side or the other, according to their inclination for conservatism or amelio- ration. With every new uprising of a social difficulty, we see the retrograde school proposing, as the only certain and uni- versal remedy, the restoration of the corresponding part of the old politiod system ; and the critical school referring the evil exclusively to the destruction of the old system not being complete. We do not often see the two doctrines presented without modification. They so exist only in purely speculative minds. But when we see them in monstrous alliance, as we do in all degrees of existing political opinion, we cannot but know that such an alliance cannot yield any virtue which its elements do not contain, and that it can only exhibit their mutaal neutralization. We must here, it is clear, regard the theolc^cal and the metaphysical polities separately, in the first place, that we may afterwards understand their present antagonism, and form an estimate of the fritile combinations into which men have endeavoured to force them. Pernicious as the theological polity may be in our day, no true philosopher will ever forget that ^^*^^^' it aflTorded the beneficent guardianship under P° ^•
which the formation and earhest development of modem so- cieties took place. But it is equally incontestable that, for three centuries past, its influence among the most advanced nationa has been essentially retrograde, notwithstanding some
6 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY^
partial servioes. We need not go into any discassion of its doctrine^ in order to ascertain its powerlessness for fdture ser- vice : for it is plain that a polity that could not hold its ground before the natural progress of intelligence and of society can never again seive as a basis of social order. The historical analysis which I shall have to offer of the causes that have dissolved the Catholic and feudal system will show, better than any argument, how radical and irretrievable is the decay. The theological school explains the fact, as far as it can, by fortuitous and, we might almost say, personal causes: and, when they will no longer suffice, resorts to its common suppo- sition, of a mysterious caprice of Providence which has allotted to social order a season of probation, of which no account can be given, either as to its date or its duration, or even its character. A contemplation of historical &cts however shows that all the great successive modifications of the theological and military system have, from the beginning and increasingly, tended to the complete elimination of a rigime which, by the fundamental law of social evolution, could never be more than provisional, however indispensable. And if any efforts to restore the system could achieve a temporary success, they would not bring back society to a normal state, but would merely restore the very situation which compelled the revolu- tionary crisis, by obliging it to set about the work of destruc- tion again, with more violence, because the rfgime has alto- gether ceased to be compatible with progress in the most essential respects. While avoiding all controversy on so plain a case, I must briefly present a new view which appears to me to point out the simplest and surest criterion of the value of any social doctrine, and which emphatically condemns the theological polity.
Regarded from the logical point of view, the CritOTionrf problem of our social reorganization seems to
me reducible to this one condition : to construct rationally a political doctrine which, in the whole of its active development, shall be always fully consequent on its own prin- ciples. No existing doctrines approach to a fulfilment of this condition: all contain, as indispensable elements, numerous and direct contradictions on the greater number of important points. It may be laid down as a principle that the doctrine which furnishes accordant solutions on the various leading questions of polity, without failing in this one respect in the
t-i' -■•r -m^ —
THE THEOLOGICAL FOLITT. 7
course of application^ mustj by this indirect test alone, be re- cc^nized as sufficiently adapted to reorganize society; since this intellectual reorganization must mainly consist in re-esta- blishing harmony in the troubled system of our social ideas. When such a r^eneration shall have been accomplished in an individual mind (and in that way it must begin), its generali- sation, sooner or later, is secure; for the number of minds cannot increase the difficulty of the intellectual convergence, but only defer the success. We shall hereafter find how great is the superiority of the positive philosophy in this view ; be- cause, once extended to social phenomena, it must connect the different orders of human ideas more; completely than could be done in any other way.
The accomplishment of this great logical con- pailuie of the ditioQ might be expected from the theological theological polity above all others, because its doctrine is pol- linated to co-ordinating a system so clearly defined by its long ^iplication, and so fully developed in all its essential parts, that it may well be supposed secure from all serious incon- sistency. The retrograde school accordingly extols habitually, as its characteristic attribute, the perfect coherence of its ideas, in contrast with the contradictions of the revolutionary school. Yet, though the theological polity is less inconsistent than the metaphysical, it shows a daily increasing tendency to conces- sions of the most radical importance, directly contrary to all its essential principles. This is evidence enough of the futility of a doctrine which does not even possess the one quality most spontaneously correspondent to its nature. The old political system is seen to be destroyed as soon as its most devoted ad- herents have lost the true general sentiment of it : and this may now be observed, not only in active practice, but among purely speculative minds of a high order, which are uncon- sdoualy modified by the irresistible influences of their age. If examples are desired, we need only bring the retrograde doc- trine into comparison with the elements of modem civiliza- tion. There can be no doubt that the development of the scienoes, of industry, and even of the fine arts, was historically the principal, though latent cause, in the first instance, of the irretrievable decline of the theological and military system. At present, it is the ascendency of the scientific spirit which preserves us from any real restoration of the theological spirit ; as, again, the industrial spirit, in its perpetual extension, con-
8 F08ITITB PHILOSOPHY.
stitates our best saf^uard against any serious recnrrence of the military or feudid spirit. Whatever may be the names given to our political struggles^ this is the real character of our social antagonism. Now^ amidst this state of things, do we hear of such a thing as any government, or even any school^ seriously proposing a systematic repression of sdenoe, industry and art ? Do not all powers (with an eccentric exception here and there) claim the honour of encouraging their progress? Here we have the first inconsistency of the retrograde polity, annulling its own project of a restoration of the past: and though the inconsistency is less apparent than some others, it must be regarded as the most decisive of all, because it is more universal and more instinctive than any other. Napoleon Bonaparte himself, the hero of retrogression in our time, set himself up, in all sincerity, as the protector of industry, art, and science. Purely speculative minds, though more easily separating themselves from any prevalent tendency, have es- caped no better from the influence of their times. How many have been the attempts, for instance, for two centuries past, on the part of some of the most eminent minds, to subordi- nate reason to faith, according to the theological formula; reason itself being made the supreme judge of such a submis- sion, and thus evidencing the contradictory character of the proposition I The most eminent thinker of the Catholic school, the illustrious De Maistre, bore involuntary testimony to the necessity of his time when he endeavoured, in his prin- cipal work, to re-establish the papal supremacy on historical and poUtical reasonings, instead of ordaining it by divine right, which is the only ground appropriate to such a doctrine, and the only ground he would have proposed in any age but one in which the general state of intelligence precluded such a plea. Instances like these may spare us further illustration.
As for more direct inconsistencies, more striking, though less profound, and comprehended within the present times, we see in every sect of the retrograde school a direct opposi- tion to some fundamental part of their common doctrine. Perhaps the only point on which there is now any unanimity in that school is in the consent to break up the very basis of the catholic and feudal system, by surrendering the division between the spiritual and temponu power; or, what comes to the same thing, acquiescing in the subordination of the spiri- tual to the tempond authority. In this respect, the kings are
■^
FATAL DIVISIONS. 9
showing themselves as revolutionary as their peoples; and the priests have ratified their own degradation^ in catholic coun- tries no less than protestant. If their desire is to restore the old system^ thei first step must be to unite the innumerable sects which have sprung out of the decline of Christianity : but every attempt of the sort has failed through the blind and obstinate determination of the governments to retain the su- preme direction of the theological power, the centralization of which they thus render impossible. Napoleon only showed an exaggerated copy^ in his violent 'inconsistencies, of what many princes had done before him : and after his fall, when the sovereigns of Europe united to set up a power in opposi- tion to revolutionary tendencies, they usurped the attributes of the old spiritual authority, and exhibited the spectacle of a high council composed of heretic chie&, and governed by a schismatic prince. After this, it was manifestly impossible to introduce the papal power intp the alliance, in any way what- ever. Such instances of the postponement of religious prin- ciples to temporal convenience are not new; but they show how the main idea of the old political system has ceased to preponderate in the minds of the very persons who imdertook to restore it. The divisions in the retrograde school have been of late apparent under all circumstances, whether of success or defeat. Any temporary success ought to rally all dissen- tients, in a school which boasts of the unity of its doctrine : yet, through a long course of years we have witnessed suc- cessive, and more and more serious schisms among the subdi- risions of the triumphant party. The advocates of Catholicism and those of feudality have quarrelled : and the latter have split into partisans of aristocracy and defenders of royalty. Under the oompletest restored supremacy, the schisms would only break out again, with more violence, through the incompati- bility of the existing social state with the old political system. The vague assent to its general principles which is yielded in a speculative sense, must give way in their application ; and every practical development must engender further divisions : and this is the scientific description of any theory which is incompatible with the facts.
When the retrograde party is reduced to the rank of an oppooition, it has recourse to the principles of the revolu- tinary doctrine. This has been the case repeatedly during he last three centuries, when that party has been put upon the
B 3
10 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHT.
defensive. Thus we see the Catholics in England^ and yet more in Ireland^ asserting the daim of liberty of conscienoe, while still clamouring for the repression of Protestantism in France^ Austria^ and elsewhere. Again, when the sovereigns of Europe invoked the aid of the peoples to put down Napo* Icon, they surrendered their retrograde doctrme^ and testified to the power of the critical, as that which was really influenc- ing civilized society, even though they were proposing, all the wMle, to efiect the restoration of the ancient polity. We have seen something even more wonderful since that struggle. We have seen the retrograde party taking possession of the whole body of critical doctrine, endeavouring to systematize it for its own uses, and sanctioning all its anarchical conse- quences ; trying to set up the catholic and feudal rSgime by ihe very means which have destroyed it; and believing that a mere change in the person of the sovereign would intercept the consequences of a political movement which they had done nothing to modify"^. This is simply a new way of sign- ing a political abdication, however the ability of those who do it may be extolled. — ^We need not look further for illustra- tions of the pregnant fact that a polity which is the type of unity and permanence has been fuU of schisms, and now con- tains elements directly incompatible with its fundamental prin- ciples ; and that, as when we find De Maistre reproadbing Bossuet with mistaking the nature of Catholicism, and then himself fiJling into inconsistencies, the party of Older is pro- posing to re-establish that which is not comprehended by its most illustrious defenders.
Turning now to the Metaphysical polity, we ^^P^y" must first observe and carefully remember that its
doctrine, though exclusively critical, and there- fore revolutionary, has still always had the virtue of being progressive, having, in fact, superintended the chief politick progress accompli^ed during the last three centuries, which must be, in the first instance, essentially n^ative. What this doctrine had to do was to break up a system which, having directed the early growth of the human mind and society, tended to protract that infantile period : and thus, the politi- cal triumph of the metaphysical school was a necessary pre- paration for the advent of the positive school, for which the
* This was written duxing the reign of Louis Philippe, and the administni- tion of M. Qiiizot.
T^E METAPHYSICAL POLITY, 11
task is exclusively reserved of terminating the revolutionary period by the formation of a system uniting Order with Pro- gress. Though the metaphysical system^ considered by itself^ presents a character of direct anarchy^ an historical view of it^ such as we shall take hereaJFl;er^ shows that^ considered in its origin^ and in its antagonism to the old system^ it constitutes a necessary provisional state^ and must be dangerously active till the new political organization which is to succeed it is ready to put an end to its agitations.
The passage fix)m one social system to another can never be continuous and direct. There is always a transitional state of anarchy which lasts for some generations at least ; and lasts the longer the more complete is the renovation to be wrought. The best political progress that can be made during such a period is in gradually demolishing the former system^ the foundations of which had been sapped before. While this inevitable process is going on^ the elements of the new system are taking form as political institutions^ and the reorganiza- tion is stimulated by the experience of the evils of anarchy. There is another reason why the constitution of the new system cannot take place before the destruction of the old ; tiiat without that destruction no adequate conception could be formed of what must be done. Short as is our life^ and feeble as is our reason^ we cannot emancipate ourselves from the influence of our environment. Even the wildest dreamers reflect in their dreams the contemporary social state: and much more impossible is it to form a conception of a true pohtical system^ radically difierent from that amidst which we hve. The highest order of minds cannot discern the charac- teristics of the coming period till they are close upon it ;. and before that^ the incrustations of the old system will have been pretty much broken away^ and the popular mind will have been used to the spectacle of its demolition. The strongest head of all antiquity is an example of this. Aristotle could not conceive of a state of society that was not foimded on slavery^ the irrevocable abolition of which took place some centuries after him. — ^These considerations are illustrative of our own times^ for which all former transition periods were merely a preparation. Never before was the destmed renova- tion so extensive and so thorough ; and never before^ there- fore, was the critical preparatory period so protracted and so ' perilous. For the first time in the history of the world, the reroiutionaiy action is attached to a complete doctrine of me-
12 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
thodical negation of all regular government. Such being the origin of the existing critical doctrine^ we can explain the ser- vices which that doctrine has hitherto rendered^ and the ob- stacles which it now opposes to the reorganization of modem society. We shall see hereafter how each of its principal dogmas has sprung out of some corresponding decay in the old social order; a decay which then proceeded all the faster for the opposition having become a dogma. The misfortune of the case Ues in the doctrine which was thus necessarily relative to the old system coming by degrees to be supposed absolute: but we may leave it to those who desire it to blame the political conduct of our fathers^ without whose energetic perseverance we should not have found ourselves at our present stage of progress^ or have been able to conceive of the better polity that is approaching. The absolute or me- taphysical spirit was necessary to direct the formation of the critical and anti-theological doctrine^ which needed all possible energy to overthrow the great ancient system ; and this energy could no otherwise be imparted to the dogmas of the critiod philosophy. The necessity and the fact of the case are ob- vious enough : but not the less must we deplore the conse- quence^— ^that the energy imparted to the anarchical princi- ple has gone on to impede the institution of the very political order for which it came to prepare the wav. When, in the natural course of events, any doctrine has become hostile to the purposes it was destined to serve, it is evidently done with ; and its end, or the close of its activity, is near. We have seen that the retrograde or theological polity has become as disturbing as the metaphysical or revolutionaiy : if we find also that the latter, whose office was to aid progress, has be- come obstructive, it is clear that both doctrines are worn out, and must soon be replaced by a new philosophy. — This condi- tion of the metaphysical poUty is a matter so serious that we must dwell upon it a little, to see how so provisional an influ- ence can have produced the appearance of a new and stable system.
The spirit of revolutionary polity is to erect into a perma- nency the temporary action which it prompts. For instance, being in antagonism with ancient order, its tendency is to re- present all government as being the enemy of Suctive ^^ society, and the duty of society to be to keep up
a perpetual suspicion and vigilance, restricting the activity of government more and more, in order to guard
METAPHYSICAL DOGMAS. 13
against its eBcroachmeiits^ so as to reduce it at length to mere functions of police^ in no way participating in the supreme direction of collective action and social development. This was the' inevitable action by which the social evolution was brought about : and it is our misfortune that it now remains as an obstacle to the reoi^anization that we need. As the process could not but occupy several centuries^ the power that ▼ronght it must needs be invested with something definitive and absolute in the popular view^ which cannot look far be- yond the present : and it was well that it was so ; for the old system could not have been deprived of its directing powers, if they had not been stripped off firom the governments, and assumed by the polity wluch had arisen to supersede them. Regarding the doctrine in a more special view, jy^^^ ^ it is dear that its most important principle is the liberty of right of firee inquiry, or the dogma of unbounded conecienoe. liberty of conscience; involving the immediate consequences of the Kberty of the press, or of any other mode of expression, and of communication of opinions. This is the rallying-point of the revolutionary doctrine, to which all orders of minds have come up, — ^the proud and the humble, the wise and the weak, — ^those whose other opinions were compatible with this dogma, and those who unconsciously held views of an opposite order. The impulse of this emancipation was irresistible; and the revolutionary contagion was, in this one respect, uni- veisa]. It is a chief characteristic of the mind of society in this century. The most zealous partisans of the theological polity are as apt as their adversaries to judge by their per- sonal knowledge ; and those who, in their writings, set up as defenders of spiritual government, recognize, like the revolu- tionists whom they attack, no other supreme authority than that of their own reason. Now if we look at what is the real ineaning of this dogma of the universal and absolute right of inquiry, we shall find that it is the mere abstract expression (such as is conunon in metaphysics) of the temporary state of unbounded liberty in which the human mind was left by the decay of the theological philosophy, and which must last till the social advent of the positive philosophy. Such an em- bodiment of the fact of the absence of intellectual regulation powerfully concurred in expediting the dissolution of the old system. The formula could not but appear absolute at the time, because no one could foresee the scope of the transi- tional state which it marked ; a state which is even now mis*-
14 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
taken by many enlightened minds for a definitive one. Nega- tive as we now see this dogma to be^ signifying release fix)m old authority while waiting for the necessity of positive science^ (a necessity which already puts liberty of conscience out of the question in astronomy and physics^ etc.^) the absolute character supposed to reside in it gave it energy to fulfil its revolution- ary destination ; enabled philosophers to explore the principles of a new organization ; and^ by admitting the right of all to a similar research^ encouraged the discussion which must pre- cede and effect the triumph of those principles. Whenever those principles shall have become established^ the right of free inquiry will abide within its natural and permanent limits : that is^ men will discuss^ under appropriate intellectual con- ditions^ the real connection of various consequences with tun- damental rules uniformly respected. Till then^ the opinions which will hereafter bring understandings into submission to an exact continuous discipline by embodying the principles of the new social order can appear only as simple individual thoughts^ produced in virtue of the right of firee inqidry ; since their final supremacy can result in no other way than from the voluntary assent of numbers^ after the freest discussion. I shall enter further into this subject hereafter : and what I have said wiU^ I hope^ prevent any one being shocked by my general appreciation of the revolutionary dogma of free in- quiry^ as it is plain that without it this book would never have been written.
Indispensable and salutary as it has been^ this dogma can never be an organic principle : and^ moreover, it constitutes an obstacle to reorganization, now that its activity is no longer absorbed by the demolition of the old political order. In any case, private or public, the state of inquiry can evidently be only provisional, indicating the condition of mind which pre- cedes and prepares for a final decision, towards which our rea- son is always tending, even when it is renouncing old princi- ples, in order to form new ones. It is taking the exception for the rule when we set up, as a natural and permanent state, the precarious situation which belongs to the period of transi- tion ; and we ignore the deepest necessities of human reason when we would protract that scepticism which is produced by the passage from one mode of belief to another, and which is, in our need of fixed points of conviction, a kind of morbid perturbation which cannot be prolonged beyond the corre- sponding crisis without serious danger. To be always exa-
DOGMA Of LIBEBTY OF CONSCIENCE. 15
mining and never deciding would be regarded as something like madness in private conduct : and no dogmatic consecra- tion of such conduct in all individuals could constitute any perfection of social order^ with regard to ideas which it is mudk more essential^ and much more difficult to establish beyond the reach of dispute. There are very few persons who consider themselves fit to sit in judgment on the astronomical^ physical, and chemical ideas which are destined to enter into social circulation ; and everybody is willing that those ideas should direct corresponding operations; and here we see the beginnings of intellectual government. Can it be supposed ibat the most important and the most delicate conceptions^ and those which by their complexity are accessible to only a small nimiber of highly-prepared understandings^ are to be aban- doned to the arbitrary and variable decisions of the least com- petent minds? K such an anomaly could be imagined per- manent^ a dissolution of the social state must ensue^ through the ever-growing divergence of individual understandings, de- livered over to their d^rderly natural impulses in the most vague and easily perverted of all orders of ideas. The specu- lative inertia common to most minds, and perhaps, to a cer- tain extent, the wise reserve of popular good sense, tend, no doubt, to restrict such political aberrations : but these are in- fluences too feeble to root out the pretension of every man to set himself up as a sovereign arbiter of social theories ; — ^a pre- teDsbn which every intelligeat man blames in othew, with a reservation, more or less explicit, of his own personal com- petency. Now the intelleotual reorganization cannot proceed amidst such a state of things, because the convergence of minds requires the renunciation by the greater number of their right of individual inquiry on subjects above their qua- lifications, and requiring, more than any others, a real and permanent agreement. Then again, the tmbridled ambition (^ ill-prepared intellects rushes in among the most complex and obscure questions : and these disturbances, though they must finally neutraUze each other, make terrible devastation in the iuterval ; and each one that is destroyed makes way for another ; so that the issue of these controversies is a perpetual aggravation of the intellectual anarchy.
No association whatever, even of the smallest number of individuals, and for the most temporary objects, can subsist without a certain degree of reciprocal confidence, intellectual
16 POSITIVE FHIL080FHT.
and morale among its members, each one of whom has inces^' santly to act upon views which he must admit on the faith of some one else. If it is so in this limited case, there is some- thing monstrous in proposing the opposite procedure in the case of the whole human race, each one of whom is at an extreme distance from the collective point of yiew, and is the last person of the whole number fit to judge of the rules by which his personal action should be directed. Be the intel- lectual development of each and all what it may, social order must ever be incompatible with a perpetual dis^Assion of the foundations of society. Systematic toleration can exist only with regard to opinions which are considered indifferent or doubtftd, as we see in that aspect of the revolutionary spirit which takes its stand on Protestantism, where the innumer- able Christian sects are too weak to pretend to spiritual do- minion, but where there is as fierce an intolerance about any common point of doctrine or discipline as in the Romish Church itself. And when the critical doctrine was, at the beginning of the French Revolution, supposed to be oi^anic, we know how the directors of the movement strove to obtain a general assent, voluntary or forced, to the dogmas of the revolutionary philosophy, which they regarded as the bases of social order, and therefore above controversy. We shall see hereafter what are the due limits of the right of free inquiry^ in a general way, and in regard to our own social period. It is enough to observe here that political good sense has adopted, to express the first requisite of all organization, that fine axiom of the Catholic Church; in necessary things, unity: in doubtful things, liberty : in all things, charity : — ^a maxim which admirably proposes the problem, without, however, suggesting the principles by which it must be solved, and that unity attained which would be a mere illusion if it did not re- sult, in the first instance, from free discussion.
The dogma which ranks next in importance
E^'STt ""^ ^ ^^^ ^^ *^ inquiry is that of Equality ; and ^ ^' in the same way, it is taken to be absolute when
it is only relative, and permanent, while it expresses merely the position of minds employed in breaking up the old system. It is an immediate consequence of liberty of conscience, which brings after it the most fundamental equality of all, — ^that of intelligence. The supposition of its being absolute was not less necessary in this case than the former : for, if all social
BOOMA OF EQUALITY. 17
dassification had not been systematically disallowed^ the old ooiporations would have preserved their sway^ from the im- possibility of their conceiving of any other classification. To this day we have no sufficiently distinct notion ourselves of such an arrangement as would be truly appropriate to a new state of civiUzation. When the dogma of equality had achieved the overthrow of the old polities^ it could not but become an obstacle to any reorganization^ because its activity must then be directed against the bases of any new classifica- tion whatever ; for^ of course^ any classification must be in- compatible with the equality that was claimed for all. Since the abolition of slavery^ there has been no denial^ from any quarter, of the right of every man (innocent of strong anti- social conduct) to expect from all others the fulfilment of the conditions necessary to the natural development of his per- sonal activity, suitably directed : but beyond that undisputed right, men cannot be made, because they are not, equal, nor even equivalent ; and they cannot therefore possess, in a state of association, any identical rights beyond the great original one. The simple physical inequalities which fix the atten- tion of superficial observers are much less marked than in- tellectual and moral differences; and the progress of civi- lization tends to increase these more important differences, as much as to lessen the inferior kind : and, applied to any assemblage of persons thus developed, the dogma of equality becomes anarchical, and directly hostile to its original desti- nation.
The second result of the dogma of liberty of pogm» of the ooDscienoe is the Sovereignty of the people : and, Sorereigntj of like the former, it wrought at first the double *^® People. service of destroying the old rigime and preparing for a new one. Till the final system could be constituted, the only safisgnard against the renewed supremacy of the old one was in the setting up of provisional institutions, which the peoples claimed the absolute right to change at will. It was only by means of the doctrine of popular sovereignty that that succes- sion of political endeavours could take place which must pre- cede the installation of a true system of government, whenever the intellectual renovation of society shall be sufficientiy ad- vanced to settle the conditions and natural extent of the diflbrent sovereignties. Meanwhile, in discharging its func- tion, this dogma proves its revolutionary character before our
20 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
stitute for a decrepit system a more ancient and decrepit sy- stem stilly but^ for that very reason^ nearer to the primitive type. Instead of a worn-out Catholicism^ they proposed a sort of metaphysical polytheism^ at the same time that^ in polity^ they desired to replace the Middle Age system by the radioaJly iiiferior regime of the Greeks and Romans. The very elements of modem civilization, the only possible germs of a new social state, were endangered by barbaric condem- nation of the industrial ai^d artistic advancement of modem society, in the name of primitive virtue and simplicity. Even the scientific spirit, which is the only principle of intellectual organization, was stigmatized as tending to institute an aris- tocracy of knowledge which was as incompatible as any other aristocracy with the original equality that was to be set up again. Lavoisier was the martyr of this state of opinion; and it is his case that will illustrate the period to our remotest posterity. It is useless for the metaphysical school to repre- sent such results as portentous or eccentric incidents. Their legitimate descent from the revolutionary polity is evident and certain; and we should witness a repetition of them if it were possible (which it is not) for this polity to become prevalent again. The tendency to social retrograidation, under the idea of returning to the primitive state, so thoroughly belongs to the metaphysical polity, that the new sects who, in their brief day, have most haughtily censured the revolutionary imitation of Greek and Roman types, have unconsciously reproduced the same error in a far more marked way by striving to re- establish the confusion between the temporal and spiritual power, and extolling, as the highest social perfection, a return to the Egyptian or Hebrow theocracy, founded on fetichism, disguised under the name of pantheism.
As the metaphysical doctrine was the issue of ^^^K)i!t. *^« theological, and destined to modify it, it was
a matter of course that it should vindicate the general foimdations of the old system, even after having de- stroyed its chief conditions of existence. Every reformer, for three centuries past, while urging the development of the cri- tical spirit further than his predecessors, assumed to set im- mutable bounds to it ; deriving his limitations fix>m the old system. All the absolute rights proclaimed as the basis of the new doctrine were guaranteed by a sort of religious consecra- tion, in the last resort ; and this was indispensable, if their
■*■ J
IN ALL APPLICATIONS. 21
efficacy was not to be impaired by continual discussion. It was always with an invocation of the principles of the old polity on their lips that the reformers proceeded to demolish the spiritual and temporal institutions in which they Were em- bodiei ; and the whole rigime fell through the conflict of its chief elements. Hence there arose^ in the intellectual region^ a Christianity more and more attenuated or simplified^ and re- duced at last to that vague and impotent theism which^ by a monstrous conjunction of terms^ metaphysicians have entitled Natttral BeUgton, as if all religion were not necessarily super- natural. The pretension to direct a social reorganization by this strange conception is merely a recurrence to the old prin- ciple that social order must rest on a theological basis. This is now the most fatal inconsistency of the revolutionary school ; and while armed with such a concession, the advocates of Ca- tholicism will always have an incontestable logical superiority over the irrational defamers of the old faith^ who proclaim the need of a religious organization, and yet disallow all the necessary conditions. It is clear that society would be con- demned to a perpetuity of the intellectual anarchy which cha- racterizes it at present if it were to be for ever made up of minds which a^nit the want of a theological regime on the one hand^ while, on the other, they reject its principal condi- tions of existence; and those who thus acknowledge them- selves incapable have no right to discredit the only rational way to reoi^anization which remains open, and by which every other order of human conceptions has been happily retrieved and established. The social application of the positive philo- sophy remains as the resource, and the only resource, after the fiulure of both the preceding systems.
In its temporal application the inconsistency of the metaphysical doctrine is as conspicuous as ^Becnrrenoeto in the spiritual. It strives to preserve, if not the feudal, at least the military spirit, in which the feudal had its origin. The French nation did, it is true, in their revolution- ary enthusiasm, proscribe war £rom that time forward : but when the armed coalition of the retrograde forces of Europe brought out an immense amount of energy for self-defence, for the sake of the progressive movement, the sentiment, which was grounded on no principle, soon disappeared, and France was distingmshed by the most conspicuous military activity, invested with its most oppressive characteristics. The
22 POSITIVE PHJL080PHT.
military spirit is in fact so congenial with the critical doctrine that any pretext will serve for its indulgence : as for instance^ when it is proposed to regulate by war the action of the more advanced nations upon the less advanced. The true logical consequence of this would be a universal uproar ; but^ happily^ the nature of modem civilization saves us firom the danger. The tendency of the critical rigime in this respect is shown by the perpetual endeavours of the various sections of the revolutionary school to reinstate the memory of the man who, of all others, strove for political retrogradation, by wasting an enormous amount of power in the restoration of the mili- tary and theological system.
Principle of Before quitting the subject of the inoonsisten-
Political Gen- des of this school, I must, in justice, point out tralizfttion. Qjjg morc Contradiction which, as being of a pro- gressive character, is honourable to those most advanced minds which entertain it, and which alone understand its necessity, opposed as it is to the dogmas of independence and isolation which constitute the spirit of the critical school. I refer to the principle of political centralization. The two parties seem here to have changed sides. The retrograde doctrine, notwith- standing its proud pretensions to order and unity, preaches the distribution of political centres, in the secret hope of pre- serving the old system yet a while longer among the most backward of the populations, by keeping them aloof from the general centres of civilization ; while the revolutionary policy, on the other hand, proud of having withstood, in France, the coalition of the old powers, discards its own maxims to recom- mend the subordination of the secondary to the principal centres by which such a noble stand has already been made, and which must become a most valuable auxiliary of reorgani- zation. Thus alone can the reorganization be, in the first place, restricted to a choice population. In brieif, the revolu- tionary school alone has imderstood that the increasing an- archy of the time, intellectual and moral, requires, to prevent a complete dislocation of society, a growing concentration of political action, properly so called.
Thus, after three centuries, employed in the necessary de- molition of the ancient regvmey the critical doctrine shows itself as incapable of other application, and as inconsistent as we have now seen it to'be. It is no more fit to secure Pro- gress, than the old doctrine to maintain Order. But, feeble
f^m^H^^^aamac^f-r^fmr^Bm
SOCIAL OSCILLATIONS. 23
as they are apart, they actually sustain each other by their very antagomsm. It is universally understood that neither can ever again achieve a permanent triumph : but, so strong is the apprehension of even the temporary preponderance of either, that the general mind, for want of a more rational point of support, employs each doctrine in turn to restrain the encroachments of the other. This miserable oscillation of our social life must proceed till a real doctrine, as truly oiganic as progressive, shall reconcile for us the two aspects of the great poUtical problem. Then, at last, the two opposite doctrines will disappear for ever in the new conception that will be seen to be completely adapted to fdlfil the destination of both. Often has each party, blinded by some temporary success, believed that it had annihilated the other ; and never has the event Med to mock the ignorant exultation. The critical doctrine seemed to have humbled for ever the cathoUc-feudal school ; but that school arose again. Napoleon thought he had accom- plished a retrograde reaction; but the very energy of his efforts caused a reaction in favour of revolutionary principles. And thus society continues to vibrate between conflicting in- fluences ; and those influences continue to exist only by their mutual neutralization. For that purpose only, indeed, are they now ever applied. Neither could be spared before the advent of the state which is to succeed them. Without the one, we should lose the sentiment of Order, and without the other, that of Progress : and the keeping alive this sentiment, on either hand, is the only practical efficacy which now remains to them. Feeble as the conception must be, in the absence of any principle which unites the two requisites, it is preserved by the presence of the two decaying systems ; and they keep before the minds of both philosophers and the public the true conditioiis of social reorganization, which otherwise our feeble nature mi^t misconceive or lose sight of. Having the two types before us, we see the solution of the great problem to be, to form a doctrine which shall be more organic than the theological, and more progressive than the metaphysical.
The old poUtical system can be no pattern for a rigime suit- able to a widely different civilization ; but we are not under the lem obligation to study it, in order to learn what are the gwM*n*i^1 attributes of all social organization, which must re- appear in an improved state in the future. The general con- ception of the theological and military system even seems to
24 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
me to have passed too much out of sight. And^ as to the Critical system^ there can be no question of its affording, by its progressive character, and its exposure of the prec^ling rigime, a most valuable stimulus to society to seek for some- thing better than mere modifications of systems that have fail^. The common complaint that it renders all government impossible, is a mere avowal of impotence on the part of those who utter it. Whatever are its imperfections, it fulfilled for a time one of the two requisites : its abolition would in no way assist the re-establishment of Order ; and no declamations against the revolutionary philosophy will affect the instinctive attachment of society to principles which have directed its political progress for three centuries past, and which are believed to represent the indispensable conditions of its fiiture development. Each of its dogmas afibrds an indication of how the improvement is to be effected. Each expresses the political aspect of certain high moral obligations which the retrograde school, with all its pretensions, was compelled to ignore, because its system had lost all power to fulfil them. In this way, the dogma of Free Inquiry decides that the spiritual reorganization must result firom purely intellectual action, providing for a final voluntary and unanimous assent, without the disturbing intervention of any heterogeneous power. Again, the dogmas of Equality and the Sovereignty of the peo* pie devolve on the new powers and classes of society the duty of a public-spirited social conduct, instead of working the many for the interests of the few. The old system practised these moralities in its best days ; but they are now maintained only bv the revolutionary doctrine, which it would be fatal to part With till we have some substitute in these particular respects ,- for the effect would be that we should be delivered over to the dark despotism of the old system ; — to the restorers of reli- gions, for instance, who, if proselytism failed, would have recourse to tyranny to compel unity, if once the principle of free inquiry were lost from among us.
It is useless to declaim against the critical philosophy, and to deplore, in the name of social order, the dissolving energy of the spirit of analysis and inquiry. It is only by their use that we can obtain materials for reorganization; materials which shall have been thoroughly tested by free discussion, carried on tUl general conviction is secured. The philosophy which will arise out of this satisfaction of the public reason
STAGE OF INDECISION. 25
will then assign the rational limits which must obviate the abuse of the analytical spirit^ by establishing that distinction in social matters^ between the field of reasoning and that of pure observation^ which we have found already marked out in regard to every other kind of science.
Though consigned, by the course of events, to a negative doctrine for awlule, society has never renounced the laws of human reason : and when the proper time arrives, society will use the rights of this reason to organize itself anew, on prin- ciples which will then have been ascertained and estimated. The existing state of no-government seems necessary at pre- sent, in order to that ascertainment of principles ; but it does not at all follow, as some eccentric individuals seem to think, that the right of inquiry imposes the duty of never deciding. The prolonged indecision proves merely that the principles which are to close the deliberation are not yet sufficiently esta- blished. In the same way, because society claims the right of choosing and varying its institutions and governing powers, it by no means follows that the right is for ever to be used in choosing and varying, when its indefinite use shall have become injurious. ^ When the right conditions shall have been ascer- tained, society will submit its choice to the rules which will secure its efficacy; and in the interval, nothing can be more &Tourable to future order than that the political course should be kept open, to admit of the tree rise of the new social system. As it happens, the peoples have, thus far, erred on the side of too hasty a desire for reorganization, and a too generous con- fidence in every promise of social order, instead of having shown the systematic distrust attributed to the revolutionary doctrine by those whose worn-out claims will not bear dis- cussion. There is more promise of political reorganization in the revolutionary doctrine than in the retrograde, though it is the supreme daun of the latter to be the safeguard of social Order.
Such is the vicious circle in which we are at present confined. We have seen what is the Sl^^fi'^^^ antagonism of two doctrmes that are powerless apart, and have no operation but in neutralizing each other. They have lost their activity as preponderating iiduences, and are seen now in the form of politiod debate, which they daily direct by the one furnishing all the essential ideas of govern- ment, and the other the principles of opposition. At shorter
VOL, II. c
26 P08ITITB PHILOSOPHY.
and shorter intervalB, a partial and transient superiority is al- lowed to the one or the other, when its antagonist threatens danger. Oat of these oscillations a third opinion has arisen, which is constructed out of their ruins, and takes its station between them. I suppose we must give the name of Doctrine to this intermediate opinion, bastard and inconsistent as is its character; for it is presented by very earnest doctors, who urge it upon us as a type of the final political philosophy. We must call it the Stationary Doctrine ; and we see it, in yirtue of that quality, occupying the scene of politics, among the most advanced people, for above a quarter of a century. Essentially provisional as it is, the Stationary school naturally serves as a guide to society in preserving the material oilier, without which a true doctrine could not have its firee growth. It may be necessary for our weakness that the leaders of this school should suppose that they have a doctrine which is des- tined to triumph ; but whatever benefits arise firom their ac- tion are much impaired by the mistake of supposing our nuserable transition state a permanent type of the social con- dition. The stationanr polity not only contains inconsistencies, but it is itself inconsistency erected into a principle. It ac- knowledges the essential principles of the other systems, but prevents their action. Disdainftd of Utopias, it proposes the wildest of them all ; — ^that of fixing society for ever in a con- tradictory position between retrogradation and r^neration. The theory serves to keep in check the other two philosophies ; and this may be a good : but, on the other hand, it hdps to keep them idive ; and it is, in so far, an obstacle to reorgani- zation. When I present my historical review of society, I shall explain the special assemblage of social conditions which gave England her parliamentary monarchy, so lauded by the school of mixed doctrine, but, in fact, an exceptional institution, whose inevitable end cannot be very far off. When we enter upon that analysis, we shall see how great is the error of philo- sophers and statesmen when they have taken up a singular and transient case as the solution of the revolutionary crisis of modem societies, and have endeavoured to transplant on the European continent a purely local system, which would be de- prived in the process of its very roots : for it is an organized Prot'Cstantism which is its main spiritual basis in England. The expectation attached to this single specious aspect of the stationary doctrine will make a future examination of it im^-
THE 8TATI0NABT DOCTBIXE. 27
portant ; and we shall then see how hopeless is the constitutional metaphysics of the balance of powers, judged by that instance which serves as the common ground of such social fictions. After all the vast efforts made to nationalize elsewhere the stationary compromise, it has never succeeded anywhere but in its native bmd ; and this proves its powerlessness in regard to the great social problem. The only possible result is that the mischief ikould pass from the acute to the chronic state^ becoming in- cnrable by the recognition as a principle of the transient anta- gonism which is its chief sjnmptom. Its principal merit is that it admits the double aspect of the social problem, and the neces- sity of reconciling Order and Prepress : but it introduces no new idea; and its recognition amounts therefore to nothing more than an equal sacrifice, when necessary, of the one and the other. The order that it protects is a merely material order; and it therefore fails in that function precisely in crises when it is most wanted. On the other hand, this function continues to be attributed to royalty, which is the only power of the old pohty that is still active : now, the balance which is instituted bv the stationary doctrine surrounds the royal power with bonds that are dways tightening, while declaring that royal power to be the chief basis of the government. It is only a question of time when the function of sovereignty, thus em- barrassed, shall cease, and the pretended balance be destroyed. This parliamentary polity serves the cause of progress no better than that of order : for, as it proposes no new principle, the restraints which it puts upon the revolutionary spirit are all derived from the ancient system, and therefore tend to become more and more retrograde and oppressive. An example of this is, the restrictions on the right of election ; restrictions always derived firom irrational material conditions, which, being arbi- trary in their character, oppress and irritate, without answer- ing their proposed purpose, and leave the multitude of the ex- cluded much more offended than the small number of the privileged are gratified.
There is no need to say more in this place of the mixed or Stationary doctrine, which is, in fact, only a last phase of the metaphysical polity. The reader cannot but see that a theory ^ precarious and subaltern, so far firom being able to reor- ganize modem society, can only regulate, by protracting, the political conflict, and discharge the n^ative office of preventing kings from retrograding and peoples firom destroying. What-
c2
28 POSITITE PHILOSOPHY.
ever the value of this service may he, we cannot expect rege- neration to he accomplished hy means of impediments.
We have now seen the worth of these three CTiiSSr ^^o^ systems. To complete our conviction of the need
of a better, we must briefly notice the chief social dangers which result £rom the deplorable protraction of such an intellectual condition, and which must, from their nature, be aggravated from day to day. The dangers are imputable to all the three systems; though the revolutionary and sta- tionary systems assume that the blame of our disorders rests with the retrograde school: but they are certainly no less guilty; for, powerless to discover the remedy, they protract the mischief, and embarrass the treatment. And again, the discordance between the movement of governments and of their peoples is to be attributed quite as much to the hostile spirit of the directing power as to the anarchical tendency of popular opinions. The social perturbations, the aspects of which we are about to examine, proceed no less from the kings than frt>m their peoples, with this a^ravated disgrace,— that it seems as if the solution ought to emanate from the kings. Intellectual The first, the most £Eital, and the most imiver-
Bnarchj, sal cousequcnce of this situation is the alarming
and ever-widening extent of the intellectulQ anarchy which all acknowledge, however they may differ about its cause and termination, lliis evil is charged almost exdusively on the revolutionary philosophy; and that school too readily admits the charge. But, as we have seen, that doctrine does not pro- hibit decision, when the requisite grounds are ascertained: and it is the stationary theory that ought to bear the blame of the absence of those grounds : and yet more the retrograde, which is chargeable with urging the restoration of the same worn-out principles which, by their decrepitude, have caused all this anarchy. The stationary school does not want to hear of any such principles, and interdicts them; and the retrograde school insists that the old ones will do over again. So that, if the revolutionary school first encouraged the an- archy, the other two protract it.
Of all questions, there are none which have so much claim as social problems to be consigned to a small number of choice minds which shall have been prepared by a high order of discipline and instruction for the investigation of questions so complex and so mixed up with human passions. Such is»
IV^V— ^^^^■H^H^^^VgSi^^^^^F^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^IW
. EXISTINa ANARCHY. 29
at leasts the natural state of the humau mind, in contrast with wbich its condition in revolutionary periods may be regarded as, in a manner, pathological, however inevitable. The social malady must be very serious when we see all manner of per- sons, however inferior their intelligence, and however unpre- pared, stimulated, in the highest manner, and from day to day, to cut the knot of the most intricate political questions, without any guidance or restraint. The wonder is, not that the divergence of opinion is what it is, but that any points of agreement at all are left amidst all this dissolution of social maxims. « The evil has reached such a point that all political opinions, though of course derived from one of the three achools, differ through so many degrees as to become indivi- dual;— through all degrees, in fact, that the combination of three orders of vicious principles admits of. Except on occa- sion of emei^ency, when there is a temporary coalition (amidst which each one usually hopes to have his own way) it becomes more and more difficult to make even a very small number of minds adhere to a plain and explicit profession of political &ith. This inability to co-operate prevails in all the three camps, — as we ought carefully to observe : and each party has often, in its ingenuous moments, bitterly deplored the intense disagreement with which it supposed itself to be especially afflicted; whereas, the others were no better organized; and the chief difference in the three cases was that each was most acutely sensible of its own misery.
In countries where this intellectual anarchy has been sanc- tioned by the political preponderance of Protestantism, the divergences have been more multiplied than elsewhere, without being less serious. It could not but be so from the tendency of the general mind, in its then infantile state, to use its new emancipation to plunge into the indefinite discussion of reli- gions opinions — (the most vague and discordant of all), — ^in die abs^ce of a restraining spiritual authority. In the United States, for instance, there are hundreds of Christian sects, radically discordant, and incessantly parting off into opinions which are really little more than individual, which it is impos- sible to classify, and which are already homing implicated with innumerable political differences. The nations which, like the French, have escaped the treacherous stage of Protes- tantism, and have passed at once from the Catholic to the My revolutionary state, were not, on that account, entirely
80 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
exempt from the intellectual anarchy inherent in any pro- longed exercise of the absolute right of free individual inquiry. All that can be said is that their aberrations^ without being less anti-social, have a less vague character, and are less in the way of the final reorganization. They arise, take posses- sion for awhile of even healthy and well-trained intellects, and then give place to others that have their day, and in their turn are superseded. In our time, we hear of proposals, en- tertained here and there even by men who know what positive science is in some one department of study, which it is a shock to one's hopes to see so advocated; proposals, for in- stance, to abolish money and recur to a state of barter; to destroy the great capitals in order to restore rural innocence; to have a fixed rate of wages, and the same rate for every kind of labour, and so forth. Such opinions are daily given out, side by side with those which are the most philosophical and the most carefully elaborated ; and none have any chance of being established under the rule of any intellectual discipline whatever, though the wise are compromised with the foohsh in the eyes of public reason. The inevitable result of such a chronic epidemic is the gradual destruction of the public Destmotion of ''^^^^^^ which is not sustained, among the gene- publio mo- rality of men, so much by the direct sentiment ^^^- as by habit, guided by the uniform assent of indi-
vidual wills to invariable and general rules, adapted to fix, on every serious occasion, the true idea of the public good. So complex is the nature of social questions that there is much that is to be said on all sides; and there is no instituticm, however indispensable, which does not involve serious and numerous inconveniences, more or less partial and transient; and, on the other hand, there is no Utopia so wild as not to ofier some incontestable advantages : and few are the minds which are not so preoccupied by ideas, or stimulated by passion, as to be able to contemplate at once all the aspects of any social subject. Thus it is that almost all the great maxims of public morality are condemned on account of their salient faults, while their determining grounds are hidden till exhibited by an exact analysis, which must in many cases be extremely delicate. Thus, again, it is that all true moral order is in- compatible with the existing vagabond liberty of individual minds, if such license were to last ; for the great social rules which should become customary cannot be abandoned to the
PBBIL TO MORALITY. 31
Uind and arbitraiy decision of an incompetent public without losing all their efficacy. The requisite convergence of the best minds cannot be obtained without the voluntary renun- ciation^ on the part of most of them^ of their sovereign right of free inquiry^ which they will doubtless be willing to abdicate^ as soon as they have found oi^ans worthy to exercise appro- priately their vain provisional supremacy. If it is so in pro- blems of science^ there is every reason to expect it in the more difficult questions of social principle. Meanwhile, all vasue luitknis (^public good, degJerati^ into on indistbct ph^. thropy^ must succumb to the energetic forces of a highly stimulated selfishness. In the daily course of our political con- fficts we see accordingly the most conscientious men taxing each other with wickedness and foUy ; and^ on every serious occasion, the most opposite doctrines maintained by persons equally worthy of confidence : and, while all deep and steady conviction is thus rendered impossible, no true political mo- rality can be hoped for by those who desire it most.
This public demoralization has, it must be admitted, been sensibly retarded, in our time, by the preponderance of that revolutionary doctrine which has borne the imputation of causing it; for the revolutionary party, progressive in cha- racter, could not but be animated, more than the others, by sincere convictions, which, in their depth and activity, must tend to restrain, and even annihilate, individual selfishness. This was especially remarkable during the season when the revolutionary doctrine was, by a general illusion, supposed to be destined to reorganize society. Under the impulse of this persuasion, the strongest social devotedness that can shed ho- nour upon contemporary history was manifested. But this oould be only for a time. As the illusion disappeared, the convic- tions which arose from it became first weakened, and then min- gled with the influences of the stationary, and even the retro- grade polity : and though they are still of a higher order than those which are inspired by the other doctrines, and especially among the young, they have not energy to resist the dissolving action of the revolutionary philosophy, even among its own advocates ; so that this philosophy now contributes, almost as much as its two antagonists, to the spread of political demo- ralization.
Private morality is, happily, much less depen- Private dent on established opinions. Other conditions morality.
82 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
enter into this case ; and in the commonest questions, nata- ral sentiment is fiir more operative than in public relationB. Disorganizing influences are strongly counteracted by the con- tinuous amelioration of our manners, through a more equa. ble inteUeptual development, by a juster sense and more fa- miliar taste for the various fine arts, and by the gradual improvement of social condition in consequence of steady industrial progress. The common rules of domestic and per- sonal morality have guarded private life longer than political from the injLoB of^i^gaLng mfluepJS, and thfintru- sion of individual analysis. But the time has arrived for these inevitable disturbances, long concealed, to manifest their dangerous activity.. So long ago as the first rise of the re- volutionary state, this deleterious influence on morality, pro- perly so called, began with a serious innovation on the insti- tution of Marriage^ which would have been radically changed, by the permission of divorce in Protestant countries, if public decency and private good sense had not, up to this time, weakened the pernicious effects of theologico-metaphysical extravagances. Still, private morality could be reached only through the destruction of political morals : and now, that barrier being broken through, the dissolving action threatens domestic, and even personal morality, which is the necessary foundation of every other. Whichever way we look at it^ whether as to the relations of the sexes, to those of ages, or of conditions, it is clear that the elements of all social life are directly compromised by a corrosive discussion which is not directed by true principles, and which brings into question, without the possibility of solution, even the least important ideas of duty. Even the Family, which, amidst the fiercest revolutionary tumults, had been on the whole respected, has been assailed in our day in its very foimdations, by attacks on the hereditary principle and on marriage. We have even seen the commonest principle of personal morality, the sub- jection of the passions to reason, denied by pretended refor- mers who, in defiance of all experience and such positive science as we have, have proposed as a fimdamental dogma of their regenerated morality, the systematic dominion of the passions, which they have striven, not to restrain, but to ex- cite by the strongest stimulants. These speculations have so far penetrated social Hfe, that any one is now at liberty to make an easy merit of the most turbulent passions; so that.
TO PRIVATE MO&ALITT. 33
if such fioenae could last, insatiable stomachs might at length get to pride themselves on their own voracity. It is in vain for the retrograde school to throw the blame of all this on the revolutionary school. The censure rests upon themselves^ inasmuch as they have persisted in extolling, as the only in- tellectual bases of socisd duty, principles which have betrayed thor impotence in this very case ; for, if theological concep- tions are, in truth, the immutable bases of future as well as past morality, how is it that they now £Edl to obviate such license ? What are we to think of the attempt to shore up by laborious artifices, the religious principles which are proposed, after they have lost their strength, as the only supports of moral oider ? No supreme function can be assigned to con- victions that have themselves given way before the develop- ment of human reason, which is not likely to use its mature power to reconstruct the bonds which it broke through in the ^rts of its youth. It is remarkable that the license I have ^ken of has been proposed by the ardent restorers of reU- gioos theories, in their exasperation against all positive philo- sophy; and this has, for some time past, been the case with Protestant, no less than Catholic advocates. So &r firom fiumishing bases for morality, domestic or personal, religious convictions have long tended to its injury, both by hindering its erection on more solid foundations among those who are free from their control, and by being insufficient for their own subjects, without the active intervention of a sacerdotal authority; that authority meanwhile perpetually losing its hold over the more advanced populations, and being more and more absorbed by the care of its own preservation, in- stead of venturing upon any unpopular scheme of discipline. Bafly experience shows that the ordinary morality of rel^ous men is not, at present, in spite of our intellectual anarchy, superior to that of the average of those who have quitted the churches. The chief practical tendency of religious convic- tions is, in our present social life, to inspire an instinctive and insurmountable hatred against all who have emancipated themselves, without any usefdl emulation having arisen firom the conflict. Thus the chief assaults, direct and indirect, on private as well as public morality, are as strictly imputable to the stationary, and yet more to the retrograde, than to the revolutionary philosophy, which is commonly made to bear sll the blame. It is indeed but too evident that the three
c3
f
34 P08ITIVX FHIUMOFHT.
doctrines are almost equally poweiless to restrain the develop- ment of individual selfiflhnessy whidi grows bolder, firom day to day, in damouring for the license of the least social pas- sions, in the name of universal intellectual anarchy.
The second characteristic of our condition fol- Folitica j^^g boTEL the first. It is the systematic corrup-
""""'^^ tion which is aet up as an iiidkpeDsable instr^ ment of government. The three doctrines bear their share, though it may be an unequal one, in this disgraceful result, because all exclude, as we have seen, true political convictions. Amidst the absence, or the discredit, of general ideas, which have now no power to command genuine acts, there is no other daily resource for the maintenance of even a rough and precarious order than an appeal, more or less immediate, to personal interests. Such an influence is scarcely ever needed with men of deep convictions. Even in the lower order of characters, human miture is rarely so debased as to allow a course of political conduct in opposition to any strong convic- tions; and such contrariety, if persevoed in, would soon paralyse the fiumlties. In the scientific dass, in which phi- losophical convictions are at present most common and best marked, active corruption is scaicdy practicable, though minds are there much of the same quality as they are eLse- where. Thus, exceptional cases apart, the rapid spread of a corruption which avails itself of the half-convictions that are prevalent in the political world must be attributed mainly to the undecided and fluctuating state in which social ideas are kept by the intellectual anarchy of our time. Not only does this disorder of minds permit the political corruption : it even requires it, as the only means of obtaining any sort of prac- tical convergence, such as is necessary for the mere preserva- tion of the social state in its grossest interests : and we must prepare ourselves for the continuous extension of the evil, as long as intellectual anarchy goes on destroying all strong politiod conviction. Rulers and the ruled are alike guilty in regard to this vice : the rulers b^ their disdain of all sodal theory ; by their repression of mmd, and by their application of the instrument which they cannot dispejise with to their own, instead of the general interest ; and the ruled by their acceptance of the proffered corruption, and by their intellec- tual condition rendering the use of it inevitable. If indivi- duals cannot co-operate on any other ground than that of
TO PUBLIC MORALITY. 85
privBte intereBt, they liave no right to complain that govern- ments take the same ground to prociire the assistance that thqr cannot dispense with^ diuring a period in which it is scarcely possible to see clearly what the public good reaUy consists in. All that can be said for such a state of things is that matters would be worse if individual eccentricities were not somewhat restrained by personal interest^ in the absence of better influences ; and that it is the natural result of the situation to which it applies^ and therefore certainly destined to disappear whenever society shall begin to admit of a better discipline. Till then we must expect to see this miserable expedient more and more resorted to; as is proved by the constant experience of all peoples living under a prolonged constitutional or representative regime, as we now call it, always compelled to oi^anize in this manner a certain ma- terial discipline in the midst of a complete intellectual, and therefore moral anarchy. All that we have a right to re- quire is that governments, instead of welcoming this disastrous necessity, and making an eager use of the fSsbcilities it offers, should set themselves to favour, systematically, by all the means at their command, the great philosophical elaboration through which modem society may enter upon a better course. By corruption, I do not mean only direct venality, nor yet the holding of honorary distinctions which are merely flatter- ing to the vanity. The scope offered to various kinds of am- bition is a more corrupting influence. In some countries this had been carried so far, in the form of creation of offices, that nations are fanned by the functionaries of their governments. The danger of such a course is obvious enough^ for the num- ber of aspirants, where offices are very numerous, must always largely exceed that of the chosen ; and their disappointment must awaken passions anything but favourable to the esta- blished r^ffime. Moreover, the practice must spread the more it is resorted to; and it will go on extending tUl the time for social reo^anization has arrived. Here, again, all the three schools must share the blame. The Revolutionary school sup- plied, as we have seen, the dissolving influence which rendered the system of corruption necessary. The Stationary school even sets it up as a type, declaring the equal admission of all to public functions to be the finid destination of the general sooal movement ; and aggravating the case by connecting the conditions of order with the mere possession of fortune, how-
86 POSITIVE PHIL080PHT.
ever obtained. As for the Retrograde school^ with all its pre- tensions to moral purity^ it employs corruption as fatally as the other two^ under the special form which it appropriates, — that of systematic hypocrisy. From the opening of the rero- lutionary period^ in the sixteenth century^ this system of hy- pocrisy has been more and more ekborated in practice, per- mitting the emancipation of all minds of a certain bearing, on the tacit condition that they should aid in protracting the submission of the masses. This was, eminently, the policy of the Jesuits. Thus has the retrograde school suffered under this vice as early as the others ; and it cannot but resort to corruption more and more, in proportion to its own opposition to the general movement of the society which it pretends to rule.
This, then, is our state. For want of a moral authority, material order requires the use of either terror or corruption ; and the latter is both more durable, less inconvenient, and more accordant with the nature of modem society than the former. But, while admitting the inevitable character of the evil, it is impossible not to lament, bitterly and mournfully, the blindness which prevents the social powers of our time from facilitating to the utmost the philosophical evolution by which alone we can issue into a better state. It seems as if statesmen of all parties were agreed to close this sole avenue of safety by visiting with stupid reprobation all elaboration of social theories. This again, however, is only another conse- quence of the present state of the most civilized nations ; and, as a consequence, not less necessary or characteristic than those that have gone before.
Low aims of "^^^ third symptom of our social situation is political the growing preponderance of material and im-
questions. mediate considerations in regard to political ques- tions. There is something more concerned here than the ordinary antagonism between theory and practice, a^ravated by the weakness of attempts at theory in an infantile period of social science. The repugnance to theory is further attri- butable to the historical circumstance that when, three centu- ries ago, the spiritual power was finally annulled or absorbed by the temporal, all lofty social speculations were more and more devolved upon minds which were always pre-occupied by practical affairs. Thus kings and their peoples concurred in exalting the lower order of considerations; and the tendency
UNWORTHINBSS OP POLITICAL QUESTIONS. 87
bdonged to all the three schools of polity. If the crowning evil of OUT time be its intellectual anarchy^ it is clear that we cannot too strongly lament this irrational unanimity of the political world in closing the path of progress by proscribing speculative researches. We see the consequences in OUT experience of the past century. In seeking ^JJ^^ social reoiganization^ men have not first looked '^°*^'^®*'' to the doctrines of a new social order^ and then to the corre- sponding manners ; but have gone straight to the construction of institutions^ at a time when we have all possible evidence that institutions can be nothing more than provisional^ re- stricted to the most indispensable objects, and having no other relation to the future than such facility as they may afibrd to the procesB of political regeneration. The makmg of institutions in OUT day consists in parcelling out the old political powers, minutely organizing factitious and complex antagonisms among them, rendering them more and more precarious by submitting them to election for terms ; but in no way changing either the general nature of the ancient rigime or the spirit which worked it. For want of all social doctrine, nothing more has been attempted than restraining the powers thus preserved, till there is every danger of their being altogether annulled, while the principles which were to direct their application were left doubtful and obscure. The pompous name of a Constitution is then given to this piece of work, and it is consecrated to the eternal admiration of posterity. Though the average duration of these constitutions has been at most ten years, each new system, set up on the very ground of the feulure of the last, has dflomed, imder pains and penalties, a general faith in its absolute and indefinite triumph. The only action of such in- stitutions is in preventing aU social reorganization by fixing minds on puerile questions of political forms, and by inter- dicting speculations and philosophical discussions which would diflcloae the principles of reorganization. By this action, the character of the disease has been concealed as much as pos- nble, and any gradual and specific cure has been almost im- practicable. It is strange that minds should be so self-deceived as to disclaim all speculative prejudices while they propose the most absurd of all political Utopias, — the construction of a system of government which rests upon no true social doc- trine. Such an absurdity is referrible to the cloudy prevalence of the metaphysical philosophy, which perverts and confuses
88 POSITIVX PHIL0807HT.
men's notions in politics^ as it did formerly, during its short triumph^ in all other orders of human conceptions.
Fatal to Order ^* ** ^^* ^^^ ^ *^ impediment to progress ' that the preponderance of material conceptions is to be deplored. It is dangerous to order. When all political evils are imputed to institutions instead of to ideas and social manners, which are now the real seat of the mischief; the re- medy is vainly sought in changes, each more serious than the last, in institutions and existing powers. The failure of the bust change is forgotten ; and hopes are concentrated on the next, showing how ineffectual are the lessons of experience when the results are not elucidated by a rational analysis. Such changes must occur, in our progress to a better state. What it is £air to require in regard to them is that they should be recognized as provisional, and be guided by some philoso- phical consideration of the social question at large. Another consequence of the prevalent preference of institutions to doc- trines is, besides its prematurity, its engendering errors of the most serious kind, and of a permanent character, by including in the domain of temporal government what belongs to the spiritual. For their neglect of this grand distinction, the ya- rious governments of Europe have been punished by becom- ing responsible for all the evils of society, whencesoever they might have arisen. The illusion ia yet more injurious to so- ciety itself through the disturbances and mortifications whidi it induces. An illustration of the case is presented by the discussions and attacks which have so often menaced the in- stitution of Property. It is impossible to deny that, when all exaggerations are stripped away, an unquestionable amount of evil remains in connection with property, which ought to be taken in hand, and remedied, as £ar as our modem social state permits. But it is equally evident that the remedy must arise from opinions, customs, and manners, and that political regu- lations can have no radical efficacy ; for the question refers us to public prepossessions and usages which must habitually direct^ for the interest of society, the exercise of property, in whose hands soever it may be lodged. We may see here how futile and how blind, and also how disturbing, is this tendency to refer everything to political institutions, instead of fixing ex- pectation on an intellectual and moral reorganization.
Thus we proceed, securing neither order nor progress, while we consider our sufferings to be of a physical, whereas they axe
INCOMPETXNCX OF POLITICAL L2ADBB8. 89
reaDj of a moral nature. ModificatioiiB of andent syBtems hare been tried^ and have given no relief; and onr ideas of political progress axe narrowing down to that of a substitution of persons, — ^the most disgraodiil political degradation of all, beaaae, directed by no plan, it tends to subject society to an interminable series of catastrophes. The material order, which is all that is contemplated, is confided to a power whidi is re- garded as hostile, and perpetually enfeebled by a systematic antagonism. Therestrictedviewof each of the agents of such a mechanism prevents their co-operation, except under the im- mediate alann of material anarchy, when they suspend their useless controversies till the storm has blown over, when they go on as before, till some catastrophe ensues, taking every- body by surprise, though any one might have foreseen it. In this discarding of social speculation for the sake of material and immediate considerations, we see a fresh indication that intellectual anarchy is the main cause of our social maladies. A fourth characteristic of our social condition incompetence is a natural consequence and complement of the of politioBl preceding ; the incompetence of the minds which l^^^on* occupy tiie chief political stations, during such a condition of affidrs, and even ^eir antipathy to a true reorganization : so that a final, and not less disastrous illusion of modem society is that the solution of the problem may be looked for from those who can do nothing but hinder it. From what we have already seen, we must be aware that the gradual demolition of all sooal maxims, and, at the same time, the attenuation of po- litical actkm, must tend to remove elevated minds and superior understandings firom such a career, and to deliver over the po- litical world to the rule of charlatanism and mediocrity. The absence of any distinct and large conception of a social future is fiivourable to the more vulgar forms of ambition ; and pre- sumptuous and enterprising mediocrity has never before had so fbrtunate a chance. While social principles are not even sought, charlatanism will always attract by the magnificence ct its promises ; and its transient successes will dazzle society, while in a sufiering condition, and deprived of all rational hope. Every impulse of noble ambition must turn the best men away firom a field of action where there is no chance of scope and permanence, such as are requisite to the carrying out of generous schemes. It is, as M. Guizot has well said, a social period when men nriU feebly, but desire immense^. It
40' POSITIVE FHIL0807HT.
is a state of half-oonyiction and half- will, resulting from in- tellectual and moral anarchy, offering many obstacles to the solution of our difficulties. It is important, however, not to exaggerate those obstacles. This very state of half-conviction and half-will tends to facilitate by anticipation the prevalence of a true conception of society which, once produced, will have no active resistance to withstand, because it will repose on serious convictions : and at present, the dispersion of social interests tends to preserve the material order which is an in- dispensable condition of philosophical growth. It would be a mere satirical exa^eration to describe existing society as preferring political quackery and illusion to that wise settle- ment which it has not had opportunity to obtain. When the choice is offered, it will be seen whether the attraction of de- ceptive promises, and the power of former habit, will prevent our age from entering, with ardour and steadiness, upon a better course. There are evident symptoms that the choice will be a wise one^ though the circumstances of the time ope- rate to place the direction of the movement in hands which are anything but fittest for the purpose. This inconvenience dates from the beginning of the revolutionary period, and is not a new, but an aggravated evil. For three centuries past, the most eminent minds have been chiefly engaged with science, and have neglected politics; thus differing widely fit)m the wisest men in ancient times, and even in the Middle Ages. The consequence of this is that the most difficult and urgent questions have been committed to the class which is essentiaUy one under two names, — ^the civilians and the meta- physicians, or, under their common title, the lawyers and men of letters, whose position in regard to statesmanship is natu- rally a subordinate one. We shall see hereafter that, from its origin to the time of the first French Revolution, the system of metaphysical polity was expressed and directed by the uni- versities on the one hand and the great judiciary corporations on the other : the first constituting a sort of spiritual, and the other the temporal power. This state of things is still trace- able in most countries of the continent ; while in France, for above half a century, the arrangement has degenerated into such an abuse that the judges are superseded by the bar, and the doctors (as they used to be called) by mere men of letters ; so that now, any man who can hold a pen may aspire to the spiritual regulation of society, through the press or from the
ADVENT OF THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 41
professional chair, nnoonditionally, and whatever may be his qnalifications. When the time comes for the constitution of an oi^anic condition, the reign of sophists and declaimers will have come to an end ; but there will be the impediment to sormonnt of their having been provisionallj in possession of public confidence.
The survey that we have made must convince us only too well of the anarchical state of existing society, under its des- titution of guiding and governing ideas, and amidst its con- flict of opinions and passions, wluch there is no power in any of the three schools to cure or moderate. As preliminary con- siderations, these hct» are deeply disheartening; and we can- not wonder that some generous and able, but ill-prepared minds should have sunk into a kind of philosophical despair about the future of society, which appears to them doomed to &U under a gloomy despotism or into mere anarchy, or to os- dUate between the two. I trust that the study we are about to enter upon will give rise to a consoling conviction that the movement of r^eneration is going on, though quietly in com- parison with the apparent decomposition, and that the most advanced of the human race are at the threshold of a social order worthy of their nature and their needs. I shall con- clude this introduction by showing what must necessarily be the intellectual character of the salutary philosophy which is to lead us into this better future : and its dogmatic exposition wiU follow in the next chapters.
The preliminary survey which I have just con- Adrent of the duded led us necessarily into the domain of po- Positiye Fhi- litics. We must now return firom this excursion, lo«>phy. and take our stand again at the point of view of this whole Work, and contemplate the condition and prospects of society from the ground of positive philosophy. Every other ground has been found untenable. The theological and metaphysical philosophies have fSsdled to secure permanent social welfare, while the positive philosophy has uniformly succeeded, and conspicuously for three centuries past, in reorganizing, to the unanimous satisfaction of the intellectual world, all the an- terior orders of human conceptions, which had been till then in the same chaotic state that we now deplore, in regard to social science. Contemporary opinion regard^ the state of each of those sciences as hopeless till the positive philosophy brought them out of it. There is no reason why it should
42 POBinYK PHIIjOSOPHT.
fail in the latest applicatioQ, after haying saooeeded in all the earlier. Advancing from the leas complex categories of ideas to the more complex and final one, and comparing with this experience the picture just given of our present social condi- tion, we cannot but see that the political analysis and the sci- entific concur in demonstrating that the positive philosophy, carried on to its completion, is the only possible agent in the reorganization of modem society. I wish to establish this principle first, and in this place, apart from all considerations about my way of proving my point ; so that, if my attempt should be her^dter condemned, no un&vourable inference may be drawn in regard to a method which alone can save society, and that public reason should have nothing to do but to re- quire from happier successors more efiectual endeavours in the same direction. In all cases, and especially in this, the method is of even more importance than the doctrine ; and it is for this reason that I think it right, before closing my long introduction, to offer, in a brief form, some last prefsktory considerations.
This is not the place in which to enter upon any compari- son between the positive political philosophy and the other social theories which have been tried ; but, while still de- ferring the scientific appreciation of the positive method, and before quitting the political ground on which I have, for the occasion, taken my stand, I must point out in a direct and general way, the relation of the positive philosophy to the two great necessities of our age.
Logical CO- ^® ascendency of a positive social doctrine is
herenoe of the secured by its perfect logical coherence in its en- dootrine. tire application — ^a characteristic property which
enables us at once to connect the political with the scientific point of view. The positive polity will embrace at once all the essential aspects of the present state of civilization, and will dissolve the deplorable opposition that now exists be- tween the two orders of social needs, the common satisfaction of which will henceforth depend on the same principle. It will impart a homogeneous and rational character to the de- sultory politics of our day, and it will by the same act con- nect this co-ordinated present with the whole past, so as to establish a general harmony in the entire system of social ideas, by exhibiting the fundamental uniformity of the collec- tive Ufe of humanity ; for this conception cannot, by its na-
RATIONAL EXPECTATION FROM THE DOCTRINE. 43
tare, be applied to the actaal social state till it has undergone the test of explaining, fix)m the same point of view, the con- tinuoos series of the chief former transformations of society. It is important to note this difference between the positive principle and that of the two other schools. The critical school treats all times prior to the revolutionary period with a blind reprobation. The retrograde school equally fails in nnitiTig the present with the past^ and uniformly disparages the position of modem society during the last three centuries. It is the exclusive property of the positive principle to recog- nize the fundamental law of continuous human development, representing the existing evolution as the necessary result of the gradual series of former transformations, by simply ex- tending to social phenomena the spirit which governs the treatment of all other natural phenomena. This coherence and homogeneousness of the positive principle is further shown by its operation in not only comprehending all the various social ideas in one whole, but in connecting the system with the whole of natural philosophy, and constituting thus the aggregate of human knowledge as a complete scientific hier- ardiy. We shall see hereafter how this is accomplished, and I mention it now to show how the positive philosophy, finding thus a general fulcrum in all minds, cannot but spread to a universal extension. In the present chaotic state of our poli- tical ideas we can scarcely imagine what must be the irre- sistible eneigy of a philosophical movement, in which the en- tire renovation of social science will be directed b^ the same spiiit which is unanimously recognized as effectual in all other departments of human knowledge. Meantime, it finds some points of contact in the most wilfid minds, from whence it may proceed to work a regeneration of views. It speaks to eveiy dass of society, and to every political party, the lan- guage best adapted to produce conviction, while maintaining the invincible originality of its Amdamental character. It akme, embracing in its survey the whole of the social ques- tion, can render exact justice to the conflicting schools, by estimatiiig their past and present services. It alone can ex- hibit to each party its highest destination, prescribing order in the name of progress, and progress in the name of order, ao that each, instead of annulling, may strengthen the other. Bringing no stains firom the past, this new polity is subject to no imputation of retrograde tyranny, or of revolutionary
44) POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
anarchy. The only chaj^e that can be brought against it is that of novelty ; and the answer is famished by the evident in- sufficiency of all existing theories, and by the &ct that for two centuries past its success has been uniform and complete, wherever it has been applied.
As to its operation upon Order, it is plain that ^^^^ect on ^jj^g science ha^ no other aim than the establish- ment of intellectual order, which is the basis of every other. Disorder dreads the scientific spirit even more than the theological, and, in the field of politics, minds which rebelled against metaphysical hypotheses and theological fic- tions submit without difficulty to the discipline of the positive method. We even see that while the mind of our day is ac- cused of tending towards absolute scepticism, it eagerly wel- comes the least appearance of positive demonstration, however premature and imperfect. The eagerness would be full as great if the idea were once formed that social science might also be conducted by the positive spirit. The conception of invariable natural laws, the foundation of every idea of order, in aU departments, would have the same philosophical efiicacy here as elsewhere, as soon as it was sufficiently generalized to be applied to social phenomena, thenceforth referred, like all other phenomena, to such laws. It is only by the positive polity that the revolutionary spirit can be restrained, because by it alone can the influence of the critical doctrine be justly estimated and circumscribed. No longer roused to resistance, as by the retrograde school, and seeing its work done better than by itself, it will merge in a doctrine which leaves it no- thing to do or to desire. Under the rule of the positive spirit, again, all the difficult and delicate questions which now keep up a perpetual irritation in the bosom of society, and which can never be settled while mere pohtical solutions are pro- posed, will be scientifically estimated, to the great furtherance of social peace. By admitting at once that the institutions of modem societies must necessarily be merely provisional, the positive spirit will abate unreasonable expectations firom them, and concentrate effort upon a fundamental innovation of social ideas, and consequently of public morals. Instead of indifference being caused by this canrying forward of poHti. cal aims, there will be a new source of interest in so modifying modem institutions as to make them contributory to -the in- evitable intellectual and moral evolution. At the same time^
ITS EFFECT ON OBDEB. 45
it will be teaching societjr that, in the present state of their ideas, no political change can be of supreme importance, while the perturbation attending change is supremely mischievous, in the way both of immediate hjpdrance and of diverting at- teation fi!Y)m the true need and procedure. And again, order will profit by the recognition of the relative spirit of the posi- tive philosophy, which discredits the absolute spirit of the dieological and metaphysical schools. It cannot but dissipate the illusion by which those schools are for ever striving to set up, in all stages of civilization, their respective types of im- mutable government ; as when, for iostance, they propose to dvilize Tahiti by a wholesale importation of Protestantism and a Parliamentary system. Again, the positive spirit tends to consolidate order, by the rational development of a wise resignation to incurable political evils. Negative as is the character of this virtue, it affords an aid under the pains of the human lot which cannot be dispensed with, and which has no place under the metaphysical polity, which regards poli- tical action as indefinite. Religious, and especially Christian resignation is, in plain truth, only a prudent temporizing, which enjoins the endurance of present suffering in view of an ultimate ineffable felicity. A true resignation, — ^that is, a permanent disposition to endure, steadily, and without hope of compensation, all inevitable e^s, can proceed only from a deep sense of the connection of all kinds of natural pheno- mena with invariable laws. If there are (as I doubt not there are) political evils which, like some personal sufferings, can- not be remedied by science, science at least proves to us that they are incurable, so as to calm our restlessness under pain by the conviction that it is by natural laws that they are ren- dered insurmountable. Human nature suffers in its relations with the astronomical world, and the physical, chemical, and bblogical, as well as the political. How is it that we turbu- lently resist in the last case, while, in the others, we are calm and resigned, under pain as signal, and as repugnant to our nature? Surely it is because the positive philosophy has as yet developed our sense of the natural laws only in regard to the simpler phenomena; and when the same sense shiJl have been awakened with r^ard to the more complex phenomena of social life, it will fortify us with a similar resignation, ge- neral or specnal, provisional or indefinite, in the case of politi- cal suffering. An habitual conviction of this kind cannot but
46 FOSITIVS PHIL080PHT.
conduce to public tranquillity, by obviating vain efforts for redress, while it equally excludes the apathy which belongs to the passive character of religious resignation, by requiring submission to nothing but necessity, and encouraging the noblest exercises of human activity, wherever the analysis of the occasion opens any prospect whatever of genuine remedy. Finally, the positive philosophy befriends public order by bringing back men^s understandings to a normal state through the influence of its method alone, before it has had time to establish any social theory. It dissipates disorder at once by imposing a series of indisputable scientific conditions on the study of political questions. By including social science in the scientific hierarchy, the positive spirit admits to success in this study only well-prepared and disciplined minds, so trained in the preceding departments of knowledge as to be fit for the complex problems of the last. The long and diffi- cult preliminary elaboration must disgust and deter vulgar and ill-prepared nunds, and subdue the most rebellious. This consideration, if there were no other, would prove the emi- nently organic tendency of the new poUtical philosophy.
I have dwelt on this influence of the Positive ^™g|^^" philosophy, in favour of Order, because it is that
which is, as yet, least recognized, while the retro- grade and stationary schools continue to found their claims upon that very point. There is less mistake about its favour- able influence on Progress. In all its applications, the positive spirit is directly progressive ; its express office being to increase our knowledge, and perfect the connection of its parts. Even the illustrations of progression are, at the present day, derived firom the positive sciences. Whatever rational idea of social progress (that is, of continuous development, with a steady tendency towards a determinate end,) anywhere exists, should, as we shall hereafter see, be attributed to the unperceived in- fluence of the positive philosophy, in disengaging this great notion from its present vague and fluctuating state by clearly assigning the aim and the general course of progress. Though Christianity certainly bore a part in originating the sentiment of social progress by proclaiming the superioritv of the new law to the old, it is evident that the theological polity, pro- ceeding upon an immutable type, which was realised only in the past, must have become radically incompatible with ideas of continuous progression, and manifests, on the contrary, a
IT8 EFFECT ON PROGBESS. 47
thorougUy letrograde character. The metaphysical polity^ in its dogmatic aspect, has the same incompatibility, though the feeble connection of its doctrines renders it more accessible to the spirit of our time. Indeed, it was only after the decline of that school had begun, that ideas of progress took any general possession of the public mind. Thus the progressive, as well as the organic instinct, is to be developed by the positive philosophy alone.
The only idea of progress which is really proper to the revolutionary philosophy, is that of the continuous extension of tiberty ; that is, in positive terms, the gradual expansion of human powers. Now, even in the restricted and negative sense in which this is true, — ^that of the perpetual diminution of obstacles, — ^the positive philosophy is incontestably superior: for true liberty is nothing else than a rational submission to the preponderance of the laws of nature, in release firom all arbitrary personal dictation. Decisions of sovereign assemblies have been called laws by the metaphysical polity, and have been fictitiously r^arded as a manifestation of popular will. But no such homage paid to constitutional entities can dis- guise the arbitrary tendency which marks all the philosophies bat the positive. The arbitrary can never be excluded while political j^enomena are referred to Will, divine or human, instead of being connected with invariable natural laws ; and liberty will remain illusory and precarious, notwithstanding all constitutional artifices, and whatever be the will to which we pay our daily obedience. By substituting the empire of genuine convictions for that of arbitrary w^, the positive philosophy will put an end to the absolute liberty of the revolu- tionary school, — ^the license of running from one extravagance to another, — ^and, by establishing social principles, will meet the need at once of order and of progress. The special office of the revolutionary philosophy, that of extinguishing all but the historical existence of the ancient political system, is vir- tually committed to the positive principle ; and, in fact, the power exercised by the critical doctrine in this direction has been owing to its serving the purpose of a provisional organ to the positive philosophy. In other sciences, the critical action, however energetic, is only a collateral consequence of its oi^anic development ; and the organic development which vi &tal to the old theological system, involves in the same condemnation the metaphysical spirit, which is even the less
48 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
logical of the two. The most serious difficulty of contemporary politics is the condition of the lower classes ; and in this case^ the positive philosophy afiTords practical amelioration most favourable to progress. The revolutionary polity opened only an insurrectionary issue to this difficulty^ and merely shifted without solving the question. The question is not settled by opening a way to popular ambition^ the gratification of which must be confined to a few, (probably deserters from their class,) and can do nothing to soothe the murmurs of the multitude. The general lot is even aggravated by the excitement of un- reasonable hopes, and by the elevation of a few by the chances of the political game. As it is the inevitable lot of the ma- jority of men to live on the more or less precarious frxdts of daily labour, the great social problem is to ameliorate the condition of this majority, without destroying its classification, and disturbing the general economy : and this is the function of the positive polity, regarded as regulating the final classifica- tion of modem society. We shall have occasion to see here- after that the mental reorganization, by habitually interposing a common moral authority between the working classes and the leaders of society, will offer the only regular basis of a pacific and equitable reconciliation of their chief conflicts, nearly abandoned in the present day to the savage discipline of a purely material antagonism.
In this brief sketch of the prominent characteristics of the positive polity, we have seen that, notwithstanding its severe estimate of the different existing parties, it commands access to the spirit of each by proving itself adapted to ftdfil the aims which each has pursued too exclusively. It can also turn to the profit of its gradual ascendency all the important inci- dents of existing society which it could not intercept. Whether in its hour of exultation, the one school manifests its insuffi- ciency ; or whether, in the despair of failure, the other shows a disposition to welcome new means of political action; or whether, again, a kind of universal torpor exhibits in its naked- ness the aggregate of social needs, the new philosophy can always lay hold of a certain general issue to introduce, by a daily application, its fundamental instruction. In doing this however, we must, it seems to me, lay aside all hope of a real conversion of the retrograde school. Setting aside some happy individual anomali^, such as always exist, and may become more frequent, it remains indisputable that there is
«^^^WB9^p«v^^i^PMi«|BVa^iM9v^w««pv^^ii«HBV^MHiM^^^mii
AVENUE OF THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 49
such an antipathy, in regard to social questions, between the theological and the positive philosophies, that the one can never estimate the other, and must disappear before it, without being able to undergo any radical modification of its present form. It is, in fact, not Order that the ancient riffime aims at, but only its own preconception of a unique order, con- nected with its habits of mind and special interests, outside of which everything appears disorderly, and therefore indif- ferent. In the midst of its pretended devotion to general order, the retrograde school has often betrayed its tendency to care for the means more than the end. It is through the stationary school, whose love of order is at least more impar- tial, if not more disinterested, that the positive polity must obtain the access which it could not hope for from the retro- grade school. The metaphysical fictions of the parliamentary or constitutional philosophy may have diverted the mind of the stationaiy school from the true issue ; but they have not attained such an ascendency among the nations of the Euro- pean continent as to render them deaf to the rational voice of the new philosophy, when it appeals to a school so openly disposed as is the stationary party to establish permanent ordVon whatever prindples; in modem society. S^e useful action may therefore be hoped for through this medium. — Nevertheless, I avow that it is on the revolutionary school alone that, in my opinion, we can expect that the positive polity can exercise a predominant influence, because this school is the only one that is always open to new action on behalf of progress. All its indispensable provisional doctrines will be absorbed by the new philosophy, while all its anarchical tendencies will be extinguished. There will be more explo- sions of revolutionary doctrine, as long as there are any re- mains of the retrograde system; for the natural course of events does not wait for our slow philosophical preparation. Whether in virtue of our intellectual condition, or of faults committed by existing governments, such outbreaks will occur ; and perhaps they may be necessary to the uprooting of all hope of reconstructing social order on the old basis; but the positive philosophy will have foreseen such conflicts, and will take no part in them, further than to make use of the instruc- tion that they afford. It will not interfere with the last operations of the revolutionary preponderance; — knowing that thqr are the last. Nor will it paralyse so important a
VOL. II. D
50 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
geiaeral disposition as that which constitutes the critical spirit^ properly so called. By subordinating it for ever to the or- ganic spirit^ it will open to it broad political aims ; it will afford it employment in destroying all metaphysical and theo- logical interference^ using for this end the satirical faculties which produced nothing in the last century, but which may be of a secondary value in influencing the development of the political character that will be finally assigned to each school. On the whole, we may hope that the positive philosophy will find grounds of support among the most advanced sections of the revolutionary school; and, whatever mav be the hopes of that school from different political parties, it will be unable to dispense with the scientific superiority of the positive doc- trine, which is the certain cause and guarantee of its gradual ascendency.
Anarohical ^* might have been hoped that the renovation
tendeneiiM of we are anticipating would have been lai^ly aided thfi scientific by the scientific class of society, as that which ■* must be most familiar with positive science. But
it is not so. At present, the anarchical tendencies of that class appear to be as strong as any. The indifference of scientific men to the most interesting and most urgent of all classes of problems may be partly accounted for by their deep intellectual disgust at the irrational character of the social doctrines of their day ; but there are other reasons, even less honourable than this. They are themselves defective in scientific disci- pline. They abhor generalities, and have a systematic predi- lection for specialities. Under the idea of an organization of labour, they restrict their several pursuits within the narrow- est bounds, without providing for the investigation of general relations ; and thus, science becomes a pastime, grounded on no adequate preparation. It is not wonderful then that they have no interest in the entire generality which is the indis- pensable attribute of any philosophy that aspires to the moral government of mankind. Daily experience shows that, when learned bodies are brought into junction, for any poUtical purpose, with sensible men who know notlung of science, but are accustomed to general views, the superiority rests with the latter, even in regard to matters which particularly con- cern the scientific class. As long as this is the case, the sci- entific class decrees its own political subordination. Their social sentiment is on a par with theirideas; and their egotism is aggravated by their devotion to specialities, when it ought
CONCLUSION. 51
to be subdued by a mastery of positive science ; and would be 90^ if they could admit its general ideas. This is no fault of indiiriduals among them. It is imputable to the defective sdentiiic education of our time ; and all that men of science are censurable for is their dogmatic denial of the need of a better. We must^ however, abandon all hope of their co- operation in extending the positive method to the study of social phenomena. K we may anticipate anything in that direction, it must be from a rising generation for whom a more adequate training must be provided, and who will be led by a reaUy scientific education beyond the special and isolated studies to which they now conceive themselves to be destined, and which constitute at present their only idea of scientific pursuit.
I have now presented a view of the chief points ^ of support which the present state of the social ^ ^^ world afibrds to the renovating influence of the new political philosophy. This introduction may appear long ; but it will abridge my future labour by fumishmg my readers with a kind of rational programme of the conditions of the subject. Yet more, it indicates clearly what is apt to escape the notice of minds habituated to the superficial and irrational treatment of social questions, — the complete political efficacy of the positive philosophv. The high practical utility of the theory I am about to offer cannot be questioned by the haughtiest politician when it has once been demonstrated that the deepest want of modem society is, in its nature, eminently theoretical, and that, consequently, an intellectual, and then a moral re- organization must precede and direct the political. — ^This mu- tual relation being established, with a care proportionate to its. importance, we must now return, — ^not again to quit it, — ^to the strictly scientific point of view of this work, and pursue tbe study of the phenomena of social physics in a disposition of mind as purely speculative as that in which we surveyed the other fundamental sciences, with no other intellectual ambition than to discover the natural laws of a final order of phenomena, remarkable in the extreme, and never before ex- amined in this way.
Before prooeedmg, however, to this direct examination, I propose to consider, briefly, the principal philosophical at- tempts to constitute social science ; as a general estimate of this kind will tend to illustrate the nature and spirit of this ^ great department of positive philosophy.
D 2
52
CHAPTER 11.
PBINCIPAL PHILOSOPHICAL ATTEMPTS TO CONSTITUTE
A SOCIAL SYSTEM.
We have seen that the complex and special ciftl Saenoe. " natnre of social phenomena is the chief reason
why the study has remained imperfect to the last ; it being impossible to analyse them till the simpler de- partments of science were understood^ and till the great dis- covery of cerebral physiology had opened a rational access to their examination. To this main consideration we must now add another, which explains more specially why it has never till now been possible to establish social science on a positive basis. This consideration is, that we have not till now been in possession of a range of facts wide enough to diadose the natural laws of social phenomena.
The first rise of speculative doctrine has always^ in all sci- ences, taken place from the theological method, as I have shown. In the case of the anterior sciences, this did not preclude the formation of a positive theory, when once there had been a sufficient perpetuity of phenomena. The materials were ready before there were observers qualified to make a scientific use of them. But, even if observers had been ready, the phenomena of social life were not ample and various enough in early days to admit of their philosophical analysis. Many and profound modifications of the primitive civilization were necessary to afford a sufficient basis for experiment. We shall see hereafter how indispensable was the operation of the theological philosophy in directing the earliest progress of the himian mind and of society. Our present business is to no« tice the obstacles which it presented to the formation of a true social science. It was not, in fact, till modem political revolutions, and especially the French, had proved the insuffi- ciency of the old political system for the social needs of the age that the great idea of Progress could acquire sufficient firmness, distinctness and generality, to serve a scientific pur- pose. The direction of the social movement was not deter-
FIB8T 8SN8B OF PBOG&ESSION. 53
mined; and social speculation was embarrassed by firndfol notions of oscillating or circular movements, such as even now cause hesitation in able but iU-prepared minds as to the real nature of human progression. Till it is known in what this pr(^;re8sion consists, the fact itself may be disputed; since, from such a point of view, humanity may appear to be doomed to an arbitrary succession of identical phases, with- out ever experiencing a new transformation, gradually directed towards an end determined by the whole constitution of hu- man nature.
Thus all idea of social progress was interdicted to the phi- losophers of antiquity, for want of matenaLs of political obser- yation. The most eminent and sagacious of them were sub- ject to the common tendency to suppose the contemporary state of things inferior to that of former times. This suppo* ntion was the more natural and legitimate because the phUo- 8ophical works which contained this view coincided, as to date, with the decline of the Greek and Roman rigime. This de- cline, which, in relation to the whole of human history, was in &ct progress, could not appear so to the ancients, who did not anticipate what was to come. I have before intimated that the first dawning sense of human progression was inspired by Christianity, which, by proclaiming the superiority of the law of Jesus to that of Moses, gave form to the idea of a more perfect state replacing a less perfect, which had been necessary as a preparation. Though Catholicism'^ was, in this, simply the ofgan of expression of human reason, the service it thus rendered entitles it not the less, as all true philosophers will agree, to our eternal gratitude. But, apart from the mischief of the mysticism and vague obscurity which belong to all apptications of the theological method, such a beginning could not possibly suggest any scientific view of social progression : for any such progression was barred at once by the claim of Chrisfaanity to be the ultimate stage at which the human mind must stop. The social efficacy of the theological philo- sophy is now exhausted, and it has become therefore retro-
* This gnat idea belongs eBsentull j to Catholicum, from which Protestantiam Mred it in an imperfect and corrupt manner, — not only bj recurring irra- ^iooaUy to the period of the primitive Church, but also by offering for popular pudaaoe the most borbaroua and dangerous port of the Scriptures — ^that which KUtea to Hebrew antiquity. Mohammedanism pursued the same practice, and thos instituted »jnere imitation of Judaic barbarism, without introducing any re>t tmdioration.
54 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
grade, as we have seen; but the condition of continuity is an indispensable element in the conception of progress ; an idea which would have no power to guide social speculation if it represented progress as limited bjr its nature to a determinate condition, attained long ago.
It is thus evident that the conception of progress belongs exclusively to the positive philosophy. This philosophy alone can indicate the final term which human nature will be for ever approaching and never attaining ; and it alone can pre- scribe the general course of this gradual development. Ac- cordingly, the only rational ideas of continuous advance are of modem origin, and relate especially to the expansion of the positive sciences which gave birth to them. It may even be worth observing that the first satisfactory view of general progression was proposed by a philosopher whose genius was essentially mathematical ; and therefore conversant with the simplest form of the scientific spirit. Whatever may be the value of this observation, it is certain that Pascal was ani- mated by a sense of the progress of the sciences when he ut- tered the immortal aphorism : '' the entire succession of men, through the whole course of ages, must be regarded as one man, always living and incessantly learning.^' Whatever may have been the actual efiect of this first ray of light, it must be admitted that the idea of continuous progress had no scientific consistency, or public regard, till after the memorable con- troversy, at the beginning of the last century, about a gene- ral comparison of the ancients and modems. In my view, that solemn discussion constitutes a ripe event in the history of the human mind, which thus, for the first time, declared that it had made an irreversible advance. It is needless to point out that the leaders of this great philosophical move- ment derived all the force of their arguments trojn the scien- tific spirit : but it is remarkable that their most illustrious ad- versaries committed the inconsistency of declaring that they preferred the philosophy of Descartes to that which preceded it. — From this scientific origin the conception spread more and more in a political direction, till, at length, the French revolution manifested the tendency of humanity toward a po- litical system, indeterminate enough, but radically different firom the old system. This was the negative view of social progress ; ineffectual in itself, but necessary as a preparation for the advent of the positive philosophy, when it ^ould have
ARISTOTLE. 55
made its induction £rom social phenomena^ and ascertained their laws.
Having thns seen how impossible was the formation of so- cial science in ancient times^ we are in a condition to appreci- ate the attempts which were here and there prematurely made. The foregoing analysis shows that the political conditions of the subject are^ generally^ precisely coincident with the scien- tific, so as to retard by their competition the possibility of establishing social science on a positive basis. This obstacle has existed even up to our own generation^ who can only make a mere beginning in seeking in the past a basis for social sci- ence^ in virtue of theur experience of a revolutionary period^ and of their opening perception of the positive principle^ as they see it established in the other departments of himian knowledge, including that of intellectual and moral pheno- mena. It would be waste of time, and a departure from my object, to analyse fidly the attempts of ancient philosophers to form a poUtical science which was thus clearly impracti- cable in their day; and I shaU therefore merely point out the essential vice of each speculation, thereby justifying the judg- ment that we have just passed by anticipation, and disclosing the true nature of an enterprise which remains to be begun.
The name of Aristotle first presents itself, his memorable " Polities'' being one of the finest ^^!^^, productions of antiquity, and furnishing the general type of most of the works on that subject that have followed. This treatise could not possibly disclose any sense of the progressive tendencies of humanity, nor the slightest glimpse of the natural laws of civilization; and it was neces- sarily occupied by metaphysical discussions of the principle and form of government : but it is truly marvellous that any mind should have produced a work so advanced, and even nearer to a positive view than his other works, at a time when poUtical observation was restricted to a uniform and prehmi- naiy social state, and when the nascent positive spirit lived feebly in geometry alone. The analysis by which he refuted the dangerous fiancies of Plato and Ms imitators about com- munity of property evidences a rectitude, a sagacity, and a strength which, in their application to such subjects, have been rarely equalled, and never surpassed. Thus much I have said, in the way of homage to the first manifestation of human genius on the great subject of government, notwithstanding
56 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
the evident influence that it has exercised upon ^lilosophical meditation, from its own day to this.
The works which succeeded need not detain us. ThCT were merely an accumulation of fresh materials, classified by the type that Aristotle had furnished. The next period worth notice is that in which the preponderance of the positive spirit in the study of phenomena caused the first clear comprehen- sion of the meaning of general laws, and in which the idea of human progress b^an to assume some consistency ; and, to find these two conditions in concurrence, we can hardly go further back than the middle of the last century. The first
and most important series of works which then
onteBquieu. pjgg^Qjjg itself is that of Montcsquieu, first, in
his treatise on the '^ Greatness and Decline of the Romans,'' and afterwards in his '^ Spirit of Laws.'' The great strength of tins memorable work appears to me to lie in its tendency to regard pohtical phenomena as subject to invariable laws, like sJl other phenomena. This is numifested at the very out- set, in the preliminary chapter, in which, for the first time in the history of the human mind, the general idea of law is directly defined, in relation to all, even to political subjects, in the same sense in which it is applied in the simplest positive investigations. The progress of science which had been effected by the labours of Descartes, Galileo and Kepler, a century before, had rendered the most advanced minds familiar with an incomplete notion of progress. Montesquieu's conception was a generalization of this incomplete notion : and^ instead of denying originality to so eminent a service, we may weU be amazed that such a conception should be offered, before the positive method had extended beyond the simplest natural phenomena, — ^being scarcely admitted into the department of chemistry, and not yet heard of in the study of living bodies. And, in the other view, a man must have been in advance of his time, who could conceive of natural laws as the basis of social speculation and action, while all other able men were talking about the absolute and indefinite power of l^islators, when armed with due authority, to modify at will the social state. The very qualities, however, which give its pre-emi- nence to Montesquieu's work prove to us the impossibility of success in an enterprise* so premature in regard to its proposed object, the very conditions of which were still impracticable. The project of the work is not fulfilled in its course ; and^
MONTESQUIEU. 57
admirable as are some of its details^ it falls back^ like all others, upon the primitive type offered by Aristotle^s treatise. We find no reference of social phenomena to the laws whose existence was announced at the outset ; nor any scientific se- lection and connection of £Eu;ts. The general nature of his practical conclusions seems to show how fsur the execution of his work was firom corresponding with his original intention ; for his desultory review d the whole mass of social subjects ends in his settmg up^ as a universal political type^ the English parliamentary system, the insufficiency of which, for the sa- tisCu^on of modem social requirements, was not, it is true, so conspicuous in his day as it is now, but still discernible enough, as we shall have occasion to see. It was honourable to Montesquieu's philosophical character, that he steered wide of the metaphysic^ Utopias which lay in his way, and resorted rather to the narrow anchorage at which he rested ; but such a rescMTt^ so narrow and so barren, proves that he had wandered away fiom the course announced by himself. The only part of the book which bears any true marks of sustained positivity IS that in which the social influence of permanent local causes, —of that which in political language we may call climate, — ^is considered. This view, evidently derived from Hippocrates, manifests a tendency to attach observed phenomena to forces able to produce them, as in natural philosophy; but the aim has &iled. The true political influence of climate is miscon- ceived, and usually much exaggerated, through the common error of analysing a mere modification before the main action is fiilly understood ; which is much like trying to determine planetEury perturbations before ascertaining the chief gravita- tions. This error was inevitable under Montesquieu's ne- cessary ignorance of the great social laws, while he was bent upon introducing the positive spirit into the domain of politics. He naturally betook himself to the only class of social specu- lations which seemed fit for his purpose. Pardonable or una- voidable as was his fiEulure, it is a new evidence of the vast gap which lies open at the outset of the science. Montesquieu did not even perceive, any more than others, the fact which should regulate the whole political theory of climate ; — ^that local physical causes, very powerfrQ in the early days of civiliza- tion, lose their force in proportion as human development ad- mits of their being neutralized : — a view which would certainly have occurred to Montesquieu if he had possessed himself of
n 3
58 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
the fundamental notion of human progression hefore he treated of the political theory of climate. Thus, this great philosopher proposed a grand enterprise which was premature in two senses, and in which he could not hut fail, — ^first, by bringing social phenomena under the operation of the positive spirit before it had been introduced into the system of biologiod science ; and again, in proposing social reoi^anization during a period mark^ out for revolutionary action. This explains why a mind so eminent should have exercised, through its very ad- vancement, an immediate influence very inferior to that of a mere sophist, like Rousseau, whose intellectual state, much better adapted to the disposition of his contemporaries, allowed him to constitute himself, with so remarkable a success, the natural organ of the revolutionary movement of the time. It is by our posterity that Montesquieu will be duly estimated, when the extension of the positive philosophy to social specu- lations will disclose the high value of the precocious attempts which, though doomed to failure, yield the light by which ihe general question must be laid down.
^ After Montesquieu, the next great addition to
^ ^"* ■ Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Ck>ndorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious firiend Turgot. Turgof 8 suggestions with regard to the theory of the perfectibility of human nature were doubtless the basis of Condoroet^s spcinilation exhibited in his Historical Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind^ in which the scientific con- ception of the social progression of the race was, for the first time, clearly and directly proposed, with a distinct assertion of its primary importance. The strength of the work lies in its introduction, in which Condorcet exhibits his general idea, and proposes his philosophical project of studying the radical connection of the various social states of mankind. These few immortal pages leave really nothing to be desired in regard to the position of the sociological question at lai^, which will, in my opinion, rest, through all future time, on this ad- mirable statement. The execution is far from corresponding with the greatness of the project ; but no failure in the carrying out can impair the value of the design. The success and the failure may both be easily accounted for by a consideration of the scientific and political knowledge of the time. The expan- sion of the natural sciences, and especially of chemistry, during
CONDOaCET. 59
the second half of the last century, had thoroughly established in the best minds of the period the idea of positive laws ; and the stndy of living bodies, in the departments of anatomy and taxonomy, if not of physiology, began to assume a truly scientific character. Condorcet's mind was rationally prepared by ma- theniatical study, under the direction of D'Alembert : by his philosophical position in society, he had all the advantage of the expansion of physico-chemical science then taking place ; and of the labours of Haller, Jussieu, Linnseus, Buffon and Vicq-d'Azir in the principal departments of biological know- ledge ; and it was natural that he should conceive the enter- prise of carrying into the speculative study of social phenomena the same positive method which, fix)m the time of Descartes, had been regenerating the entire system of human knowledge. With equal advantages, and his higher order of genius, Mon- tesquieu would, no doubt, have achieved higher results than he has left us. Still, even Condorcet's project was premature, though less so than that of Montesquieu ; for a great deficiency remained in the imperfect state of biological knowledge, and especially in the exclusion of intellectual and moral phenomena from treatment by the positive method : and the unfortunate Condorcet did not live to see them assume their proper place. In their absence, he lost himself in wanderings after an inde- finite perfectibility, and chimerical and absurd anticipations. Such aberrations, affecting such men, are a lesson to us as to the impossibility of imaided reason overleaping the inter- nals which have not been steadily explored in the gradual ad- vance of the human mind. As to the political circumstances of the time, — the idea of social progression was certainly more distinct and more firm in Condorcet's than in Montesquieu's time : for the tendency of society to relinquish the ancient social system was becoming evident, though the new system which was to succeed it was but vaguely suspected, even where it was not wholly misconceived. The evil influence of the refolutionary docmne is singularly exhibited in Condorcet's ▼ork, in the form of an inconsistency which must strike every reader. The human race is there represented as having at- tamed a vast degree of perfection at the close of the eighteenth century, while the author attributes an entirely retrogressive inflnenoe to almost every doctrine, institution and preponderant power throughout the whole past. Whereas, the total pro- gress accomplished can be nothing else than the result of the
60 FOSITIYX PHIL080FHT.
Tarious kinds of partial progress realized since the b^;inning of civilization^ in virtue of the gradual onward course of hu- man nature. Such a state of things as Condorcet describes would be nothing else than a perpetual miracle ; and it is not to him^ therefore^ that we can look for any disclosure of the laws of human development^ any appreciation of the transi- tory nature of the revolutionary philosophy, or any general con- ception of the futtire of society. Here again we recognize the philosophical superiority of Montesquieu, who, not having Condorcet's opportunities of estimating the revolutionary spirit, had been able to free his mind from those critical pre- judices in regard to the past which formed the views of ail around him, and had injured his own earlier speculations. This brief survey of the labours of these great men shows us that the basis of true social science can be fixed only after the revolutionary spirit has begun to decline ; and thus the political, as well as the scientific indications of the subject point to our own time as that in which such a science is to be founded. Condorcet gave us a dear exposition of the nature of the enterprise ; but the whole accomplishment yet remains to be achieved.
These two attempts are really all that have been made in the right road to social science ; for they are the only specu- lations which have been based on the a^regate of lustorical &cts. I shall have occasion, further on, to notice some at- tempts which are not worthy to rank with these, and which merely testify to the existing need of social science by showing how various are the directions in which it is sought. On one subject, however, I shall here make a few observations, in order to illustrate further the aim and spirit of my own efibrts to constitute a basia for social science. That subject ia the nature and object of what is called Political Economy.
We cannot impute to political economists any l^^ ^" design to establish social science; for it is the
express assertion of the most classical among them that their subject is wholly distinct from, and indepen- dent of general political science. Yet, sincere as they doubt- less are in their dogma of isolation, they are no less sin- cerely persuaded that they have applied the positive spirit to economical science; and they perpetually set forth their me- thod as the type by which all social theories will be finally regenerated. As this pretension has obtained credit enough
THB POLITICAL ECONOMISTS. 61
to procure the establisliment of several professorships for this species of instraction^ I find myself obliged to explain why it is that I cannot, as would be very desirable, propose to carry on my enterprise finom the point reached by these philoso- phers, but must begin fix)m the beginning. My criticism on political economy in this place is merely for the purpose of showing that it is not the philosophical creation that we want ; and I must refer to my exposition as a whole any objectors to my summary estimate of political economy.
It is tmfavonrable to the philosophical pretensions of the economists that, being almost invariably lawyers or literary men, they have had no opportunity of discipline in that spirit of positive rationality wUch they suppose they have intro- duced into their researches. Precluded by their education from any idea of scientific observation of even the smallest phenomena, firom any notion of natural laws, from all percep- tion of what demonstration is, they must obviously be inca- pable of applying, impromptu, a method in which they have had no practice to the most difficult of all analyses. The only philosophical preparation that they can show is a set of vague prec^ts of general logic, susceptible of no real use ; and thus, their conceptions present a purely metaphysical character. There is one great exceptional case which I must at once exempt firom this criticism, — ^that of the illustrious philoso- pher, Adam Smith, who made no pretension to found a new spe- cial science ; but merely proposed, (what he admirably achieved) to illustrate some leading points of social philosophy by lu- minous analyses relating to the division of employments, the function of money, the general action of banks, etc., and other chief portions of the industrial developments of the hu- man race. Though involved, like all his contemporaries, in the metaphysical philosophy, a mind of such quality as his could not, however distinguished in the metaphysical school^ be blinded by its illusions, because his preparatory studies had impressed hun with a sense of what constitutes a true scien- tific method, as is clearly proved by the valuable sketches of the philosophical history of the sciences, and of astronomy in particular^ which are published among his posthumous works. The economists have no right to claim Adam Smith as their authority while the whole dogmatic part of their science presents a merely metaphysical character, dressed up with special forma and a list of scientific terms, *taken bodily firom
82 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
former pliiloiK>pliical expositions^ — ^as^ for instance^ firom the theolc^co-metaphysical writings of Spinoza. The contempo- rary history of this so-called science confirms this judgment of its nature. The most certain signs of ooncqptions being scientific are continuousness and fertility : and when existing works^ instead of being the result and development of those that have gone before^ have a character as personal as that of their authors, and bring the most fundamental ideas into ques- tion; and when, again, the dogmatic constitution provides for no real and sustained progress, but only for a barren reproduction of old controversies, it is dear that we are dealing with no posi- tive doctrine whatever, but merely with theological or meta- physical dissertations. And this is the spectacle which poli- tical economy has presented for half a century past. K our economists were really the sdentific successors of Adam Smith, thev would show us where they had carried on and completed their master's doctrine, and what new discoveries they had added to his primitive surveys; but looking with an impartial eye upon their disputes on the most elementary ideas of value, utility, production, etc., we might imagine ourselves present at the strangest conferences of the scholiasts of the Middle Ages about the attributes of their metaphysical entities ; which indeed economical conceptions resemble more and more, in proportion as they are dogmatized and refined upon. The result in both cases is, but too often, the perversion of the valuable indications of popular good sense, which become confused, inapplicable, and productive only of idle disputes about words. All intelligent men, for instance, understand what is meant by the terms prodttct and producer ; but, firom the time that economical metaphysics undertook to define them, the idea of production has become, through vicious generalizations, so indeterminate, that conscientious and clear writers are obliged to use circuitous explanations to avoid the use of terms which have become obscure and equivocal. Such abuse is analogous to that which metaphysics has introduced into the study of the human understanding^ with regard, for instance, to the general ideas of analysis and synthesis and the like. The avowal of the economists that their science is isolated firom that of social philosophy in general, is itself a sufficient confirmation of my judgment ; for it is a universal fact in social, as in biologic^ science, that all the various general aspects of the subject are scientifically one, and ration-
THBIA GOOD AND EVIL INFLUENCE. 63
ally inseparable^ so that they caimot be illustrated but by each other. Thus^ the economical or industrial analysis of society caimot be effected in the positive method, apart from its intel- lectoal, moral, and political analysis, past and present. And thus does the boasted isolation of political economy testify to its being grounded on a metaphysical basis.
This is the dogmatic aspect of the science. But it T^ould be unjust to forget that, looking at this doctrine historically, tad more with a political than a scientific view, it constitutes a final essential part of the system of critical philosophy, which has exercised an indispensable, though transitory influ- ence during the revolutionary period. PoUtical Economy has borne an honourable share in this vast intellectual conflict, by thoroughly discrediting the industrial polity of the Middle Ages, which became more and more injurious, in its descent to our time, to the industry which it had once protected. Such is the credit due to Political Economy. Its worst practical finilt is that, like the other portions of the metaphysical phi- losophy, it systematizes anarchy ; and the danger is only ag- gravated by its use of modem scientific forms. It has not been satisfied with criticizing, in much too absolute a way, the industrial polity of the old European sovereignties, without which the industrial development of modem times could nerer have taken place : it goes far beyond this; it sets up as a oniyersal dogma the absence of all regulating intervention whatever as the best means of promoting the spontaneous rise of society ; so that, on every serious occasion, this doctrine can respond to urgent practical needs only by the uniform reproduction of this systematic negation. Because it per- ceives a natural tendency in society to arrange itself in a cer- tain order, not seeing in this a suggestion of an order to be promoted by social arrangements, it preaches an absence of regulation which, if carried out to the limit of the principle, would lead to the methodical abolition of all government. But here we meet the compensating virtue that political eco- nomy insists on all human interests being bound up toge- ther, and thereforo susceptible of a permanent reconciliation. Though this may be simply the expression of the convictions of popular good sense, philosophy owes a tribute of eternal gratitude to the economists for their excellent service in extinguishing the disastrous and immoral prejudice which concluded the amelioration of the condition of some to be
66 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
view to immediate popularity by miiiistering to the popular taste. One of the most promising incidents of the time is the introduction into the highly metaphysical class of jurists of an historical school which has undertaken to connect^ during every period of histonr^ the whole of its legislation with the corresponding state oi society.
If the preceding chapter disclosed the destination of the great philosophical creation of which I am treating^ the pre- sent eidiibits its necessity^ and the opportuneness of the time. Attempts to constitute a science of society would not have been so obstinate^ nor pursued in ways so various, if an in- stinctive need of it had not been deeply felt. At the same time, the general analysis of the chief efforts hitherto made ex- plains their failure, and convinces us that the whole enterprise remains to be even conceived of in a manner which will secure its accomplishment. Nothing now prevents our going on to the fulfilment of this proposed task, by entering, in the next chapter, on the study of the method in Social Physics. We have so ascertained and cleared our ground, by firet taking a survey of our condition from a political point of view, and then reviewing the preparation made, that we are at full liberty to follow the speculative development that will prevail through- out the rest of this book, which will close with the co-ordina- tion between the theory and practice of Social Physics.
67
CHAPTER III.
CHAAACTEBISnCS OF THE FOSmVE METHOD IN ITS APPMOATION TO SOCIAL PHENOMENA.
Ik every scieiioe conoeptions which relate to method are in- separable firom those which relate to the doctrine under con- sideration. The method has to be so yaried in its application^ and 80 largely modified by the complexity and speoal nature of the phenomena^ in each case, that any general notions of method would be too indefinite for actual use. If, therefore, we have not separated the method fix)m the doctrine in the sunpler departments of science, much less should we think of doing so when treating of the complex phenomena of social Ufe, to say nothing of the great feature of this last case, — ^its waDt of positivity. In the formation of a new science the general spirit of it must be seized before its particular parts can be investigated : that is, we must have some notion of the doctrine before examining the method, and then the method cannot be estimated in any other way than by its use. Thus, I have not to ofier a logical exposition of method in social phyncs before proceeding to the science itself; but I must follow the same plan here as in the case of the anterior tdenoes, — ^ascertaining its general spirit, and what are the collective resources proper to it. Though these subjects may be said to belong to the science itself, we may consider them as belonging to the method, as they are absolutely necessary to direct our understandings in the pursuit of this difficult study. In the higher order of sciences, — in those which are the simplest and the most advanced, — the philosophical definition of each was almost sufficient to characterize their condition snd general resources, to which no doubt could attach. But the case is otherwise with a recent and extremely complex study, the very nature of which has to be settled by laborious chscuasions, which are happily needless in regard to the pre- ceding sdenoes. In treating of Biology, we found it neces- ssry to dwell upon preparatory explanations which would have
68 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
seemed pnerile in any of the foregoing departments, because the chief bases of a science about which there were still so many disputes must be indisputably settled before it could take rank in the positive series. It is evident that the same process is even more needful, and must be more laborious, in the case of the science of social development, which has hitherto had no character of positivity at all, and which some of the ablest minds of our time sentence never to have any. We must not be surprised then if, after applying here the simplest and most radical ideas of positive philosophy, such as would indeed appear trivial in their formal application to the more advanced sciences, the result should appear to many, even among the enlightened, to constitute too bold an innova- tion, though the conditions may be no more than the barest equivalent of those which are admitted in every other case.
Infimtile sUite ^ ^® ^^^ ^* » philosophical eye upon the of social present state of social science, we cannot but re-
■cience. oognize in it the combination of all the features
of that theologico-metaphysical infancy which all the other sciences have had to pass through. The present condition of political science revives before our eyes the anal<^ of what astrology was to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry, and the search for the universal panacea to the system of medical studies. We may, for our present purpose, consider the theo- logical and the metaphysical polities together, — the second bemg only a modification of the first in its relation to social science. Their attributes are the same, consisting, in regard to method, in the preponderance of imagination over obs^a* tion; and, in regard to doctrine, in the exclusive investigation of absolute ideas ; the result of both of which is an inevitable tendency to exercise an arbitrary and indefinite action over phenomena which are not r^arded as subject to invariable natural laws. In short, the general spirit of all speculation at that stage is at once ideal in its course, absolute in its concep- tion, and arbitrary in its application ; and these are unques- tionably the prevailing characteristics of social speculation at present, regutled from any point of view whatever. If we re- verse all the three aspects, we shall have precisely the spirit which must actuate the formation of positive sociology, and which must afterwards direct its continuous development. The scientific spirit is radically distinguished fiN)m the theo- logical and metaphysical by the steady subordination of the
INFANTILE STATE OV SOCIAL SCIENCE. 69
imaginatian to obsenration ; and though the positive philoso- phy offsrs the vastest and richest field to human imagination^ it restricts it to discovering and perfecting the co-ordination of observed £Bcts^ and the means of effecting new researches : and it is this habit of subjecting scientific conceptions to the fiu!t8 whose connection has to be disclosed, which it is above all things necessary to introduce into social researches; for the observations hitherto made have been vague and ill-circum- scribed, so as to afford no adequate foundation for scientific reasoning; and they are usually modified themselves at the jdeasure of an imagination stimulated by the most fluctuating passions. From their complexity, and their closer connection with human passions, political speculations must be detained longer than any others in this deplorable philosophical condi- tion, in which they are still involved, while simpler and less stimulating sciences have successively obtained emancipation ; bat we must remember that all other kinds of scientific con- ception have gone through the same stage, firom which they have issued with the more difficulty and delay exactly in pro- portion to their complexity and special nature. It is, indeed, (Hily in our own day that the more complex have issued firom that condition at all, as we saw to be the case with the intel- lectual and moral phenomena of individual life, which are still studied in a way dmost as anti-scientific as political pheno- mena themselves. We must not, then, consider that uncer- tainty and vagueness in observation are proper to political subjects. It is only that the same imperfection which has had its day throughout the whole range of speculation is here more intense and protracted ; and the same theory which shows how this must be the case gives us full assurance of a philosophi- cal regeneration in this department of science analogous to that which has taken place in the rest, though by means of se- verer intellectual difficulty, and the embarrassment which may arise from collision with the predominant passions of men; a liability which cannot but stimulate the endeavours of real thinkers.
If we contemplate the positive spirit in its re- rj^^ relative lation to scientific conception, rather than the Bupeneding mode of procedure, we shall find that this philo- *^® absolute. eophy is distinguished firom the theologioo-metaphysical by its tendency to render relative the ideas which were at first absolute. This inevitable passage from the absolute to the
70 POSITIVE PHILOSOFHT.
relative is one of the most important philosopUcal resnlts of each of the intellectual revolutions which has carried on every kind of speculation from the theological or metaphysical to the scientific state. In a scientific view^ this contrast between the relative and the absolute may be regarded as the most decisive manifestation of the antipathy between the modem philosophy and the ancient. All investigation into the nature of beings, and their first and final causes, must always be ab- solute ; whereas the study of the laws of phenomena must be relative, since it supposes a continuous progress of speculation subject to the gradual improvement of observation, without the precise reality being ever fully disclosed : so that the rela- tive character of scientific conceptions is inseparable from the true idea of natural laws, just as the chimerical inclination for absolute knowledge accompanies every use of theological fictions and metaphysical entities. Now, it is obvious that the absolute spirit characterizes social speculation now, wher- ever it exists, as the different schools are all agreed in looking for an immutable political type, which makes no allowance for the regular modification of political conceptions according to the variable state of civilization. This absolute spirit, having prevailed through all social changes, and their cor- responding philosophical divergences, is now so inherent in existing political science that it affords, amidst all its enor- mous evils, the only means of restraining individual eccen- tricities, and excluding the influx of arbitrarilv variable opi- nions. Thus, such philosophers as have desirea to emancipate themselves firom this absolutism, without having risen to the conception of a positive social philosophy, have justly incurred the reproach of representing political ideas as uncertain and even arbitrary in their nature, because they have deprived them of whatever character of consistency they had, without substituting any other. They have even cast a sort of dis- credit upon all philosophical enterprise in the direction of political science, which, losing its absolutism, seemed to lose its stability, and therefore its morality. A positive sociology, however, would put to flight all these natural, though em- pirical fears ; for all antecedent experience shows that in other departments of natural philosophy, scientific ideas have not become arbitrary by becoming relative, but have, on the con- trary, acquired a new consistence and stability by being im- plicated in a system of relations which is ever extending and
POLITICAL SPIRIT OP THE TIME. 71
strengthenings and more and more restraining all serious aberration. There is therefore no fear of falling into a dan- gerous BcepticiBm by destroying the absolute spirit^ if it is done in the natural course of passing on towards the positive state. Here^ as elsewhere^ it is characteristic of the positive philosophy to destroy no means of intellectual co-ordmation without substituting one more effectual and more extended; and it is evident that this transition from the absolute to the relative offers the only existing means of attaining to political conceptions that can gradually secure an unanimous and per- manent assent.
The importance and soundness of these conditions are less conspicuous than they might be^ on account of the too close connection which^ in social science more than any other, still exists between theory and practice, in consequence of which all specuiatiye and abstract appreciation, however supremely important, excites only a feeble interest and inadequate atten- tion. To show how this confusion results from the imper- fection of social science, as the most complex of all, we must look at the existing political spirit in relation to its general application, and not for the moment in relation to the science itsdf. In this view we see that the existing PrwmnptuouB political spirit is marked by its disposition to character of exercise an illimitable action over the corre- ^^®. exiBting sponding phenomena, as it was once supposed po^^^cd^pinL possible to do in other departments of philosophy. Men w&re long in learning that Man's power of modifying pheno- mena can result only from his knowledge of their natural laws ; and in the in&ncy of each science, they believed them- selves able to exert an unbounded influence over the pheno- mena of that science. As this happened precisely at the period when they had the least power over phenomena, from ignorance of their laws, they rested their confidence on expec- tations of aid from supernatural agents, or mysterious forces supposed to be inherent in all that they saw. The delusion was protracted, and the growth of true science hindered in proportion, by the increasing complexity of the descending sdenoes, as each order of phenomena exhibited less generaUty than the last, and obscured the perception as to what the mo- difying power of Man really is. Social phenomena are, of conise, from their extreme complexity, the last to be freed from this pretension : but it is therefore only the more neces-
72 POSITITE PHILOfiOFHT.
sary to remember that the pretensioii existed with regard to all the rest^ in their earliest stage, and to anticipate therefore that social science wHl, in its turn, be emancipated firom the delusion. It still hangs about the daas of intellectual and moral phenomena; but otherwise it is now confined to social subjects. There, amidst the dawning of a sounder philosophy^ we see statesmen and politicians still supposing that social phenomena can be modified at will, the human race haTing*^ in their view, no spontaneous impulsion, but being always ready to yield to any influence of the legislator, spiritual or temporal, provided he is invested with a sufiicient authority. We see the theolc^cal polity, as before, more consistent than the metaphysical, explaining the monstrous disproportion be- tween slight causes and vast effects, by regarding the legis- lator as merely the oi^an of a supernatural and absolute power : and again, we see the metaphysical school following the same course, merely substituting for Providence its unin- telligible entities, and especially its grand entity. Nature, which comprehends all the rest, and is evidently only an ab- stract deterioration of the theological principle. Ooing fur- ther than the theological school in its disdain of the subjection of effects to causes, it escapes firam difficulty by attributing observed events to chance, and sometimes, when that method is too obviously absurd, exaggerating ridiculously the influence of the individual mind upon the course of human affairs. The result is the same in both cases. It represents the social action of Man to be indefinite and arbitrary, as was once thought in regard to biological, chemical, physical, and even astronomical phenomena, in the earlier stages of their respec- tive sciences. It is easy to see that true political science would be unacceptable, because it must impose limits on political action, by dissipating for ever the pretension of governing at will this class of phenomena, and withdrawing them from human or super-human caprice. In close connec- tion mth the tendency to absolute conceptions, we must recognize in this delusion the chief intellectual cause of the social disturbance which now exists; for the human race finds itself delivered over, without logical protection, to the ill-regulated experimentation of the various poUtical schools each one of which strives to set up, for all future time, its own immutable type of govehiment. We have seen what are the chaotic results of such a strife : and we shall find that
VHP
PREVISION OF SOCIAL PHENOMENA. 73
there is no chance of order and agreement but in subjecting social phenomena, like all others^ to invariable natural laws^ which shall^ as a whole, prescribe for each period, with entire certainty, the limits and character of political action: — in other words, introducing into the study of social phenomena the same positive spirit which has regenerated every other branch of human speculation. Such a procedure is the true scientific basis of human dignity ; as the chief tendencies of man's nature thus acquire a solemn character of authority which must be always respected by rational legislation; whereas the existing belief in the indefinite power of poli- tical combinations, which seems at first to exalt the importance of Man, issues in attributing to him a sort of social auto- matism passively directed by some supremacy of either Provi- dence or the human ruler. I have said enough to show that the central difficulty in the task of regenerating political science is to rectify such an error of conception, at a time when our prevailing intellectual habits render it difficult to seize social conceptions in any other than their practical aspect, and when their scientific, and yet more, their logical relations are obscured by the prepossessions of the general mind.
The last of the preliminary considerations that prension of we have to review is that of the scientific pre- sodAl phono- vision of phenomena, which, as the test of true ™®^*" science, includes all the rest. We have to contemplate social phenomena as susceptible of prevision, like all other classes, within the limits of exactness compatible with their higher complexity. Comprehending the three characteristics of po- htical science which we have been examining, prevision of social phenomena supposes first, that we have abandoned the region of metaphysiad idealities, to assume the ground of observed realities by a systematic subordination of imagina- tion to observation; secondly, that political conceptions have ceased to be absolute, and have become relative to the varia- ble state of civilization, so that theories, following the natu- ral course of facts, may admit of our foreseeing them ; and, thirdly, that permanent political action is limited by determi- iiate laws, since, if social events were always exposed to dis- turbance by the accidental intervention of the legislator, hu- inan or divine, no scientific prevision of them would be possi- ble. Thus, we may concentrate the conditions of the spirit of positive social philosophy on this one great attribute of scien-
VOU 11. E
74 POSITIYB PHILOSOPHY.
tific prevision. This ooncentration is all the more apt for the purpose of our inquiry, because there is no other view in which the new social philosophy is so clearly distinguished finom the old. Events ordered by a supernatural will may leave room for a supposition of revelation ; but the very thought of pre- vision in that case is sacrilegious : and the case is essentially the same when the direction of events is assigned to metaphy- sical entities, except that it leaves the chance of revelation; the existence of which chance shows that the metaphysical conception is a mere modification of the tiieological. The old conceptions may evidently be applied to explain opposite fiwits equaUy well ; and they can never afford the slightest indica- tion of those which are yet future. And, if it be objected that, at all times, a great number of secondary political facts have been considered susceptible of prevision, this only proves that the old philosophy has never been strictly universal, but has always been tempered by an admixture of feeble and im- perfect positivism, without more or less of which society could not have held on its course. This admixture has, however, been hitherto insufficient to allow anything worthy the name of prevision, — ^anything more than a sort of popular forecast of some secondary and pmrtial matters,— never rising above an uncertam and rough empiricism, which might be of some pro- visional use, but could not in any decree supply the need of a true political philosophy.
Having now ascertained the fundamental position of the problems of political philosophy, and thus obtained guidance as to the scientific aim to be attained, the next step is to ex- hibit the general spirit of Social Physics, whose conditions we nave been deciding.
Spirit of Social .. V^^ philosophical principle of the science being Science. ^^ social phenomena are subject to natural laws,
tain wW 4- ^^**^ ^^ "jtional prevision, we have to ascer- tarn what 18 the precise subject, and what the pecuUar cha- ^d%^aS{::fl ^^^;.^The distinction between tihTstatical to sociJ^S^^ conations of the subject must be extended SiJStT • l"^"^ ^ ^^ *^t of the conditions of social STZiom^'''^'^'J "^"^ ^^ organization under the ^ bicJ^^iC *1^/^^ '^A ^T f ^^^ movement, This diS, ne^^ fo^J^^^, *^ ^^ of physiology, be stretched CoSS „I ^^^^"^^^^y purposes, must not cuoeyond that use: and, as we saw in Biology, that
STATICAL AND DYNAMICAL ASPECTS, 75
the distinction becomes weaker with the advance of science, so shall we see that when the science of social physics is fully constituted, this division will remain for analytical pur- poses, but not as a real separation of the science into two parts. The distinction is not between two classes of facts, but between two aspects of a theory. It corresponds with the double conception of order and progress : for order consists (in a poBitive sense) in a permanent harmony among the condi- tions of social existence; and progress consists in social deve- lopment ; and the conditions in the one case, and the laws of movement in the other, constitute the statics and dynamics of social physics. — ^And here we find again the constant relation between the science and the art, — ^the theory and the prac- tice. A science which proposes a positive study of the laws of order and of progress cannot be charged with speculative rashness by practical men of any intelligence, since it offers the only rational basis for the practical means of satisfying the needs of society, as to order and progress ; and the correspon- dence in this case will be foimd to be analogous to that which we have seen to exist between biological science and the arts which relate to it, — ^the medical art especially. — One view of the deepest interest in this connection is that the ideas of order and progress which are in perpetual conflict in existing society, occasioning infinite disturbance, are thus reconciled, and made necessary to each other, becoming as truly inseparable as the ideas of organization and life in the individual being. The further we go in the study of the couditionfi of human society, the more clearly will the or- ganizing and progressive spirit of the positive philosophy be- come manifest.
The statical study of sociology consists in the g^^^^,^ ^^^ investigation of the laws of action and reaction of the different parts of the social system, — apart, for the oc- casion, from the fundamental movement which is always gra- doally modifying them. In this view, sociological prevision, founded upon the exact general knowledge of those relations, acts by judging by each other the various statical indications of eadi mode of social existence, in conformity with direct observation, — just as is done daily in the case of anatomy. This view condemns the existing philosophical practice of con- templating sodal elements separately^ as if they had an inde- pendent existence ; and it leads ub to regard them as in mu-
E 2
76 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
tual relation, and forming a whole which compels us to treat them in combination. By this method, not only are we fur- nished with the only possible basis for the study of social movement, but we are put in possession of an important aid to direct observation ; since many social elements which can- not be investigated by immediate observation may be esti- mated by their scientific relation to others ab^ady known. When we have a scientific knowledge of the interior relation of the parts of any science or art ; and again, of the relations of the sciences to each other : and again, of the relations of arts to their respective sciences, the observation of certain por- tions of the scheme enables us to pronounce on the state of other portions, with a true philosophical security. The case is the same when, instead of studying the collective social phenomena of a single nation, we include in the study those of contemporary nations, whose reciprocal influence cannot be disputed, though it is much reduced in modem times, and^ as in the instance of western E\u*ope and eastern Asia, appa- rently almost effaced.
The only essential case in which this funda- f^i^ ^^"^"^ mental relation is misconceived or neglected is
that which is the most important of aU, — ^involv- ing, as it does, social organization, properly so called. The theory of social organization is still conceived of as absolute and isolated, independent altogether of the general analysis of the corresponding civilization, of which it can, in fact, constitute only one of the principal elements. This vice is chargeable in an almost equal degree upon the most opposite political schools, which agree in abstract discussions of political systems, without thinking of the coexisting state of civilization, and usually conclude with making their immutable political type coincide with an infantile state of human development. If we ascend to the philosophical source of this error, we shall find it, I think, in the great theological dogma of the Fall of Man. This fundamental dogma, which reappears, in one form or another, in all religions, and which is supported in its inteUoctual influence by the natural propensity of men to admire the past, tends, directly and necessanly, to make the continuous deterioration of society coincide with the ex- tension of civilization. We have noticed before how, when it passes from the theological into the metaphysical state, this dogma takes the form of the celebrated hypothesis of a chi-
mmmmammtmmmmtmm
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONCURRENCE. 77
merical state of nature^ superior to the social state^ and the more remote^ the further we advance in civilization. We cannot £Eiil to perceive the extreme seriousness^ in a political as well as a philosophical sense^ of an error so completely in- corporated with existing doctrines^ and so deeply influencing, in an unconscious way^ our collective social speculations^ — the more disastrously perhaps for not being expressly main- tained as a general principle. — If it were so presented, it must immediately give way before sound philosophical discussion ; for it is in direct contradiction to many ideas in political phi« losophy which, without having attained any scientific oon- siistency, are obtaining some intellectual ascendency, through the natural course of events, or the expansion of the general nimd. For instance, all enlightened political writers acknow- ledge more or less mutual relation between political institu- tions; and this is the first direct step towards the rational conception of the agreement of the special system of institu- tions with the total system of civilization. We Political and now see the best thinkers admitting a constant social concur- mutnal connection between the political and the '^'^• civil power : which means, in scientific language, that prepon- derating social forces always end in assuming the direction of society. Such partial advances towards a right view, — such fortunate feeling after the right path, must not, however, in- dooe us to relax in our requirements of a true philosophical conception of that general social agreement which can alone constitute organization. Desultory indications, more Htorary than scientific, can never supply the place of a strict philoso- phical doctrine, as we may see 6rom the fact that, firom Aris- totle downwaids, (and evenfix)m an earlier period,) the greater number of philosophers have constantly reproduced the fa- iQous aphorism of the necessary subordination of laws to numners, without this germ of sound philosophy having had an^ effect on the general habit of regarding institutions as independent of the coexisting state of civilization, — however strange it may seem that such a contradiction should live through twenty centuries. This is, however, the natural coone with intellectual principles and philosophical opinions, as well as with social manners and political institutions. When once they have obtained possession of men's minds, they live on, notwithstanding their admitted impotence and inconve- nience, giving occasion to more and more serious inconsis-
78 POSITIVB FHIL060PHT.
tendes^ till the expansion of Iranian reason originates new prin- ciples, of equivalent generality and superior rationality. We must not therefore take for more than their worth the desul- tory attempts that we see made in the right direction, but must insist on the principle which lies at the heart of every scheme of social organization, — ^the necessary participation of the collective political righne in the universal consensus of the social body.
The scientific principle of the relation between the political and the social condition is simply this; — ^that there must always be a spontaneous harmony between the whole and the parts of the social system^ the elements of which must inevi- tably be, sooner or later, combined in a mode entirely con- formable to their nature. It is evident that not only must political institutions and social manners on the one hand, and manners and ideas on the other, be always mutually con- nected; but, further, that 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 : and the only object of any political system whatever, temporal or spi- ritual, is to regulate the spontaneous expansion so as best to direct it towaids its determinate end. Even during revolu- tionary periods, when the harmony appears furthest firom being duly realized, it still exists : for without it there would be a total dissolution of the social organism. During those excep- tional seasons, the political rigime is still, in the long run, in conformity with the corresponding state of civilization^ as the disturbances which are manifest in the one proceed from equi- valent derangements in the other. It is observiible that when the popular theory attributes to the legislator the permanent power of infiinging the harmony we are speaking of, it sup- poses him to be armed with a sufficient authority. But every social power, whether called authority or anything else, is constituted by a corresponding assent, spontaneous or deli- berate, expilicit or implicit, of various individual wills, resolved, firom certain preparatory convictions, to concur in a common action, of which this power is first the organ, and then the regulator. Thus, authority is derived firom concurrence, and not concurrence irom authority, (setting aside the necessary reaction:) so that no great power can arise otherwise than fi'om the strongly prevalent disposition of the society in which
THE POLITICAL SYSTEM ALWAYS RELATIVE. 79
it exists: and when there is no strong preponderance^ such powers as exist are weak accordingly : and the more extensive the society^ the more irresistible is the correspondence. On the other hand, there is no denying the influence which^ by a Beoesaary reaction^ the political system^ as a whole^ exercises o?ef the general system of civilization, and which is so often exhibited in the action, fortunate or disastrous, of institutions, measures, or purely pohtical events, even upon the course of &e sciences and arts, in all ages of society, and especially the earliest. We need not dwell on this ; for no one denies it. The common error, indeed, is to exaggerate it, so as to place the reaction before the primary action. It is evident, consi- dering their scientific relation to each other, that both concur in creating that fundamental agreement of the social organism which I propose to set forth in a brief maimer, as the philoso- phical principle of statical sociology. We shall have to advert lepeat^y to the subject of the general correspondence be- tween the political rSgime and the contemporary state of civili" xation, in connection with the question of the necessary limits of political action, and in the chapter which I must devote to aooal statics : but I did not think fit to wait for these expla- natioiis before pointing out that the political system ought sdways to be regarded as relative. The relative point of view, sahstitated for the absolute tendency of the ordinary theories, certainly constitutes the chief scientific character of the po- sitiTe philosophy in its political application. If, on the one hand, the conception of this connection between government and dyilization presents all ideas of political good or evil as neoeasarily relative and variable (which is quite another thing than being arbitrary), on the other hand, it provides a rationtd basis for a positive theory of the spontaneous order of human society, already vaguely perceived, in regard to some minor rektions, by that part of the metaphysical polity which we call political economy ; for, if the value of any political system can consist in nothing but its harmony with the correspond- ing social state, it follows that in the natural course of events, and in the absence of intervention, such a harmony must ne- cessarily be estabUshed.
There are two principal considerations which in- jnteKonnection dnoe me to insist on this elementary idea of the rk- of the sooial dical consensus proper to the social organism : first, organism, the extreme philosophical importance of this master-thought of
82 POStTIYS PHILOSOPHY.
condition appears in the presence of the principle I have laid down.
Before we go on to the subject of social dyna- P"^'*? j'*** mics, I will just remark that the prominent inter-
tical study. . • •' i \ • i '^ • •!_
connection we have been considenng prescribes a procedure in organic studies different from that which suits inorganic. The metaphysicians announce as an aphorism that we should always, in every kind of study, proceed fiom the simple to the compound : whereas, it appears most rational to suppose that we should foUow that or the reverse method, as may best suit our subject. There can be no absolute merit in the method enjoined, apart from its suitableness. The rule should rather be (and there probably was a time when the two rules were one) that we must proceed from the more known to the less. Now, in the inorganic sciences, the elements are much better known to us than the whole which they consti- tute : so that in that case we must proceed from the simple to the compoimd. But the reverse method is necessary in the study of Man and of Society ; Man and Society as a whole being better known to us, and more accessible subjects of study, than the parts which constitute them. In exploring the universe, it is as a whole that it is inaccessible to us ; whereas, in investi- gating Man or Society, our difficulty is in penetrating the de- tails. We have seen, in our survey of biology, that the general idea of animal nature is more distinct to our minds than the simpler notion of vegetable nature; and that man is the bio- logical unity ; the idea of Man being at once the most com- pound, and the startmg-point of speculation in regard to vital existence. Thus, if we compare the two halves of natursd philosophy, we shall find that in the one case it is the last degree of composition, and, in the other, the last degree of simplicity, that is beyond the scope of our research. As for the rest, it may obviate some danger of idle discussions to say that the positive philosophy, subordinating all fancies to reality, excludes logical controversies about the absolute value of this or that method, apart from its scientific application. The only ground of preference being the superior adaptation of any means to the proposed end, this philosophy may, without any inconsistency, change its order of proceeding when the one first tried is found to be inferior to its converse : — a discovery of which there is no fear in regard to the question we have now been examining.
DYNAMICAL SOCIOLOGY. 88
Paasiiig on from statical to dynamical sociology^ we will contemplate the philosophical conception ^^"""^ which should govern our study of the movement ' ^' of society. Part of this subject is already despatched^ from the exphmations made in connection with statics having sim- pMfied tiie chief difficulties of the case. And social dynamics will be so prominent throughout the rest of this work, that I may reduce within very small compass what I have to say now under that head.
Though the statical view of society is the basis of sociology, the dynamical view is not only the more interesting of the two, but the more marked in its philosophical character, from its being more distinguished from biology by the master- thought of continuous progress, or rather, of the gradual de- velopment of humanity. K I were writing a methodical treatiae on political philosophy, it would be necessary to offer a preliminary analysis of the individual impulsions which m^ up the progrekive force of the hmnan ra^, hy referring them to that instinct which results from the concurrence of all our natural tendencies, and which uiges man to develope the whole of his life, physical, moral, and intellectual, as far as his circumstances allow. But this view is admitted by all enlightened philosophers; so that I may proceed at once to oonnder the continuous succesnon of human development, regarded in the whole race, as if humanity were one. For deamess, we may take advantage of Condorcet's device of supposing a single nation to which we may refer all the conse- cutive social modifications actually witnessed among distinct peo|rfe8. This rational fiction is nearer the reality than we are accustomed to suppose ; for, in a political view, the true suc- cessors of such or such a people are certainly those who, taking up and carrying out their primitive endeavours, have prolonged their social progress, whatever may be the soil which they inhabit, or even the race from which they spring. In brief, it is political continuity which regulates sociological succession, though the having a common country must usually affect this continuity in a high degree. As a scientific artifice merely, however, I shall employ this hypothesis, and on the gronnd of its manifest utility.
The true general spirit of social dynamics then consists in conceiving of each of these consecu- ^JJ^^jjj- tive social states as the necessary result of the ^
84 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.
preceding, and the indispensable mover of the following, ac- cording to the axiom of Leibnitz, — the present is big with the future. In this view, the object of science is to discover the laws which govern ttus continuity, and the aggregate of which determines the course of human development. In short, social dynamics studies the laws of succession, while social statics inquires into those of co-existence ; so that the use of the first is to furnish the true theory of progress to political practice, while the second performs the same service in r^ard to order ; and this suitability to the needs of modem society is a strong confirmation of the philosophical character of such a combination.
If the existence of sociological laws has been ^^w^. established in the more difficult and imoertain
case of the statical condition, we may assume that they will not be questioned in the dynamical province. In all times and places, the ordinary course of even our brief individual life has disclosed certain remarkable modifications which have occurred, in various ways, in the social state ; and all the most ancient representations of human life bear unconscious and most interesting testimony to this, apart from all systematic estimate of the fact. Now it is the slow, continuous accumulation of these successive changes which gradually constitutes the social movement, whose steps are ordinarily marked by generations, as the most appreciable elementary variations are wrought by the constant renewal of adults. At a time when the average rapidity of this progression seems to all eyes to be remarkably accelerated, the reality of the movement cannot be disputed, even by those who most abhor it. The only question is about the constant subjection of these great dynamical phenomena to invariable natural laws, a proposition about which there is no question to any one who takes his stand on positive philo- sophy. It is easy however to establish, from any point of view, that the successive modifications of society have always taken place in a determinate order, the rational explanation of which is already possible in so many cases that we may confi- dently hope to recognize it ultimately in all the rest. So re- markable is the steadiness of this order, moreover, that it exhibits an exact parallelism of development among distinct and independent populations, as we shall see when we come to the historical portion of this volume. Since, then, the ex- istence of the social movement is imquestionable, on the one
SOCIETY SUBJECT TO NATURAL LAWS. 85
liand, and, on the other, the succeasion of Bodal states is ne?er arbitrary, we cannot but regard this continuous pheno- menon as subject to natural laws as positive as those which gorem all other phenomena, though more complex. There is in fikct no intellectual alternative ; and thus it is evident that it is on the ground of social science that the great conflict must soon terminate which has gone on for three centuries between the positive and the theologico-metaphysical spirit* Banished for ever firom all other dasses of speculation, in principle at least, the old philosophies now prevail in social science alone ; and it is from this domain that they have to be exdnded, by the conception of the social movement being sub- ject to invariable natural laws, instead of to any will whatever. Though the fundamental laws of social interconnection are especially verified in this condition of movement, and though there is a necessary uiuty in this phenomenon, it may be use- fully applied, for preparatory purposes, to the separate ele- mentary aspects of human existence, physical, moral, intel- lectual and, finally, political, — ^their mutual relation being kept in