Oass_i_ 
 Book 
 
 M 
 
I 
 

 
 iUGUSTE COITE 
 
 AND 
 
 l^ 
 
 POSITIVISM 
 
 BY JOHN STUART MILL 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 1866. 
 

 
 v^° 
 
 Af'SfrQ 
 
<** RECEDED. V <i 
 
 AUGUSTE COM:r 
 
 POSITIVISM, 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE COTJRS DE PHILOSOPHIE POSITIVE. 
 
 For some time nmcli has been said, in England 
 and on the Continent, concerning "Positivism" 
 and " the Positive Philosophy." Those phrases, 
 which during the life of the eminent thinker who 
 introduced them had made their way into no writ- 
 ings or discussions but those of his very few direct 
 disciples, have emerged from the depths and mani- 
 fested themselves on the surface of the philosophy 
 of the age. It is not very widely known what they 
 represent, but it is understood that they represent 
 something. They are symbols of a recognised mode 
 of thought, and one of sufficient importance to in- 
 duce almost all who now discuss the great problems 
 of philosophy, or survey from any elevated point 
 of view the opinions of the age, to take what is 
 termed the Positivist view of things into serious 
 i 
 
2 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 consideration, and define their own position, more 
 or less friendly or hostile, in regard to it; Indeed, 
 though the mode of thought expressed by the terms 
 Positive and Positivism is widely spread, the words 
 themselves are, as usual, better known through the 
 enemies of that mode of thinking than through its 
 friends ; and more than one thinker who never 
 called himself or his opinions by those appellations, 
 and carefully guarded himself against being con- 
 founded with those who did, finds himself, some- 
 times to his displeasure, though generally by a 
 tolerably correct instinct, classed with Positivists, 
 and assailed as a Positivist. This change in the 
 bearings of philosophic opinion commenced in 
 England earlier than in Prance, where a philo- 
 sophy of a contrary kind had been more widely 
 cultivated, and had taken a firmer hold on the 
 speculative minds of a generation formed by 
 Boy er- Collar d, Cousin, Jouffroy, and their com- 
 peers. The great treatise of M. Comte was scarcely 
 mentioned in Prench literature or criticism, when 
 it was already working powerfully on the minds of 
 many British students and thinkers. But, agree- 
 ably to the usual course of things in Prance, the 
 new tendency, when it set in, set in more strongly. 
 Those who call themselves Positivists are indeed 
 not numerous ; but all Prench writers who adhere 
 to the common philosophy, now feel it necessary to 
 begin by fortifying their position against " the 
 Positivist school." And the mode of thinking 
 thus designated is already manifesting its import- 
 ance by one of the most unequivocal signs, the 
 
ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 6 
 
 appearance of thinkers who attempt a compromise 
 or juste milieu between it and its opposite. The 
 acute critic and metaphysician M. Taine, and the 
 distinguished chemist M. Berthelot, are the authors 
 of the two most conspicuous of these attempts. 
 
 *The time, therefore, seems to have come, when 
 every philosophic thinker not only ought to form, 
 but may usefully express, a judgment respecting 
 this intellectual movement ; endeavouring to under- 
 stand what it is, whether it is essentially a whole- 
 some movement, and if so, what is to be accepted 
 and what rejected of the direction given to it by its 
 most important movers. There cannot be a more 
 appropriate mode of discussing these points than in 
 the form of a critical examination of the philosophy 
 of August e Comte ; for which the appearance of a 
 new edition of his fundamental treatise, with a 
 preface by the most eminent, in every point of 
 view, of his professed disciples, M. Littre, affords a 
 good opportunity. The name of M. Comte is more 
 identified than any other with this mode of thought. 
 He is the first who has attempted its complete sys- 
 tematization, and the scientific extension of it to all 
 objects of human knowledge. And in doing this 
 he has displayed a quantity and quality of mental 
 power, and achieved an amount of success, which 
 have not only won but retained the high admira- 
 tion of thinkers as radically and strenuously op- 
 posed as it is possible to be, to nearly the whole of 
 his later tendencies, and to many of his earlier 
 opinions. It would have been a mistake had such 
 
 thinkers busied themselves in the first instance 
 
 1 * 
 
4 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 with drawing attention to what they regarded as 
 errors in his great work. Until it had taken the 
 place in the world of thought which belonged to it, 
 the important matter was not to criticise it, but to 
 help in making it known. To have put those who 
 neither knew nor were capable of appreciating 
 the greatness of the book, in possession of its vul- 
 nerable points, would have indefinitely retarded 
 its progress to a just estimation, and was not need- 
 ful for guarding against any serious inconvenience. 
 While a writer has few readers, and no influence 
 except on independent thinkers, the only thing 
 worth considering in him is what he can teach us : 
 if there be anything in which he is less wise than 
 we are already, it may be left unnoticed until the 
 time comes when his errors can do harm. But the 
 high place which M. Comte has now assumed 
 among European thinkers, and the increasing in- 
 fluence of his principal work, while they make it a 
 more hopeful task than before to impress and en- 
 force the strong points of his philosophy, have ren- 
 dered it, for the first time, not inopportune to dis- 
 cuss his mistakes. Whatever errors he may have 
 fallen into are now in a position to be injurious, 
 while the free exposure of them can no longer 
 be so. 
 
 We propose, then, to pass in review the main 
 principles of M. Comte's philosophy ; commencing 
 with the great treatise by which, in this country, 
 he is chiefly known, and postponing consideration of 
 the writings of the last ten years of his life, except 
 for the occasional illustration of detached points. 
 
AUGTTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 5 
 
 When we extend our examination to these later 
 productions, we shall have, in the main, to reverse 
 our judgment. Instead of recognizing, as in the 
 Cours de Philosophic Positive, an essentially sound 
 view of philosophy, with a few capital errors, it is 
 in their general character that we deem the sub- 
 sequent speculations false and misleading, while 
 in the midst of this wrong general tendency, we 
 find a crowd of valuable thoughts, and suggestions 
 of thought, in detail. Eor the present we put out 
 of the question this signal anomaly in M. Comte's 
 intellectual career. We shall consider only the 
 principal gift which he has left to the world, his 
 clear, full, and comprehensive exposition, and in 
 part creation, of what he terms the Positive Philo- 
 sophy : endeavouring to sever what in our estima- 
 tion is true, from the much less which is erroneous, 
 in that philosophy as he conceived it, and distin- 
 guishing, as we proceed, the part which is specially 
 his, from that which belongs to the philosophy of 
 the age, and is the common inheritance of thinkers. 
 This last discrimination has been partially made in 
 a late pamphlet, by Mr Herbert Spencer, in vin- 
 dication of his own independence of thought : but 
 this does not diminish the utility of doing it, with 
 a less limited purpose, here ; especially as Mr 
 Spencer rejects nearly all which properly belongs 
 to M. Comte, and in his abridged mode of state- 
 ment does scanty justice to what he rejects. The 
 separation is not difficult, even on the direct evi- 
 dence given by M. Comte himself, who, far from 
 claiming any originality not really belonging to 
 
6 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 him, was eager to connect his own most original 
 thoughts with every germ of anything similar 
 which he oh served in previous thinkers. 
 
 The fundamental doctrine of a true philosophy, 
 according to M. Comte, and the character hy which 
 he defines Positive Philosophy, is the following : 
 — We have no knowledge of anything hut Phseno- 
 mena; and our knowledge of phenomena is relative, 
 not absolute. We know not the essence, nor the 
 real mode of production, of any fact, but only its 
 relations to other facts in the way of succession or 
 of similitude. These relations are constant ; that 
 is, always the same in the same circumstances. 
 The constant resemblances which link phenomena 
 together, and the constant sequences which unite 
 them as antecedent and consequent, are termed 
 their laws. The laws of phsenomena are all we 
 know respecting them. Their essential nature, 
 and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, 
 are unknown and inscrutable to us. 
 
 M. Comte claims no originality for this con- 
 ception of human knowledge. He avows that it 
 has been virtually acted on from the earliest period 
 by all who have made any real contribution to 
 science, and became distinctly present to the minds 
 of speculative men from the time of Bacon, Des- 
 cartes, and Galileo, whom he regards as collect- 
 ively the founders of the Positive Philosophy. 
 A& he says, the knowledge which mankind, even 
 in the earliest ages, chiefly pursued, being that 
 which they most needed, was /breknowledge : " sa- 
 voir, pour prevoir." When they sought for the 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 7 
 
 cause, it was mainly in order to control the effect, 
 or if it was uncontrollable, to foreknow and adapt 
 their conduct to it. Now, all foresight of phseno- 
 mena, and power over them, depend on knowledge 
 of their sequences, and not upon any notion we 
 may have formed respecting their origin or inmost 
 nature. We foresee a fact or event by means of 
 facts which are signs of it, because experience has 
 shown them to be its antecedents. We bring about 
 any fact, other than our own muscular contractions, 
 by means of some fact which experience has shown 
 to be followed by it. All foresight, therefore, and 
 all intelligent action, have only been possible in 
 proportion as men have successfully attempted to 
 ascertain the successions of phsenomena. Neither 
 foreknowledge, nor the knowledge which is practi- 
 cal power, can be acquired by any other means. 
 
 The conviction, however, that knowledge of 
 the successions and co-existences of phsenomena is 
 the sole knowledge accessible to us, could not be 
 arrived at in a very early stage of the progress of 
 thought. Men have not even now left off hoping 
 for other knowledge, nor believing that they have 
 attained it ; and that, when attained, it is, in some 
 undefinable manner, greatly more precious than 
 mere knowledge of sequences and co-existences. 
 The true doctrine was not seen in its full clearness 
 even by Bacon, though it is the result to which all 
 his speculations tend : still less by Descartes. It 
 was, however, correctly apprehended by Newton.* 
 
 * See the Chapter on Efficient Causes in Eeid's " Essays on the 
 Active Powers," which is avowedly grounded on Newton's ideas. 
 
8 ATJG-TTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 But it was probably first conceived in its entire 
 generality by Hume, who carries it a step further 
 than Comte, maintaining not merely that the only 
 causes of phenomena which can be known to us 
 are other phenomena, their invariable antecedents, 
 but that there is no other kind of causes : cause, 
 as he interprets it, means the invariable antece- 
 dent. This is the only part of Hume's doctrine 
 which was contested by his great adversary, Kant ; 
 who, maintaining as strenuously as Comte that we 
 know nothing of Things in themselves, of Nou- 
 mena, of real Substances and real Causes, yet 
 peremptorily asserted their existence. But nei- 
 ther does Comte question this : on the contrary, 
 all his language implies it. Among the direct 
 successors of Hume, the writer who has best stated 
 and defended Comte' s fundamental doctrine is Br 
 Thomas Brown. The doctrine and spirit of Brown's 
 philosophy are entirely Positivist, and no better 
 introduction to Positivism than the early part of 
 his Lectures has yet been produced. Of living 
 thinkers we do not speak; but the same great 
 truth formed the groundwork of all the speculative 
 philosophy of Bentham, and pre-eminently of James 
 Mill : and Sir William Hamilton's famous doctrine 
 of the Belativity of human knowledge has guided 
 many to it, though we cannot credit Sir "William 
 Hamilton himself with having understood the 
 principle, or been willing to assent to it if he had. 
 
 The foundation of M. Comte' s philosophy is 
 thus in no way peculiar to him, but the general 
 property of the age, however far as yet from being 
 universally accepted even by thoughtful minds. 
 
 \ 
 
ATTGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 9 
 
 The philosophy called Positive is not a recent in- 
 vention of M. Comte, but a simple adherence to 
 the traditions of all the great scientific minds 
 whose discoveries have made the human race what 
 it is. M. Comte has never presented it in any 
 other light. But he has made the doctrine his 
 own by his manner of treating it. To know rightly 
 what a thing is, we require to know, with equal 
 distinctness, what it is not. To enter into the real 
 character of any mode of thought, we must under- 
 stand what other modes of thought compete with 
 it. M. Comte has taken care that we should do 
 so. The modes of philosophizing which, according 
 to him, dispute ascendancy with the Positive, are 
 two in number, both of them anterior to it in date ; 
 the Theological, and the Metaphysical. 
 
 We use the words Theological, Metaphysical, 
 and Positive, because they are chosen by M. Comte 
 as a vehicle for M. Comte's ideas. Any philoso- 
 pher whose thoughts another person undertakes to 
 set forth, has a right to require that it should be 
 done by means of his own nomenclature. They 
 are not, however, the terms we should ourselves 
 choose. In all languages, but especially in Eng- 
 lish, they excite ideas other than those intended. 
 The words Positive and Positivism, in the meaning 
 assigned to them, are ill fitted to take root in 
 English soil; while Metaphysical suggests, and 
 suggested even to M. Comte, much that in no 
 way deserves to be included in his denunciation. 
 The term Theological is less wide of the mark, 
 though the use of it as a term of condemnation 
 implies, as we shall see, a greater reach of nega- 
 
10 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 tion than need be included in the Positive creed. 
 Instead of the Theological we should prefer to 
 speak of the Personal, or Yolitional explanation of 
 nature ; instead of Metaphysical, the Ahstractional 
 or Ontological : and the meaning of Positive would 
 be less ambiguously expressed in the objective as- 
 pect by Phsenomenal, in the subjective by Experi- 
 ential. But M. Comte's opinions are best stated 
 in his own phraseology ; several of them, indeed, 
 can scarcely be presented in some of their bear- 
 ings without it. 
 
 The Theological, which is the original and 
 spontaneous form of thought, regards the facts 
 of the universe as governed not by invariable 
 laws of sequence, but by single and direct volitions 
 of beings, real or imaginary, possessed of life and 
 intelligence. In the infantile state of reason and 
 experience, individual objects are looked upon as 
 animated. The next step is the conception of 
 invisible beings, each of whom superintends and 
 governs an entire class of objects or events. The 
 last merges this multitude of divinities in a single 
 God^ho made the whole universe in the begin- 
 ning, and guides and carries on its phenomena 
 by his continued action, or, as others think, only 
 modifies them from time to time by special inter- 
 ferences. 
 
 The mode of thought which M. Comte terms 
 Metaphysical, accounts for phenomena by ascrib- 
 ing them, not to volitions either sublunary or 
 celestial, but to realized abstractions. In this 
 stage it is no longer a god that causes and directs 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 11 
 
 each of the various agencies of nature : it is a 
 power, or a force, or an occult quality, considered 
 as real existences, inherent in but distinct from 
 the concrete bodies in which they reside, and 
 which they in a manner animate. Instead of 
 Dryads presiding over trees, producing and regu- 
 lating their phenomena, every plant or animal has 
 now a Vegetative Soul, the 9gs7rnx?j \J/u;^ of Aris- 
 totle. At a later period the Vegetative Soul has 
 become a Plastic Force, and still later, a Vital 
 Principle. Objects now do all that they do because 
 it is their Essence to do so, or by reason of an 
 inherent Virtue. Phenomena are accounted for 
 by supposed tendencies and propensities of the 
 abstraction Nature ; which, though regarded as 
 impersonal, is figured as acting on a sort of 
 motives, and in a manner more or less analogous 
 to that of conscious beings. Aristotle affirms a 
 tendency of nature towards the best, which helps 
 him to a theory of many natural phenomena. The 
 rise of water in a pump is attributed to Nature's 
 horror of a vacuum. The fall of heavy bodies, and 
 the ascent of flame and smoke, are construed as 
 attempts of each to get to its natural place. Many 
 important consequences are deduced from the doc- 
 trine that Nature has no breaks (non habet 
 saltum). In medicine the curative force (vis 
 medicatrix) of Nature furnishes the explanation 
 of the reparative processes which modern physiolo- 
 gists refer each to its own particular agencies and 
 laws. 
 
 Examples are not necessary to prove to those 
 
12 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 who are acquainted with the past phases of human 
 thought, how great a place hoth the theological 
 and the metaphysical interpretations of phenomena 
 have historically occupied, as well in the specula- 
 tions of thinkers as in the familiar conceptions 
 of the multitude. Many had perceived before 
 M. Comte that neither of these modes of explan- 
 ation was final : the warfare against hoth of them 
 could scarcely be carried on more vigorously than 
 it already was, early in the seventeenth century, 
 by Hobbes. Nor is it unknown to any one who 
 has followed the history of the various physical 
 sciences, that the positive explanation of facts has 
 substituted itself, step by step, for the theological 
 and metaphysical, as the progress of inquiry 
 brought to light an increasing number of the 
 invariable laws of phaenomena. In these respects 
 M. Comte has not originated anything, but has 
 taken his place in a fight long since engaged, and 
 ^L. on the side already in the main victorious. The 
 generalization which belongs to himself, and in 
 which he had not, to the best of our knowledge, 
 been at all anticipated, is, that every distinct class 
 of human conceptions passes through all these 
 stages, beginning with the theological, and pro- 
 ceeding through the metaphysical to the positive : 
 the metaphysical being a mere state of transition, 
 but an indispensable one, from the theological 
 mode of thought to the positive, which is destined 
 finally to prevail, by the universal recognition 
 that all phaenomena without exception are governed 
 by invariable laws, with which no volitions, either 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 13 
 
 natural or supernatural, interfere. This general 
 theorem is completed by the addition, that the 
 theological mode of thought has three stages, 
 Eetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism : the suc- 
 cessive transitions being prepared, and indeed 
 caused, by the gradual uprising of the two rival 
 modes of thought, the metaphysical and the posi- 
 tive, and in their turn preparing the way for the 
 ascendancy of these ; first and temporarily of the 
 metaphysical, finally of the positive. 
 
 This generalization is the most fundamental 
 of the doctrines which originated with M. Comte ; 
 and the survey of history, which occupies the two 
 largest volumes of the six composing his work, 
 is a continuous exemplification and verification 
 of the law. How well it accords with the facts, 
 and how vast a number of the greater historical 
 phaenomena it explains, is known only to those 
 who have studied its exposition, where alone it 
 can be found — in these most striking and instruct- 
 ive volumes. As this theory is the key to M. 
 Comte' s other generalizations, all of which are 
 more or less dependent on it ; as it forms the 
 backbone, if we may so speak, of his philosophy, 
 and, unless it be true, he has accomplished little ; 
 we cannot better employ part of our space than in 
 clearing it from misconception, and giving the 
 explanations necessary to remove the obstacles 
 which prevent many competent persons from 
 assenting to it. 
 
 It is proper to begin by relieving the doctrine 
 from a religious prejudice. The doctrine condemns 
 
14 ATJGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 all theological explanations, and replaces them, or 
 thinks them destined to be replaced, by theories 
 which take no account of anything but an ascer- 
 tained order of phenomena. It is inferred that 
 if this change were completely accomplished, man- 
 kind would cease to refer the constitution of 
 Nature to an intelligent will, or to believe at all in 
 a Creator and supreme Governor of the world. 
 This supposition is the more natural, as M. Comte 
 was avowedly of that opinion. He indeed dis- 
 claimed, with some acrimony, dogmatic atheism, 
 and even says (in a later work, but the earliest 
 contains nothing at variance with it) that the 
 hypothesis of design has much greater verisimili- 
 tude than that of a blind mechanism. But con- 
 jecture, founded on analogy, did not seem to him 
 a basis to rest a theory on, in a mature state of 
 human intelligence. He deemed all real know- 
 ledge of a commencement inaccessible to us, and 
 the inquiry into it an overpassing of the essential 
 limits of our mental faculties. To this point, 
 however, those who accept his theory of the pro- 
 gressive stages of opinion are not obliged to follow 
 him. The Positive mode of thought is not neces- 
 sarily a denial of the supernatural ; it merely 
 throws back that question to the origin of all 
 things. If the universe had a beginning, its 
 beginning, by the very conditions of the case, was 
 supernatural ; the laws of nature cannot account 
 for their own origin. The Positive philosopher is 
 free to form his opinion on the subject, according 
 to the weight he attaches to the analogies which 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 15 
 
 are called marks of design, and to the general 
 traditions of the human race. The value of these 
 evidences is indeed a question for Positive philoso- 
 phy, but it is not one upon which Positive philoso- 
 phers must necessarily be agreed. It is one of M. 
 Comte's mistakes that he never allows of open 
 questions. Positive Philosophy maintains that 
 within the existing order of the universe, or rather 
 of the part of it known to us, the direct determin- 
 ing cause of every phenomenon is not supernatural 
 but natural. It is compatible with this to believe, 
 that the universe was created, and even that it is 
 continuously governed, by an Intelligence, pro- 
 vided we admit that the intelligent Governor 
 adheres to fixed laws, which are only modified or 
 counteracted by other laws of the same dispensa- 
 tion, and are never either capriciously or provi- 
 dentially departed from. Whoever regards all 
 events as parts of a constant order, each one being 
 the invariable consequent of some antecedent 
 condition, or combination of conditions, accepts 
 fully the Positive mode of thought : whether he 
 acknowledges or not an universal antecedent on 
 which the whole system of nature was originally 
 consequent, and whether that universal antecedent 
 is conceived as an Intelligence or not. 
 
 There is a corresponding misconception to be 
 corrected respecting the Metaphysical mode of 
 thought. In repudiating metaphysics, M. Comte 
 did not interdict himself from analysing or criti- 
 cising any of the abstract conceptions of the mind. 
 He was not ignorant (though he sometimes seemed 
 
16 ATJGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 to forget) that such, analysis and criticism are a 
 necessary part of the scientific process, and ac- 
 company the scientific mind in all its operations. 
 What he condemned was the habit of conceiving 
 these mental abstractions as real entities, which 
 could exert power, produce phenomena, and the 
 enunciation of which could be regarded as a theory 
 or explanation of facts. Men of the present day 
 with difficulty believe that so absurd a notion was 
 ever really entertained, so repugnant is it to the 
 mental habits formed by long and assiduous culti- 
 vation of the positive sciences. But those sciences, 
 however widely cultivated, have never formed the 
 basis of intellectual education in any society. It is 
 with philosophy as with religion : men marvel at 
 the absurdity of other people's tenets, while ex- 
 actly parallel absurdities remain in their own, and 
 the same man is unaffectedly astonished that words 
 can be mistaken for things, who is treating other 
 words as if they were things every time he opens 
 his mouth to discuss. No one, unless entirely 
 ignorant of the history of thought, will deny that 
 the mistaking of abstractions for realities pervaded 
 speculation all through antiquity and the middle 
 ages. The mistake was generalized and systema- 
 tized in the famous Ideas of Plato. The Aristo- 
 telians carried it on. Essences, quiddities, virtues 
 residing in things, were accepted as a bond fide ex- 
 planation of phenomena. Not only abstract 
 qualities, but the concrete names of genera and 
 species, were mistaken for objective existences. It 
 was believed that there were General Substances 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 17 
 
 corresponding to all the familiar classes of concrete 
 things : a substance Man, a substance Tree, a 
 substance Animal, which, and not the individual 
 objects so called, were directly denoted by 
 those names. The real existence of Universal Sub- 
 stances was the question at issue in the famous 
 controversy of the later middle ages between No- 
 minalism and Realism, which is one of the turn- 
 ing points in the history of thought, being its first 
 struggle to emancipate itself from the dominion of 
 verbal abstractions. The Realists were the stronger 
 party, but though the Nominalists for a time suc- 
 cumbed, the doctrine they rebelled against fell, 
 after a short interval, with the rest of the schol- 
 astic philosophy. But while universal substances 
 and substantial forms, being the grossest kind of 
 realized abstractions, were the soonest discarded, 
 Essences, Virtues, and Occult Qualities long sur- 
 vived them, and were first completely extruded 
 from real existence by the Cartesians. In Des- 
 - cartes' conception of science, all physical phseno- 
 mena were to be explained by matter and motion, 
 that is, not by abstractions but by invariable 
 physical laws : though his own explanations were 
 many of them hypothetical, and turned out to be 
 erroneous. Long after him, however, fictitious 
 entities (as they are happily termed by Bentham) 
 continued to be imagined as means of accounting 
 for the more mysterious phsenomena ; above all 
 in physiology, where, under great varieties of 
 phrase, mysterious forces and principles were the 
 explanation, or substitute for explanation, of the 
 
18 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 phenomena of organized beings. To modern 
 philosophers these fictions are merely the abstract 
 names of the classes of phenomena which corre- 
 spond to them; and it is one of the puzzles of 
 philosophy, how mankind, after inventing a set of 
 mere names to keep together certain combinations 
 of ideas or images, could have so far forgotten 
 their own act as to invest these creations of their 
 will with objective reality, and mistake the name 
 of a phenomenon for its efficient cause. What 
 was a mystery from the purely dogmatic point of 
 view, is cleared up by the historical. These abstract 
 words are indeed now mere names of phenomena, 
 but were not so in their origin. To us they denote 
 only the phenomena, because we have ceased to 
 believe in what else they once designated ; and the 
 employment of them in explanation is to us 
 evidently, as M. Comte says, the naif reproduction 
 of the phenomenon as the reason for itself : but it 
 was not so in the beginning. The metaphysical 
 point of view was not a perversion of the positive, 
 but a transformation of the theological. The 
 human mind, in framing a class of objects, did 
 not set out from the notion of a name, but from 
 that of a divinity. The realization of abstractions 
 was not the embodiment of a word, but the gra- 
 dual disembodiment of a Fetish. 
 
 The primitive tendency or instinct of mankind 
 is to assimilate all the agencies which they per- 
 ceive in Nature, to the only one of which they are 
 directly conscious, their own voluntary activity. 
 Every object which seems to originate power, that 
 
AUGTTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 19 
 
 is, to act without being first visibly acted upon, to 
 communicate motion without having first received 
 it, they suppose to possess life, consciousness, will. 
 This first rude conception of nature can scarcely, 
 however, have been at any time extended to all 
 phenomena. The simplest observation, without 
 which the preservation of life would have been 
 impossible, must have pointed out many uniform- 
 ities in nature, many objects which, under given 
 circumstances, acted exactly like one another : and 
 whenever this was observed, men's natural and 
 untutored faculties led them to form the similar 
 objects into a class, and to think of them together : 
 of which it was a natural consequence to refer 
 effects, which were exactly alike, to a single will, 
 rather than to a number of wills precisely accord- 
 ant. But this single will could not be the will of 
 the objects themselves, since they were many : it 
 must be the will of an invisible being, apart from 
 the objects, and ruling them from an unknown 
 distance. This is Polytheism. "We are not aware 
 that in any tribe of savages or negroes who have 
 been observed, Eetichism has been found totally 
 unmixed with Polytheism, and it is probable that 
 the two coexisted from the earliest period at which 
 the human mind was capable of forming objects 
 into classes. Eetichism proper gradually becomes 
 limited to objects possessing a marked individuality 
 A particular mountain or river is worshipped bodily 
 (as it is even now by the Hindoos and the South Sea 
 Islanders) as a divinity in itself, not the mere re- 
 sidence of one, long after invisible gods have been 
 
 2 * 
 
20 AUGTTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 imagined as rulers of all the great classes of pheno- 
 mena, even intellectual and moral, as war, love, 
 wisdom, beauty, &c. The worship of the eartli 
 (Tellus or Pales) and of the various heavenly 
 bodies, was prolonged into the heart of Polythe- 
 ism. Every scholar knows, though litterateurs and 
 men of the world do not, that in the full vigour 
 of the Greek religion, the Sun and Moon, not 
 a god and goddess thereof, were sacrificed to as 
 deities — older deities than Zeus and his descend- 
 ants, belonging to the earlier dynasty of the 
 Titans (which was the mythical version of the fact 
 that their worship was older), and these deities had 
 a distinct set of fables or legends connected with 
 them. The father of Phaethon and the lover of 
 Endymion were not Apollo and Diana, whose iden- 
 tification with the Sungod and the Moongoddess 
 was a late invention. Astrolatry, which, as M. 
 Comte observes, is the last form of Eetichism, sur- 
 vived the other forms, partly because its objects, 
 being inaccessible, were not so soon discovered to 
 be in themselves inanimate, and partly because of 
 the persistent spontaneousness of their apparent 
 motions. 
 
 As far as Eetichism reached, and as long as it 
 lasted, there was no abstraction, or classification of 
 objects, and no room consequently for the metaphy- 
 sical mode of thought. But as soon as the volun- 
 tary agent, whose will governed the phenomenon, 
 ceased to be the physical object itself, and was re- 
 moved to an invisible position, from which he or 
 she superintended an entire class of natural agen- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 21 
 
 cies, it began to seem impossible that this being 
 should exert his powerful activity from a distance, 
 unless through the medium of something present 
 on the spot. Through the same Natural Prejudice 
 which made Newton unable to conceive the pos- 
 sibility of his own law of gravitation without a 
 subtle ether filling up the intervening space, and 
 through which the attraction could be communi- 
 cated — from this same natural infirmity of the 
 human mind, it seemed indispensable that the god, 
 at a distance from the object, must act through 
 something residing in it, which was the immediate 
 agent, the god having imparted to the intermediate 
 something the power whereby it influenced and di- 
 rected the object. When mankind felt a need for 
 naming these imaginary entities, they called them 
 the nature of the object, or its essence, or virtues resid- 
 ing in it, or by many other different names. These 
 metaphysical conceptions were regarded as intensely 
 real, and at first as mere instruments in the hands of 
 the appropriate deities. But the habit being acquired 
 of ascribing not only substantive existence, but real 
 and efficacious agency, to the abstract entities, the 
 consequence was that when belief in the deities de- 
 clined and faded away, the entities were left stand- 
 ing, and a semblance of explanation of phenomena, 
 equal to what existed before, was furnished by the 
 entities alone, without referring them to any voli- 
 tions. When things had reached this point, the 
 metaphysical mode of thought had completely sub- 
 stituted itself for the theological. 
 
 Thus did the different successive states of the 
 
22 AUGU3TE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 human intellect, even at an early stage of its pro- 
 gress, overlap one another, the Petichistic, the Poly- 
 theistic, and the Metaphysical modes of thought 
 coexisting even in the same minds, while the helief 
 in invariable laws, which constitutes the Positive 
 mode of thought, was slowly winning its way be- 
 neath them all, as observation and experience dis- 
 closed in one class of phenomena after another the 
 laws to which they are really subject. It was this 
 growth of positive knowledge which principally 
 determined the next transition in the theological 
 conception of the universe, from Polytheism to 
 Monotheism. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that this transition took 
 place very tardily. The conception of a unity in 
 Nature, which wo aid admit of attributing it to a 
 single will, is far from being natural to man, and 
 only finds admittance after a long period of discipline 
 and preparation, the obvious appearances all point- 
 ing to the idea of a government by many conflicting 
 principles. We know how high a degree both of 
 material civilization and of moral and intellectual 
 development preceded the conversion of the lead- 
 ing populations of the world to the belief in one 
 God. The superficial observations by which Chris- 
 tian travellers have persuaded themselves that they 
 found their own Monotheistic belief in some tribes 
 of savages, have always been contradicted by more 
 accurate knowledge : those who have read, for in- 
 stance, Mr Kohl's Kitchigami, know what to think 
 of the Great Spirit of the American Indians, who 
 belongs to a well-defined system of Polytheism, 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 23 
 
 interspersed with large remains of an original Fe- 
 tichism. We have no wish to dispute the matter 
 with those who believe that Monotheism was the 
 primitive religion, transmitted to our race from its 
 first parents in uninterrupted tradition. By their 
 own acknowledgment, the tradition was lost by 
 all the nations of the world except a small and pecu- 
 liar people, in whom it was miraculously kept alive, 
 but who were themselves continually lapsing from 
 it, and in all the earlier parts of their history did 
 not hold it at all in its full meaning, but admitted 
 the real existence of other gods, though believing 
 their own to be the most powerful, and to be the 
 Creator of the world. A greater proof of the un- 
 naturalness of Monotheism to the human mind be- 
 fore a certain period in its development, could not 
 well be required. The highest form of Monotheism, 
 Christianity, has persisted to the present time in 
 giving partial satisfaction to the mental dispositions 
 that lead to Polytheism, by admitting into its theo- 
 logy the thoroughly polytheistic conception of a 
 devil. When Monotheism, after many centuries, 
 made its way to the Greeks and Romans from the 
 small corner of the world where it existed, we know 
 how the notion of dsemons facilitated its reception, 
 by making it unnecessary for Christian s to deny the 
 existence of the gods previously believed in, it being 
 sufficient to place them under the absolute power of 
 the new Cod, as the gods of Olympus were already 
 under that of Zeus, and as the local deities of all the 
 subjugated nations had been subordinated by con- 
 quest to the divine patrons of the Roman State. 
 
24 AXTGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 In whatever mode, natural or supernatural, we 
 choose to account for the early Monotheism of the 
 Hebrews, there can be no question that its reception 
 by the Gentiles was only rendered possible by the 
 slow preparation which the human mind had un- 
 dergone from the philosophers. In the age of the 
 Caesars nearly the whole educated and cultivated 
 class had outgrown the polytheistic creed, and 
 though individually liable to returns of the su- 
 perstition of their childhood, were predisposed 
 (such of them as did not reject all religion what- 
 ever) to the acknowledgment of one Supreme 
 Providence. It is vain to object that Christianity 
 did not find the majority of its early proselytes 
 among the educated class : since, except in 
 Palestine, its teachers and propagators were 
 mainly of that class — many of them, like St 
 Paul, well versed in the mental culture of their 
 time ; and they had evidently found no intellectual 
 obstacle to the new doctrine in their own minds. 
 We must not^be deceived by the recrudescence, at 
 a much later date, of a metaphysical Paganism in 
 the Alexandrian and other philosophical schools, 
 provoked not by attachment to Polytheism, but by 
 distaste for the political and social ascendancy of 
 the Christian teachers. The fact was, that Mono- 
 theism had become congenial to the cultivated 
 mind : and a belief which has gained the cultivated 
 minds of any society, unless put down by force, is 
 certain, sooner or later, to reach the multitude. 
 Indeed the multitude itself had been prepared for 
 it, as already hinted, by the more and more com- 
 
ATTGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 25 
 
 plete subordination of all other deities to the su- 
 premacy of Zeus ; from which the step to a single 
 Deity, surrounded by a host of angels, and keeping 
 in recalcitrant subjection an army of devils, was by 
 no means difficult. 
 
 By what means, then, had the cultivated minds 
 of the Roman Empire been educated for Monothe- 
 ism ? By the growth of a practical feeling of the 
 invariability of natural laws. Monotheism had a 
 natural adaptation to this belief, while Polytheism 
 naturally and necessarily conflicted with it. As 
 men could not easily, and in fact never did, suppose 
 that beings so powerful had their power absolutely 
 restricted, each to its special department, the will 
 of any divinity might always be frustrated by 
 another : and unless all their wills were in com- 
 plete harmony (which would itself be the most 
 difficult to credit of all cases of invariability, and 
 would require beyond anything else the ascendancy 
 of a Supreme Deity) it was impossible that the 
 course of any of the phenomena under their govern- 
 ment could be invariable. But if, on the contrary, 
 all the phenomena of the universe were under the 
 exclusive and uncontrollable influence of a single 
 will, it was an admissible supposition that this 
 will might be always consistent with itself, and 
 might choose to conduct each class of its operations 
 in an invariable manner. In proportion, therefore, 
 as the invariable laws of phenomena revealed them- 
 selves to observers, the theory which ascribed 
 them all to one will began to grow plausible; 
 but must still have appeared improbable until it 
 
26 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 had come to seem likely that invariability was the 
 common rule of all nature. The Greeks and 
 Romans at the Christian era had reached a point 
 of advancement at which this supposition had be- 
 come probable. The admirable height to which 
 geometry had already been carried, had familiarized 
 the educated mind with the conception of laws 
 absolutely invariable. The logical analysis of the 
 intellectual processes by Aristotle had shown a 
 similar uniformity of law in the realm of mind. In 
 the concrete external world, the most imposing 
 phsenomena,/ those of the heavenly bodies, which 
 by their power over the imagination had done most 
 to keep up the whole system of ideas connected 
 with supernatural agency, had been ascertained to 
 take place in so regular an order as to admit of 
 being predicted with a precision which to the 
 notions of those days must have appeared perfect. 
 And though an equal degree of regularity had not 
 been discerned in natural phenomena generally, 
 even the most empirical observation had ascertained 
 so many cases of an uniformity almost complete, 
 that inquiring minds were eagerly on the look-out 
 for further indications pointing in the same direc- 
 tion ; and vied with one another in the formation 
 of theories which, though hypothetical and essen- 
 tially premature, it was hoped would turn out to be 
 correct representations of invariable laws governing 
 large classes of phenomena. When this hope and 
 expectation became general, they were already a 
 great encroachment on the original domain of the 
 theological principle. Instead of the old concep- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 27 
 
 tion, of events regulated from day to day by the 
 unforeseen and changeable volitions of a legion of 
 deities, it seemed more and more probable that all 
 the phaenomena of the universe took place accord- 
 ing to rules which must have been planned from 
 the beginning ; by which conception the function 
 of the gods seemed to be limited to forming the 
 plans, and setting the machinery in motion : their 
 subsequent office appeared to be reduced to a sine- 
 cure, or if they continued to reign, it was in the 
 manner of constitutional kings, bound by the laws 
 to which they had previously given their assent. 
 Accordingly, the pretension of philosophers to 
 explain physical phaenomena by physical causes, or 
 to predict their occurrence, was, up to a very late 
 period of Polytheism, regarded as a sacrilegious in- 
 sult to the gods. Anaxagoras was banished for it, 
 Aristotle had to fly for his life, and the mere 
 unfounded suspicion of it contributed greatly to 
 the condemnation of Socrates. We are too well 
 acquainted with this form of the religious sentiment 
 even now, to have any difficulty in comprehending 
 what must have been its violence then. It was 
 inevitable that philosophers should be anxious to 
 get rid of at least these gods, and so escape from the 
 particular fables which stood immediately in their 
 way ; accepting a notion of divine government 
 which harmonized better with the lessons they 
 learnt from the study of nature, and a God con- 
 cerning whom no mythos, as far as they knew, had 
 yet been invented. 
 
 Again, when the idea became prevalent that the 
 
28 ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 constitution of every part of Nature had been plan- 
 ned from the beginning, and continued to take place 
 as it had been planned, this was itself a striking 
 feature of resemblance extending through all 
 Nature, and affording a presumption that the 
 whole was the work, not of many, but of the same 
 hand. It must have appeared vastly more probable 
 that there should be one indefinitely foreseeing 
 Intelligence and immovable Will, than hundreds 
 and thousands of such. The philosophers had not 
 at that time the arguments which might have been 
 grounded on universal laws not yet suspected, 
 such as the law of gravitation and the laws of heat; 
 but there was a multitude, obvious even to them, of 
 analogies and homologies in natural phsenomena, 
 which suggested unity of plan ; and a still greater 
 number were raised up by their active fancy, aided 
 by their premature scientific theories, all of which 
 aimed at interpreting some phenomenon by the 
 analogy of others supposed to be better known ; 
 assuming, indeed, a much greater similarity among 
 the various processes of Nature, than ampler expe- 
 rience has since shown to exist. The theological 
 mode of thought thus advanced from Polytheism to 
 Monotheism through the direct influence of the 
 Positive mode of thought, not yet aspiring to com- 
 plete speculative ascendancy. But, inasmuch as 
 the belief in the invariability of natural laws was 
 still imperfect even in highly cultivated minds, and 
 in the merest infancy in the uncultivated, it gave 
 rise to the belief in one God, but not in an immovable 
 one. For many centuries the God believed in was 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 29 
 
 flexible by entreaty, was incessantly ordering the 
 affairs of mankind by direct volitions, and continu- 
 ally reversing the course of nature by miraculous 
 interpositions ; and this is believed still, wherever 
 the invariability of law has established itself in 
 men's convictions as a general, but not as an uni- 
 versal truth. 
 
 In the change from Polytheism to Monotheism, 
 the Metaphysical mode of thought contributed its 
 part, affording great aid to the up-hill struggle 
 which the Positive spirit had to maintain against 
 the prevailing form of the Theological. M. Comte, 
 indeed, has considerably exaggerated the share of 
 the Metaphysical spirit in this mental revolution, 
 since by a lax use of terms he credits the Metaphy- 
 sical mode of thought with all that is due to dialec- 
 tics and negative criticism — to the exposure of 
 inconsistencies and absurdities in the received reli- 
 gions. But this operation is quite independent of 
 the Metaphysical mode of thought, and was no 
 otherwise connected with it than in being very 
 generally carried on by the same minds (Plato is a 
 brilliant example), since the most eminent effici- 
 ency in it does not necessarily depend on the pos- 
 session of positive scientific knowledge. But the 
 Metaphysical spirit, strictly so called, did contri- 
 bute largely to the advent of Monotheism. The 
 conception of impersonal entities, interposed be- 
 tween the governing deity and the phaanomena, 
 and forming the machinery through which these 
 are immediately produced, is not repugnant, as the 
 theory of direct supernatural volitions is, to the 
 
30 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 belief in invariable laws. The entities not being, 
 like the gods, framed after the exemplar of men — 
 being neither, like them, invested with human 
 passions, nor supposed, like them, to have power 
 beyond the phsenomena which are the special de- 
 partment of each, there was no fear of offending 
 them by the attempt to foresee and define their 
 action, or by the supposition that it took place 
 according to fixed laws. The popular tribunal 
 which condemned Anaxagoras had evidently not 
 risen to the metaphysical point of view. Hippo- 
 crates, who was concerned only with a select and 
 instructed class, could say with impunity, speaking 
 of what were called the god-inflicted diseases, that 
 to his mind they were neither more nor less god- 
 inflicted than all others. The doctrine of abstract 
 entities was a kind of instinctive conciliation be- 
 tween the observed uniformity of the facts of nature, 
 and their dependence on arbitrary volition ; since 
 it was easier to conceive a single volition as setting 
 a machinery to work, which afterwards went on of 
 itself, than to suppose an inflexible constancy in so 
 capricious and changeable a thing as volition must 
 then have appeared. But though the regime of 
 abstractions was in strictness compatible with Poly- 
 theism, it demanded Monotheism as the condition 
 of its free development. The received Polytheism 
 being only the first remove from Petichism, its 
 gods were too closely mixed up in the daily details 
 of phenomena, and the habit of propitiating them 
 and ascertaining their will before any important 
 action of life was too inveterate, to admit, without 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 31 
 
 the strongest shock to the received system, the 
 notion that they did not habitually rule by special 
 interpositions, but left phenomena in all ordinary 
 cases to the operation of the essences or peculiar 
 natures which they had first implanted in them. 
 Any modification of Polytheism which would have 
 made it fully compatible with the Metaphysical 
 conception of the world, would have been more 
 difficult to effect than the transition to Monotheism, 
 as Monotheism was at first conceived. 
 
 We have given, in our own way, and at some 
 length, this important portion of M. Comte's view 
 of the evolution of human thought, as a sample of 
 the manner in which his theory corresponds with 
 and interprets historical facts, and also to obviate 
 some objections to it, grounded on an imperfect 
 comprehension, or rather on a mere first glance. 
 Some, for example, think the doctrine of the three 
 successive stages of speculation and belief, incon- 
 sistent with the fact that they all three existed 
 contemporaneously ; much as if the natural suc- 
 cession of the hunting, the nomad, and the agri- 
 cultural state could be refuted by the fact that there 
 are still hunters and nomads. That the three 
 states were contemporaneous, that they all began 
 before authentic history, and still coexist, is M. 
 Comte's express statement : as well as that the ad- 
 vent of the two later modes of thought was the 
 very cause which disorganized and is gradually de- 
 stroying the primitive one. The Theological mode 
 of explaining phenomena was once universal, with 
 the exception, doubtless, of the familiar facts 
 
32 AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 which, being even then seen to be controllable by 
 human will, belonged already to the positive mode 
 of thought. The first and easiest generalizations 
 of common observation, anterior to the first traces 
 of the scientific spirit, determined the birth of the 
 Metaphysical mode of thought; and every further 
 advance in the observation of nature, gradually 
 bringing to light its invariable laws, determined a 
 further development of the Metaphysical spirit at 
 the expense of the Theological, this being the only 
 medium through which the conclusions of the Posi- 
 tive mode of thought and the premises of the Theo- 
 logical could be temporarily made compatible. At a 
 later period, when the real character of the positive 
 laws of nature had come to be in a certain degree 
 understood, and the theological idea had assumed, 
 in scientific minds, its final character, that of a 
 God governing by general laws, the positive spirit, 
 having now no longer need of the fictitious medium 
 of imaginary entities, set itself to the easy task of 
 demolishing the instrument by which it had risen. 
 But though it destroyed the actual belief in the 
 objective reality of these abstractions, that belief 
 has left behind it vicious tendencies of the human 
 mind, which are still far enough from being extin- 
 guished, and which we shall presently have occa- 
 sion to characterize. 
 
 The next point on which we have to touch is 
 one of greater importance than it seems. If all 
 human speculation had to pass through the three 
 stages, we may presume that its different branches, 
 having always been very unequally advanced, could 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 33 
 
 not pass from one stage to another at the same 
 time. There must have been a certain order of 
 succession in which the different sciences would 
 enter, first into the metaphysical, and afterwards 
 into the purely positive stage ; and this order M. 
 Comte proceeds to investigate. The result is his 
 remarkable conception of a scale of subordination 
 of the sciences, being the order of the logical de- 
 pendence of those which follow on those which 
 precede. It is not at first obvious how a mere 
 classification of the sciences can be not merely a 
 help to their study, but itself an important part of 
 a body of doctrine ; the classification, however, 
 is a very important part of M. Comte' s philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 He first distinguishes between the abstract 
 and the concrete sciences. The abstract sciences 
 have to do with the laws which govern the ele- 
 mentary facts of Nature ; laws on which all phe- 
 nomena actually realized must of course depend, but 
 which would have been equally compatible with 
 many other combinations than those which actually 
 come to pass. The concrete sciences, on the con- 
 trary, concern themselves only with the particular 
 combinations of phenomena which are found in 
 existence. For example ; the minerals which 
 compose our planet, or are found in it, have been 
 produced and are held together by the laws of 
 mechanical aggregation and by those of chemical 
 union. It is the business of the abstract sciences, 
 Physics and Chemistry, to ascertain these laws : 
 to discover how and under what conditions bodies 
 
34 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 may become aggregated, and what are the possible 
 modes and results of chemical combination. The 
 great majority of these aggregations and combina- 
 tions take place, so far as we are aware, only in 
 our laboratories ; with these the concrete science, 
 Mineralogy, has nothing to do. Its business is 
 with those aggregates, and those chemical com- 
 pounds, which form themselves, or have at some 
 period been formed, in the natural world. 'Again, 
 Physiology, the abstract science, investigates, by 
 such means as are available to it, the general laws 
 of organization and life. Those laws determine 
 what living beings are possible, and maintain the 
 existence and determine the phsenomena of those 
 which actually exist : but they would be equally 
 capable of maintaining in existence plants and ani- 
 mal* very different from these. The concrete 
 sciences, Zoology and Botany, confine themselves 
 to species which really exist, or can be shown to 
 have really existed : and do not concern them- 
 selves with the mode in which even these would 
 comport themselves under all circumstances, but 
 only under those which really take place. They 
 set forth the actual mode of existence of plants 
 and animals, the phsenomena which they in fact 
 present : but they set forth all of these, and take 
 into simultaneous consideration the whole real ex- 
 istence of each species, however various the ulti- 
 mate laws on which it depends, and to whatever 
 number of different abstract sciences these laws 
 may belong. The existence of a date tree, or of a 
 lion, is a joint result of many natural laws, phy- 
 
AXJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 35 
 
 sical, chemical, biological, and even astronomical. 
 Abstract science deals with these laws separately, 
 but considers each of them in all its aspects, all its 
 possibilities of operation : concrete science consi- 
 ders them only in combination, and so far as they 
 exist and manifest themselves in the animals or 
 plants of which we have experience. The distinc- 
 tive attributes of the two are summed up by M. 
 Comte in the expression, that concrete science re- 
 lates to Beings, or Objects, abstract science to 
 Events.* 
 
 * Mr Herbert Spencer, who also distinguishes between abstract 
 and concrete sciences, employs the terms in a different sense from that 
 explained above. He calls a science abstract when its truths are 
 merely ideal ; when, like the truths of geometry, they are not exactly 
 true of real things — or, like the so-called law of inertia (the persistence 
 in direction and velocity of a motion once impressed) are " involved " in 
 experience but never actually seen in it, being always more or less 
 completely frustrated. Chemistry and biology he includes, on the 
 contrary, among concrete sciences, because chemical combinations and 
 decompositions, and the physiological action of tissues, do actually take 
 place (as our senses testify) in the manner in which the scientific pro- 
 positions state them to take place. We will not discuss the logical or 
 philological propriety of either use of the terms abstract and concrete, 
 in which two-fold point of view very few of the numerous acceptations 
 of these words are entirely defensible : but of the two distinctions M. 
 Comte's answers to by far the deepest and most vital difference. Mr 
 Spencer's is open to the radical objection, that it classifies truths not 
 according to their subject-matter or their mutual relations, but accord- 
 ing to an unimportant difference in the manner in which we come to 
 know them. Of what consequence is it that the law of inertia (con- 
 sidered as an exact truth) is not generalized from our direct perceptions, 
 but inferred by combining with the movements which we see, those 
 which we should see if it were not for the disturbing causes ? In 
 either case we are equally certain that it is an exact truth : for every 
 dynamical law is perfectly fulfilled even when it seems to be counter- 
 
 3 * 
 
36 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 The concrete sciences are inevitably later in 
 their development than the abstract sciences on 
 which they depend. Not that they begin later to 
 be studied ; on the contrary, they are the earliest 
 cultivated, since in our abstract investigations we 
 necessarily set out from spontaneous facts. But 
 though we may make empirical generalizations, we 
 can form no scientific theory of concrete pheno- 
 mena until the laws which govern and explain 
 them are first known ; and those laws are the sub- 
 ject of the abstract sciences. In consequence, 
 there is not one of the concrete studies (unless we 
 count astronomy among them) which has received, 
 up to the present time, its final scientific constitu- 
 tion, or can be accounted a science, except in a 
 very loose sense, but only materials for science : 
 partly from insufficiency of facts, but more, be- 
 cause the abstract sciences, except those at the 
 very beginning of the scale, have not attained the 
 degree of perfection necessary to render real con- 
 crete sciences possible. 
 
 Postponing, therefore, the concrete sciences, as 
 not yet formed, but only tending towards forma- 
 tion, the abstract sciences remain to be classed. 
 These, as marked out by M. Comte, are six in 
 number ; and the principle which he proposes for 
 their classification is admirably in accordance with 
 the conditions of our study of Nature. It might 
 
 acted. There must, we should think, be many truths in physiology 
 (for example) which are only known by a similar indirect process ; and 
 Mr Spencer would hardly detach these from the body of the science, 
 and call them abstract and the remainder concrete. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 37 
 
 have happened that the different classes of pheno- 
 mena had depended on laws altogether distinct ; 
 that in changing from one to another subject of 
 scientific study, the student left behind all the 
 laws he previously knew, and passed under the do- 
 minion of a totally new set of uniformities. The 
 sciences would then have been wholly independent 
 of one another ; each would have rested entirely 
 on its own inductions, and if deductive at all, 
 would have drawn its deductions from premises 
 exclusively furnished by itself. The fact, however, 
 is otherwise. The relation which really subsists 
 between different kinds of phenomena, enables the 
 sciences to be arranged in such an order, that in 
 travelling through them we do not pass out of the 
 sphere of any laws, but merely take up additional 
 ones at each step. In this order M. Comte pro- 
 poses to arrange them. He classes the sciences in 
 an ascending series, according to the degree of 
 complexity of their phenomena; so that each 
 science depends on the truths of all those which 
 precede it, with the addition of peculiar truths of 
 its own. 
 
 Thus, the truths of number are true of all things, 
 and depend only on their own laws ; the science, 
 therefore, of Number, consisting of Arithmetic and 
 Algebra, may be studied without reference to any 
 other science. The truths of Geometry presuppose 
 the laws of Number, and a more special class of 
 laws peculiar to extended bodies, but require no 
 others : Geometry, therefore, can be studied inde- 
 pendently of all sciences except that of Number. 
 
38 ATTGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 Rational Mechanics presupposes, and depends on, 
 the laws of number and those of extension, and 
 along with them another set of laws, those of Equi- 
 librium and Motion. The truths of Algebra and 
 Geometry nowise depend on these last, and would 
 have been true if these had happened to be the re- 
 verse of what we find them : but the phsenomena of 
 equilibrium and motion cannot be understood, nor 
 even stated, without assuming the laws of number 
 and extension, such as they actually are. The 
 phsenomena of Astronomy depend on these three 
 classes of laws, and on the law of gravitation be- 
 sides ; which last has no influence on the truths of 
 number, geometry, or mechanics. Physics (badly 
 named in common English parlance Natural Phi- 
 losophy) presupposes the three mathematical sci- 
 ences, and also astronomy ; since all terrestrial 
 phsenomena are affected by influences derived from 
 the motions of the earth and of the heavenly bodies. 
 Chemical phsenomena depend (besides their own 
 laws) on all the preceding, those of physics among 
 the rest, especially on the laws of heat and electri- 
 city ; physiological phsenomena, on the laws of 
 physics and chemistry, and their own laws in addi- 
 tion. The phsenomena of human society obey laws 
 of their own, but do not depend solely upon these : 
 they depend upon all the laws of organic and animal 
 life, together with those of inorganic nature, these 
 last influencing society not only through their in- 
 fluence on life, but by determining the physical con- 
 ditions under which society has to be carried on. 
 " Chacun de ces degres successifs exige des indue- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 89 
 
 tions qui lui sont propres ; mais elles ne peuvent 
 jamais devenir systematiques que sous l'impulsion 
 deductive resultee de tous les ordres moins compli- 
 ques."* 
 
 Thus arranged by M. Comte in a series, of which 
 each term represents an advance in speciality be- 
 yond the term preceding it, and (what necessarily 
 accompanies increased speciality) an increase of 
 complexity — a set of phenomena determined by a 
 more numerous combination of laws ; the sciences 
 stand in the following order : 1st, Mathematics ; 
 its three branches following one another on the 
 same principle, Number, Geometry, Mechanics. 
 2nd, Astronomy. 3rd, Physics. 4th, Chemistry. 
 5th, Biology. 6th, Sociology, or the Social Science, 
 the phenomena of which depend on, and cannot be 
 understood without, the principal truths of all the 
 other sciences. The subject matter and contents of 
 these various sciences are obvious of themselves, 
 with the exception of Physics, which is a group of 
 sciences rather than a single science, and is again 
 divided by M. Comte into five departments : Baro- 
 logy, or the science of weight; Thermology, or that 
 of heat ; Acoustics, Optics, and Electrology. These 
 he attempts to arrange on the same principle of in- 
 creasing speciality and complexity, but they hardly 
 admit of such a scale, and M. Comte' s mode of 
 placing them varied at different periods. All the 
 five being essentially independent of one another, 
 he attached little importance to their order, except 
 that barology ought to come first, as the connecting 
 
 s;> Systeme de Politique Positive, ii. 3G. 
 
40 AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 link with astronomy, and electrology last, as the 
 transition to chemistry. 
 
 If the best classification is that which is ground- 
 ed on the properties most important for our pur- 
 poses, this classification will stand the test. By 
 placing the sciences in the order of the complexity 
 of their subject matter, it presents them in the order 
 of their difficulty. Each science proposes to itself 
 a more arduous inquiry than those which precede 
 it in the series ; it is therefore likely to be suscept- 
 ible, even finally, of a less degree of perfection, and 
 will certainly arrive later at the degree attainable 
 by it. In addition to this, each science, to estab- 
 lish its own truths, needs those of all the sciences 
 anterior to it. The only means, for example, by 
 which the physiological laws of life could have been 
 ascertained, was by distinguishing, among the mul- 
 tifarious and complicated facts of life, the portion 
 which physical and chemical laws cannot ac- 
 count for. Only by thus isolating the effects of the 
 peculiar organic laws, did it become possible to dis- 
 cover what these are. It follows that the order in 
 which the sciences succeed one another in the 
 series, cannot but be, in the main, the historical 
 order of their development ; and is the only order 
 in which they can rationally be studied. Eor 
 this last there is an additional reason : since the 
 more special and complete sciences require not only 
 the truths of the simpler and more general ones, 
 but still more their methods. The scientific intel- 
 lect, both in the individual and in the race, must 
 learn in the more elementary studies that art of in- 
 
AUGTTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 41 
 
 vestigation and those canons of proof which are to 
 be pnt in practice in the more elevated. No intel- 
 lect is properly qualified for the higher part of the 
 scale, without due practice in the lower. 
 
 Mr Herbert Spencer, in his essay entitled " The 
 Genesis of Science," and more recently in a pam- 
 phlet on "the Classification of the Sciences," has 
 criticised and condemned M. Comte's classification, 
 and proposed a more elaborate one of his own : and 
 M. Littre\ in his valuable biographical and philoso- 
 phical work on M. Comte (" Auguste Comte et 
 la Philosophic Positive "), has at some length criti- 
 cised the criticism. Mr Spencer is one of the small 
 number of persons who by the solidity and ency- 
 clopedical character of their knowledge, and their 
 power of co-ordination and concatenation, may 
 claim to be the peers of M. Comte, and entitled to 
 a vote in the estimation of him. But after giving 
 to his animadversions the respectful attention due 
 to all that comes from Mr Spencer, we cannot find 
 that he has made out any case. It is always easy 
 to find fault with a classification. There are a hun- 
 dred possible ways of arranging any set of objects, 
 and something may almost always be said against 
 the best, and in favour of the worst of them. But 
 the merits of a classification depend on the purposes 
 to which it is instrumental. We have shown the pur- 
 poses for which M. Comte's classification is intended. 
 Mr Spencer has not shown that it is ill adapted to 
 those purposes : and we cannot perceive that his 
 own answers any ends equally important. Plis chief 
 objection is that if the more special sciences need 
 
42 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 the truths of the more general ones, the latter also 
 need some of those of the former, and have at times 
 been stopped in their progress by the imperfect state 
 of sciences which follow long after them in M. 
 Comte's scale ; so that, the dependence being 
 mutual, there is a consensus, but not an ascending 
 scale or hierarchy of the sciences. That the earlier 
 sciences derive help from the later is undoubtedly 
 true ; it is part of M. Comte's theory, and amply 
 exemplified in the details of his work. When he 
 affirms that one science historically precedes another, 
 he does not mean that the perfection of the first 
 precedes the humblest commencement of those 
 which follow. Mr Spencer does not distinguish 
 between the empirical stage of the cultivation of a 
 branch of knowledge, and the scientific stage. The 
 commencement of every study consists in gathering 
 together unanalyzed facts, and treasuring up such 
 spontaneous generalizations as present themselves 
 to natural sagacity. - In this stage any branch of 
 inquiry can be carried on independently of every 
 other ; and it is one of M. Comte's own remarks 
 that the most complex, in a scientific point of view, 
 of all studies, the latest in his series, the study of 
 man as a moral and social being, since from its ab- 
 sorbing interest it is cultivated more or less by every 
 one, and pre-eminently by the great practical minds, 
 acquired at an early period a greater stock of just 
 though unscientific observations than the more ele- 
 mentary sciences. It is these empirical truths that 
 the later and more special sciences lend to the ear- 
 lier ; or, at most, some extremely elementary scien- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 43 
 
 tine truth, which happening to be easily ascertain- 
 able by direct experiment, could be made available 
 for carrying a previous science already founded, to a 
 higher stage of development ; a re-action of the 
 later sciences on the earlier which M. Cornte not 
 only fully recognized, but attached great import- 
 ance to systematizing.* 
 
 But though detached truths relating to the more 
 complex order of phenomena may be empirically 
 observed, and a few of them even scientifically estab- 
 
 * The strongest case which Mr Spencer produces of a scientifically 
 ascertained law, which, though belonging to a later science, was neces- 
 sary to the scientific formation of one occupying an earlier place in M. 
 Comte's series, is the law of the accelerating force of gravity ; which 
 M. Comte places in Physics, but without which the Newtonian theory 
 of the celestial motions could not have been discovered, nor could even 
 now be proved. This fact, as is judiciously remarked byM. Littre, is not 
 valid against the plan of M. Comte's classification, but discloses a slight 
 error in the detail. M. Comte should not have placed the laws of ter- 
 restrial gravity under Physics. ■ They are part of the general theory of 
 gravitation, and belong to astronomy. Mr Spencer has hit one of the 
 weak points in M. Comte's scientific scale ; weak however only because 
 left unguarded. Astronomy, the second of M. Comte's abstract sciences, 
 answers to his own definition of a concrete science. M. Comte however 
 was only wrong in overlooking a distinction. There is an abstract 
 science of astronomy, namely, the theory of gravitation, which would 
 equally agree with and explain the facts of a totally different solar sys- 
 tem from the one of which our earth forms a part. The actual facts of 
 our own system, the dimensions, distances, velocities, temperatures, 
 physical constitution, &c, of the sun, earth, and planets, are properly 
 the subject of a concrete science, similar to natural history ; but the 
 concrete is more inseparably united to the abstract science than in any 
 other case, since the few celestial facts really accessible to us are nearly 
 all required for discovering and proving the law of gravitation as an 
 universal property of bodies, and have therefore an indispensable place 
 in the abstract science as its fundamental data. 
 
44 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 lished, contemporaneously with an early stage of 
 some of the sciences anterior in the scale, such de- 
 tached truths, as M. Littre* justly remarks, do not 
 constitute a science. What is known of a subject, 
 only becomes a science when it is made a connected 
 body of truth ; in which the relation between the 
 general principles and the details is definitely made 
 out, and each particular truth can be recognized as 
 a case of the operation of wider laws. This point of 
 progress, at which the study passes from the prelim- 
 inary state of mere preparation, into a science, can- 
 not be reached by the more complex studies until it 
 has been attained by the simpler ones. A certain 
 regularity of recurrence in the celestial appearances 
 was ascertained empirically before much progress 
 had been made in geometry ; but astronomy could 
 no more be a science until geometry was a highly 
 advanced one, than the rule of three could have 
 been practised before addition and subtraction. 
 The truths of the simpler sciences are a part of 
 the laws to which the phenomena of the more 
 complex sciences conform : and are not only a 
 necessary element in their explanation, but must 
 be so well understood as to be traceable through 
 complex combinations, before the special laws which 
 co-exist and co-operate with them can be brought 
 to light. This is all that M. Comte affirms, and 
 enough for his purpose.* He no doubt occasion - 
 
 * The only point at which the general principle of the series fails 
 in its application, is the subdivision of Physics ; and there, as the 
 subordination of the different branches scarcely exists, their order is of 
 little consequence. Thermology, indeed, is altogether an exception to 
 the principle of decreasing generality, heat, as Mr Spencer truly says 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 45 
 
 ally indulges in more unqualified expressions than 
 can be completely justified, regarding the logical 
 perfection of the construction of his series, and its 
 exact correspondence with the historical evolution 
 of the sciences ; exaggerations confined to lan- 
 guage, and which the details of his exposition 
 often correct. But he is sufficiently near the 
 truth, in both respects, for every practical pur- 
 pose.* Minor inaccuracies must often be forgiven 
 
 being as universal as gravitation. But the place of Thermology is 
 marked out, within certain narrow limits, by the ends of the classifica- 
 tion, though not by its principle. The desideratum is, that every 
 science should precede those which cannot be scientifically constituted 
 or rationally studied until it is known. It is as a means to this end, 
 that the arrangement of the phsenomena in the order of their depend- 
 ence on one another is important. Now, though heat is as universal 
 a phenomenon as any which external nature presents, its laws do not 
 affect, in any manner important to us, the phenomena of Astronomy, 
 and operate in the other branches of Physics only as slight modifying 
 agencies, the consideration of which may be postponed to a rather ad- 
 vanced stage. But the phsenomena of Chemistry and Biology depend 
 on them often for their very existence. The ends of the classification 
 require therefore that Thermology should precede Chemistry and 
 Biology, but do not demand that it should be thrown farther back. 
 On the other hand, those same ends, in another point of view, require 
 that it should be subsequent to Astronomy, for reasons not of doctrine 
 but of method : Astronomy being the best school of the true art of 
 interpreting Nature, by which Thermology profits like other sciences, 
 but which it was ill adapted to originate. 
 
 # The philosophy of the subject is perhaps nowhere so well ex- 
 pressed as in the " Systeme de Politique Positive " (iii. 41). " Congu 
 logiquement, l'ordre suivant lequel nos principales theories accomplis- 
 sent revolution fondamentale resulte necessairement de leur depend- 
 ance mutuelle. Toutes les sciences peuvent, sans doute, etre ebauchees 
 a la fois : leur usage pratique exige meme cette culture simultanee. 
 Mais elle ne peut concerner que les inductions propres a chaque classe 
 
46 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 even to great thinkers. Mr Spencer, in the very 
 writings in which he criticises M. Comte, affords 
 signal instances of them.* 
 
 de speculations. Or cet essor inductif ne saurait fournir des principes 
 suffisants qu'envers les plus simples etudes. Partout ailleurs, ils ne 
 peuvent etre etablis qu'en subordonnant chaque genre d'inductions 
 scientifiques a l'ensemble des deductions emanees des domaines moins 
 compliques, et des-lors moins dependants. Ainsi nos diverses theories 
 reposent dogmatiquement les unes sur les autres, suivant un ordre 
 invariable, qui doit regler historiquement leur avenement decisif, les 
 plus indepeudantes ayant toujours du se developper plus tot." 
 
 * " Science." says Mr Spencer in his " Genesis," " while purely in- 
 ductive is purely qualitative. . . . All quantitative prevision is reached 
 deductively; induction can achieve only qualitative prevision." Now, 
 if we remember that the very first accurate quantitative law of physical 
 phenomena ever established, the law of the accelerating force of gravity, 
 was discovered and proved by Galileo partly at least by experiment ; 
 that the quantitative laws on which the whole theory of the celestial 
 motions is grounded, were generalized by Kepler from direct compari- 
 son of observations ; that the quantitative law of the condensation of 
 gases by pressure, the law of Boyle and Mariotte, was arrived at by 
 direct experiment ; that the proportional quantities in which every 
 known substance combines chemically with every other, were ascer- 
 tained by innumerable experiments, from which the general law of 
 chemical equivalents, now the ground of the most exact quantitative 
 previsions, was an inductive generalization ; we must conclude that 
 Mr Spencer has committed himself to a general proposition, which a 
 very slight consideration of truths perfectly known to him would have 
 shown to be unsustainable. 
 
 Again, in the very pamphlet in which Mr Spencer defends himself 
 against the supposition of being a disciple of M. Comte (" The Classi- 
 fication of the Sciences," p. 37), he speaks of " M. Comte's adherent, 
 Mr Buckle." Now, except in the opinion common to both, that his- 
 tory may be made a subject of science, the speculations of these two 
 thinkers are not only different, but run in different channels, M. Comte 
 applying himself principally to the laws of evolution common to all 
 mankind, Mr Buckle almost exclusively to the diversities: and it may 
 
AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 47 
 
 Combining the doctrines, that every science is 
 in a less advanced state as it occnpies a higher 
 place in the ascending scale, and that all the 
 sciences pass through the three stages, theological, 
 metaphysical, and positive, it follows that the more 
 special a science is, the tardier is it in effecting each 
 transition, so that a completely positive state of an 
 earlier science has often coincided with the meta- 
 physical state of the one next to it, and a purely 
 theological state of those further on. This statement 
 correctly represents the general course of the facts, 
 though requiring allowances in the detail. Mathe- 
 matics, for example, from the very beginning of its 
 cultivation, can hardly at any time have been in 
 the theological state, though exhibiting many traces 
 of the metaphysical. No one, probably, ever be- 
 lieved that the will of a god kept parallel lines 
 from meeting, or made two and two equal to four ; 
 or ever prayed to the gods to make the square of 
 the hypothenuse equal to more or less than the 
 sum of the squares of the sides. The most devout 
 believers have recognized in propositions of this 
 
 be affirmed without presumption, that they neither saw the same 
 truths, nor fell into the same errors, nor defended their opinions, either 
 true or erroneous, by the same arguments. Indeed, it is one of the 
 surprising things in the case of Mr Buckle as of Mr Spencer, that being 
 a man of kindred genius, of the same wide range of knowledge, and 
 devoting himself to speculations of the same kind, he profited so little 
 by M. Comte. 
 
 These oversights prove nothing against the general accuracy of Mr 
 Spencer's acquirements. They are mere lapses of inattention, such 
 as thinkers who attempt speculations requiring that vast multitudes of 
 facts should be kept in recollection at once, can scarcely hope always 
 to avoid. 
 
48 AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 description, a class of truths independent of the 
 divine omnipotence. Even ainong the truths which 
 popular philosophy calls by the misleading name 
 of Contingent, the few which are at once exact 
 and obvious were probably, from the very first, ex- 
 cepted from the theological explanation. M. Comte 
 observes, after Adam Smith, that we are not told in 
 any age or country of a god of Weight. It was 
 otherwise with Astronomy : the heavenly bodies 
 were believed not merely to be moved by gods, but 
 to be gods themselves : and when this theory was 
 exploded, their movements were explained by me- 
 taphysical conceptions ; such as a tendency of 
 Nature to perfection, in virtue of which these 
 sublime bodies, being left to themselves, move in 
 the most perfect orbit, the circle. Even Kepler 
 was full of fancies of this description, which only 
 terminated when Newton, by unveiling the real 
 physical laws of the celestial motions, closed the 
 metaphysical period of astronomical science. As M. 
 Comte remarks, our power of foreseeing pheno- 
 mena, and our power of controlling them, are the 
 two things which destroy the belief of their being 
 governed by changeable wills. In the case of 
 pheenomena which science has not yet taught us 
 either to foresee or to control, the theological mode 
 of thought has not ceased to operate : men still 
 pray for rain, or for success in war, or to avert a 
 shipwreck or a pestilence, but not to put back the 
 stars in their courses, to abridge the time neces- 
 sary for a journey, or to arrest the tides. Such 
 vestiges of the primitive mode of thought linger in 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 49 
 
 the more intricate departments of sciences which 
 have attained a high degree of positive develop- 
 ment. The metaphysical mode of explanation, 
 being less antagonistic than the theological to the 
 idea of invariable laws, is still slower in being en- 
 tirely discarded. M. Comte finds remains of it in 
 the sciences which are the most completely 
 positive, with the single exception of astronomy, 
 mathematics itself not being, he thinks, altogether 
 free from them : which is not wonderful, when we 
 see at how very recent a date mathematicians have 
 been able to give the really positive interpretation 
 of their own symbols.* We have already however 
 had occasion to notice M. Comte's propensity to 
 use the term metaphysical in cases containing 
 nothing that truly answers to his definition of the 
 word. Eor instance, he considers chemistry as 
 tainted with the metaphysical mode of thought by 
 the notion of chemical affinity. He thinks that 
 the chemists who said that bodies combine because 
 they have an aninity for each other, believed in a 
 mysterious entity residing in bodies and inducing 
 them to combine. On any other supposition, he 
 thinks the statement could only mean that bodies 
 combine because they combine. But it really 
 meant more. It was the abstract expression of 
 the doctrine, that bodies have an invariable tend- 
 ency to combine with one thing in preference to 
 
 * We refer particularly to the mystical metaphysics connected 
 with the negative sign, imaginary quantities, infinity and infinitesi- 
 mals, &c, all cleared up and put on a rational footing in the highly 
 philosophical treatises of Professor De Morgan. 
 
 4 
 
50 AUGTUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 another : that the tendencies of different sub- 
 stances to combine are fixed quantities, of which 
 the greater always prevails over the less, so that if 
 A detaches B from C in one case it will do so in 
 every other ; which was called having a greater 
 attraction, or, more technically, a greater affinity 
 for it. This was not a metaphysical theory, but a 
 positive generalization, which accounted for a 
 great number of facts, and would have kept its 
 place as a law of nature, had it not been disproved 
 by the discovery of cases in which though A de- 
 tached B from C in some circumstances, G de- 
 tached it from A in others, showing the law of 
 elective chemical combination to be a less simple 
 one than had at first been supposed. In this case, 
 therefore, M. Comte made a mistake : and he will 
 be found to have made many similar ones. But in 
 the science next after chemistry, biology, the 
 empty mode of explanation by scholastic entities, 
 such as a plastic force, a vital principle, and the 
 like, has been kept up even to the present day. 
 The German physiology of the school of Oken, 
 notwithstanding his acknowledged genius, is al- 
 most as metaphysical as Hegel, and there is in 
 Erance a quite recent revival of the Animism of 
 Stalil. These metaphysical explanations, besides 
 their inanity, did serious harm, by directing the 
 course of positive scientific inquiry into wrong 
 channels. There was indeed nothing to prevent 
 investigating the mode of action of the supposed 
 plastic or vital force by observation and experi- 
 ment ; but the phrases gave currency and coher- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 51 
 
 ence to a false abstraction and generalization, set- 
 ting inquirers to look out for one cause of complex 
 phenomena which undoubtedly depended on many. 
 According to M. Comte, chemistry entered into 
 the positive stage with Lavoisier, in the latter half 
 of the last century (in a subsequent treatise he 
 places the date a generation earlier) ; and biology 
 at the beginning of the present, when Bichat drew 
 the fundamental distinction between nutritive or 
 vegetative and properly animal life, and referred 
 the properties of organs to the general laws of the 
 component tissues. The most complex of all 
 sciences, the Social, had not, he maintained, be- 
 come positive at all, but was the subject of an 
 ever-renewed and barren contest between the theo- 
 logical and the metaphysical modes of thought. To 
 make this highest of the sciences positive, and 
 thereby complete the positive character of all 
 human speculations, was the principal aim of his 
 labours, and he believed himself to have accom- 
 plished it in the last three volumes of his Treatise. 
 But the term Positive is not, any more than Meta- 
 physical, always used by M. Comte in the same 
 meaning. There never can have been a period in 
 any science when it was not in some degree posi- 
 tive, since it always professed to draw conclusions 
 from experience and observation. M. Comte would 
 have been the last to deny that previous to his own 
 speculations, the world possessed a multitude of 
 truths, of greater or less certainty, on social sub- 
 jects, the evidence of which was obtained by in- 
 ductive or deductive processes from observed se- 
 
 4 * 
 
52 ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 quences of phenomena. Nor could it be denied 
 that the best writers on subjects upon which so 
 many men of the highest mental capacity had em- 
 ployed their powers, had accepted as thoroughly 
 the positive point of view, and rejected the theo- 
 logical and metaphysical as decidedly, as M. Comte 
 himself. Montesquieu ; even Macchiavelli ; Adam 
 Smith and the political economists universally, 
 both in Prance and in England ; Bentham, and all 
 thinkers initiated by him, — had a full conviction 
 that social phenomena conform to invariable laws, 
 the discovery and illustration of which was their 
 great object as speculative thinkers. All that can 
 be said is, that those philosophers did not get so 
 far as M. Comte in discovering the methods best 
 adapted to bring these laws to light. It was not, 
 therefore, reserved for M. Comte to make socio- 
 logical inquiries positive. But what he really 
 meant by making a science positive, is what we 
 will call, with M. Littre, giving it its final scien- 
 tific constitution ; in other words, discovering or 
 proving, and pursuing to their consequences, those 
 of its truths which are fit to form the connecting 
 links among the rest : truths which are to it what 
 the law of gravitation is to astronomy, what the 
 elementary properties of the tissues are to physio- 
 logy, and we will add (though M. Comte did not) 
 what the laws of association are to psychology. 
 This is an operation which, when accomplished, 
 puts an end to the empirical period, and enables 
 the science to be conceived as a co-ordinated and 
 coherent body of doctrine. This is what had not 
 
ATTGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 53 
 
 yet been done for sociology ; and the hope of effect- 
 ing it was, from his early years, the prompter and 
 incentive of all M. Comte's philosophic labours. 
 
 It was with a view to this that he undertook 
 that wonderful systematization of the philosophy of 
 all the antecedent sciences, from mathematics to 
 physiology, which, if we had done nothing else, 
 would have stamped him, in all minds competent 
 to appreciate it, as one of the principal thinkers of 
 the age. To make its nature intelligible to those 
 who are not acquainted with it, we must explain 
 what we mean by the philosophy of a science, as 
 distinguished from the science itself. The proper 
 meaning of philosophy we take to be, what the 
 ancients understood by it — the scientific knowledge 
 of Man, as an intellectual, moral, and social being. 
 Since his intellectual faculties include his knowing 
 faculty, the science of Man includes everything 
 that man can know, so far as regards his mode of 
 knowing it : in other words, the whole doctrine of 
 the conditions of human knowledge. The philoso- 
 phy of a Science thus comes to mean the science 
 itself, considered not as to its results, the truths 
 which it ascertains, but as to the processes by 
 which the mind attains them, the marks by which 
 it recognises them, and the co-ordinating and 
 methodizing of them with a view to the greatest 
 clearness of conception and the fullest and readiest 
 availibility for use : in one word, the logic of the 
 science. M. Comte has accomplished this for the 
 first five of the fundamental sciences, with a suc- 
 cess which can hardlv be too much admired. We 
 
54 AUGUSTE COMTB AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 never reopen even the least admirable part of this 
 survey, the volume on chemistry and biology 
 (which was behind the actual state of those sciences 
 when first written, and is far in the rear of them 
 now), without a renewed sense of the great reach 
 of its speculations, and a conviction that the 
 way to a complete rationalizing of those sciences, 
 still very imperfectly conceived by most who 
 cultivate them, has been shown nowhere so success- 
 fully as there. 
 
 Yet, for a correct appreciation of this great 
 philosophical achievement, we ought to take ac- 
 count of what has not been accomplished, as well 
 as of what has. Some of the chief deficiencies and 
 infirmities of M. Comte's system of thought will be 
 found, as is usually the case, in close connexion 
 with its greatest successes. 
 
 The philosophy of Science consists of two prin- 
 cipal parts ; the methods of investigation, and the 
 requisites of proof. The one points out the roads 
 by which the human intellect arrives at conclu- 
 sions, the other the mode of testing their evidence. 
 The former if complete would be an Organon of 
 Discovery, the latter of Proof. It is to the first of 
 these that M. Comte principally confines himself, 
 and he treats it with a degree of perfection hitherto 
 unrivalled. Nowhere is there anything comparable, 
 in its kind, to his survey of the resources which 
 the mind has at its disposal for investigating the 
 laws of phsenomena ; the circumstances which 
 render each of the fundamental modes of explora- 
 tion suitable or unsuitable to each class of phaeno- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 55 
 
 mena ; the extensions and transformations which 
 the process of investigation has to undergo in 
 adapting itself to each new province of the field of 
 study ; and the especial gifts with which every one 
 of the fundamental sciences enriches the method of 
 positive inquiry, each science in its turn being the 
 best fitted to bring to perfection one process or 
 another. These, and many cognate subjects, such 
 as the theory of Classification, and the proper use 
 of scientific Hypotheses, M. Comte has treated with 
 a completeness of insight which leaves little to be 
 desired. Not less admirable is his survey of the 
 mosfc comprehensive truths that had been arrived 
 at by each science, considered as to their relation 
 to the general sum of human knowledge, and their 
 logical value as aids to its further progress. But 
 after all this, there remains a further and distinct 
 question. We are taught the right way of search- 
 ing for results, but when a result has been reached, 
 how shall we know that it is true ? How assure 
 ourselves that the process has been performed cor- 
 rectly, and that our premises, whether consisting of 
 generalities or of particular facts, really prove the 
 conclusion we have grounded on them ? On this 
 question M. Comte throws no light. He supplies 
 no test of proof. As regards deduction, he neither 
 recognises the syllogistic system of Aristotle and 
 his successors (the insufficiency of which is as 
 evident as its utility is real) nor proposes any 
 other in lieu of it : and of induction he has no 
 canons whatever. He does not seem to admit the 
 possibility of any general criterion by which to 
 
56 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 decide whether a given inductive inference is cor- 
 rect or not. Yet he does not, with Dr Whewell, 
 regard an inductive theory as proved if it accounts 
 for the facts : on the contrary, he sets himself in 
 the strongest opposition to those scientific hypo- 
 theses which, like the luminiferous ether, are not 
 susceptible of direct proof, and are accepted on the 
 sole evidence of their aptitude for explaining 
 phsenomena. He maintains that no hypothesis is 
 legitimate unless it is susceptible of verification, 
 and that none ought to be accepted as true unless 
 it can be shown not only that it accords with the 
 facts, but that its falsehood would be inconsistent 
 with them. He therefore needs a test of inductive 
 proof ; and in assigning none, he seems to give up 
 as impracticable the main problem of Logic pro- 
 perly so called. At the beginning of his treatise 
 he speaks of a doctrine of Method, apart from 
 particular applications, as conceivable, but not 
 needful : method, according to him, is learnt only 
 by seeing it in operation, and the logic of a science 
 can only usefully be taught through the science 
 itself. Towards the end of the work, he assumes a 
 more decidedly negative tone, and treats the very 
 conception of studying Logic otherwise than in its 
 applications as chimerical. He got on, in his sub- 
 sequent writings, to considering it as wrong. This 
 indispensable part of Positive Philosophy he not 
 only left to be supplied by others, but did all that 
 depended on him to discourage them from attempt- 
 ing it. 
 
 This hiatus in M. Comte's system is not uncon- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 57 
 
 nected with, a defect in his original conception of 
 the subject matter of scientific investigation, which 
 has been generally noticed, for it lies on the sur- 
 face, and is more apt to be exaggerated than over- 
 looked. It is often said of him that he rejects the 
 study of causes. This is not, in the correct accept- 
 ation, true, for it is only questions of ultimate 
 origin, and of Efficient as distinguished from what 
 are called Physical causes, that he rejects. The 
 causes that he regards as inaccessible are causes 
 which are not themselves phenomena. Like other 
 people he admits the study of causes, in every sense 
 in which one physical fact can be the cause of 
 another. But he has an objection to the word 
 cause ; he will only consent to speak of Laws of 
 Succession : and depriving himself of the use of a 
 word which has a Positive meaning, he misses the 
 meaning it expresses. He sees no difference be- 
 tween such generalizations as Kepler's laws, and 
 such as the theory of gravitation. He fails to per- 
 ceive the real distinction between the laws of suc- 
 cession and coexistence which thinkers of a different 
 school call Laws of Phaenomena, and those of what 
 they call the action of Causes : the former exempli- 
 fied by the succession of day and night, the latter 
 by the earth's rotation which causes it. The suc- 
 cession of day and night is as much an invariable 
 sequence, as the alternate exposure of opposite sides 
 of the earth to the sun. Yet day and night are not 
 the causes of one another ; why ? Because their 
 sequence, though invariable in our experience, is 
 not unconditionally so : those facts only succeed 
 
58 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 each other, provided that the presence and absence 
 of the snn succeed each other, and if this alternation 
 were to cease, we might have either day or night 
 unfollowed by one another. There are thus two 
 kinds of uniformities of succession, the one uncon- 
 ditional, the other conditional on the first : laws of 
 causation, and other successions dependent on those 
 laws. All ultimate laws are laws of causation, and 
 the only universal law beyond the pale of mathe- 
 matics is the law of universal causation, namely, 
 that every phenomenon has a phenomenal cause ; 
 has some phenomenon other than itself, or some 
 combination of phenomena, on which it is invaria- 
 bly and unconditionally consequent. It is on the 
 universality of this law that the possibility rests of 
 establishing a canon of Induction. A general pro- 
 position inductively obtained is only then proved to 
 be true, when the instances on which it rests are 
 such that if they have been correctly observed, the 
 falsity of the generalization would be inconsistent 
 with the constancy of causation ; with the univer- 
 sality of the fact that the phenomena of nature 
 take place according to invariable laws of succes- 
 sion.* It is probable, therefore, that M. Comte's 
 determined abstinence from the word and the idea 
 
 # Those who wish to see this idea followed out, are referred to " A 
 System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive." It is not irrelevant to 
 state that M. Corate, soon after the publication of that work, expressed, 
 both in a letter (published in M. Littre's volume) and in print, his high 
 approval of it (especially of the Inductive part) as a real contribution 
 to the construction of the Positive Method. But we cannot discover 
 that he was indebted to it for a single idea, or that it influenced, 
 in the smallest particular, the course of his subsequent speculations. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 59 
 
 of Cause, had much to do with his inability to 
 conceive an Inductive Logic, by diverting his 
 attention from the only basis upon which it could 
 be founded. 
 
 We are afraid it must also be said, though 
 shown only by slight indications in his fundament- 
 al work, and coming out in full evidence only in 
 his later writings — that M. Comte, at bottom, was 
 not so solicitous about completeness of proof as 
 becomes a positive philosopher, and that the un- 
 impeachable objectivity, as he would have -called 
 it, of a conception — its exact correspondence to the 
 realities of outward fact — was not, with him, an 
 indispensable condition of adopting it, if it was 
 subjectively useful, by affording facilities to the 
 mind for grouping phenomena. This appears very 
 curiously in his chapters on the philosophy of Che- 
 mistry. He recommends, as a judicious use of 
 " the degree of liberty left to our intelligence by 
 the end and purpose of positive science," that we 
 should accept as a convenient generalization the 
 doctrine that all chemical composition is between 
 two elements only ; that every substance which 
 our analysis decomposes, let us say into four ele- 
 ments, has for its immediate constituents two 
 hypothetical substances, each compounded of two 
 simpler ones. There would have been nothing to 
 object to in this as a scientific hypothesis, assumed 
 tentatively as a means of suggesting experiments 
 by which its truth may be tested. With this for 
 its destination, the conception would have been 
 legitimate and philosophical ; the more so, as, if 
 
60 AUGTTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 confirmed, it would have afforded an explanation 
 of the fact that some substances which analysis 
 shows to be composed of the same elementary sub- 
 stances in the same proportions, differ in their 
 general properties, as for instance, sugar and gum.* 
 And if, besides affording a reason for difference 
 between things which differ, the hypothesis had 
 afforded a reason for agreement between things 
 which agree; if the intermediate link by which 
 the quaternary compound was resolved into two 
 binary ones, could have been so chosen as to bring 
 each of them within the. analogies of some known 
 class of binary compounds (which it is easy to sup- 
 pose possible, and which in some particular in- 
 stances actually happens) ; f the universality of 
 binary composition would have been a successful 
 example of an hypothesis in anticipation of a posi- 
 tive theory, to give a direction to inquiry which 
 might end in its being either proved or aban- 
 doned. But M. Comte evidently thought that 
 even though it should never be proved — however 
 many cases of chemical composition might always 
 remain in which the theory was still as hypotheti- 
 
 * The force, however, of this last consideration has been much 
 weakened by the progress of discovery since M. Comte left off studying 
 chemistry ; it being now probable that most if not all substances, 
 even elementary, are susceptible of allotropic forms ; as in the case of 
 oxygen and ozone, the two forms of phosphorus, &c. 
 
 f Thus ; by considering prussic acid as a compound of hydrogen 
 and cyanogen rather than of hydrogen and the elements of cyanogen 
 (carbon and nitrogen), it is assimilated to a whole class of acid com- 
 pounds between hydrogen and other substances, and a reason is thus 
 found for its agreeing in their acid properties. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 61 
 
 cal as at first — so long as it was not actually dis- 
 proved (which it is scarcely in the nature of the 
 case that it should ever be) it would deserve to be 
 retained, for its mere convenience in bringing a 
 large body of phenomena under a general concep- 
 tion. In a resume of the general principles of the 
 positive method at the end of the work, he claims, 
 in express terms, an unlimited license of adopting 
 " without any vain scruple" hypothetical concep- 
 tions of this sort ; " in order to satisfy, within pro- 
 per limits, our just mental inclinations, which al- 
 ways turn, with an instinctive predilection, towards 
 simplicity, continuity, and generality of concep- 
 tions, while always respecting the reality of exter- 
 nal laws in so far as accessible to us" (vi. 639). 
 " The most philosophic point of view leads us to 
 conceive the study of natural laws as destined to 
 represent the external world so as to give as much 
 satisfaction to the essential inclinations of our intel- 
 ligence, as is consistent with the degree of exacti- 
 tude commanded by the aggregate of our practical 
 wants" (vi. 642). Among these " essential inclina- 
 tions " he includes not only our " instinctive 
 predilection for order and harmony," which makes 
 us relish any conception, even fictitious, that helps 
 to reduce phenomena to system ; but even our 
 feelings of taste, " les convenances purement esthe- 
 tiques," which, he says, have a legitimate part in 
 the employment of the " genre de liberty reste' 
 facultatif pour notre intelligence." After the due 
 satisfaction of our " most eminent mental inclina- 
 tions," there will still remain "a considerable mar- 
 
62 ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 gin of mdeterminateness, which should be made use 
 of to give a direct gratification to our besoin of ideal- 
 ity, by embellishing our scientific thoughts, with- 
 out injury to their essential reality " (vi. 647). In 
 consistency with all this, M. Comte warns thinkers 
 against too severe a scrutiny of the exact truth of 
 scientific laws, and stamps with " severe reproba- 
 tion" those who break down "by too minute an 
 investigation " generalizations already made, with- 
 out being able to substitute others (vi. 639) : as in 
 the case of Lavoisier's general theory of chemistry, 
 which would have made that science more satisfac- 
 tory than at present to " the instinctive inclina- 
 tions of our intelligence " if it had turned out true, 
 but unhappily it did not. These mental disposi- 
 tions in M. Comte account for his not having found 
 or sought a logical criterion of proof ; but they are 
 scarcely consistent with his inveterate hostility to 
 the hypothesis of the luminiferous ether, which 
 certainly gratifies our " predilection for order and 
 harmony," not to say our " besoin d'id^aliteV' in 
 no ordinary degree. This notion of the " destina- 
 tion " of the study of natural laws is to our minds 
 a complete dereliction of the essential principles 
 which form the Positive conception of science ; and 
 contained the germ of the perversion of his own 
 philosophy which marked his later years. It might 
 be interesting, but scarcely worth while, to attempt 
 to penetrate to the just thought which misled M. 
 Comte, for there is almost always a grain of truth 
 in the errors of an original and powerful mind. 
 There is another grave aberration in M. Comte' s 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. Go 
 
 view of the method of positive science, which though 
 not more unphilosophical than the last mentioned, 
 is of greater practical importance. He rejects 
 totally, as an invalid process, psychological observ- 
 ation properly so called, or in other words, inter- 
 nal consciousness, at least as regards our intel- 
 lectual operations. He gives no place in his series 
 of the science of Psychology, and always speaks of 
 it with contempt. The study of mental phsenomena, 
 or, as he expresses it, of moral and intellectual 
 functions, has a place in his scheme, under the 
 head of Biology, but only as a branch of physio- 
 logy. Our knowledge of the human mind must, 
 he thinks, be acquired by observing other people. 
 How we are to observe other people's mental opera- 
 tions, or how interpret the signs of them without 
 having learnt what the signs mean by knowledge 
 of ourselves, he does not state. But it is clear to 
 him that we can learn very little about the feelings, 
 and nothing at all about the intellect, by self-ob- 
 servation. Our intelligence can observe all other 
 things, but not itself : we cannot observe ourselves 
 observing, or observe ourselves reasoning : and if 
 we could, attention to this reflex operation would 
 annihilate its object, by stopping the process ob- 
 served. 
 
 There is little need for an elaborate refutation 
 of a fallacy respecting which the only wonder is 
 that it should impose on any one. Two answers 
 may be given to it. In the first place, M. Comte 
 might be referred to experience, and to the writ- 
 ings of his countryman M. Cardaillac and our 
 
6Jd ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 own Sir William Hamilton, for proof that the 
 mind can not only be conscious of, but attend to, 
 more than one, and even a considerable number, 
 of impressions at once.* It is true that attention 
 is weakened by bein^ divided; and this forms a 
 special difficulty in psychological observation, as 
 psychologists (Sir TTilliam Hamilton in particular) 
 have fully recognised ; but a difficulty is not an 
 impossibility. Secondly, it might have occurred 
 to M. Comte that a fact may be studied through 
 the medium of memory, not at the very moment of 
 our perceiving it, but the moment after : and this 
 is really the mode in which our best knowledge of 
 our intellectual acts is generally acquired. TTe 
 reflect on what we have been doing, when the act 
 is past, but when its impression in the memory is 
 still fresh. Unless in one of these ways, we could 
 not have acquired the knowledge, which nobody 
 denies us to have, of what passes in our minds. 
 M. Comte would scarcely have affirmed that we 
 are not aware of our own intellectual operations. 
 "We know of our observings and our reasonings, 
 either at the very time, or by memory the moment 
 after ; in either case, by direct knowledge, and not 
 (like things done by us in a state of somnambu- 
 lism) merely by their results. This simple fact 
 destroys the whole of M. Comte's argument. 
 Whatever we are directly aware of, we can direct- 
 ly observe. 
 
 8 According to Sir William Hamilton, as many as six ; but nu- 
 merical precision in sucli matters is out of the question, and it is pro- 
 bable that different minds have the power in different degrees. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 65 
 
 And what Organon for the study of " the 
 moral and intellectual functions " does M. Comte 
 offer, in lieu of the direct mental observation 
 which he repudiates ? We are almost ashamed to 
 say, that it is Phrenology ! Not, indeed, he says, 
 as a science formed, but as one still to be created ; 
 for he rejects almost all the special organs ima- 
 gined by phrenologists, and accepts only their 
 general division of the brain into the three regions 
 of the propensities, the sentiments, and the intel- 
 lect,* and the subdivision of the latter region be- 
 tween the organs of meditation and those of observ- 
 ation. Yet this mere first outline pf an appor- 
 tionment of the mental functions among different 
 organs, he regards as extricating the mental study 
 of man from the metaphysical stage, and elevating 
 it to the positive. The condition of mental science 
 would be sad indeed if this were its best chance of 
 being positive ; for the later course of physiologi- 
 cal observation and speculation has not tended to 
 confirm, but to discredit, the phrenological hypo- 
 thesis. And even if that hypothesis were true, 
 psychological observation would still be necessary ; 
 for how is it possible to ascertain the correspond- 
 ence between two things, by observation of only 
 one of them ? To establish a relation between 
 mental functions and cerebral conformations, re- 
 quires not only a parallel system of observations 
 applied to each, but (as M. Comte himself, with 
 
 * Or, as afterwards corrected by him, the appetites and emotions, 
 the active capacities, and the intellectual faculties ; " le coeur," " le 
 caractere," and " l'esprit." 
 
66 ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 some inconsistency, acknowledges) an analysis of 
 the mental faculties, " des diverses faculty 616- 
 mentaires," (iii. 573), conducted without any refer- 
 ence to the physical conditions, since the proof of 
 the theory would lie in the correspondence be- 
 tween the division of the brain into organs and 
 that of the mind into faculties, each shown by 
 separate evidence. To accomplish this analysis 
 requires direct psychological study carried to a 
 high pitch of perfection ; it being necessary, 
 among other things, to investigate the degree in 
 which mental character is created by circum- 
 stances, since no one supposes that cerebral con- 
 formation does all, and circumstances nothing. 
 The phrenological study of Mind thus supposes as 
 its necessary preparation the whole of the Associa- 
 tion psychology. Without, then, rejecting any 
 aid which study of the brain and nerves can afford 
 to psychology (and it has afforded, and will yet 
 afford, much), we may affirm that M. Comte has 
 done nothing for the constitution of the positive 
 method of mental science. He refused to profit 
 by the very valuable commencements made by his 
 predecessors, especially by Hartley, Brown, and 
 James Mill (if indeed any of those philosophers 
 were known to him), and left the psychological 
 branch of the positive method, as well as psycho- 
 logy itself, to be put in their true position as a 
 part of Positive Philosophy by successors who duly 
 placed themselves at the twofold point of view of 
 physiology and psychology, Mr Bain and Mr 
 Herbert Spencer. This great mistake is not a 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 67 
 
 mere hiatus in M. Oomte's system, but the parent 
 of serious errors in his attempt to create a Social 
 Science. He is indeed very skilful in estimating 
 the effect of circumstances in moulding the gen- 
 eral character of the human race ; were he not, 
 his historical theory could be of little worth : but 
 in appreciating the influence which circumstances 
 exercise, through psychological laws, in producing 
 diversities of character, collective or individual, he 
 is sadly at fault. 
 
 After this summary view of M. Comte's con- 
 ception of Positive Philosophy, it remains to give 
 some account of his more special and equally am- 
 bitious attempt to create the Science of Sociology, 
 or, as he expresses it, to elevate the study of social 
 phenomena to the positive state. 
 
 He regarded all who profess any political opin- 
 ions as hitherto divided between the adherents of the 
 theological and those of the metaphysical mode of 
 thought : the former deducing all their doctrines 
 from divine ordinances, the latter from abstractions. 
 This assertion, however, cannot be intended in the 
 same sense as when the terms are applied to the 
 sciences of inorganic nature ; for it is impossible 
 that acts evidently proceeding from the human 
 will could be ascribed to the agency (at least im- 
 mediate) of either divinities or abstractions. No 
 one ever regarded himself or his fellow-man as a 
 mere piece of machinery worked by a god, or as 
 the abode of an entity which was the true author of 
 what the man himself appeared to do. True, it 
 was believed that the gods, or God, could move or 
 
68 ATTCUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 change human wills, as well as control their conse- 
 quences, and prayers were offered to them accord- 
 ingly, rather as able to overrule the spontaneous 
 course of things, than as at each instant carrying 
 it on. On the whole, however, the theological and 
 metaphysical conceptions, in their application to 
 sociology, had reference not to the production of 
 phenomena, but to the rule of duty, and conduct 
 in life. It is this w T hich was based, either on a 
 divine will, or on abstract mental conceptions, 
 which, by an illusion of the rational faculty, were 
 invested with objective validity. On the one hand, 
 the established rules of morality were everywhere 
 referred to a divine origin. In the majority of 
 countries the entire civil and criminal law was 
 looked upon as revealed from above ; and itjisjto 
 the petty military communities which escaped this 
 delusion, that man is indebted for being now a pro- 
 gressive being. The fundamental institutions of 
 the state were almost everywhere believed to have 
 been divinely established, and to be still, in a 
 greater or less degree, of divine authority. The 
 divine right of certain lines of kings to rule, and 
 even to rule absolutely, was but lately the creed of 
 the dominant party in most countries of Europe ; 
 while the divine right of popes and bishops to 
 dictate men's beliefs (and not respecting the invisi- 
 ble world alone) is still striving, though under con- 
 siderable difficulties, to rule mankind. When these 
 opinions began to be out of date, a rival theory 
 presented itself to take their place. There were, in 
 truth, many such theories, and to some of them the 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. G9 
 
 term metaphysical, in M. Comte's sense, cannot 
 justly be applied. All theories in which the ulti- 
 mate standard of institutions and rules of action 
 was the happiness of mankind, and observation and 
 experience the guides (and some such there have 
 been in all periods of free speculation), are entitled 
 to the name Positive, whatever, in other respects, 
 their imperfections may be. But these were a 
 small minority. M. Comte was right in affirming 
 that the prevailing schools of moral and political 
 speculation, when not theological, have been meta- 
 physical. They affirmed that moral rules, and even 
 political institutions, were not means to an end, 
 the general good, but corollaries evolved from the 
 conception of Natural Eights. This was especially 
 the case in all the countries in which the ideas of 
 publicists were the offspring of the Uoman Law. 
 The legislators of opinion on these subjects, when 
 not theologians, were lawyers : and the Continental 
 lawyers followed the Roman jurists, who followed 
 the Greek metaphysicians, in acknowledging as the 
 ultimate source of right and wrong in morals, and 
 consequently in institutions, the imaginary law of 
 the imaginary being Nature. The first system- 
 atizers of morals in Christian Europe, on any other 
 than a purely theological basis, the writers on In- 
 ternational Law, reasoned wholly from these pre- 
 mises, and transmitted them to a long line of 
 successors. This mode of thought reached its cul- 
 mination in Rousseau, in whose hands it became as 
 powerful an instrument for destroying the past, as 
 it was impotent for directing the future. The com- 
 
70 AUGUSTS COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 plete victory which this philosophy gained, in 
 speculation, over the old doctrines, was temporarily 
 followed hy an equally complete practical triumph, 
 the French Revolution : when, having had, for the 
 first time, a full opportunity of developing its tend- 
 encies, and showing what it could not do, it failed 
 so conspicuously as to determine a partial reaction 
 to the doctrines of feudalism and Catholicism. 
 Between these and the political metaphysics (meta- 
 politics as Coleridge called it) of the Revolution, 
 society has since oscillated ; raising up in the pro- 
 cess a hybrid intermediate party, termed Conserva- 
 tive, or the party of Order, which has no doctrines 
 of its own, but attempts to hold the scales even 
 between the two others, borrowing alternately the 
 arguments of each, to use as weapons against 
 whichever of the two seems at the moment most 
 likely to prevail. 
 
 Such, reduced to a very condensed form, is M. 
 Comte's version of the state of European opinion 
 on politics and society. An Englishman's criticism 
 would-be, that it describes well enough the general 
 division of political opinion in Erance and the 
 countries which follow her lead, but not in Eng- 
 land, or the communities of English origin : in all 
 of which, divine right died out with the Jacobites, 
 and the law of nature and natural rights have 
 never been favourites even with the extreme popu- 
 lar party, who preferred to rest their claims on the 
 historical traditions of their own country, and on 
 maxims drawn from its law books, and since they 
 outgrew this standard, almost always base them on 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 71 
 
 general expediency. In England, the preference 
 of one form of government to another seldom turns 
 on anything but the practical consequences which 
 it produces, or which are expected from it. M. 
 Comte can point to little of the nature of metaphy- 
 sics in English politics, except "la inetaphysique 
 constitutionnelle," a name he chooses to give to the 
 conventional fiction by which the occupant of the 
 throne is supposed to be the source from whence 
 all power emanates, while nothing can be further 
 from the belief or intention of anybody than that 
 such should really be the case. Apart from this, 
 which is a matter of forms and words, and has no 
 connexion with any belief except belief in the pro- 
 prieties, the severest criticism can find nothing 
 either worse or better, in the modes of thinking 
 either of our conservative or of our liberal party, than 
 a particularly shallow and flimsy kind of positivism. 
 The working classes indeed, or some portion of 
 them, perhaps still rest their claim to universal 
 suffrage on abstract right, in addition to more sub- 
 stantial reasons, and thus far and no farther does 
 metaphysics prevail in the region of English poli- 
 tics. But politics is not the entire art of social 
 existence : ethics is a still deeper and more vital 
 part of it : and in that, as much in England as else- 
 where, the current opinions are still divided be- 
 tween the theological mode of thought and the 
 metaphysical. What is the whole doctrine of In- 
 tuitive Morality, which reigns supreme wherever 
 the idolatry of Scripture texts has abated and the 
 influence of Bentham's philosophy has not reached, 
 
72 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 but the metaphysical state of ethical science ? 
 What else, indeed, is the whole a priori philosophy, 
 in morals, jurisprudence, psychology, logic, even 
 physical science, for it does not always keep its 
 hands off that, the oldest domain of observation 
 and experiment ? It has the universal diagnostic of 
 the metaphysical mode of thought, in the Comtean 
 sense of the word ; that of erecting a mere creation 
 of the mind into a test or norma of external truth, 
 and presenting the abstract expression of the beliefs 
 already entertained, as the reason and evidence 
 which justifies them. Of those who still adhere to 
 the old opinions we need not speak ; but when one 
 of the most vigorous as well as boldest thinkers 
 that English speculation has yet produced, full of 
 the true scientific spirit, Mr Herbert Spencer, 
 places in the front of his philosophy the doctrine 
 that the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition 
 is the inconceivableness of its negative ; when, fol- 
 lowing in the steps of Mr Spencer, an able ex- 
 pounder of positive philosophy like Mr Lewes, in 
 his meritorious and by no means superficial work 
 on Aristotle, after laying, very justly, the blame of 
 almost every error of the ancient thinkers on their 
 neglecting to verify their opinions, announces that 
 there are two kinds of verification, the Ileal and the 
 Ideal, the ideal test of truth being that its negative 
 is unthinkable, and by the application of that test 
 judges that gravitation must be universal even in 
 the stellar regions, because in the absence of proof 
 to the contrary, " the idea of matter without gravity 
 is unthinkable ; " — when those from whom it was 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 73 
 
 least to be expected thus set up acquired necessities 
 of thought in the minds of one or two generations 
 as evidence of real necessities in the universe, 
 we must admit that the metaphysical mode of 
 thought still rules the higher philosophy, even in 
 the department of inorganic nature, and far more 
 in all that relates to man as a moral, intellectual, 
 and social being. 
 
 But, while M. Comte is so far in the right, we 
 often, as already intimated, find him using the 
 name metaphysical to denote certain practical 
 conclusions, instead of a particular kind of theore- 
 tical premises. Whatever goes by the different 
 names of the revolutionary, the radical, the demo- 
 cratic, the liberal, the free-thinking, the sceptical, 
 or the negative and critical school or party in 
 religion, politics, or philosophy, all passes with 
 him under the designation of metaphysical, and 
 whatever he has to say about it forms part of his 
 description of the metaphysical school of social 
 science. He passes in review, one after another, 
 what he deems the leading doctrines of the revolu- 
 tionary school of politics, and dismisses them all 
 as mere instruments of attack upon the old social 
 system, with no permanent validity as social truth. 
 
 He assigns only this humble rank to the 
 first of all the articles of the liberal creed, 
 " the absolute right of free examination, or the 
 dogma of unlimited liberty of conscience." As 
 far as this doctrine only means that opinions, 
 and their expression, should be exempt from 
 legal restraint, either in the form of prevention 
 
74 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 or of penalty, M. Comte is a firm adherent of 
 it : but the moral right of every human being, 
 however ill-prepared by the necessary instruction 
 and discipline, to erect himself into a judge of 
 the most intricate as well as the most important 
 questions that can occupy the human intellect, 
 he resolutely denies. " There is no liberty of 
 conscience," he said in an early work, " in as- 
 tronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physio- 
 logy, in the sense that every one would think 
 it absurd not to accept in confidence the principles 
 established in those sciences by the competent 
 persons. If it is otherwise in politics, the reason 
 is merely because, the old doctrines having gone 
 by and the new ones not being yet formed, there 
 are not properly, during the interval, any estab- 
 lished opinions." When first mankind outgrew 
 the old doctrines, an appeal from doctors and 
 teachers to the outside public was inevitable and 
 indispensable, since without the toleration and 
 encouragement of discussion and criticism from 
 all quarters, it would have been impossible for any 
 new doctrines to grow up. But in itself, the 
 practice of carrying the questions which more 
 than all others require special knowledge and 
 preparation, before the incompetent tribunal of 
 common opinion, is, he contends, radically irra- 
 tional, and will and ought to cease when once 
 mankind have again made up their minds to a 
 system of doctrine. The prolongation of this pro- 
 visional state, producing an ever-increasing diver- 
 gence of opinions, is already, according to him, 
 
AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 75 
 
 extremely dangerous, since it is only when there 
 is a tolerable unanimity respecting the rule of life, 
 that a real moral control can be established over 
 the self-interest and passions of individuals. Besides 
 which, when every man is encouraged to believe 
 himself a competent judge of the most difficult 
 social questions, he cannot be prevented from 
 thinking himself competent also to the most im- 
 portant public duties, and the baneful competition 
 for power and official functions spreads constantly 
 downwards to a lower and lower grade of intelli- 
 gence. In M. Comte's opinion, the peculiarly 
 complicated nature of sociological studies, and the 
 great amount of previous knowledge and intel- 
 lectual discipline requisite for them, together with 
 the serious consequences that may be produced by 
 even temporary errors on such subjects, render 
 it necessary in the case of ethics and politics, still 
 more than of mathematics and physics, that what- 
 ever legal liberty may exist of questioning and 
 discussing, the opinions of mankind should really 
 be formed for them by an exceedingly small 
 number of minds of the highest class, trained to 
 the task by the most thorough and laborious 
 mental preparation : and that the questioning of 
 their conclusions by any one, not of an equivalent 
 grade of intellect and instruction, should be ac- 
 counted equally presumptuous, and more blamable, 
 than the attempts occasionally made by sciolists to 
 refute the Newtonian astronomy. All this is, in a 
 sense, true : but we confess our sympathy with 
 those who feel towards it like the man in the story, 
 
76 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 who being asked whether he admitted that six and 
 five make eleven, refused to give an answer until 
 he knew what use was to be made of it. The 
 doctrine is one of a class of truths which, unless 
 completed by other truths, are so liable to perver- 
 sion, that we may fairly decline to take notice of 
 them except in connexion with some definite 
 application. In justice to M. Comte it should 
 be said that he does not wish this intellectual 
 dominion to be exercised over an ignorant people. 
 Par from him is the thought of promoting the 
 allegiance of the mass to scientific authority by 
 withholding from them scientific knowledge. He 
 holds it the duty of society to bestow on every one 
 who grows up to manhood or womanhood as com- 
 plete a course of instruction in every department 
 of science, from mathematics to sociology, as can 
 possibly be made general : and his ideas of what is 
 possible in that respect are carried to a length to 
 which few are prepared to follow him. There 
 is something startling, though, when closely looked 
 into, not Utopian or chimerical, in the amount 
 of positive knowledge of the most varied kind 
 which he believes may, by good methods of teach- 
 ing, be made the common inheritance of all 
 persons with ordinary faculties who are born into 
 the world : not the mere knowledge of results, to 
 which, except for the practical arts, he attaches 
 only secondary value, but knowledge also of the 
 mode in which those results were attained, and the 
 evidence on which they rest, so far as it can be 
 
AUGUSTE CQMTE AND POSITIVISM. 77 
 
 known and understood by those who do not devote 
 their lives to its study. 
 
 "We have stated thus fully M. Comte's opinion 
 on the most fundamental doctrine of liberalism, be- 
 cause it is the clue to much of his general concep- 
 tion of politics. If his object had only been to 
 exemplify by that doctrine the purely negative 
 character of the principal liberal and revolutionary 
 schools of thought, he need not have gone so far : 
 it would have been enough to say, that the mere 
 liberty to hold and express any creed, cannot itself 
 be that creed. Every one is free to believe and 
 publish that two and two make ten, but the import- 
 ant thing is to know that they make four. M. 
 Comte has no difficulty in making out an equally 
 strong case against the other principal tenets of 
 what he calls the revolutionary school ; since all 
 that they generally amount to is, that something 
 ought not to be : which cannot possibly be the whole 
 truth, and which M. Comte, in general, will not 
 admit to be even part of it. Take for instance the 
 doctrine which denies to governments any initiative 
 in social progress, restricting them to the function 
 of preserving order, or in other words keeping the 
 peace : an opinion which, so far as grounded on so- 
 called rights of the individual, he justly regards as 
 purely metaphysical ; but does not recognise that 
 it is also widely held as an inference from the laws 
 of human nature and human affairs, and there- 
 fore, whether true or false, as a Positive doctrine. 
 Believing with M. Comte that there are no absolute 
 
78 ATJGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 truths in the political art, nor indeed in any art 
 whatever, we agree with him that the laisser faire 
 doctrine, stated without large qualifications, is both 
 unpractical and unscientific ; but it does not follow 
 that those who assert it are not, nineteen times out 
 of twenty, practically nearer the truth than those 
 who deny it. The doctrine of Equality meets no 
 better fate at M. Comte's hands. He regards it as 
 the erection into an absolute dogma of a mere pro- 
 test against the inequalities which came down from 
 the middle ages, and answer no legitimate end in 
 modern society. He observes, that mankind in a 
 normal state, having to act together, are necessarily, 
 in practice, organized and classed with some refer- 
 ence to their unequal aptitudes, natural or acquired, 
 which demand that some should be under the direc- 
 tion of others : scrupulous regard being at the same 
 time had to the fulfilment towards all, of "the 
 claims rightfully inherent in the dignity of a human 
 being ; the aggregate of which, still very insuffi- 
 ciently appreciated, will constitute more and more 
 the principle of universal morality as applied to 
 
 daily use a grand moral obligation, which 
 
 has never been directly denied since the aboli- 
 tion of slavery" (iv. 54). There is not a word 
 to be said against these doctrines : but the practical 
 question is one which M. Comte never even enter- 
 tains — viz., when, after being properly educated, 
 people are left to find their places for themselves, 
 do they not spontaneously class themselves in a 
 manner much more conformable to their unequal 
 
ATJGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 79 
 
 or dissimilar aptitudes, than governments or social 
 institutions are likely to do it for them? The Sove- 
 reignty of the People, again, — that metaphysical 
 axiom which in Prance and the rest of the Con- 
 tinent has so long been the theoretic basis of radi- 
 cal and democratic politics, — he regards as of a 
 purely negative character, signifying the right of 
 the people to rid themselves by insurrection of a 
 social order that has become oppressive; but, when 
 erected into a positive principle of government, 
 which condemns indefinitely all superiors to "an 
 arbitrary dependence upon the multitude of their 
 inferiors," he considers it as a sort of "transport- 
 ation to peoples of the divine right so much re- 
 proached to kings " (iv. 55, 56). On the doctrine 
 as a metaphysical dogma or an absolute principle, 
 this criticism is just ; but there is also a Positive 
 doctrine, without any pretension to being absolute, 
 which claims the direct participation of the govern- 
 ed in their own government, not -as a natural right, 
 but as a means to important ends, under the con- 
 ditions and with the limitations which those ends 
 impose. The general result of M. Comte's criticism 
 on the revolutionary philosophy, is that he deems 
 it not only incapable of aiding the necessary reor- 
 ganization of society, but a serious impediment 
 thereto, by setting up, on all the great interests of 
 mankind, the mere negation of authority, direction, 
 or organization, as the most perfect state, and the 
 solution of all problems : the extreme point of this 
 aberration being reached by Pousseau and his fol- 
 
80 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 lowers, when they extolled the savage state, as an 
 ideal from which civilization was only a degeneracy, 
 more or less marked and complete. 
 
 The state of sociological speculation being such 
 as has been described — divided between a feudal 
 and theological school, now effete, and a demo- 
 cratic and metaphysical one, of no value except 
 for the destruction of the former ; the problem, 
 how to render the social science positive, must 
 naturally have presented itself, more or less dis- 
 tinctly, to superior minds. M. Comte examines 
 and criticises, for the most part justly, some of the 
 principal efforts which have been made by indivi- 
 dual thinkers for this purpose. But the weak side 
 of his philosophy comes out prominently in his 
 strictures on the only systematic attempt yet made 
 by any body of thinkers, to constitute a science, 
 not indeed of social phenomena generally, but of 
 one great class or division of them. We mean, of 
 course, political economy, which (with a reserva- 
 tion in favour of the speculations of Adam Smith 
 as valuable preparatory studies for science) he 
 deems unscientific, unpositive, and a mere branch 
 of metaphysics, that comprehensive category of 
 condemnation in which he places all attempts at 
 positive science which are not in his opinion di- 
 rected by a right scientific method. Any one 
 acquainted with the writings of political econo- 
 mists need only read his few pages of animadver- 
 sions on them (iv. 193 to 205), to learn how ex- 
 tremely superficial M. Comte can sometimes be. 
 He affirms that they have added nothing really 
 
AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 81 
 
 new to the original apergus of Adam Smith ; when 
 every one who has read them knows that they 
 have added so much as to have changed the whole 
 aspect of the science, besides rectifying and clear- 
 ing up in the most essential points the apergus them- 
 selves. He lays an almost puerile stress, for the 
 purpose of disparagement, on the discussions about 
 the meaning of words which are found in the best 
 books on political economy, as if such discussions 
 were not an indispensable accompaniment of the 
 progress of thought, and abundant in the history 
 of every physical science. On the whole question 
 he has but one remark of any value, and that he 
 misapplies ; namely, that the study of the condi- 
 tions of national wealth as a detached subject is 
 unphilosophical, because, all the different aspects 
 of social phsenomena acting and reacting on one 
 another, they cannot be rightly understood apart : 
 which by no means proves that the material and 
 industrial phenomena of society are not, even by 
 themselves, susceptible of useful generalizations, 
 but only that these generalizations must neces- 
 sarily be relative to a given form of civilization 
 and a given stage of social advancement. This, 
 we apprehend, is what no political economist 
 would deny. None of them pretend that the laws 
 of wages, profits, values, prices, and the like, set 
 down in their treatises, would be strictly true, or 
 many of them true at all, in the savage state (for 
 example), or in a community composed of masters 
 and slaves. But they do think, with good reason, 
 that whoever understands the political economy 
 
82 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 of a country with the complicated and manifold 
 civilization of the nations of Europe, can deduce 
 without difficulty the political economy of any 
 other state of society, with the particular circum- 
 stances of which he is equally well acquainted.* 
 We do not pretend that political economy has 
 never been prosecuted or taught in a contracted 
 spirit. As often as a study is cultivated by nar- 
 row minds, they will draw from it narrow conclu- 
 sions. If a political economist is deficient in 
 general knowledge, he will exaggerate the import- 
 ance and universality of the limited class of truths 
 which he knows. All kinds of scientific men are 
 liable to this imputation, and M. Comte is never 
 weary of urging it against them ; reproaching them 
 with their narrowness of mind, the petty scale of 
 their thoughts, their incapacity for large views, 
 and the stupidity of those they occasionally at- 
 tempt beyond the bounds of their own subjects. 
 Political economists do not deserve these reproaches 
 more than other classes of positive inquirers, but 
 less than most. The principal error of narrowness 
 
 M. Littre, who, though a warm admirer, and accepting the posi- 
 tion of a disciple of M. Comte, is singularly free from his errors, makes 
 the equally ingenious and just remark, that Political Economy corre- 
 sponds in social science to the theory of the nutritive functions in 
 biology, which M. Comte, with all good physiologists, thinks it not 
 only permissible but a great and fundamental improvement to treat, 
 in the first place, separately, as the necessary basis of the higher 
 branches of the science : although the nutritive functions can no more 
 be withdrawn in fact from the influence of the animal and human 
 attributes, than the economical phenomena of society from that of the 
 political and moral. 
 
AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 83 
 
 with which they are frequently chargeable, is that 
 of regarding, not any economical doctrine, but 
 their present experience of mankind, as of univers- 
 al validity ; mistaking temporary or local phases 
 of human character for human nature itself ; hav- 
 ing no faith in the wonderful pliability of the 
 human mind ; deeming it impossible, in spite of 
 the strongest evidence, that the earth can produce 
 human beings of a different type from that which 
 is familiar to them in their own age, or even, 
 perhaps, in their own country. The only security 
 against this narrowness is a liberal mental cultiva- 
 tion, and all it proves is that a person is not likely 
 to be a good political economist who is nothing else. 
 
 Thus far, we have had to do with M. Comte, as a 
 sociologist, only in his critical capacity. We have 
 now to deal with him as a constructor — the author 
 of a sociological system. The first question is that 
 of the Method proper to the study. His view of 
 this is highly instructive. 
 
 The Method proper to the Science of Society 
 must be, in substance, the same as in all other 
 sciences ; the interrogation and interpretation of 
 experience, by the twofold process of Induction 
 and Deduction. But its mode of practising these 
 operations has features of peculiarity. In general, 
 Induction furnishes to science the laws of the ele- 
 mentary facts, from which, when known, those of 
 the complex combinations are thought out deduc- 
 tively : specific observation of complex phenomena 
 yields no general laws, or only empirical ones ; its 
 scientific function is to verify the laws obtained by 
 
 6 * 
 
84 ATJGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 deduction. This mode of philosophizing is not 
 adequate to the exigencies of sociological investi- 
 gation. In social phenomena the elementary facts 
 are feelings and actions, and the laws of these are 
 the laws of human nature, social facts being the 
 results of human acts and situations. Since, then, 
 the phenomena of man in society result from his 
 nature as an individual being, it might be thought 
 that the proper mode of constructing a positive 
 Social Science must be by deducing it from the 
 general laws of human nature, using the facts of 
 history merely for verification. Such, accordingly, 
 has been the conception of social science by many 
 of those who have endeavoured to render it posi- 
 tive, particularly by the school of Bentham. M. 
 Comte considers this as an error. We may, he 
 says, draw from the universal laws of human 
 nature some conclusions (though even these, we 
 think, rather precarious) concerning the very earliest 
 stages of human progress, of which there are either 
 no, or very imperfect, historical records. But as 
 society proceeds in its development, its pheno- 
 mena are determined/more and more, not by the 
 simple tendencies of universal human nature, but 
 by the accumulated influence of past generations 
 over the present. The human beings themselves, 
 on the laws of whose nature the facts of history 
 depend, are not abstract or universal but historical 
 human beings, already shaped, and made what 
 they are, by human society. This being the case, 
 no powers of deduction could enable any one, 
 starting from the mere conception of the Being 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 85 
 
 Man, placed in a world such as the earth may 
 have been before the commencement of human 
 agency, to predict and calculate the phsenomena 
 of his development such as they have in fact proved. 
 If the facts of history, empirically considered, had 
 not given rise to any generalizations, a deductive 
 study of history could never have reached higher 
 than more or less plausible conjecture. By good 
 fortune (for the case might easily have been other- 
 wise) the history of our species, looked at as a 
 comprehensive whole, does exhibit a determinate 
 course, a certain order of development : though 
 history alone cannot prove this to be a necessary 
 law, as distinguished from a temporary accident. 
 Here, therefore, begins the office of Biology (or, as 
 we should say, of Psychology) in the social science. 
 The universal laws of human nature are part of 
 the data of sociology, but in using them we must 
 reverse the method of the deductive physical 
 sciences : for while, in these, specific experience 
 commonly serves to verify laws arrived at by de- 
 duction, in sociology it is specific experience which 
 suggests the laws, and deduction which verifies 
 them. If a sociological theory, collected from 
 historical evidence, contradicts the established 
 general laws of human nature ; if (to use M. 
 Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of man- 
 kind, any very decided natural bent, either in a 
 good or in a bad direction ; if it supposes that the 
 reason, in average human beings, predominates 
 over the desires, or the disinterested desires over 
 the personal ; we may know that history has been 
 
86 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 misinterpreted, and that the theory is false. On 
 the other hand, if laws of social phenomena, em- 
 pirically generalized from history, can when once 
 suggested he affiliated to the known laws of human 
 nature ; if the direction actually taken hy the de- 
 velopments and changes of human society, can be 
 seen to he such as the properties of man and of 
 his dwelling-place made antecedently probable, 
 the empirical generalizations are raised into posi- 
 tive laws, and Sociology becomes a science. 
 
 Much has been said and written for centuries 
 past, by the practical or empirical school of politi- 
 cians, in condemnation of theories founded on 
 principles of human nature, without an historical 
 basis ; and the theorists, in their turn, have suc- 
 cessfully retaliated on the practicalists. But we 
 know not any thinker who, before M. Comte, had 
 penetrated to the philosophy of the matter, and 
 placed the necessity of historical studies as the 
 foundation of sociological speculation on the true 
 footing. Prom this time any political thinker who 
 fancies himself able to dispense with a connected 
 view of the great facts of history, as a chain of 
 causes and effects, must be regarded as below the 
 level of the age ; while the vulgar mode of using 
 history, by looking in it for parallel cases, as if any 
 cases were parallel, or as if a single instance, or 
 even many instances not compared and analysed, 
 could reveal a law, will be more than ever, and 
 irrevocably, discredited. 
 
 The inversion of the ordinary relation between 
 Deduction and Induction is not the only point in 
 
AUGUSTS COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 87 
 
 which, according to M. Comte, the Method proper 
 to Sociology differs from that of the sciences of 
 inorganic nature. The common order of science 
 proceeds from the details to the whole. The 
 method of Sociology should proceed from the 
 whole to the details. There is no universal prin- 
 ciple for the order of study, but that of proceed- 
 ing from the known to the unknown ; finding our 
 way to the facts at whatever point is most open to 
 our observation. In the phenomena of the social 
 state, the collective phenomenon is more accessible 
 to us than the parts of which it is composed. This 
 is already, in a great degree, true of the mere 
 animal body. It is essential to the idea of an 
 organism, and it is even more true of the social 
 organism than of the individual. The state of 
 every part* of the social whole at any time, is in- 
 timately connected with the contemporaneous state 
 of all the others. Heligious belief, philosophy, 
 science, the fine arts, the industrial arts, com- 
 merce, navigation, government, all are in close 
 mutual dependence on one another, insomuch that 
 when any considerable change takes place in one, 
 we may know that a parallel change in all the 
 others has preceded or will follow it. The progress 
 of society from one general state to another is not 
 an aggregate of partial changes, but the product of 
 a single impulse, acting through all the partial 
 agencies, and can therefore be most easily traced 
 by studying them together. Could it even be de- 
 tected in them separately, its true nature could not 
 be understood except by examining them in the 
 
88 ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 ensemble. In constructing, therefore, a theory of 
 society, all the different aspects of the social 
 organization must be taken into consideration at 
 once. 
 
 Our space is not consistent with inquiring into 
 all the limitations of this doctrine. It requires 
 many of which M. Comte's theory takes no ac- 
 count. There is one, in particular, dependent on 
 a scientific artifice familiar to students of science, 
 especially of the applications of mathematics to the 
 study of nature. When an effect depends on several 
 variable conditions, some of which change less, or 
 more slowly, than others, we are often able to de- 
 termine, either by reasoning or by experiment, 
 what would be the law of variation of the effect if 
 its changes depended only on some of the con- 
 ditions, the remainder being supposed' constant. 
 The law so found will be sufficiently near the truth 
 for all times and places in which the latter set of 
 conditions do not vary greatly, and will be a basis 
 to set out from when it becomes necessary to allow 
 for the variations of those conditions also. Most of 
 the conclusions of social science applicable to 
 practical use are of this description. M. Comte's 
 system makes no room for them. We have seen 
 how he deals with the part of them which are the 
 most scientific in character, the generalizations of 
 political economy. 
 
 There is one more point in the general philo- 
 sophy of sociology requiring notice. Social pheno- 
 mena, like all others, present two aspects, the 
 statical, and the dynamical ; the phenomena of 
 
AUGUSTS COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 89 
 
 equilibrium, and those of motion. The statical 
 aspect is that of the laws of social existence, con- 
 sidered abstractedly from progress, and confined to 
 what is common to the progressive and the station- 
 ary state. The dynamical aspect is that of social 
 progress. The statics of society is the study of the 
 conditions of existence and permanence of the 
 social state. The dynamics studies the laws of its 
 evolution. The first is the theory of the consensus, 
 or interdependence of social phenomena. The 
 second is the theory of their filiation. 
 
 The first division M. Comte, in his great work, 
 treats in a much more summary manner than the 
 second ; and it forms* to our thinking, the . weak- 
 est part of the treatise. lie can hardly have seemed 
 even to himself to have originated, in the statics of 
 society, anything new, 41 unless his revival of the 
 Catholic idea of a Spiritual Power may be so con- 
 sidered. The remainder, with the exception of de- 
 tached thoughts, in which even his feeblest pro- 
 ductions are always rich, is trite, while in our 
 judgment far from being always true. 
 
 He begins by a statement of the general pro- 
 perties of human nature which make social exist- 
 
 * Indeed his claim to be the creator of Sociology does not extend to 
 this branch of the science ; on the contrary, he, in a subsequent work, 
 expressly declares that the real founder of it was Aristotle, by whom 
 the theory of the conditions of social existence was carried as far 
 towards perfection as was possible in the absence of any theory of 
 Progress. Without going quite this length, we think it hardly possible 
 to appreciate too highly the merit of those early efforts, beyond which 
 little progress had been made, until a very recent period, either in 
 ethical or in political science. 
 
90 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM, 
 
 ence possible. Man has a spontaneous propensity 
 to the society of his fellow-beings, and seeks it in- 
 stinctively, for its own sake, and not out of regard 
 to the advantages it procures for him, which, in 
 many conditions of humanity, must appear to him 
 very problematical. Man has also a certain, though 
 moderate, amount of natural benevolence. On the 
 other hand, these social propensities are by nature 
 weaker than his selfish ones ; and the social state, 
 being mainly kept in existence through the former, 
 involves an habitual antagonism between the two. 
 Eurther, our wants of all kinds, from the purely 
 organic upwards, can only be satisfied by means of 
 labour, nor does bodily labour suffice, without the 
 guidance of intelligence. But labour, especially 
 when prolonged and monotonous, is naturally 
 hateful, and mental labour the most irksome of 
 all ; and hence a second antagonism, which must 
 exist in all societies whatever. The character of 
 the society is principally determined by the degree 
 in which the better incentive, in each of these 
 cases, makes head against the worse. In both the 
 points, human nature is capable of great ameliora- 
 tion. The social instincts may approximate much 
 nearer to the strength of the personal ones, though 
 never entirely coming up to it ; the aversion to 
 labour in general, and to intellectual labour in par- 
 ticular, may be much weakened, and the predom- 
 inance of the inclinations over the reason greatly 
 diminished, though never completely destroyed. 
 The spirit of improvement results from the increas- 
 ing strength of the social instincts, combined with 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 91 
 
 the growth of an intellectual activity, which guid- 
 ing the personal propensities, inspires each indi- 
 vidual with a deliberate desire to improve his con- 
 dition. The personal instincts left to their own 
 guidance, and the indolence and apathy natural to 
 mankind, are the sources which mainly feed the 
 spirit of Conservation. The struggle between the 
 two spirits is an universal incident of the social 
 state. 
 
 The next of the universal elements in human 
 society is family life ; which M. Comte regards as 
 originally the sole, and always the principal, source 
 of the social feelings, and the only school open to 
 mankind in general, in which unselfishness can be 
 learnt, and the feelings and conduct demanded 
 by social relations be made habitual. M. Comte 
 takes this opportunity of declaring his opinions on 
 the proper constitution of the family, and in parti- 
 cular of the marriage institution. They are of the 
 most orthodox and conservative sort. M. Comte 
 adheres not only to the popular Christian, but to 
 the Catholic view of marriage in its utmost strict- 
 ness, and rebukes Protestant nations for having 
 tampered with the indissolubility of the engage- 
 ment, by permitting divorce. He admits that the 
 marriage institution has been, in various respects, 
 beneficially modified with the advance of society, 
 and that we may not yet have reached the last of 
 these modifications ; but strenuously maintains 
 that such changes cannot possibly affect what he 
 regards as the essential principles of the institu- 
 tion — the irrevocability of the engagement, and the 
 
92 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 complete subordination of the wife to the husband, 
 and of women generally to men ; which are pre- 
 cisely the great vulnerable points of the existing 
 constitution of society on this important subject. 
 It is unpleasant to have to say it of a philosopher, 
 but the incidents of his life which have been made 
 public by his biographers afford an explanation of 
 one of these two opinions : he had quarrelled with 
 his wife.* At a later period, under the influence of 
 circumstances equally personal, his opinions and 
 feelings respecting women were very much modi- 
 fied, without becoming more rational : in his final 
 scheme of society, instead of being treated as grown 
 children, they were exalted into goddesses : hon- 
 ours, privileges, and immunities, were lavished on 
 them, only not simple justice. On the other 
 question, the irrevocability of marriage, M. Comte 
 must receive credit for impartiality, since the oppo- 
 site doctrine would have better suited his personal 
 convenience : but we can give him no other credit, 
 for his argument is not only futile but refutes 
 itself. He says that with liberty of divorce, life 
 would be spent in a constant succession of experi- 
 ments and failures ; and in the same breath con- . 
 gratulates himself on the fact, that modern manners 
 and sentiments have in the main prevented the 
 baneful effects which the toleration of divorce in 
 Protestant countries might have been expected to 
 
 fr It is due to them both to say, that he continued to express, in 
 letters which have been published, a high opinion of her, both morally 
 and intellectually ; and her persistent and strong concern for his inter- 
 ests and his fame is attested both by M. Littre and by his own corre- 
 spondence. 
 
ATJGUSTE COMTB AND POSITIVISM. 93 
 
 produce. He did not perceive that if modern habits 
 and feelings have successfully resisted what he deems 
 the tendency of a less rigorous marriage law, it must 
 be because modern habits and feelings are inconsist- 
 ent with the perpetual series of new trials which 
 he dreaded. If there are tendencies in human 
 nature which seek change and variety, there are 
 others which demand fixity, in matters which touch 
 the daily sources of happiness ; and one who had 
 studied history as much as M. Comte, ought to 
 have known that ever since the nomad mode of 
 life was exchanged for the agricultural, the latter 
 tendencies have been always gaining ground on the 
 former. All experience testifies that regularity in 
 domestic relations is almost in direct proportion to 
 industrial civilization. Idle life, and military life 
 with its long intervals of idleness, are the condi- 
 tions to which either sexual profligacy, or prolong- 
 ed vagaries of imagination on that subject, are 
 congenial. Busy men have no time for them, and 
 have too much other occupation for their thoughts : 
 they require that home should be a place of rest, 
 not of incessantly renewed excitement and disturb- 
 ance. In the condition, therefore, into which 
 modern society has passed, there is no probability 
 that marriages would often be contracted without a 
 sincere desire on both sides that they should be 
 permanent. That this has been the case hitherto 
 in countries where divorce was permitted, we have 
 on M. Comte's own showing : and everything leads 
 us to believe that the power, if granted elsewhere, 
 would in general be used only for its legitimate 
 
91 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 purpose — for enabling those who, by a blameless or 
 excusable mistake, have lost their first throw for 
 domestic happiness, to free themselves (with due 
 regard for all interests concerned) from the bur- 
 thensome yoke, and try, under more favourable 
 auspices, another chance. Any further discussion 
 of these great social questions would evidently be 
 incompatible with the nature and limits of the 
 present paper. 
 
 Lastly, a phenomenon universal in all societies, 
 and constantly assuming a wider extension as they 
 advance in their progress, is the co-operation of 
 mankind one with another, by the division of 
 employments and interchange of commodities and 
 services ; a communion which extends to nations 
 as well as individuals. The economic importance 
 of this spontaneous organization of mankind as 
 joint workers with and for one another, has often 
 been illustrated. Its moral effects, in connecting 
 them by their interests, and as a more remote con- 
 sequence, by their sympathies, are equally salutary. 
 But there are some things to be said on the other 
 side. The increasing specialisation of all employ- 
 ments ; the division of mankind into innumerable 
 small fractions, each engrossed by an extremely 
 minute fragment of the business of society, is not 
 without inconveniences, as well moral as intellect- 
 ual, which, if they could not be remedied, would 
 be a serious abatement from the benefits of ad- 
 vanced civilization. The interests of the whole — the 
 bearings of things on the ends of the social union 
 — are less and less present to the minds of men 
 
ATTGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 95 
 
 who have so contracted a sphere of activity. The 
 insignificant detail which forms their whole occu- 
 pation — the infinitely minute wheel they help to 
 turn in the machinery of society — does not arouse 
 or gratify any feeling of public spirit, or unity with 
 their fellow-men. Their work is a mere tribute to 
 physical necessity, not the glad performance of a 
 social office. This lowering effect of the extreme 
 division of labour tells most of all on those who are 
 set up as the lights and teachers of the rest. A 
 man's mind is as fatally narrowed, and his feelings 
 towards the great ends of humanity as miserably 
 stunted, by giving all his thoughts to the classifi- 
 cation of a few insects or the resolution of a few 
 equations, as to sharpening the points or putting on 
 the heads of pins. The " dispersive speciality " of 
 the present race of scientific men, who, unlike their 
 predecessors, have a positive aversion to enlarged 
 views, and seldom either know or care for any of 
 the interests of mankind beyond the narrow limits 
 of their pursuit, is dwelt on by M. Comte as one of 
 the great and growing evils of the time, and the 
 one which most retards moral and intellectual 
 regeneration. To contend against it is one of the 
 main purposes towards which he thinks the forces 
 of society should be directed. The obvious remedy 
 is a large and liberal general education, prepara- 
 tory to all special pursuits: and this is M. Comte's 
 opinion : but the education of youth is not in his 
 estimation enough : he requires an agency set 
 apart for obtruding upon all classes of persons 
 through the whole of life, the paramount claims of 
 
98 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 the general interest, and the comprehensive ideas 
 that demonstrate the mode in which human actions 
 promote or impair it. In other words, he demands 
 a moral and intellectual authority, charged with 
 the duty of guiding men's opinions and enlighten- 
 ing and warning their consciences ; a Spiritual 
 Power, whose judgments on all matters of high 
 moment should deserve, and receive, the same uni- 
 versal respect and deference which is paid to the 
 united judgment of astronomers in matters astro- 
 nomical. The very idea of such an authority 
 implies that an unanimity has been attained, at 
 least in essentials, among moral and political 
 thinkers, corresponding or approaching to that 
 which already exists in the other sciences. There 
 cannot be this unanimity, until the true methods 
 of positive science have been applied to all subjects, 
 as completely as they have been applied to the 
 study of physical science : to this, however, there 
 is no real obstacle ; and when once it is accom- 
 plished, the same degree of accordance will natur- 
 ally follow. The undisputed authority which astro- 
 nomers possess in astronomy, will be possessed 
 on the great social questions by Positive Philoso- 
 phers ; to whom will belong the spiritual govern- 
 ment of society, subject to two conditions : that 
 they be entirely independent, within their own 
 sphere, of the temporal government, and that they 
 be peremptorily excluded from all share in it, re- 
 ceiving instead the entire conduct of education. 
 
 This is the leading feature in M. Comte's con- 
 ception of a regenerated society ; and however much 
 
AUGTTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 97 
 
 this ideal differs from that which is implied more 
 or less confusedly in the negative philosophy of the 
 last three centuries, we hold the amount of truth in 
 the two to be about the same. M. Comte has got 
 hold of half the truth, and the so-called liberal or 
 revolutionary school possesses the other half ; each 
 sees what the other does not see, and seeing it ex- 
 clusively, draws consequences from it which to the 
 other appear mischievously absurd. It is, without 
 doubt, the necessary condition of mankind to re- 
 ceive most of their opinions on the authority of 
 those who have specially studied the matters to 
 which they relate. The wisest can act on no other 
 rule, on subjects with which they are not them- 
 selves thoroughly conversant ; and the mass of 
 mankind have always done the like on all the great 
 subjects of thought and conduct, acting with im- 
 plicit confidence on opinions of which they did not 
 know, and were often incapable of understanding, 
 the grounds, but on which as long as their natural 
 guides were unanimous they fully relied, growing 
 uncertain and sceptical only when these became 
 divided, and teachers who as far as they could 
 judge were equally competent, professed contra- 
 dictory opinions. Any doctrines which come re- 
 commended by the nearly universal verdict of 
 instructed minds will no doubt continue to be, as 
 they have hitherto been, accepted without mis- 
 giving by the rest. The difference is, that with the 
 wide diffusion of scientific education among the 
 whole people, demanded by M. Comte, their faith, 
 however implicit, would not be that of ignorance : 
 
 7 
 
98 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 it would not be the blind submission of dunces to 
 men of knowledge, but the intelligent deference of 
 those who know much, to those who know still 
 more. It is those who have some knowledge of 
 astronomy, not those who have none at all, who 
 best appreciate how prodigiously more Lagrange or 
 Laplace knew than themselves. This is what can 
 be said in favour of M. Comte. On the contrary 
 side it is to be said, that in order that this salutary 
 ascendancy over opinion should be exercised by the 
 most eminent thinkers, it is not necessary that they 
 should be associated and organized. The ascend- 
 ancy will come of itself when the unanimity is attain- 
 ed, without which it is neither desirable nor possi- 
 ble. It is because astronomers agree in their 
 teaching that astronomy is trusted, aad not because 
 there is an Academy of Sciences or a Royal Society 
 issuing decrees or passing resolutions. A consti- 
 tuted moral authority can only be required when 
 the object is not "merely to promulgate and diffuse 
 principles of conduct, but to direct the detail of 
 their application ; to declare and inculcate, not 
 duties, but each person's duty, as was attempted by 
 the spiritual authority of the middle ages. Prom 
 this extreme application of his principle M. Comte 
 does not shrink. A function of this sort, no doubt, 
 may often be very usefully discharged by individual 
 members of the speculative class ; but if entrusted 
 to any organized body, would involve nothing less 
 than a spiritual despotism. This however is what 
 M. Comte really contemplated, though it would 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 90 
 
 practically nullify that peremptory separation of 
 the spiritual from the temporal power, which he 
 justly deemed essential to a wholesome state of 
 society. Those whom an irresistible public opinion 
 invested with the right to dictate or control the 
 acts of rulers, though without the means of backing 
 their advice by force, would have all the real power 
 of the temporal authorities, without their labours or 
 their responsibilities. M. Comte would probably 
 have answered that the temporal rulers, having the 
 whole legal power in their hands, would certainly 
 not pay to the spiritual authority more than a very 
 limited obedience : which amounts to saying that 
 the ideal form of society which he sets up, is 
 only fit to be an ideal because it cannot possibly be 
 realized. 
 
 That education should be practically directed 
 by the philosophic class, when there is a philosophic 
 class who have made good their claim to the place 
 in opinion hitherto filled by the clergy, would be 
 natural and indispensable. But that all education 
 should be in the hands of a centralized authority, 
 whether composed of clergy or of philosophers, and 
 be consequently all framed on the same model, and 
 directed to the perpetuation of the same type, is a 
 state of things which instead of becoming more ac- 
 ceptable, will assuredly be more repugnant to man- 
 kind, with every step of their progress in the unfet- 
 tered exercise of their highest faculties. We shall 
 see, in the Second Part, the evils with which the 
 conception of the new Spiritual Power is pregnant, 
 
 7 * 
 LOFC. 
 
100 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 coining out into full bloom in the more complete 
 development which M. Comte gave to the idea in 
 his later years. 
 
 After this unsatisfactory attempt to trace the 
 outline of Social Statics, M. Comte passes to a 
 topic on which he is much more at home — the 
 subject of his most eminent speculations ; Social 
 Dynamics, or the laws of the evolution of human 
 society. 
 
 Two questions meet us at the outset : Is there 
 •7" a natural evolution in human affairs ? and is that 
 evolution an improvement ? M. Comte resolves 
 them both in the affirmative by the same answer. 
 The natural progress of society consists in the 
 growth of our human attributes, comparatively to 
 our animal and our purely organic ones : the pro- 
 gress of our humanity towards an ascendancy over our 
 animality, ever more nearly approached though in- 
 capable of being completely realized. This is the 
 character and tendency of human development, or 
 of what is called civilization ; and the obligation of 
 seconding this movement — of working in the direc- 
 tion of it — is the nearest approach which M. Comte 
 makes in this treatise to a general principle or 
 standard of morality. 
 
 But as our more eminent, and peculiarly human, 
 faculties are of various orders, moral, intellectual, 
 and aesthetic, the question presents itself, is there 
 any one of these whose development is the predomi- 
 nant agency in the evolution of our species ? Ac- 
 cording to M. Comte, the main agent in the pro- 
 gress of mankind is their intellectual development. 
 
ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 101 
 
 Not because the intellectual is the most powerful 
 part of our nature, for, limited to its inherent 
 strength, it is one of the weakest : but because it is 
 the guiding part, and acts not with its own strength 
 alone, but with the united force of all parts of our 
 nature which it can draw after it. In a social state 
 the feelings and propensities cannot act with their 
 full power, in a determinate direction, unless the 
 speculative intellect places itself at their head. The 
 passions are, in the individual man, a more ener- 
 getic power than a mere intellectual conviction ; 
 but the passions tend to divide, not to unite, man- 
 kind : it is only by a common belief that passions 
 are brought to work together, and become a collect- 
 ive force instead of forces neutralizing one another. 
 j Our intelligence is first awakened by the stimulus 
 of our animal wants and of our stronger and 
 coarser desires ; and these for a long time almost 
 exclusively determine the direction in which our 
 intelligence shall work : but once roused to acti- 
 vity, it assumes more and more the management of 
 the operations of which stronger impulses are the 
 prompters, and constrains them to follow its lead, 
 not by its own strength, but because in the play of 
 antagonistic forces, the path it points out is (in 
 scientific phraseology) the direction of least resist- 
 ance. Personal interests and feelings, in the social 
 state, can only obtain the maximum of satisfaction 
 by means of co-operation, and the necessary con- 
 dition of co-operation is a common belief. All 
 human society, consequently, is grounded on a 
 system of fundamental opinions, which only the 
 
102 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 speculative faculty can provide, and which when 
 provided, directs our other impulses in their mode 
 of seeking their gratification. And hence the his- 
 tory of opinions, and of the speculative faculty, has 
 always "been the leading element in the history of 
 mankind. 
 
 This doctrine has heen combated by Mr Her- 
 bert Spencer, in the pamphlet already referred to ; 
 and we will quote, in his own words, the theory 
 he propounds in opposition to it : — 
 
 "Ideas do not govern and overthrow the world ; the world is go- 
 verned or overthrown by feelings, to which ideas serve only as guides. 
 The social mechanism does not rest finally upon opinions, but almost 
 wholly upon character. Not intellectual anarchy, but moral antago- 
 nism, is the cause of political crises. All social phenomena are pro- 
 duced by the totality of human emotions and beliefs, of which the 
 emotions are mainly predetermined, while the beliefs are mainly post- 
 determined. Men's desires are chiefly inherited ; but their beliefs are 
 chiefly acquired, and depend on surrounding conditions ; and the most 
 important surrounding conditions depend on the social state which the 
 prevalent desires have produced. The social state at any time exist- 
 ing, is the resultant of all the ambitions, self-interests, fears, rever- 
 ences, indignations, sympathies, &c, of ancestral citizens and existing 
 citizens. The ideas current in this social state must, on the average, 
 be congruous with the feelings of citizens, and therefore, on the average, 
 with the. social state these feelings have produced. Ideas wholly foreign 
 to this social state cannot be evolved, and if introduced from without, 
 cannot get accepted — or, if accepted, die out when the temporary 
 phase of feeling which caused their acceptance ends. Hence, though 
 advanced ideas, when once established, act upon society and aid its 
 further advance, yet the establishment of such ideas depends on the 
 fitness of society for receiving them. Practically, the popular charac- 
 ter and the social state determine what ideas shall be current ; instead 
 of the current ideas determining the social state and the character. 
 The modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous 
 
AUGTTSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 103 
 
 discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to social 
 relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social progress."* 
 
 A great part of these statements would have 
 been acknowledged as true by M. Comte, and be- 
 long as much to his theory as to Mr Spencer's. The 
 re-action of all other mental and social elements 
 upon the intellectual not only is fully recognized by 
 him, but his philosophy of history makes great use 
 of it, pointing out that the principal intellectual 
 changes could not have taken place unless changes 
 in other elements of society had preceded ; but also 
 showing that these were themselves consequences 
 of prior intellectual changes. It will not be found, 
 on a fair examination of what M. Comte has written, 
 that he has overlooked any of the truth that there 
 is in Mr Spencer's theory. He would not indeed 
 have said (what Mr Spencer apparently wishes us 
 to say) that the effects which can be historically 
 traced, for example to religion, were not produced 
 by the belief in God, but by reverence and fear of 
 him. He would have said that the reverence and 
 fear presuppose the belief : that a God must be be- 
 lieved in before he can be feared or reverenced. The 
 whole influence of the belief in a God upon society 
 and civilization, depends on the powerful human 
 sentiments which are ready to attach themselves to 
 the belief ; and yet the sentiments are only a social 
 force at all, through the definite direction given to 
 them by that or some other intellectual conviction ; 
 nor did the sentiments spontaneously throw up the 
 belief in a God, since in themselves they were equally 
 
 * " Of the Classification of the Sciences," pp. 37, 38. 
 
104 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 capable of gathering round some other object. 
 Though it is true that men's passions and interests 
 often dictate their opinions, or rather decide their 
 choice among the two or three forms of opinion 
 which the existing condition of human intelligence 
 renders possible, this disturbing cause is confined to 
 morals, politics, and religion ; and it is the intellect- 
 ual movement in other regions than these, which is 
 at the root of all the great changes in human affairs. 
 It was not human emotions and passions which 
 discovered the motion of the earth, or detected the 
 evidence of its antiquity ; which exploded Scholas- 
 ticism, and inaugurated the exploration of nature ; 
 which invented printing, paper, and the mariner's 
 compass. Yet the Reformation, the English and 
 French Revolutions, and still greater moral and 
 social changes yet to come, are direct consequences 
 of these and similar discoveries. Even alchemy and 
 astrology were not believed because people thirsted 
 for gold and were anxious to pry into the future, 
 for these desires are as strong now as they were 
 then : but because alchemy and astrology were con- 
 ceptions natural to a particular stage in the growth 
 of human knowledge, and consequently determined 
 during that stage the particular means whereby the 
 passions which always exist, sought their gratifica- 
 tion. To say that men's intellectual beliefs do not 
 determine their conduct, is like saying that the ship 
 is moved by the steam and not by the steersman. The 
 steam indeed is the motive power ; the steersman, 
 left to himself, could not advance the vessel a single 
 inch ; yet it is the steersman's will and the steers- 
 
ATJGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 105 
 
 man's knowledge which decide in what direction it 
 shall move and whither it shall go. 
 
 Examining next what is the natural order of in- 
 tellectual progress among mankind, M. Comte ob- 
 serves, that as their general mode of conceiving the 
 universe must give its character to all their con- 
 ceptions of detail, the determining fact in their in- 
 tellectual history must be the natural succession of 
 theories of the universe ; which, it has been seen, 
 consists of three stages, the theological, the me- 
 taphysical, and the positive. The passage of man- 
 kind through these stages, including the successive 
 modifications of the theological conception by 
 the rising influence of the other two, is, to M. 
 Comte's mind, the most decisive fact in the evolu- 
 tion of humanity. Simultaneously, however, there 
 has been going on throughout history a parallel 
 movement in the purely temporal department of 
 things, consisting of the gradual decline of the 
 military mode of life (originally the chief occupa- 
 tion of all freemen) and its replacement by the in- 
 dustrial. M. Comte maintains that there is a 
 necessary connexion and interdependence between 
 this historical sequence and the other : and he easily 
 shows that the progress of industry and that of 
 positive science are correlative ; man's power to 
 modify the facts of nature evidently depending on 
 the knowledge he has acquired of their laws. We do 
 not think him equally successful in showing a 
 natural connexion between the theological mode of 
 thought and the military system of society : but 
 since they both belong to the same age of the world 
 
106 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 — since each is, in itself, natural and inevitable, and 
 they are together modified and together undermined 
 by the same cause, the progress of science and in- 
 dustry, M. Comte is justified in considering them 
 as linked together, and the movement by which 
 mankind emerge from them as a single evolution. 
 
 These propositions having been laid down as the 
 first principles of social dynamics, M. Comte pro- 
 ceeds to verify and apply them by a connected view 
 of universal history. This survey nearly fills two 
 large volumes, above a third of the work, in all of 
 which there is scarcely a sentence that does not add 
 an idea. We regard it as by far his greatest achieve- 
 ment, except his review of the sciences, and in some 
 respects more striking even than that. We wish it 
 were practicable in the compass of an essay like the 
 present, to give even a faint conception of the ex- 
 traordinary merits of this historical analysis. It 
 must be read to be appreciated. Whoever disbe- 
 lieves that the philosophy of history can be made a 
 science, should suspend his judgment until he has 
 read these volumes of M. Comte. We do not affirm 
 that they would certainly change his opinion ; but 
 we would strongly advise him to give them a 
 chance. 
 
 We shall not attempt the vain task of abridgment. 
 A few words are all we can give to the subject. 
 M. Comte confines himself to the main stream of 
 human progress, looking only at the races and 
 nations that led the van, and regarding as the 
 successors of a people not their actual descendants, 
 but those who took up the thread of progress after 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 107 
 
 them. His object is to characterize truly, though 
 generally, the successive states of society through 
 which the advanced guard of our species has 
 passed, and the filiation of these states on one 
 another — how each grew out of the preceding and 
 was the parent of the following state. A more 
 detailed explanation, taking into account minute 
 differences and more special and local phenomena, 
 M. Comte does not aim at, though he does not 
 avoid it when it falls in his path. Here, as in all 
 his other speculations, we meet occasional mis- 
 judgments, and his historical correctness in minor 
 matters is now and then at fault ; but we may 
 well wonder that it is not oftener so, considering 
 the vastness of the field, and a passage in one 
 of his prefaces in which he says of himself that 
 he rapidly amassed the materials for his great 
 enterprise (vi. 34). This expression in his mouth 
 does not imply what it would in that of the 
 majority of men, regard being had to his rare 
 capacity of prolonged and concentrated mental 
 labour : and it is wonderful that he so seldom 
 gives cause to wish that his collection of materials 
 had been less " rapid." But (as he himself re- 
 marks) in an inquiry of this sort the vulgarest 
 facts are the most important. A movement common 
 to all mankind — to all of them at least who do 
 move — must depend on causes affecting them all ; 
 and these, from the scale on which they operate, 
 cannot require abstruse research to bring them to 
 light : they are not only seen, but best seen, in the 
 most obvious, most universal, and most undisputed 
 
108 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 phenomena. Accordingly M. Comte lays no claim 
 to new views respecting the mere facts of history ; 
 he takes them as he finds them, bnilds almost 
 exclusively on those concerning which there is no 
 dispute, and only tries what positive results can 
 be obtained by combining them. Among the vast 
 mass of historical observations which he has 
 grouped and co-ordinated, if we have found any 
 errors they are in things which do not affect his 
 main conclusions. The chain of causation by 
 which he connects the spiritual and temporal life 
 of each era with one another and with the entire 
 series, will be found, we think, in all essentials, 
 irrefragable. When local or temporary disturbing 
 causes have to be taken into the account as modify- 
 ing the general movement, criticism has more to 
 say. But this will only become important when 
 the attempt is made to write the history or delineate 
 the character of some given society on M. Comte's 
 principles. 
 
 Such doubtful statements, or misappreciations 
 of states of society, as we have remarked, are con- 
 fined to cases which stand more or less apart from 
 the principal line of development of the progressive 
 societies. For instance, he makes greatly too much 
 of what, with many other Continental thinkers, he 
 calls the Theocratic state. He regards this as a 
 natural, and at one time almost an universal, stage 
 of social progress, though admitting that it either 
 never existed or speedily ceased in the two ancient 
 nations to which mankind are chiefly indebted for 
 being permanently progressive. We hold it doubt- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 100 
 
 ful if there ever existed what M. Comte means by 
 a theocracy. There was indeed no lack of societies 
 in which, the civil and penal law being supposed to 
 have been divinely revealed, the priests were its 
 authorized interpreters. But this is the case even 
 in Mussulman countries, the extreme opposite of 
 theocracy. By a theocracy we understand to be 
 meant, and we understand M. Comte to mean, 
 a society founded on caste, and in which the 
 speculative, necessarily identical with the priestly 
 caste, has the temporal government in its hands or 
 under its control. We believe that no such state 
 of things ever existed in the societies commonly 
 cited as theocratic. There is no reason to think 
 that in any of them, the king, or chief of the 
 government, was ever, unless by occasional usurp- 
 ation, a member of the priestly caste.* It was 
 
 * In the case of Egypt we admit that there may be cited against 
 us the authority of Plato, in whose Politicus it is said that the king of 
 Egypt must be a member of the priestly caste, or if by usurpation a 
 member of any other caste acquired the sovereignty he must be initi- 
 ated with the sacerdotal order. But Plato was writing of a state of 
 things which already belonged to the past ; nor have we any assurance 
 that his information on Egyptian institutions was authentic and ac- 
 curate. Had the king been necessarily or commonly a member of the 
 priestly order, it is most improbable that the careful Herodotus, of 
 whose comprehensive work an entire book was devoted to a minute 
 account of Egypt and its institutions, and who collected his information 
 from Egyptian priests in the country itself, would have been ignorant 
 of a part so important, and tending so much to exalt the dignity of the 
 priesthood, who were much more likely to affirm it falsely to Plato 
 than to withhold the knowledge of it if true from Heredotus. Not 
 only is Herodotus silent respecting any such law or custom, but he 
 thinks it needful to mention that in one particular instance the king 
 (by name Sethos) was a priest, which he would scarcely have done 
 
110 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 not so in Israel, even in the time of the Judges ; 
 Jephtha, for example, was a Gileadite, of the tribe 
 of Manasseh, and a military captain, as all govern- 
 ors in such an age and country needed to be. 
 Priestly rulers only present themselves in two 
 anomalous cases, of which next to nothing is 
 known : the Mikados of Japan and the Grand 
 Lamas of Thibet : in neither of which instances 
 was the general constitution of society one of caste, 
 and in the. latter of them the priestly sovereignty is 
 as nominal as it has become in the former. India 
 is the typical specimen of the institution of caste — 
 the only case in which we are certain that it ever 
 really existed, for its existence anywhere else is a 
 matter of more or less probable inference in the 
 remote past. But in India, where the importance 
 of the sacerdotal order was greater than in any 
 other recorded state of society, the king not only 
 was not a priest, but, consistently with the 
 religious law, could not be one : he belonged to a 
 different caste. The Brahmins were invested with 
 an exalted character of sanctity, and an enormous 
 amount of civil privileges ; the king was enjoined 
 to have a council of Brahmin advisers ; but practi- 
 cally he took their advice or disregarded it exactly 
 as he pleased. As is observed by the historian who 
 
 if this had been other than an exceptional case. It is likely enough 
 that a king of Egypt would learn the hieratic character, and would not 
 suffer any of the mysteries of law or religion which were in the keeping 
 of the priests to be withheld from him ; and this was very probably all 
 the foundation which existed for the assertion of the Eleatic stranger in 
 Plato's dialogue. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. Ill 
 
 first threw the light of reason on Hindoo society,* 
 the king, though in dignity, to judge by the 
 written code, he seemed vastly inferior to the 
 Brahmins, had always the full power of a despotic 
 monarch : the reason being that he had the com- 
 mand of the army, and the control of the public 
 revenue. There is no case known to authentic 
 history in which either of these belonged to the 
 sacerdotal caste. Even in the cases most favour- 
 able to them, the priesthood had no voice in tem- 
 poral affairs, except the " consultative " voice 
 which M. Comte's theory allows to every spiritual 
 power. His collection of materials must have been 
 unusually "rapid" in this instance, for he regards 
 almost all the societies of antiquity, except the 
 Greek and Roman, as theocratic, even Gaul under 
 the Druids, and Persia under Darius ; admitting, 
 however, that in these two countries, when they 
 emerge into the light of history, the theocracy had 
 already been much broken down by military usurp- 
 ation. By what evidence he could have proved 
 that it ever existed, we confess ourselves unable to 
 divine. 
 
 The only other imperfection worth noticing 
 here, which we find in M. Comte's view of history, 
 is that he has a very insufficient understanding of 
 the peculiar phenomena of English development ; 
 though he recognizes, and on the whole correctly 
 estimates, its exceptional character in relation to 
 the general European movement. His failure con- 
 sists chiefly in want of appreciation of Protest- 
 
 * Mill, History of British India, book ii. chap. iii. 
 
1 
 
 
 
 112 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 antism ; which, like almost all thinkers, even un- 
 believers, who have lived and thought exclusively 
 in a Catholic atmosphere, he sees and knows only 
 on its negative side, regarding the Reformation as 
 a mere destructive movement, stopped short in too 
 early a stage. He does not seem to be aware that 
 Protestantism has any positive influences, other 
 than the general ones of Christianity ; and misses 
 one of the most important facts connected with it, 
 its remarkable efficacy, as contrasted with Ca- 
 tholicism, in cultivating the intelligence and con- 
 science of the individual believer. Protestantism, 
 when not merely professed but actually taken into 
 the mind, makes a demand on the intelligence ; 
 the mind is expected to be active, not passive, in 
 the reception of it. The feeling of a direct re- 
 sponsibility of the individual immediately to God, 
 is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism. Even 
 when Protestants were nearly as persecuting as 
 Catholics (quite as much so they never were) ; 
 even when they held as firmly as Catholics that 
 salvation depended on having the true belief, they 
 still maintained that the belief was not to be 
 accepted from a priest, but to be sought and found 
 by the believer, at his eternal peril if he failed ; 
 and that no one could answer to Gocl for him, but 
 that he had to answer for himself. The avoidance 
 of fatal error thus became in a great measure a 
 question of culture ; and there was the strongest 
 inducement to every believer, however humble, to 
 seek culture and to profit by it. In those Pro- 
 testant countries, accordingly, whose Churches 
 
ATTGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 113 
 
 were not, as the Church of England always was, 
 principally political institutions — in Scotland, for 
 instance, and the New England States — an amount 
 of education was carried down to the poorest of the 
 people, of which there is no other example ; every 
 peasant expounded the Bible to his family (many 
 to their neighbours), and had a mind practised in 
 meditation and discussion on all the points of his 
 religious creed. The food may not have been 
 the most nourishing, but we cannot be blind 
 to the sharpening and strengthening exercise 
 which such great topics gave to the understanding 
 — the discipline in abstraction and reasoning 
 which such mental occupation brought down to 
 the humblest layman, and one of the consequences 
 of which was the privilege long enjoyed by Scot- 
 land of supplying the greater part of Europe with 
 professors for its universities, and educated and 
 skilled workmen for its practical arts. 
 
 This, however, notwithstanding its importance, 
 is, in a comprehensive view of universal history, 
 only a matter of detail. "We find no fundamental 
 errors in M. Comte's general conception of history. 
 He is singularly exempt from most of the twists and 
 exaggerations which we are used to find in almost 
 all thinkers who meddle with speculations of 
 this character. Scarcely any of them is so free 
 (for example) from the opposite errors of ascribing 
 too much or too little influence to accident, and to 
 the qualities of individuals. The vulgar mistake 
 of supposing that the course of history has no 
 tendencies of its own, and that great events 
 
114 AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 usually proceed from small causes, or that kings, 
 or conquerors, or the founders of philosophies and 
 religions, can do with society what they please, 
 no one has more completely avoided or more 
 tellingly exposed. But he is equally free from the 
 error of those who ascribe all to general causes, 
 and imagine that neither casual circumstances, 
 nor governments by their acts, nor individuals 
 of genius by their thoughts, materially accelerate 
 or retard human progress. This is the mistake 
 which pervades the instructive writings of the 
 thinker who in England and in our own times bore 
 the nearest, though a very remote, resemblance to 
 M. Comte — the lamented Mr Buckle ; who, had he 
 not been unhappily cut off in an early stage of his 
 labours, and before the complete maturity of his 
 powers, would probably have thrown off an error, 
 the more to be regretted as it gives a colour to the 
 prejudice which regards the doctrine of the invari- 
 ability of natural laws as identical with fatalism. 
 Mr Buckle also fell into another mistake which M. 
 Comte avoided, that of regarding the intellectual as 
 the only progressive element in man, and the 
 moral as too much the same at all times to affect 
 even the annual average of crime. M. Comte 
 shows, on the contrary, a most acute sense of the 
 causes which elevate or lower the general level 
 of moral excellence ; and deems intellectual pro- 
 gress in no other way so beneficial as by creating a 
 standard to guide the moral sentiments of man- 
 kind, and a mode of bringing those sentiments 
 effectively to. bear on conduct. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 115 
 
 M. Comte is equally free from the error of con- 
 sidering any practical rule or doctrine that can be 
 laid down in politics as universal and absolute. All 
 political truth he deems strictly relative, implying 
 as its correlative a given state or situation of 
 society. This conviction is now common to him 
 with all thinkers who are on a level with the age, 
 and comes so naturally to any intelligent reader of 
 history, that the only wonder is how men could 
 have been prevented from reaching it sooner. It 
 marks one of the principal differences between the 
 political philosophy of the present time and that of 
 the past ; but M. Comte adopted it when the oppo- 
 site mode of thinking was still general, and there 
 are few thinkers to whom the principle owes more 
 in the way of comment and illustration. 
 
 Again, while he sets forth the historical succes- 
 sion of systems of belief and forms of political 
 society, and places in the strongest light those im- 
 perfections in each which make it impossible that 
 any of them should be final, this does not make 
 him for a moment unjust to the men or the 
 opinions of the past. He accords with generous 
 recognition the gratitude due to all who, with 
 whatever imperfections of doctrine or even of con- 
 duct, contributed materially to the work of human 
 improvement. In all past modes of thought and 
 forms of society he acknowledged a useful, in many 
 a necessary, office, in carrying mankind through 
 one stage of improvement into a higher. The theo- 
 logical spirit in its successive forms, the metaphy- 
 sical in its principal varieties, are honoured by him 
 
 8 * 
 
116 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 for the services they rendered in bringing mankind 
 out of pristine savagery into a state in which more 
 advanced modes of belief became possible. His list 
 of heroes and benefactors of mankind includes, not 
 only every important name in the scientific move- 
 ment, from Thales of Miletus to Fourier the mathe- 
 matician and Blainville the biologist, and in the 
 aesthetic from Homer to Manzoni, but the most 
 illustrious names in the annals of the various reli- 
 gions and philosophies, and the really great poli- 
 ticians in all states of society.* Above all, he has 
 the most profound admiration for the services ren- 
 dered by Christianity, and by the Church of the 
 middle ages. His estimate of the Catholic period 
 is such as the majority of Englishmen (from whom 
 we take the liberty to differ) would deem exagger- 
 ated, if not absurd. The great men of Christianity, 
 from St Paul to St Erancis of Assisi, receive his 
 warmest homage : nor does he forget the greatness 
 even of those who lived and thought in the centuries 
 in which the Catholic Church, having stopt short 
 
 L° At a somewhat later period M. Comte drew up what he termed 
 a Positivist Calendar, in which every day was dedicated to some bene- 
 factor of humanity (generally with the addition of a similar but minor 
 luminary, to be celebrated in the room of his principal each bissex- 
 tile year). In this no kind of human eminence, really useful, is 
 omitted, except that which is merely negative and destructive. On 
 this principle (which is avowed) the French pliilosophcs as such are ex- 
 cluded, those only among them being admitted who, like Voltaire and 
 Diderot, had claims to admission on other grounds : and the Protest- 
 ant religious reformers are left out entirely, with the curious excep- 
 tion of George Fox — who is included, we presume, in consideration of 
 his Peace principles. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 117 
 
 while the world had gone on, had become a hin- 
 drance to progress instead of a promoter of it ; 
 such men as Fenelon and St Vincent de Paul, Bos- 
 suet and Joseph de Maistre. A more comprehen- 
 sive, and, in the primitive sense of the term, more 
 catholic, sympathy and reverence towards real 
 worth, and every kind of service to humanity, 
 we have not met with in any thinker. Men who 
 would have torn each other in pieces, who even 
 tried to do so, if each usefully served in his own 
 way the interests of mankind, are all hallowed to 
 him. 
 
 Neither is his a cramped and contracted notion 
 4. of human excellence, which cares only for certain 
 forms of development. He not only personally ap- 
 preciates, but rates high in moral value, the crea- 
 tions of poets and artists in all departments, deem- 
 ing them, by their mixed appeal to the sentiments 
 and the understanding, admirably fitted to educate 
 the feelings of abstract thinkers, and enlarge the 
 intellectual horizon of people of the world.* He 
 regards the law of progress as applicable, in spite 
 of appearances, to poetry and art as much as to 
 science and politics. The common impression to 
 the contrary he ascribes solely to the fact, that the 
 perfection of aesthetic creation requires as its con- 
 dition a consentaneousness in the feelings of man- 
 kind, which depends for its existence on a fixed 
 
 * He goes still further and deeper in a subsequent work. " L'art 
 ramene doucement a la realite les contemplations trop abstraites du 
 theoricien, tandis qu'il pousse noblement le praticien aux specula- 
 tions desinteressees." Systeme de Politique Positive, i. 287, 
 
J 
 
 118 ATJGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 and settled state of opinions : while the last five 
 centuries have been a period not of settling, but 
 of unsettling and decomposing, the most general 
 beliefs and sentiments of mankind. The numerous 
 monuments of poetic and artistic genius which 
 the modern mind has produced even under this 
 great disadvantage, are (he maintains) sufficient 
 proof what great productions it will be capable of, 
 when one harmonious vein of sentiment shall once 
 more thrill through the whole of society, as in the 
 days of Homer, of iEschylus, of Phidias, and even 
 of Dante. 
 
 After so profound and comprehensive a view of 
 the progress of human society in the past, of which 
 the future can only be a prolongation, it is natural 
 to ask, to what use does he put this survey as a 
 basis of practical recommendations ? Such recom- 
 mendations he certainly makes, though, in the pre- 
 sent Treatise, they are of a much less definite char- 
 acter than in his later writings. But we miss a 
 necessary link ; there is a break in the otherwise 
 close concatenation of his speculations. We fail to 
 see any scientific connexion between his theoretical 
 explanation of the past progress of society, and his 
 proposals for future improvement. The proposals 
 are not, as we might expect, recommended as that 
 towards which human society has been tending and 
 working through the whole of history. It is thus 
 that thinkers have usually proceeded, who formed 
 theories for the future, grounded on historical 
 analysis of the past. Tocqueville, for example, 
 and others, finding, as they thought, through all 
 
AUGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 119 
 
 history, a steady progress in the direction of social 
 and political equality, argued that to smooth this 
 transition, and make the best of what is certainly 
 coming, is the proper employment of political fore- 
 sight. We do not find M. Comte supporting his 
 recommendations by a similar line of argument. 
 They rest as completely, each on its separate rea- 
 sons of supposed utility, as with philosophers who, 
 like Bentham, theorize on politics without any his- 
 torical basis at all. The only bridge of connexion 
 which leads from his historical speculations to his 
 practical conclusions, is the inference, that since 
 the old powers of society, both in the region of 
 thought and of action, are declining and destined 
 to disappear, leaving only the two rising powers, 
 positive thinkers on the one hand, leaders of indus- 
 try on the other, the future necessarily belongs to 
 these : spiritual power to the former, temporal to 
 the latter. As a specimen of historical forecast 
 this is very deficient ; for are there not the masses 
 as well as the leaders of industry ? and is not theirs 
 also a growing power ? Be this as it may, M. 
 Comte' s conceptions of the mode in which these 
 growing powers should be organized and used, are 
 grounded on anything rather than on history. And 
 we cannot but remark a singular anomaly in a 
 thinker of M. Comte' s calibre. After the ample 
 evidence he has brought forward of the slow growth 
 of the sciences, all of which except the mathe- 
 matico -astronomical couple are still, as he justly 
 thinks, in a very early stage, it yet appears as if, 
 to his mind, the mere institution of a positive 
 
120 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 science of sociology were tantamount to its com- 
 pletion; as if all the diversities of opinion on the 
 subject, which set mankind at variance, were solely 
 owing to its having been studied in the theological 
 or the metaphysical manner, and as if when the 
 positive method which has raised up real sciences 
 on other subjects of knowledge, is similarly em- 
 ployed on this, divergence would at once cease, and 
 the entire body of positive social inquirers would 
 exhibit as much agreement in their doctrines as 
 those who cultivate any of the sciences of inorganic 
 life. Happy would be the prospects of mankind if 
 this were so. A time such as M. Comte reckoned 
 upon may come ; unless something stops the pro- 
 gress of human improvement, it is sure to come : 
 but after an unknown duration of hard thought 
 and violent controversy. The period of decomposi- 
 tion, which has lasted, on his own computation, 
 from the beginning of the fourteenth century to 
 the present, is not yet terminated : the shell of 
 the old edifice will remain standing until there is 
 another ready to replace it ; and the new synthesis 
 is barely begun, nor is even the preparatory analy- 
 sis completely finished. On other occasions M. 
 Comte is very well aware that the Method of a 
 science is not the science itself, and that when 
 the difficulty of discovering the right processes 
 has been overcome, there remains a still greater 
 difficulty, that of applying them. This, which is 
 true of all sciences, is truest of all in Sociology. 
 The facts being more complicated, and depending 
 on a greater concurrence of forces, than in any 
 
ATJGTJSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 121 
 
 other science, the difficulty of treating them deduc- 
 tively is proportionally increased, while the wide 
 difference between any one case and every other in 
 some of the circumstances which affect the result, 
 makes the pretence of direct induction usually no 
 better than empiricism. It is therefore, out of all 
 proportion, more uncertain than in any other 
 science, whether two inquirers equally competent 
 and equally disinterested will take the same view 
 of the evidence, or arrive at the same conclusion. 
 When to this intrinsic difficulty is added the in- 
 finitely greater extent to which personal or class 
 interests and predilections interfere with impartial 
 judgment, the hope of such accordance of opinion 
 among sociological inquirers as would obtain, in 
 mere deference to their authority, the universal 
 assent which M. Comte's scheme of society re- 
 quires, must be adjourned to an indefinite dis- 
 tance. 
 
 M. Comte's own theory is an apt illustration of 
 these difficulties, since, though prepared for these 
 speculations as no one had ever been prepared be- 
 fore, his views of social regeneration even in the 
 rudimentary form in which they appear above- 
 ground in this treatise (not to speak of the singu- 
 lar system into which he afterwards enlarged 
 them) are such as perhaps no other person of 
 equal knowledge and capacity would agree in. 
 Were those views as true as they are questionable, 
 they could not take effect until the unanimity 
 among positive thinkers, to which he looked for- 
 ward, shall have been attained; since the main- 
 
122 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 spring of his system is a Spiritual Power composed 
 of positive philosophers, which only the previous 
 attainment of the unanimity in question could call 
 into existence. A few words will sufficiently ex- 
 press the outline of his scheme. A corporation of 
 philosophers, receiving a modest support from the 
 state, surrounded by reverence, but peremptorily 
 excluded not only from all political power or em- 
 ployment, but from all riches, and all occupations 
 except their own, are to have the entire direction 
 of education : together with, not only the right 
 and duty of advising and reproving all persons 
 respecting both their public and their private life, 
 but also a control (whether authoritative or only 
 moral is not denned) over the speculative class 
 itself, to prevent them from wasting time and in- 
 genuity on inquiries and speculations of no value 
 to mankind (among which he includes many now 
 in high estimation), and compel them to employ all 
 their powers on the investigations which may be 
 judged, at the time, to be the most urgently im- 
 portant to the general welfare. The temporal 
 government which is to coexist with this spiritual 
 authority, consists of an aristocracy of capitalists, 
 whose dignity and authority are to be in the ratio 
 of the degree of generality of their conceptions 
 and operations — bankers at the summit, merchants 
 next, then manufacturers, and agriculturists at the 
 bottom of the scale. No representative system, or 
 other popular organization, by way of counter- 
 poise to this governing power, is ever contem- 
 plated. The checks relied upon for preventing its 
 
AUGUSTS COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 123 
 
 abuse, are the counsels and remonstrances of the 
 Spiritual Power, and unlimited liberty of discus- 
 sion and comment by all classes of inferiors. Of 
 the mode in which either set of authorities should 
 fulfil the office assigned to it, little is said in this 
 treatise : but the general idea is, while regulating 
 as little as possible by law, to make the pressure of 
 opinion, directed by the Spiritual Power, so heavy 
 on every individual, from the humblest to the 
 most powerful, as to render legal obligation, in as 
 many cases as possible, needless. Liberty and 
 spontaneity on the part of individuals form no part 
 of the scheme. M. Comte looks on them with as 
 great jealousy as any scholastic pedagogue, or 
 ecclesiastical director of consciences. Every par- 
 ticular of conduct, public or private, is to be open 
 to the public eye, and to be kept, by the power of 
 opinion, in the course which the Spiritual corpora- 
 tion shall judge to be the most right. 
 
 This is not a sufficiently tempting picture to 
 have much chance of making converts rapidly, and 
 the objections to the scheme are too obvious to 
 need stating. Indeed, it is only thoughtful per- 
 sons to whom it will be credible, that speculations 
 leading to this result can deserve the attention 
 necessary for understanding them. We propose in 
 the next Essay to examine them as part of the ela- 
 borate and coherent system of doctrine, which M. 
 Comte afterwards put together for the reconstruc- 
 tion of society. Meanwhile the reader will gather, 
 from what has been said, that M. Comte has not, 
 in our opinion, created Sociology. Except his 
 
124 AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 analysis of history, to which there is much to be 
 added, but which we do not think likely to be 
 ever, in its general features, superseded, he has 
 done nothing in Sociology which does not require 
 to be done over again, and better. Nevertheless, 
 he has greatly advanced the study. Besides the 
 great stores of thought, of various and often of 
 eminent merit, with which he has enriched the 
 subject, his conception of its method is so much 
 truer and more profound than that of any one who 
 preceded him, as to constitute an era in its culti- 
 vation. If it cannot be said of him that he has 
 created a science, it may be said truly that he has, 
 for the first time, made the creation possible. 
 This is a great achievement, and, with the extraor- 
 dinary merit of his historical analysis, and of his 
 philosophy of the physical sciences, is enough to 
 immortalize his name. But his renown with pos- 
 terity would probably have been greater than it is 
 now likely to be, if after showing the way in 
 which the social science should be formed, he had 
 not flattered himself that he had formed it, and 
 that it was already sufficiently solid for attempting 
 to build upon its foundation the entire fabric of 
 the Political Art. 
 
125 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE LATEE, SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE.* 
 
 The appended list of publications contain the 
 materials for knowing and estimating what M. 
 Comte termed his second career, in which the 
 savant, historian, and philosopher of his funda- 
 mental treatise, came forth transfigured as the 
 High Priest of the Religion of Humanity. They 
 include all his writings except the Cours de 
 Philosophic Positive : for his early productions, 
 
 tt 1. Systeme.de Politique Positive, ou Traite de Sociologies instituant 
 la Religion de VHumanite. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris : 1851 — 1854. 
 
 2. CatecMsme PositivTsfe, ou Sommaire Exposition de la Religion 
 Universelle, en onze Entretiens Systematiques entre une Femme et un 
 Pretre de VHumanite. 1 vol. 12mo. Paris : 1852. 
 
 3. Appel aux Conservateurs. Paris : 1855 (brochure). 
 
 4. Synthese Subjective, ou Systeme Universel des Conceptions pro- 
 pres a VEtat Normal de VHumanite. Tome Premier, contenant le 
 Systeme de Logique Positive, ou Traite de Philosophic Mathematique. 
 8vo. Paris: 1856'. 
 
 5. Auguste Comte et la PhilosopJiie Positive. Par E. Littre. 
 1 vol. 8vo. Paris : 1863. 
 
 6. Exposition AbregSe et Popitlaire de la PhilosopJiie et de la Reli- 
 gion Positives. Par Celestin de Blignieres, ancien eleve de l'Ecole 
 Polytechnique. 1 vol. 12mo. Paris : 1857. 
 
 7. Notice sur VCEuvre et sur la Vie dAuguste Comte. Par le 
 Docteur Eobinet, son Medecin, etl'un de ses treize Executeurs Testa- 
 mentaires. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris : 1860. 
 
126 LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 
 
 and the occasional publications of his later life, 
 are reprinted as Preludes or Appendices to the 
 treatises here enumerated, or in Dr Hobinet's 
 volume, which, as well as that of M. Littre, also 
 contains copious extracts from his correspondence. 
 In the concluding pages of his great systematic 
 work, M. Comte had announced four other treatises 
 as in contemplation : on Politics ; on the Philoso- 
 phy of Mathematics ; on Education, a project 
 subsequently enlarged to include the systematiza- 
 tion of Morals ; and on Industry, or the action of 
 man upon external nature. Our list comprises 
 the only two of these which he lived to execute. 
 It further contains a brief exposition of his final 
 doctrines, in the form of a Dialogue, or, as he 
 terms it, a Catechism, of which a translation has 
 been published by his principal English adherent, 
 Mr Congreve. There has also appeared very 
 recently, under the title of " A General View of 
 Positivism," a translation by Dr Bridges, of the 
 Preliminary Discourse in six chapters, prefixed to 
 the Systeme de Politique Positive. The remaining 
 three books on our list are the productions of dis- 
 ciples in different degrees. M. Littr£, the only 
 thinker of established reputation who accepts that 
 character, is a disciple only of the Cours de 
 Philosophie Positive, and can see the weak points 
 even in that. Some of them he has discriminated 
 and discussed with great judgment : and the merits 
 of his volume, both as a sketch of M. Comte's 
 life and an appreciation of his doctrines, would 
 well deserve a fuller notice than we are able to give 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 127 
 
 it here. M. de Blignieres is a far more thorough 
 adherent ; so much so, that the reader of his 
 singularly well and attractively written condens- 
 ation and popularization of his master's doctrines, 
 does not easily discover in what it falls short of 
 that unqualified acceptance which alone, it would 
 seem, could find favour with M. Comte. For he 
 ended by casting off M. de Blignieres, as he had 
 previously cast off M. Littre, and every other 
 person who, having gone with him a certain 
 length, refused to follow him to the end. The 
 author of the last work in our enumeration, Dr 
 Bobinet, is a disciple after M. Comte' s own heart ; 
 one whom no difficulty stops, and no absurdity 
 startles. But it is far from our disposition to 
 speak otherwise than respectfully of Dr Bobinet 
 and the other earnest men, who maintain round 
 the tomb of their master an organized co-operation 
 for the diffusion of doctrines which they believe 
 destined to regenerate the human race. Their en- 
 thusiastic veneration for him, and devotion to the 
 ends he pursued, do honour alike to them and to 
 their teacher, and are an evidence of the personal 
 ascendancy he exercised over those who approached 
 him ; an ascendancy which for a time carried away 
 even M. Littre^ as he confesses, to a length which 
 his calmer judgment does not now approve. 
 
 These various writings raise many points of inter- 
 est regarding M. Comte' s personal history, and 
 some, not without philosophic bearings, respecting 
 his mental habits: from all which matters we shall 
 abstain, with the exception of two, which he him- 
 
128 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 self proclaimed with great emphasis, and a know- 
 ledge of which is almost indispensable to an appre- 
 hension of the characteristic difference between his 
 second career and his first. It shonld be known 
 that dnring his later life, and even before complet- 
 ing his first great treatise, M. Gomte adopted a rule, 
 to which he very rarely made any exception : to 
 abstain systematically, not only from newspapers 
 or periodical publications, even scientific, but from 
 all reading whatever, except a few favourite poets 
 in the ancient and modern European languages. 
 This abstinence he practised for the sake of mental 
 health; by way, as he said, of " hygiene cerebrate " 
 We are far from thinking that the practice has 
 nothing whatever to recommend it. For most 
 thinkers, doubtless, it would be a very unwise one; 
 but we will not affirm that it may not sometimes 
 be advantageous to a mind of the peculiar quality 
 of M. Comte's — one that can usefully devote itself 
 to following out to the remotest developments a 
 particular line of meditations, of so arduous a kind 
 that the complete concentration of the intellect 
 upon its own thoughts is almost a necessary condi- 
 tion of success. When a mind of this character 
 has laboriously and conscientiously laid in before- 
 hand, as M. Comte had done, an ample stock of 
 materials, he may be justified in thinking that he 
 will contribute most to the mental wealth of man- 
 kind by occupying himself solely in working upon 
 these, without distracting his attention by continu- 
 ally taking in more matter, or keeping a communi- 
 cation open with other independent intellects. The 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 129 
 
 practice, therefore, may be legitimate ; but no one 
 should adopt it without being aware of what he 
 loses by it. He must resign the pretension of 
 arriving at the whole truth on the subject, what- 
 ever it be, of his meditations. That he should 
 effect this, even on a narrow subject, by the mere 
 force of his own mind, building on the foundations 
 of his predecessors, without aid or correction from 
 his contemporaries, is simply impossible. He may 
 do eminent service by elaborating certain sides of 
 the truth, but he must expect to find that there are 
 other sides which have wholly escaped his attention. 
 However great his powers, everything that he can do 
 without the aid of incessant remindings from other 
 thinkers, is merely provisional, and will require a 
 thorough revision. He ought to be aware of this, 
 and accept it with his eyes open, regarding himself 
 as a pioneer, not a constructor. If he thinks that 
 he can contribute most towards the elements of the 
 final synthesis by following out his own original 
 thoughts as far as they will go, leaving to other 
 thinkers, or to himself at a subsequent time, the 
 business of adjusting them to the thoughts by 
 which they ought to be accompanied, he is right 
 in doing so. But he deludes himself if he imagines 
 that any conclusions he can arrive at, while he 
 practises M. Comte's rule of hygiene cerihrale, can 
 possibly be definitive. 
 
 Neither is such a practice, in a hygienic point 
 of view, free from the gravest dangers to the philo- 
 sopher's own mind. When once he has persuaded 
 himself that he can work out the final truth on any 
 
130 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 subject, exclusively from his own sources, he is apt 
 to lose all measure or standard by which to be ap- 
 prized when he is departing from common sense. 
 Living only with his own thoughts, he gradually 
 forgets the aspect they present to minds of a differ- 
 ent mould from his own; he looks at his conclusions 
 only from the point of view which suggested them, 
 and from which they naturally appear perfect; and 
 every consideration which from other points of view 
 might present itself, either as an objection or as a 
 necessary modification, is to him as if it did not 
 exist. When his merits come to be recognised and 
 appreciated, and especially if he obtains disciples, 
 the intellectual infirmity soon becomes complicated 
 with a moral one. The natural result of the posi- 
 tion is a gigantic self-confidence, not to say self- 
 conceit. That of M. Comte is colossal. Except 
 here and there in an entirely self-taught thinker, 
 who has no high standard with which to compare 
 himself, we have met with nothing approaching to 
 it. As his thoughts grew more extravagant, his 
 self-confidence grew more outrageous. The height 
 it ultimately attained must be seen, in his writings, 
 to be believed. 
 
 The other circumstance of a personal nature 
 which it is impossible not to notice, because M. 
 Comte is perpetually referring to it as the origin of 
 the great superiority which he ascribes to his later 
 as compared with his earlier speculations, is the 
 " moral regeneration " which he underwent from 
 "une angelique influence" and "une incomparable 
 passion privee." He formed a passionate attach- 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS 0E M. COMTE. 131 
 
 ment to a lady whom lie describes as uniting every- 
 thing which is morally with much that is intellect- 
 ually admirable, and his relation to whom, besides 
 the direct influence of her character upon his own, 
 gave him an insight into the true sources of human 
 happiness, which changed his whole conception of 
 life. This attachment, which always remained 
 pure, gave him but one year of passionate enjoy- 
 ment, the lady having been cut off by death at the 
 end of that short period ; but the adoration of her 
 memory survived, and became, as we shall see, the 
 type of his conception of the sympathetic culture 
 proper for all human beings. The change thus 
 effected in his personal character and sentiments, 
 manifested itself at once in his speculations ; 
 which, from having been only a philosophy, now 
 aspired to become a religion ; and from having been 
 as purely, and almost rudely, scientific and intel- 
 lectual, as was compatible with a character always 
 enthusiastic in its admirations and in its ardour for 
 improvement, became from this time what, for want 
 of a better name, may be called sentimental ; but 
 sentimental in a way of its own, very curious to 
 contemplate. In considering the system of religion, 
 politics, and morals^ which in his later writings M. 
 Comte constructed, it is not unimportant to bear in 
 mind the nature of the personal experience and in- 
 spiration to which he himself constantly attributed 
 this phasis of his philosophy. But as we shall 
 have much more to say against, than in favour of, 
 the conclusions to which he was in this manner 
 conducted, it is right to declare that, from the evi- 
 
 9 * 
 
132 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 dence of his writings, we really believe the moral 
 influence of Madame Clotilde de Vaux upon his 
 character to have been of the ennobling as well as 
 softening character which he ascribes to it. 
 Making allowance for the effects of his exuberant 
 growth in self-conceit, we perceive almost as much 
 improvement in his feelings, as deterioration in his 
 speculations, compared with those of the Philoso- 
 phic Positive. Even the speculations are, in some 
 secondary aspects, improved through the beneficial 
 effect of the improved feelings ; and might have 
 been more so, if, by a rare good fortune, the object 
 of his attachment had been qualified to exercise as 
 improving an influence over him intellectually as 
 morally, and if he could have been contented with 
 something less ambitious than being the supreme 
 moral legislator and religious pontiff of the human 
 race. 
 
 When we say that M. Comte has erected his 
 philosophy into a religion, the word religion must 
 not be understood in its ordinary sense. He made 
 no change in the purely negative attitude which 
 he maintained towards theology : his religion is 
 without a God. In saying this, we have done 
 enough to induce nine-tenths of all readers, at 
 least in our own country, to avert their faces and 
 close their ears. To have no religion, though 
 scandalous enough, is an idea they are partly used 
 to : but to have no God, and to talk of religion, 
 is to their feelings at once an absurdity and an 
 impiety. Of the remaining tenth, a great propor- 
 tion, perhaps, will turn away from anything which 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 13o 
 
 calls itself by the name of religion at all. Between 
 the two, it is difficult to find an audience who can 
 be induced to listen to M. Comte without an in- 
 surmountable prejudice. But, to be just to any 
 opinion, it ought to be considered, not exclusively 
 from an opponent's point of view, but from that of 
 the mind which propounds it. Though conscious 
 of being in an extremely small minority, we ven- 
 ture to think that a religion may exist without 
 belief in a God, and that a religion without a God 
 may be, even to Christians, an instructive and pro- 
 fitable object of contemplation. 
 
 What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to 
 constitute a religion ? There must be a creed, or 
 . conviction, claiming authority over the whole of 
 human life ; a belief, or set of beliefs, deliberately 
 adopted, respecting human destiny and duty, to 
 which the believer inwardly acknowledges that all 
 his actions ought to be subordinate. Moreover, there 
 must be a sentiment connected with this creed, or 
 capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently powerful 
 to give it in fact, the authority over human con- 
 duct to which it lays claim in theory. It is a great 
 advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that 
 this sentiment should crystallize, as it were, round 
 a concrete object ; if possible a really existing one, 
 though, in all the more important cases, only 
 ideally present. Such an object Theism and Chris- 
 tianity offer to the believer : but the condition 
 may be fulfilled, if not in a manner strictly equiva- 
 lent, by another object. It has been said that 
 whoever believes in " the Infinite nature of Duty," 
 
134 LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 
 
 even if he believe in nothing else, is religious. M. 
 Comte believes in what is meant by the infinite 
 nature of duty, but he refers the obligations of 
 duty, as well as all sentiments of devotion, to a 
 concrete object, at once ideal and real; the Human 
 Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including 
 the past, the present, and the future. This great 
 collective existence, this " Grand Etre," as he 
 terms it, though the feelings it can excite are 
 necessarily very different from those which direct 
 themselves towards an ideally perfect Being, has, 
 as he forcibly urges, this advantage in respect to 
 us, that it really needs our services, which Omni- 
 potence cannot, in any genuine sense of the term, 
 be supposed to do : and M. Comte says, that as- 
 suming the existence of a Supreme Providence 
 (which he is as far from denying as from affirm- 
 ing), the best, and even the only, way in which we 
 can rightly worship or serve Him, is by doing our 
 utmost to love and serve that other Great Being, 
 whose inferior Providence has bestowed on us all 
 the benefits that we owe to the labours and virtues 
 of former generations. It may not be consonant 
 to usage to call this a religion ; but the term so 
 applied has a meaning, and one which is not 
 adequately expressed by any other word. Candid 
 persons of all creeds may be willing to admit, that 
 if a person has an ideal object, his attachment 
 and sense of duty towards which are able to con- 
 trol and discipline all his other sentiments and 
 propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, 
 that person has a religion : and though every one 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 135 
 
 naturally prefers his own religion to any other, all 
 must admit that if the object of this attachment, 
 and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our 
 fellow-creatures, this Religion of the Infidel can- 
 not, in honesty and conscience, be called an in- 
 trinsically bad one. Many, indeed, may be unable 
 to believe that this object is capable of gathering 
 round it feelings sufficiently strong : but this is 
 exactly the point on which a doubt can hardly re- 
 main in an intelligent reader of M. Comte : and 
 we join with him in contemning, as equally irra- 
 tional and mean, the conception of human nature 
 as incapable of giving its love and devoting its 
 existence to any object which cannot afford in ex- 
 change an eternity of personal enjoyment. 
 
 The power which may be acquired over the 
 mind by the idea of the general interest of the 
 human race, both as a source of emotion and as a 
 motive to conduct, many have perceived ; but we 
 know not if any one, before M. Comte, realized so 
 fully as he has done, all the majesty of which that 
 idea is susceptible. It ascends into the unknown 
 recesses of the past, embraces the manifold pre- 
 sent, and descends into the indefinite and unfore- 
 seeable future. Forming a collective Existence 
 without assignable beginning or end, it appeals 
 to that feeling of the Infinite, which is deeply 
 rooted in human nature, and which seems neces- 
 sary to the imposingness of all our highest con- 
 ceptions. Of the vast unrolling web of human 
 life, the part best known to us is irrevocably past ; 
 this we can no longer serve, but can still love : it 
 
136 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 comprises for most of us the far greater number of 
 those who have loved us, or from whom we have 
 received benefits, as well as the long series of 
 those who, by their labours and sacrifices for man- 
 kind, have deserved to be held in everlasting and 
 grateful remembrance. As M. Comte truly says, 
 the highest minds, even now, live in thought with 
 the great dead, far more than with the living ; 
 and, next to the dead, with those ideal human 
 beings yet to come, whom they are never destined 
 to see. If we honour as we ought those who have 
 served mankind in the past, we shall feel that we 
 are also working for those benefactors by serving 
 that to which their lives were devoted. And 
 when reflection, guided by history, has taught us 
 the intimacy of the connexion of every age of 
 humanity with every other, making us see in the 
 earthly destiny of mankind the playing out of a 
 great drama, or the action of a prolonged epic, all 
 the generations of mankind become indissolubly 
 united into a single image, combining all the 
 power over the mind of the idea of Posterity, with 
 our best feelings towards the living world which 
 surrounds us, and towards the predecessors who 
 have made us what we are. That the ennobling 
 power of this grand conception may have its full 
 efficacy, we should, with M. Comte, regard the 
 Grand Etre, Humanity, or Mankind, as composed, 
 in the past, solely of those who, in every age and 
 variety of position, have played their part worthily 
 in life. It is only as thus restricted that the ag- 
 gregate of our species becomes an object deserving 
 
LATEU SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 137 
 
 our veneration. The unworthy members of it are 
 best dismissed from our habitual thoughts ; and 
 the imperfections which adhered through life, 
 even to those of the dead who deserve honourable 
 remembrance, should be no further borne in mind 
 than is necessary not to falsify our conception of 
 facts. On the other hand, the Grand Etre in its 
 completeness ought to include not only all whom 
 we venerate, but all sentient beings to which we 
 owe duties, and which have a claim on our attach- 
 ment. M. Comte, therefore, incorporates into the 
 ideal object whose service is to be the law of our 
 life, not our own species exclusively, but* in a 
 subordinate degree, our humble auxiliaries, those 
 animal races which enter into real society with 
 man, which attach themselves to him, and volun- 
 tarily co-operate with hiim like the noble dog who 
 gives his life for his human friend and benefactor. 
 For this M. Comte has been subjected to unworthy 
 ridicule, but there is nothing truer or more hon- 
 ourable to him in the whole body of his doctrines. 
 The strong sense he always shows of the worth of 
 the inferior animals, and of the duties of mankind 
 towards them, is one of the very finest traits of his 
 character. 
 
 We, therefore, not only hold that M. Comte was 
 justified in the attempt to develope his philosophy 
 into a religion, and had realized the essential con- 
 ditions of one, but that all other religions are made 
 better in proportion as, in their practical result, 
 they are brought to coincide with that which he 
 aimed at constructing. But, unhappily, the next 
 

 138 LATEH SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 
 
 thing we are obliged to do, is to charge him with 
 making a complete mistake at the very ontset of 
 his operations — with fundamentally misconceiving 
 the proper office of a rule of life. He committed 
 the error which is often, but falsely, charged 
 against the whole class of utilitarian moralists ; 
 he required that the test of conduct should also be 
 the exclusive motive to it. Because the good of 
 the human race is the ultimate standard of right 
 and wrong, and because moral discipline consists in 
 cultivating the utmost possible repugnance to all 
 conduct injurious to the general good, M. Comte 
 infers that the good of others is the only induce- 
 ment on which we should allow ourselves to act ; 
 and that we should endeavour to starve the whole 
 of the desires which point to our personal satisfac- 
 tion, by denying them all gratification not strictly 
 required by physical necessities. The golden rule 
 of morality, in M. Comte' s religion, is to live for 
 others, " vivre pour autrui." To do as we would 
 be done by, and to love our neighbour as ourself, 
 are not sufficient for him : they partake, he thinks, 
 of the nature of personal calculations. We should 
 endeavour not to love ourselves at all. We shall 
 not succeed in it, but we should make the nearest 
 approach to it possible. Nothing less will satisfy 
 him, as towards humanity, than the sentiment 
 which one of his favourite writers, Thomas a 
 Kempis, addresses to God : Amem te plus quam me, 
 nee me nisi propter te. All education and all moral 
 discipline should have but one object, to make 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 139 
 
 altruism (a word of his own coining) predominate 
 over egoism. If by this were only meant that 
 egoism is bound, and should be taught, always to 
 give way to the well-understood interests of 
 enlarged altruism, no one who acknowledges any 
 morality at all would object to the proposition. 
 Eut M. Comte, taking his stand on the biological 
 fact that organs are strengthened by exercise and 
 atrophied by disuse, and firmly convinced that each 
 of our elementary inclinations has its distinct 
 cerebral organ, thinks it the grand duty of life not 
 only to strengthen the social affections by constant 
 habit and by referring all our actions to them, but, 
 as far as possible, to deaden the personal passions 
 and propensities by desuetude. Even the exercise 
 of the intellect is required to obey as an authori- 
 tative rule the dominion of the social feelings over 
 the intelligence (du coeur sur l'esprit). The physi- 
 cal and other personal instincts are to be mortified 
 far beyond the demands of bodily health, which 
 indeed the morality of the future is not to insist 
 much upon, for fear of encouraging " les calculs 
 personnels." M, Comte condemns only such 
 austerities as, by diminishing the vigour of the 
 constitution, make us less capable of being useful 
 to others. Any indulgence, even in food, not 
 necessary to health and strength, he condemns as 
 immoral. All gratifications except those of the 
 affections, are to be tolerated only as " inevitable 
 infirmities." Novalis said of Spinoza that he was a 
 God-intoxicated man : M. Comte is a moralitv- 
 
140 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 intoxicated man. Every question with him is one 
 of morality, and no motive but that of morality is 
 permitted. 
 
 The explanation of this we find in an original 
 mental twist, very common in French thinkers, 
 and by which M. Comte was distinguished beyond 
 them all. He could not dispense with what he 
 called " unity." It was for the sake of Unity that 
 a religion was, in his eyes, desirable. Not in the 
 mere sense of Unanimity, but in a far wider one. 
 A religion must be something by which to "system- 
 atize " human life. His definition of it, in the 
 " Catechisme," is "the state of complete unity 
 which distinguishes our existence, at once personal 
 and social, when all its parts, both moral and 
 physical, converge habitually to a common destina- 
 tion . . . Such a harmony, individual and collect- 
 ive, being incapable of complete realization in an 
 existence so complicated as ours, this definition of 
 religion characterizes the immovable type towards 
 which tends more and more the aggregate of human 
 efforts. Our happiness and our merit consist 
 especially in approaching as near as possible to this 
 unity, of which the gradual increase constitutes the 
 best measure of real improvement, personal or 
 social." To this theme he continually returns, and 
 argues that this unity or harmony among all the 
 elements of our life is not consistent with the pre- 
 dominance of the personal propensities, since these 
 drag us in different directions ; it can only result 
 from the subordination of them all to the social 
 feelings, which may be made to act in a uniform 
 
LATEH SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 141 
 
 direction by a common system of convictions, and 
 which differ from the personal inclinations in this, 
 that we all naturally encourage them in one an- 
 other, while, on the contrary, social life is a per- 
 petual restraint upon the selfish propensities. 
 
 The fons errorwn in M. Comte's later specula- 
 tions is this inordinate demand for " unity " and 
 " systeinatization." This is the reason why it does 
 not suffice to him that all should be ready, in case 
 of need, to postpone their personal interests and 
 inclinations to the requirements of the general 
 good : he demands that each should regard as 
 vicious any care at all for his personal interests, 
 except as a means to the good of others — should be 
 ashamed of it, should strive to cure himself of it, 
 because his existence is not " systematized," is not 
 in " complete unity," as long as he cares for more 
 than one thing. The strangest part of the matter 
 is, that this doctrine seems to M. Comte to be 
 axiomatic. That all perfection consists in unity, 
 he apparently considers to be a maxim which no 
 sane man thinks of questioning. It never seems to 
 enter into his conceptions that any one could object 
 ah initio, and ask, why this universal systematizing, 
 systematizing, systematizing ? Why is it necessary 
 that all human life should point but to one object, 
 and be cultivated into a system of means to a single 
 end ? May it not be the fact that mankind, who 
 after all are made up of single human beings, 
 obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pur- 
 sues his own, under the rules and conditions re- 
 quired by the good of the rest, than when each 
 
142 LATER SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 
 
 makes the good of tlie rest his only subject, and 
 allows himself no personal pleasures not indispens- 
 able to the preservation of his faculties ? The 
 regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully 
 submitted to when high purposes require it, but is 
 it the ideal perfection of human existence ? M. 
 Comte sees none of these difficulties. The only 
 true happiness, he affirms, is in the exercise of the 
 affections. He had found it so for a whole year, 
 which was enough to enable him to get to the 
 bottom of the question, and to judge whether he 
 could do without everything else. Of course the 
 supposition was not to be heard of that any other 
 person could require, or be the better for, what M. 
 Comte did not value. " Unity " and " systematiza- 
 tion " absolutely demanded that all other people 
 should model themselves after M. Comte. It 
 would never do to suppose that there could be more 
 than one road to human happiness, or more than 
 one ingredient in it. 
 
 The most prejudiced must admit that this reli- 
 gion without theology is not chargeable with relaxa- 
 tion of moral restraints. On the contrary, it pro- 
 digiously exaggerates them. It makes the same 
 ethical mistake as the theory of Calvinism, that 
 every act in life should be done for the glory of God, 
 and that whatever is not a duty is a sin. It does 
 not perceive that between the region of duty and 
 that of sin there is an intermediate space, the re- 
 gion of positive worthiness. It is not good that 
 persons should be bound, by other people's opinion, 
 to do everything that they would deserve praise for 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 143 
 
 doing. There is a standard of altruism to which all 
 should be required to come up, and a degree beyond 
 it which is not obligatory, but meritorious. It is 
 incumbent on every one to restrain the pursuit of 
 his personal objects within the limits consistent with 
 the essential interests of others. What those limits 
 are, it is the province of ethical science to deter- 
 mine ; and to keep all individuals and aggregations 
 of individuals within them, is the proper office of 
 punishment and of moral blame. If in addition to 
 fulfilling this obligation, persons make the good of 
 others a direct object of disinterested exertions, 
 postponing or sacrificing to it even innocent personal 
 indulgences, they deserve gratitude and honour, and 
 are fit objects of moral praise. So long as they are 
 in no way compelled to this conduct by any external 
 pressure, there cannot be too much of it ; but a 
 necessary condition is its spontaneity; since the 
 notion of a happiness for all, procured by the self- 
 sacrifice of each, if the abnegation is really felt to 
 be a sacrifice, is a contradiction. Such spontaneity 
 by no means excludes sympathetic encouragement ; 
 but the encouragement should take the form of 
 making self-devotion pleasant, not that of making 
 everything else painful. The object should be to 
 stimulate services to humanity by their natural re- 
 wards ; not to render the pursuit of our own good 
 in any other manner impossible, by visiting it with 
 the reproaches of other and of our own conscience. 
 The proper office of those sanctions is to enforce 
 upon every one, the conduct necessary to give all 
 other persons their fair chance: conduct which 
 
144 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 chiefly consists in not doing thein harm, and not 
 impeding them in anything which without harming 
 others does good to themselves. To this must of 
 course be added, that when we either expressly or 
 tacitly undertake to do more, we are bound to keep 
 our promise. And inasmuch as every one, who 
 avails himself of the advantages of society, leads 
 others to expect from him all such positive good 
 offices and disinterested services as the moral im- 
 provement attained by mankind has rendered cus- 
 tomary, he deserves moral blame if, without just 
 cause, he disappoints that expectation. Through 
 this principle the domain of moral duty is always 
 widening. When what once was uncommon virtue 
 becomes common virtue, it comes to be numbered 
 among obligations, while a degree exceeding what 
 has grown common, remains simply meritorious. 
 
 M. Comte is accustomed to draw most of his 
 ideas of moral cultivation from the discipline of the 
 Catholic Church. Had he followed that guidance 
 in the present case, he would have been less wide 
 of the mark. For the distinction which we have 
 drawn was fully recognized by the sagacious and 
 far-sighted men who created the Catholic ethics. 
 It is even one of the stock reproaches against 
 Catholicism, that it has two standards of morality, 
 and does not make obligatory on all Christians the 
 highest rule of Christian perfection. It has one 
 standard which, faithfully acted up to, suffices for 
 salvation, another and a higher which when 
 realized constitutes a saint. M. Comte, perhaps 
 unconsciously, for there is nothing that he would 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 145 
 
 have been more unlikely to do if lie had been aware 
 of it, has taken a leaf out of the book of the de- 
 spised Protestantism. Like the extreme Calvinists, 
 he requires that all believers shall be saints, and 
 damns then (after his own fashion) if they are not. 
 Our conception of human life is different. We 
 \ do not conceive life to be so rich in enjoyments, 
 that it can afford to forego the cultivation of all 
 those which address themselves to what M. Comte 
 terms the egoistic propensities. On the contrary, 
 we believe that a sufficient gratification of these, 
 short of excess, but up to the measure which ren- 
 ders the enjoyment greatest, is almost always 
 favourable to the benevolent affections. The moral- 
 ization of the personal enjoyments we deem to 
 consist, not in reducing them to the smallest pos- 
 sible amount, but in cultivating the habitual wish 
 to share them with others, and with all others, and 
 scorning to desire anything for oneself which is 
 incapable of being so shared. There is only one 
 passion or inclination which is permanently incom- 
 patible with this condition — the love of domina- 
 tion, or superiority, for its own sake ; which im- 
 plies, and is grounded on, the equivalent depression 
 of other people. As a rule of conduct, to be en- 
 forced by moral sanctions, we think no more should 
 be attempted than to prevent people from doing 
 harm to others, or omitting to do such good as 
 they have undertaken. Demanding no more than 
 this, society, in any tolerable circumstances, obtains 
 much more ; for the natural activity of human 
 nature, shut out from all noxious directions, will 
 
 10 
 
116 LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 
 
 expand itself in nsefnl ones. This is our conception 
 of the moral rule prescribed by the religion of Hu- 
 manity. But above this standard there is an 
 unlimited range of moral worth, up to the most 
 exalted heroism, which should be fostered by every 
 positive encouragement, though not converted into 
 an obligation. It is as much a part of our scheme 
 as of M. Comte's, that the direct cultivation of al- 
 truism, and the subordination of egoism to it, far 
 beyond the .point of absolute moral duty, should be 
 one of the chief aims of education, both indi- 
 vidual and collective. We even recognize the 
 value, for this end, of ascetic discipline, in the 
 original Greek sense of the word. We think with 
 Dr Johnson, that he who has never denied himself 
 anything which is not wrong, cannot be fully trust- 
 ed for denying himself everything which is so. We 
 do not doubt that children and young persons will 
 one clay be again systematically disciplined in self- 
 mortification ; that they will be taught, as in an- 
 tiquity, to control their appetites, to brave dangers, 
 and submit voluntarily to pain, as simple exercises 
 in education. Something has been lost as well as 
 gained by no longer giving to every citizen the 
 training necessary for a soldier. Nor can any pains 
 taken be too great, to form the habit, and develop 
 the desire, of being useful to others and to the 
 world, by the practice, independently of reward and 
 of every personal consideration, of positive virtue 
 beyond the bounds of prescribed duty. No efforts 
 should be spared to associate the pupil's self-re- 
 spect, and his desire of the respect of others, with 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 147 
 
 service rendered to Humanity ; when possible, col- 
 lectively, but at all events, what is always possible, 
 in the persons of its individual members. There 
 are many remarks and precepts in M. Comte' s 
 volumes, which, as no less pertinent to our concep- 
 tion of morality than to his, we fully accept. For 
 example ; without admitting that to make " calculs 
 personnels" is contrary to morality, we agree with 
 him in the opinion, that the principal hygienic pre- 
 cepts should be inculcated, not solely or principally 
 as maxims of prudence, but as a matter of duty .to 
 others, since by squandering our health we disable 
 ourselves from rendering to our fellow-creatures 
 the services to which they are entitled. As M. 
 .Comte truly says, the prudential motive is by no 
 means fully sufficient for the purpose, even physi- 
 cians often disregarding their own precepts. The 
 personal penalties of neglect of health are common- 
 ly distant, as well as more or less uncertain, and 
 require the additional and more immediate sanction 
 of moral responsibility. M. Comte, therefore, in 
 this instance, is, we conceive, right in principle ; 
 though we have not the smallest doubt that he 
 would have gone into extreme exaggeration in 
 practice, and would have wholly ignored the legiti- 
 mate liberty of the individual to judge for himself 
 respecting his own bodily conditions, with due re- 
 lation to the sufficiency of his means of knowledge, 
 and taking the responsibility of the result. 
 
 Connected with the same considerations is an- 
 other idea of M. Comte, which has great beauty 
 
 and grandeur in it, and the realization of which, 
 
 10 * 
 
148 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 within the bounds of possibility, would be a culti- 
 vation of the social feelings on a most essential 
 point. It is, that every person who lives by any 
 useful work, should be habituated to regard himself 
 not as an individual working for his private benefit, 
 but as a public functionary ; and his wages, of 
 whatever sort, as not the remuneration or purchase- 
 money of his labour, which should be given freely, 
 but as the provision made by society to enable him 
 to carry it on, and to replace the materials and pro- 
 ducts which have been consumed in the process. 
 M. Comte observes, that in modern industry every 
 one in fact works much more for others than for 
 himself, since his productions are to be consumed 
 by others, and it is only necessary that his thoughts, 
 and imagination should adapt themselves to the 
 real state of the fact. The practical problem, how- 
 ever, is not quite so simple, for a strong sense that 
 he is working for others may lead to nothing better 
 than feeling himself necessary to them, and instead 
 of freely giving his commodity, may only encour- 
 age him to put a high price upon it. What M. 
 Comte really means is that we should regard work- 
 ing for the benefit of others as a good in itself; 
 that we should desire it for its own sake, and not 
 for the sake of remuneration, which cannot justly 
 be claimed for doing what we like : that the proper 
 return for a service to society is the gratitude of 
 society : and that the moral claim of any one in 
 regard to the provision for his personal wants, is 
 not a question of quid pro quo in respect to his co- 
 operation, but of how much the circumstances of 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 149 
 
 society permit to be assigned to him, consistently 
 with the just claims of others. To this opinion we 
 entirely subscribe. The rough method of settling 
 the labourer's share of the produce, the compe- 
 tition of the market, may represent a practical 
 necessity, but certainly not a moral ideal. Its de- 
 fence is, that civilization has not hitherto been 
 equal to organizing anything better than this first 
 rude approach to an equitable distribution. Hude 
 as it is, we for the present go less wrong by leaving 
 the thing to settle itself, than by settling it artifi- 
 cially in any mode which has yet been tried. But 
 in whatever manner that question may ultimately 
 be decided, the true moral and social idea of Labour 
 is in no way affected by it. Until labourers and 
 employers perform the work of industry in the 
 spirit in which soldiers perform that of an army, 
 industry will never be moralized, and military life 
 will remain, what, in spite of the anti-social cha- 
 racter of its direct object, it has hitherto been— the 
 chief school of moral co-operation. 
 
 Thus far of the general idea of M. Comte's 
 ethics and religion. We must now say something 
 of the details. Here we approach the ludicrous 
 side of the subject : but we shall unfortunately 
 have to relate other things far more really ridi- 
 culous. 
 
 There cannot be a religion without a cultus. 
 We use this term for want of any other, for its 
 nearest equivalent, worship, suggests a different 
 order of ideas. We mean by it, a set of systematic 
 observances, intended to cultivate and maintain the 
 
150 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 religious sentiment. Though M. Comte justly ap- 
 preciates the superior efficacy of acts, in keeping 
 up and strengthening the feeling which prompts 
 them, over any mode whatever of mere expression, 
 he takes pains to organize the latter also with great 
 minuteness. He provides an equivalent both for 
 the private devotions, and for the public cere- 
 monies, of other faiths. The reader will be sur- 
 prised to learn, that the former consists of prayer. 
 But prayer, as understood by M. Comte, does not 
 mean asking ; it is a mere outpouring of feeling ; 
 and for this view of it he claims the authority of 
 the Christian mystics. It is not to be addressed to 
 the Grand Etre, to collective Humanity ; though 
 he occasionally carries metaphor so far as to style 
 this a goddess. The honours to collective Hu- 
 manity are reserved for the public celebrations. 
 Private adoration is to be addressed to it in the 
 persons of worthy individual representatives, who 
 may be either living or dead, but must in all cases 
 be women ; for women, being the sexe aimant, re- 
 present the best attribute of humanity, that which 
 ought to regulate all human life, nor can Humanity 
 possibly be symbolized in any form but that of a 
 woman. The objects of private adoration are the 
 mother, the wife, and the daughter, representing 
 severally the past, the present, and the future, and 
 calling into active exercise the three social senti- 
 ments, veneration, attachment, and kindness. We 
 are to regard them, whether dead or alive, as our 
 guardian angels, " les vrais anges gardiens." If 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 151 
 
 the last two have never existed, or if, in the parti- 
 cular casa, any of the three types is too faulty for 
 the office assigned to it, their place may be sup- 
 plied by some other type of womanly excellence, 
 even by one merely historical. Be the object living 
 or dead, the adoration (as we understand it) is to 
 be addressed only to the idea. The prayer consists 
 of two parts ; a commemoration, followed by an 
 effusion. By a commemoration M. Comte means 
 an effort of memory and imagination, summoning 
 up with the utmost possible vividness the image of 
 the object : and every artifice is exhausted to ren- 
 der the image as life-like, as close to the reality, as 
 near an approach to actual hallucination, as is con- 
 sistent with sanity. This degree of intensity having 
 been, as far as practicable, attained, the effusion 
 follows. Every person should compose his own 
 form of prayer, which should be repeated not men- 
 tally only, but orally, and may be added to or varied 
 for sufficient cause, but never arbitrarily. It may 
 be interspersed with passages from the best poets, 
 when they present themselves spontaneously, as 
 giving a felicitous expression to the adorer's own 
 feeling. These observances M. Comte practised to 
 the memory of his Clotilde, and he enjoins them on 
 all true believers. They are to occupy two hours 
 of every day, divided into three parts ; at rising, in 
 the middle of the working hours, and in bed at 
 night. The first, which should be in a kneeling 
 attitude, will commonly be the longest, and the 
 second the shortest. The third is to be extended 
 
152 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 as nearly as possible to the moment of falling 
 asleep, that its effect may be felt in disciplining 
 even the dreams. 
 
 The jmblic cultus consists of a series of celebra- 
 tions or festivals, eighty-four in the year, so ar- 
 ranged that at least one occurs in every week. 
 They are devoted to the successive glorification 
 of Humanity itself; of the various ties, political 
 and domestic, among mankind ; of the successive 
 stages in the past evolution of our species ; and of 
 the several classes into which M. Comte's polity 
 divides mankind. M. Comte's religion has, more- 
 over, nine Sacraments ; consisting in the solemn 
 consecration, by the priests of Humanity, with 
 appropriate exhortations, of all the great transi- 
 tions in life ; the entry into life itself, and into 
 each of its successive stages : education, marriage, 
 the choice of a profession, and so forth. Among 
 these is death, which receives the name of trans- 
 formation, and is considered as a passage from ob- 
 jective existence to subjective — to living in the 
 memory of our fellow- creatures. Having no eter- 
 nity of objective existence to offer, M. Comte's re- 
 ligion gives it all he can, by holding out the hope 
 of subjective immortality — of existing in the re- 
 membrance and in the posthumous adoration of 
 mankind at large, if we have done anything to 
 deserve remembrance from them ; at all events, 
 of those whom we loved during life ; and when 
 they too are gone, of being included in the col- 
 lective adoration paid to the Grand Etre. People 
 are to be taught to look forward to this as a suffi- 
 
LATEPv SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 153 
 
 cient recompense for the devotion of a whole life 
 to the service of Humanity. Seven years after 
 death, comes the last Sacrament : a public judg- 
 ment, by the priesthood, on the memory of the 
 defunct. This is not designed for purposes of re- 
 probation, but of honour, and any one may, by 
 declaration during life, exempt himself from it. 
 If judged, and found worthy, he is solemnly in- 
 corporated with the Grand Etre, and his remains 
 are transferred from the civil to the religious place 
 of sepulture : " le bois sacre qui doit entourer 
 chaque temple de 1' HumaniteV' 
 
 This brief abstract gives no idea of the minute- 
 ness of M. Comte's prescriptions, and the extra- 
 ordinary height to which he carries the mania for 
 regulation by which Frenchmen are distinguished 
 among Europeans, and M. Comte among French- 
 men. It is this which throws an irresistible air 
 of ridicule over the whole subject. There is no- 
 thing really ridiculous in the devotional practices 
 which M. Comte recommends towards a cherished 
 memory or an ennobling ideal, when they come un- 
 prompted from the depths of the individual feel- 
 ing ; but there is something ineffably ludicrous in 
 enjoining that everybody shall practise them three 
 times daily for a period of two hours, not because 
 his feelings require them, but for the premeditated 
 purpose of getting his feelings up. The ludicrous, 
 however, in any of its shapes, is a phenomenon 
 with which M. Comte seems to have been totally 
 unacquainted. There is nothing in his writings 
 from which it could be inferred that he knew of 
 
154 LATEU SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 the existence of such things as wit and humour. 
 The only writer distinguished for either, of whom 
 he shows any admiration, is Moliere, and him he 
 admires not for his wit but for his wisdom. We 
 notice this without intending any reflection on M. 
 Comte ; for a profound conviction raises a person 
 above the feeling of ridicule. Eut there are pas- 
 sages in his writings which, it really seems to us, 
 could have been written by no man who had ever 
 laughed. We will give one of these instances. 
 Besides the regular prayers, M. Comte's religion, 
 like the Catholic, has need of forms which can be 
 applied to casual and unforeseen occasions. These, 
 he says, must in general be left to the believer's 
 own choice ; but he suggests as a very suitable 
 one the repetition of " the fundamental formula of 
 Positivism," viz., ct l'amour pour principe, l'ordre 
 pour base, et le progres pour but." Not content, 
 however, with an equivalent for the Paters and 
 Aves of Catholicism, he must have one for the sign 
 of the cross also; and he thus delivers himself:* 
 " Cette expansion peut etre perfectionn^e par des 
 signes universels. . . . Ann de mieux deVelop- 
 per l'aptitude n^cessaire de la formule positiviste 
 a repr^senter toujoursla condition humaine, il con- 
 vient ordinairement de l'enoncer en touchant suc- 
 cessivement les principaux organes que la th^orie 
 cerebrale assigne a ses trois elements." This may 
 be a very appropriate mode of expressing one's de- 
 votion to the Grand Etre : but any one who had 
 appreciated its effect on the profane reader, would 
 
 •"■ Systeme de Politique Positive, iv. 100. 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 155 
 
 have thought it judicious to keep it back till a con- 
 siderably more advanced stage in the propagation 
 of the Positive Religion. 
 
 As M. Comte's religion has a cultus, so also it 
 has a clergy, who are the pivot of his entire social 
 and political system. Their nature and office will 
 be best shown by describing his ideal of political 
 society in its normal state, with the various classes 
 of which it is composed. 
 
 The necessity of a Spiritual Power, distinct and 
 separate from the temporal government, is the es- 
 sential principle of M. Comte's political scheme; 
 as it may well be, since the Spiritual Power is the 
 only counterpoise he provides or tolerates, to the 
 absolute dominion of the civil rulers. Nothing can 
 exceed his combined detestation and contempt for 
 government by assemblies, and for parliamentary 
 or representative institutions in any form. They 
 are an expedient, in his opinion, only suited to a 
 state of transition, and even that nowhere but in 
 England. The attempt to naturalize them in 
 Prance, or any Continental nation, he regards as 
 mischievous quackery. Louis Napoleon's usurpa- 
 tion is absolved, is made laudable to him, because 
 it overthrew a representative government. Elec- 
 tion of superiors by inferiors, except as a revolu- 
 tionary expedient, is an abomination in his sight. 
 Public functionaries of all kinds should name their 
 successors, subject to the approbation of their own 
 superiors, and giving public notice of # the nomina- 
 tion so long beforehand as to admit of discussion, 
 and the timely revocation of a wrong choice. But, 
 
15G LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 by the side of the temporal rulers, he places an- 
 other authority, with no power to command, but 
 only to advise and remonstrate. The family being, 
 in his mind as in that of Frenchmen generally, the 
 foundation and essential type of all society, the 
 separation of the two powers commences there. 
 The spiritual, or moral and religious power, in a 
 family, is the women of it. The positivist family 
 is composed of the " fundamental couple," their 
 children, and the parents of the man, if alive. The 
 whole government of the household, except as re- 
 gards the education of the children, resides in the 
 man ; and even over that he has complete power, 
 but should forbear to exert it. The part assigned 
 to the women is to improve the man through his 
 affections, and to bring up the children, who, until 
 the age of fourteen, at which scientific instruction 
 begins, are to be educated wholly by their mother. 
 That women may be better fitted for these functions, 
 they are peremptorily excluded from all others. 
 No woman is to work for her living. Every 
 woman is to be supported by her husband or her 
 male relations, and if she has none of these, by the 
 State. She is to have no powers of government, 
 even domestic, and no property. Her legal rights 
 of inheritance are preserved to her, that her feel- 
 ings of duty may make her voluntarily forego them. 
 There are to be no marriage portions, that women 
 may no longer be sought in marriage from inter- 
 ested motives. Marriages are to be rigidly indis- 
 soluble, except for a single cause. It is remarkable 
 that the bitterest enemy of divorce among all philo- 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 157 
 
 sopliers, nevertheless allows it, in a case which the 
 laws of England, and of other countries reproached 
 by him with tolerating divorce, do not admit : 
 namely, when one of the parties has been sentenced 
 to an infamizing punishment, involving loss of civil 
 rights. It is monstrous that condemnation, even 
 for life, to a felon's punishment, should leave an 
 unhappy victim bound to, and in the wife's case 
 under the legal authority of, the culprit. M. 
 Comte could feel for the injustice in this special 
 case, because it chanced to be the unfortunate 
 situation of his Clotilde. Minor degrees of un- 
 worthiness may entitle the innocent party to a 
 legal separation, but without the power of re-mar- 
 riage. Second marriages, indeed, are not permitted 
 by the Positive Heligion. There is to be no im- 
 pediment to them by law, but morality is to con- 
 demn them, and every couple who are married 
 religiously as well as civilly are to make a vow of 
 eternal widowhood, "le veuvage eternel." This 
 absolute monogamy is, in M. Comte's opinion, es- 
 sential to the complete fusion between two beings, 
 which is the essence of marriage ; and moreover, 
 eternal constancy is required by the posthumous 
 adoration, which is to be continuously paid by the 
 survivor to one who, though objectively dead, still 
 lives " subjectively." The domestic spiritual power, 
 which resides in the women of the family, is chiefly 
 concentrated in the most venerable of them, the 
 husband's mother, while alive. It has an auxiliary 
 in the influence of age, represented by the hus- 
 band's father, who is supposed to have passed the 
 
158 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 period of retirement from active life, fixed by M. 
 Comte (for lie fixes everything) at sixty-three ; at 
 which age the head of the family gives up the reins 
 of authority to his son, retaining only a consulta- 
 tive voice. 
 
 This domestic Spiritual Power, being prin- 
 cipally moral, and confined to a private life, re- 
 quires the support and guidance of an intellectual 
 power exterior to it, the sphere of which will 
 naturally be wider, extending also to public life. 
 This consists of the clergy, or priesthood, for M. 
 Comte is fond of borrowing the consecrated ex- 
 pressions of Catholicism to denote the nearest 
 equivalents which his own system affords. The 
 clergy are the theoretic or philosophical class, and 
 are supported by an endowment from the State, 
 voted periodically, but administered by themselves. 
 Like women, they are to be excluded from all 
 riches, and from all participation in power (except 
 the absolute power of each over his own house- 
 hold). They are neither to inherit, nor to receive 
 emolument from any of their functions, or from 
 their writings or teachings of any description, but 
 are to live solely on their small salaries. This M. 
 Comte deems necessary to the complete disinter- 
 estedness of their counsel. To have the confidence 
 of the masses, they must, like the masses, be poor. 
 Their exclusion from political and from all other 
 practical occupations is indispensable for the same 
 reason, and for others equally peremptory. Those 
 occupations are, he contends, incompatible with 
 the habits of mind necessary to philosophers. A 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 159 
 
 practical position, either private or public, chains 
 the mind to specialities and details, while a phi- 
 losopher's business is with general truths and con- 
 nected views (vues d'ensemble). These, again, 
 require an habitual abstraction from details, which 
 unfits the mind for judging well and rapidly of in- 
 dividual cases. The same person cannot be both a 
 good theorist and a good practitioner or ruler, 
 though practitioners and rulers ought to have a 
 solid theoretic education. The two kinds of func- 
 tion must be absolutely exclusive of one another : 
 to attempt them both, is inconsistent with fitness 
 for either. But as men may mistake their vocation, 
 up to the age of thirty-five they are allowed to 
 change their career. 
 
 To the clergy is entrusted the theoretic or scien- 
 tific instruction of youth. The medical art also is 
 to be in their hands, since no one is fit to be a 
 physician who does not study and understand the 
 whole man, moral as well as physical. M. Comte 
 has a contemptuous opinion of the existing race of 
 physicians, who, he says, deserve no higher name 
 than that of veterinaires, since they concern them- 
 selves with man only in his animal, and not in his 
 human character. In his last years, M. Comte (as 
 we learn from Dr Hobinet's volume) indulged in 
 the wildest speculations on medical science, declar- 
 ing all maladies to be one and the same disease, 
 the disturbance or destruction of " 1' unit e* cere- 
 brale." The other functions of the clergy are 
 moral, much more than intellectual. They are the 
 spiritual directors, and venerated advisers, of the 
 
160 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 active or practical classes, including the political. 
 They are the mediators in all social differences ; 
 between the labourers, for instance, and their em- 
 ployers. They are to advise and admonish on all 
 important violations of the moral law. Especially, 
 it devolves on them to keep the rich and powerful 
 to the performance of their moral duties towards 
 their inferiors. If private remonstrance fails, pub- 
 lic denunciation is to follow : in extreme cases they 
 may proceed to the length of excommunication, 
 which, though it only operates through opinion, 
 yet if it carries opinion with it, may, as M. Comte 
 complacently observes, be of such powerful efficacy, 
 that the richest man may be driven to produce his 
 subsistence by his own manual labour, through the 
 impossibility of inducing any other person to work 
 for him. In this as in all other cases, the priest- 
 hood depends for its authority on carrying with it 
 the mass of the people — those who, possessing no 
 accumulations, live on the wages of daily labour ; 
 popularly but incorrectly termed the working 
 classes, and by French writers, in their Iloman law 
 phraseology, proletaires. These, therefore, who are 
 not allowed the smallest political rights, are incorpor- 
 ated into the Spiritual Power, of which they form, 
 after women and the clergy, the third element. 
 
 It remains to give an account of the Temporal 
 Power, composed of the rich and the employers of 
 labour, two classes who in M. Comte' s system are 
 reduced to one, for he allows of no idle rich. A life 
 made up of mere amusement and self-indulgence, 
 though not interdicted by law, is to be deemed so 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 161 
 
 disgraceful, that nobody with the smallest sense of 
 shame would choose to be guilty of it. Here, we 
 think, M. Comte has lighted on a true principle, to- 
 wards which the tone of opinion in modern Europe 
 is more and more tending, and which is destined to 
 be one of the constitutive principles of regenerated 
 society. We believe, for example, with him, that 
 in the future there will be no class of landlords 
 living at ease on their rents, but every landlord 
 will be a capitalist trained to agriculture, himself 
 superintending and directing the cultivation of his 
 estate. No one but he who guides the work, should 
 have the control of the tools. In M. Comte' s 
 system, the rich, as a rule, consist of the " captains 
 of industry :" but the rule is not entirely without 
 exception, for M. Comte recognizes other useful 
 modes of employing riches. In particular, one of 
 his favourite ideas is that of an order of Chivalry, 
 composed of the most generous and self-devoted of 
 the rich, voluntarily dedicating themselves, like 
 knights-errant of old, to the redressing of wrongs, 
 and the protection of the weak and oppressed. He 
 remarks, that oppression, in modern life, can sel- 
 dom reach, or even venture to attack, the life or 
 liberty of its victims (he forgets the case of domes- 
 tic tyranny), but only their pecuniary means, and 
 it is therefore by the purse chiefly that individuals 
 can usefully interpose, as they formerly did by the 
 sword. The occupation, however, of nearly all the 
 rich, will be the direction of labour, and for this 
 work they will be educated. Reciprocally, it is in 
 
 M. Comte' s opinion essential, that all directors of 
 
 11 
 
162 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 labour should be rich. Capital (in which he in- 
 cludes land) should be concentrated in a few 
 holders, so that every capitalist may conduct the 
 most extensive operations which one mind is capa- 
 ble of superintending. This is not only demanded 
 by good economy, in order to take the utmost 
 advantage of a rare kind of practical ability, but it 
 necessarily follows from the principle of M. 
 Comte's scheme, which regards a capitalist as a 
 public functionary. M. Comte's conception of the 
 relation of capital to society is essentially that of 
 Socialists, but he would bring about by education 
 and opinion, what they aim at effecting by positive 
 institution. The owner of capital is by no means 
 to consider himself its absolute proprietor. Legally 
 he is not to be controlled in his dealings with it, 
 for power should be in proportion to responsibility : 
 but it does not belong to him for his own use ; he 
 is merely entrusted by society with a portion of 
 the accumulations made by the past providence of 
 mankind, to be administered for the benefit of the 
 present generation and of posterity, under the obli- 
 gation of preserving them unimpaired, and handing 
 them down, more or less augmented, to our success- 
 ors. He is not entitled to dissipate them, or 
 divert them from the service of Humanity to his 
 own pleasures. Nor has he a moral right to con- 
 sume on himself the whole even of his profits. He 
 is bound in conscience, if they exceed his reason- 
 able wants, to employ the surplus in improving 
 either the efficiency of his operations, or the physi- 
 cal and mental condition of his labourers. The 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 163 
 
 portion of his gains which he may appropriate 
 to his own use, must be decided by himself, under 
 accountability to opinion ; and opinion ought not 
 to look very narrowly into the matter, nor hold him 
 to a rigid reckoning for any moderate indulgence of 
 luxury or ostentation ; since under the great re- 
 sponsibilities that will be imposed on him, the posi- 
 tion of an employer of labour will be so much less 
 desirable, to any one in whom the instincts of pride 
 and vanity are not strong, than the " heureuse 
 insouciance " of a labourer, that those instincts 
 must be to a certain degree indulged, or no one 
 would undertake the office. With this limitation, 
 every employer is a mere administrator of his pos- 
 sessions, for his work-people and for society at large. 
 If he indulges himself lavishly, without reserving 
 an ample remuneration for all who are employed 
 under him, he is morally culpable, and will incur 
 sacerdotal admonition. This state of things neces- 
 sarily implies that capital should be in few hands, 
 because, as M. Comte observes, without great 
 riches, the obligations which society ought to 
 impose, could not be fulfilled without an amount 
 of personal abnegation that it would be hopeless to 
 expect. If a person is conspicuously qualified for 
 the conduct of an industrial enterprise, but desti- 
 tute of the fortune necessary for undertaking it, M. 
 Comte recommends that he should be enriched by 
 subscription, or, in cases of sufficient importance, 
 by the State. Small landed proprietors and capital- 
 ists, and the middle classes altogether, he regards 
 
 as a parasitic growth, destined to disappear, the best 
 
 11 * 
 
164 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 of the body becoming large capitalists, and the re- 
 mainder proletaires. Society will consist only of 
 rich and poor, and it will be the business of the 
 rich to make the best possible lot for the poor. 
 The remuneration of the labourers will continue, 
 as at present, to be a matter of voluntary arrange- 
 ment between them and their employers, the last 
 resort on either side being refusal of co-operation, 
 " refus de concours," in other words, a strike or a 
 lock-out ; with the sacerdotal order for mediators 
 in case of need. But though wages are to be an 
 affair of free contract, their standard is not to be 
 the competition of the market, but the application 
 of the products in equitable proportion between 
 the wants of the labourers and the wants and dig- 
 nity of the employer. As it is one of M. Comte's 
 principles that a question cannot be usefully pro- 
 posed without an attempt at a solution, he gives his 
 ideas from the beginning as to what the normal in- 
 come of a labouring family should be. They are 
 on such a scale, that until some great extension 
 shall have taken place in the scientific resources of 
 mankind, it is no wonder he thinks it necessary to 
 limit as much as possible the number of those who 
 are to be supported by what is left of the pro- 
 duce. In the first place the labourer's dwelling, 
 which is to consist of seven rooms, is, with all 
 that it contains, to be his own property : it is 
 the only landed property he is allowed to possess, 
 but every family should be the absolute owner of 
 all things which are destined for its exclusive use. 
 Lodging being thus independently provided for, 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 165 
 
 and education and medical attendance being se- 
 cured gratuitously by the general arrangements 
 of society, the pay of the labourer is to consist 
 of two portions, the one monthly, and of fixed 
 amount, the other weekly, and proportioned to 
 the produce of his labour. The former M. Comte 
 fixes at 100 francs (£4) for a month of 28 days ; 
 being £52 a year : and the rate of piece-work 
 should be such as to make the other part amount 
 to an average of seven francs (5s. 6d.) per work- 
 ing day. 
 
 Agreeably to M. Comte's rule, that every pub- 
 lic functionary should appoint his successor, the 
 capitalist has unlimited power of transmitting his 
 capital by gift or bequest, after his own death or 
 retirement. In general it will be best bestowed 
 entire upon one person, unless the business will 
 advantageously admit of subdivision. He will 
 naturally leave it to one or more of his sons, if 
 sufficiently qualified ; and rightly so, hereditary 
 being, in M. Comte's opinion, preferable to ac- 
 quired wealth, as being usually more generously 
 administered. But, merely as his sons, they have 
 no moral right to it. M. Comte here recognizes 
 another of the principles, on which we believe that 
 the constitution of regenerated society will rest. 
 He maintains (as others in the present generation 
 have done) that the father owes nothing to his 
 son, except a good education, and pecuniary aid 
 sufficient for an advantageous start in life : that 
 he is entitled, and may be morally bound, to leave 
 the bulk of his fortune to some other properly 
 
166 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 selected person or persons, whom he judges likely 
 to make a more beneficial use of it. This is the 
 first of three important points, in which M. Comte's 
 theory of the family, wrong as we deem it in its 
 foundations, is in advance of prevailing theories 
 and existing institutions. The second is the re-in- 
 troduction of adoption, not only in default of chil- 
 dren, hut to fulfil the purposes, and satisfy the sym- 
 pathetic wants, to which such children as there are 
 may happen to be inadequate. The third is a 
 most important point — the incorporation of domes- 
 tics as substantive members of the family. There 
 is hardly any part of the present constitution of 
 society more essentially vicious, and morally in- 
 jurious to both parties, than the relation between 
 masters and servants. To make this a really hu- 
 man and a moral relation, is one of the principal 
 desiderata in social improvement. The feeling of 
 the vulgar of all classes, that domestic service has 
 anything in it peculiarly mean, is a feeling than 
 which there is none meaner. In the feudal ages, 
 youthful nobles of the highest rank thought them- 
 selves honoured by officiating in what is now 
 called a menial capacity, about the persons of 
 superiors of both sexes, for whom they felt re- 
 spect : and, as M. Comte observes, there are many 
 families who can in no other way so usefully 
 serve Humanity, as by ministering to the bodily 
 wants of other families, called to functions which 
 require the devotion of all their thoughts. We 
 will add, by way of supplement to M. Comte's 
 doctrine, that much of the daily physical work of 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 167 
 
 a household, even in opulent families, if silly 
 notions of degradation, common to all ranks, did 
 not interfere, might very advantageously be per- 
 formed by the family itself, at least by its younger 
 members ; to whom it would give healthful exer- 
 cise of the bodily powers, which has now to be 
 sought in modes far less useful, and also a familiar 
 acquaintance with the real work of the world, and 
 a moral willingness to take their share of its 
 burthens, which, in the great majority of the 
 better-off classes, do not now get cultivated at all. 
 
 We have still to speak of the directly political 
 functions of the rich, or, as M. Comte terms them, 
 the patriciate. The entire political government is 
 to be in their hands. Pirst, however, the existing 
 nations are to be broken up into small republics, 
 the largest not exceeding the size of Belgium, 
 Portugal, or Tuscany ; any larger nationalities 
 being incompatible with the unity of wants and 
 feelings, which is required, not only to give due 
 strength to the sentiment of patriotism (always 
 strongest in small states), but to prevent undue 
 compression; for no territory, M. Comte thinks, 
 can without oppression be governed from a distant 
 centre. Algeria, therefore, is to be given up to 
 the Arabs, Corsica to its inhabitants, and Prance 
 proper is to be, before the end of the century, 
 divided into seventeen republics, corresponding to 
 the number of considerable towns : Paris, however, 
 (need it be said?) succeeding to Rome as the 
 religious metropolis of the world. Ireland, Scot- 
 land, and Wales, are to be separated from England, 
 
168 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 which is of course to detach itself from all its 
 transmarine dependencies. In each state thus con- 
 stituted, the powers of government are to be vested 
 in a triumvirate of the three principal bankers, 
 who are to take the foreign, home, and financial 
 departments respectively. How they are to con- 
 duct the government and remain bankers, does not 
 clearly appear ; but it must be intended that they 
 should combine both offices, for they are to receive 
 no pecuniary remuneration for the political one. 
 Their power is to amount to a dictatorship (M. 
 Comte's own word) : and he is hardly justified in 
 saying that he gives political power to the rich, 
 since he gives it over the rich and every one else, 
 to three individuals of the number, not even chosen 
 by the rest, but named by their predecessors. As 
 a check on the dictators, there is to be complete 
 freedom of speech, writing, printing, and voluntary 
 association ; and all important acts of the govern- 
 ment, except in cases of emergency, are to be 
 announced sufficiently long beforehand to ensure 
 ample discussion. This, and the influences of the 
 Spiritual Power, are the only guarantees provided 
 against misgovernment. When we consider that 
 the complete dominion of every nation of mankind 
 is thus handed over to only four men — for the 
 Spiritual Power is to be under the absolute and 
 undivided control of a single Pontiff for the whole 
 human race — one is appalled at the picture of 
 entire subjugation and slavery, which is recom- 
 mended to us as the last and highest result of the 
 evolution of Humanity. But the conception rises 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 169 
 
 to the terrific, when we are told the mode in which 
 the single High Priest of Humanity is intended to 
 use his authority. It is the most warning example 
 we know, into what frightful aberrations a powerful 
 and comprehensive mind may be led by the ex- 
 clusive following out of a single idea. 
 
 The single idea of M. Comte, on this subject, 
 is that the intellect should be wholly subordinated 
 to the feelings ; or, to translate the meaning out of 
 sentimental into logical language, that the exercise 
 of the intellect, as of all our other faculties, should 
 have for its sole object the general good. Every 
 other employment of it should be accounted not 
 only idle and frivolous, but morally culpable. 
 Being indebted wholly to Humanity for the culti- 
 vation to which we owe our mental powers, we are 
 bound in return to consecrate them wholly to her 
 service. Having made up his mind that this ought 
 to be, there is with M. Comte but one step to con- 
 cluding that the Grand Pontiff of Humanity must 
 take care that it shall be ; and on this foundation 
 he organizes an elaborate system for the total 
 suppression of all independent thought. He does 
 not, indeed, invoke the arm of the law, or call for 
 any prohibitions. The clergy are to have no 
 monopoly. Any one else may cultivate science if 
 he can, may write and publish if he can find 
 readers, may give private instruction if anybody 
 consents to receive it. But since the sacerdotal 
 body will absorb into itself all but those whom it 
 deems either intellectually or morally unequal to 
 the vocation, all rival teachers will, as he calculates, 
 
170 LATEll SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 be so discredited beforehand, that their competition 
 will not be formidable. Within the body itself, 
 the High Priest has it in his power to make sure 
 that there shall be no opinions, and no exercise of 
 mind, but such as he approves; for he alone 
 decides the duties and local residence of all its 
 members, and can even eject them from the body. 
 Before electing to be under this rule, we feel a 
 natural curiosity to know in what manner it is to 
 be exercised. Humanity has only yet had one 
 Pontiff, whose mental qualifications for the post 
 are not likely to be often surpassed, M. Comte 
 himself. It is of some importance to know what 
 are the ideas of this High Priest, concerning the 
 moral and religious government of the human 
 intellect. 
 
 One of the doctrines which M. Comte most 
 strenuously enforces in his later writings is, that 
 during the preliminary evolution of humanity, 
 terminated by the foundation jof Positivism, the 
 free development of our forces of all kinds was the 
 important matter, but that from this time forward 
 the principal need is to regulate them. Formerly 
 the danger was of their being insufficient, but 
 henceforth, of their being abused. Let us express, 
 in passing, our entire dissent from this doctrine. 
 Whoever thinks that the wretched education which 
 mankind as yet receive, calls forth their mental 
 powers (except those of a select few) in a sufficient 
 or even tolerable degree, must be very easily 
 satisfied : and the abuse of them, far from becoming 
 proportionally greater as knowledge and mental 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 171 
 
 capacity increase, becomes rapidly less, provided 
 always that the diffusion of those qualities keeps 
 pace with their growth. The abuse of intellectual 
 power is only to be dreaded, when society is divided 
 between a few highly cultivated intellects and an 
 ignorant and stupid multitude. But mental power 
 is a ^thing which M. Comte does not want — or 
 wants infinitely less than he wants submission and 
 obedience. Of all the ingredients of human nature, 
 he continually says, the intellect most needs to be 
 disciplined and reined-in. It is the most turbulent 
 " le plus perturbateur," of all the mental elements ; 
 more so than even the selfish instincts. Through- 
 out the whole modern transition, beginning with 
 ancient Greece (for M. Comte tells us that we have 
 always been in a state of revolutionary transition 
 since then), the intellect has been in a state of 
 systematic insurrection against " le coeur." The 
 metaphysicians and literati (lettres), after help- 
 ing to pull down the old religion and social 
 order, are rootedly hostile to the construction of the 
 new, and desiring only to prolong the existing 
 scepticism and intellectual anarchy, which secure 
 to them a cheap social ascendancy, without the 
 labour of earning it by solid scientific preparation. 
 The scientific class, from whom better might have 
 been expected, are, if possible, worse. Void of 
 enlarged views, despising all that is too large for 
 their comprehension, devoted exclusively each to 
 his special science, contemptuously indifferent to 
 moral and political interests, their sole aim is to 
 acquire an easy reputation, and in France (through 
 
172 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 paid Academies and professorships) personal lucre, 
 by pushing their sciences into idle and useless 
 inquiries (speculations oiseuses), of no value to the 
 real interests of mankind, and tending to divert 
 the thoughts from them. One of the duties most 
 incumbent on opinion and on the Spiritual Power, 
 is to stigmatize as immoral, and effectually sup- 
 press, these useless employments of the speculative 
 faculties. All exercise of thought should be ab- 
 stained from, which has not some beneficial 
 tendency, some actual utility to mankind. M. 
 Comte, of course, is not the man to say that it 
 must be a merely material utility. If a specula- 
 tion, though it has no doctrinal, has a logical 
 value — if it throws any light on universal Method — 
 it is still more deserving of cultivation than if its 
 usefulness was merely practical : but, either as 
 method or as doctrine, it must bring forth fruits to 
 Humanity, otherwise it is not only contemptible, 
 but criminal. 
 
 That there is a portion of truth at the bottom 
 of all this, we should be the last to deny. No 
 respect is due to any employment of the intellect 
 which does not tend to the good of mankind. It is 
 precisely on a level with any idle amusement, and 
 should be condemned as waste of time, if carried 
 beyond the limit within which amusement is per- 
 missible. And whoever devotes powers of thought 
 which could render to Humanity services it ur- 
 gently needs, to speculations and studies which it 
 could dispense with, is liable to the discredit at- 
 taching to a well-grounded suspicion of caring 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 173 
 
 little for Humanity. But who can affirm positively 
 of any speculations, guided by right scientific 
 methods, on subjects really accessible to the hu- 
 man faculties, that they are incapable of being of 
 any use ? Nobody knows what knowledge will 
 prove to be of use, and what is destined to be use- 
 less. The most that can be said is that some kinds 
 are of more certain, and above all, of more present 
 utility than others. How often the most import- 
 ant practical results have been the remote con- 
 sequence of studies which no one would have 
 expected to lead to them ! Could the mathema- 
 ticians, who, in the schools of Alexandria, inves- 
 tigated the properties of the ellipse, have foreseen 
 that nearly two thousand years afterwards their 
 speculations would explain the solar system, and 
 a little later would enable ships safely to circum- 
 navigate the earth ? Even in M. Comte's opinion, 
 it is well for mankind that, in those early days, 
 knowledge was thought worth pursuing for its 
 own sake. Nor has the " foundation of Posi- 
 tivism," we imagine, so far changed the conditions 
 of human existence, that it should now be criminal 
 to acquire, by observation and reasoning, a know- 
 ledge of the facts of the universe, leaving to pos- 
 terity to find a use for it. Even in the last two or 
 three years, has not the discovery of new metals, 
 which may prove important even in the practical 
 arts, arisen from one of the investigations which 
 M. Comte most unequivocally condemns as idle, 
 the research into the internal constitution of the 
 sun? How few, moreover, of the discoveries which 
 
174 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 have changed the face of the world, either were or 
 could have heen arrived at hy investigations aim- 
 ing directly at the object ! Would the mariner's 
 compass ever have heen found hy direct efforts for 
 the improvement of navigation ? Should we have 
 reached the electric telegraph hy any amount of 
 striving for a means of instantaneous communica- 
 tion, if Franklin had not identified electricity with 
 lightning, and Ampere with magnetism ? The 
 most apparently insignificant archaeological or 
 geological fact, is often found to throw a light on 
 human history, which M. Comte, the basis of 
 whose social philosophy is history, should be the 
 last person to disparage. The direction of the 
 entrance to the three great Pyramids of Ghizeh, 
 by showing the position of the circumpolar stars 
 at the time when they were built, is the best evi- 
 dence we even now have of the immense antiquity 
 of Egyptian civilization.* The one point on which 
 M. Comte's doctrine has some colour of reason, is 
 the case of sidereal astronomy : so little knowledge 
 of it being really accessible to us, and the connex- 
 ion of that little with any terrestrial interests 
 being, according to all our means of judgment, 
 infinitesimal. It is certainly difficult to imagine 
 how any considerable benefit to humanity can be 
 derived from a knowledge of the motions of the 
 double stars : should these ever become important 
 to us it will be in so prodigiously remote an age, 
 that we can afford to remain ignorant of them 
 until, at least, all our moral, political, and social 
 
 ° See Sir John Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, § 319. 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 175 
 
 difficulties have been settled. Yet the discovery 
 that gravitation extends even to those remote 
 regions, gives some additional strength to the con- 
 viction of the universality of natural laws ; and 
 the habitual meditation on such vast objects and 
 distances is not without an aesthetic usefulness, by 
 kindling and exalting the imagination, the worth 
 of which in itself, and even its re-action on the 
 intellect, M. Comte is quite capable of appreciat- 
 ing. He would reply, however, that there are 
 better means of accomplishing these purposes. In 
 the same spirit he condemns the study even of the 
 solar system, when extended to any planets but 
 those which are' visible to the naked eye, and 
 which alone exert an appreciable gravitative in- 
 fluence on the earth. Even the perturbations he 
 thinks it idle to study, beyond a mere general con- 
 ception of them, and thinks that astronomy may 
 well limit its domain to the motions and mutual 
 action of the earth, sun, and moon. He looks for 
 a similar expurgation of all the other sciences. 
 In one passage he expressly says that the greater 
 part of the researches which are really accessible 
 to us are idle and useless. He would pare down 
 the dimensions of all the sciences as narrowly as 
 possible. He is continually repeating that no 
 science, as an abstract study, should be carried 
 further than is necessary to lay the foundation for 
 the science next above it, and so ultimately for 
 moral science, the principal purpose of them all. 
 Any further extension of the mathematical and 
 physical sciences should be merely "episodic;" 
 
176 LATEH SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 limited to what may from time to time be demand- 
 ed by the requirements of industry and the arts ; 
 and should be left to the industrial classes, except 
 when they find it necessary to apply to the sacer- 
 dotal order for some additional development of 
 scientific theory. This, he evidently thinks, would 
 be a rare contingency, most physical truths suffi- 
 ciently concrete and real for practice being empir- 
 ical. Accordingly in estimating the number of 
 clergy necessary for Prance, Europe, and our en- 
 tire planet (for his forethought extends thus far), 
 he proportions it solely to their moral and religious 
 attributions (overlooking, by the way, even their 
 medical) ; and leaves nobody with any time to 
 cultivate the sciences, except abortive candidates 
 for the priestly office, who having been refused ad- 
 mittance into it for insufficiency in moral excel- 
 lence or in strength of character, may be thought 
 worth retaining as "pensioners " of the sacerdotal 
 order, on account of their theoretic abilities. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say, that M. Comte 
 gradually acquired a real hatred for scientific and 
 all purely intellectual pursuits, and was bent on 
 retaining no more of them than was strictly indis- 
 pensable. The greatest of his anxieties is lest 
 people should reason, and seek to know, more than 
 enough. He regards all abstraction and all reason- 
 ing as morally dangerous, by developing an inordi- 
 nate pride (orgueil), and still more, by producing 
 dryness (s^cheresse) . Abstract thought, he says, 
 is not a wholesome occupation for more than a 
 small number of human beings, nor of them for 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 177 
 
 more than a small part of their time. Art, which 
 calls the emotions into play along with and more 
 than the reason, is the only intellectual exercise 
 really adapted to human nature. It is nevertheless 
 indispensahle that the chief theories of the various 
 abstract sciences, together with the modes in which 
 those theories were historically and logically ar- 
 rived at, should form a part of universal education : 
 for, first, it is only thus that the methods can be 
 learnt, by which to attain the results sought by the 
 moral and social sciences : though we cannot per- 
 ceive that M. Comte got at his own moral and 
 social results by those processes. Secondly, the 
 principal truths of the subordinate sciences are 
 necessary to the systematization (still systematiza- 
 tion !) of our conceptions, by binding together our 
 notions of the world in a set of propositions, which 
 are coherent, and are a sufficiently correct repre- 
 sentation of fact for our practical wants. Thirdly, 
 a familiar knowledge of the invariable laws of 
 natural phenomena is a great elementary lesson of 
 submission, which, he is never weary of saying, is 
 the first condition both of morality and of happi- 
 ness. For these reasons, he would cause to be 
 taught, from the age of fourteen to that of twenty- 
 one, to all persons, rich and poor, girls or youths, 
 a knowledge of the whole series of abstract sciences, 
 such as none but the most highly instructed per- 
 sons now possess, and of a far more systematic and 
 philosophical character than is usually possessed 
 even by them. (N.B. — They are to learn, during 
 the same years, Greek and Latin, having previous- 
 
 12 
 
178 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 ly, between the ages of seven and fourteen, learnt 
 the five principal modern languages, to the degree 
 necessary for reading, with due appreciation, the 
 chief poetical compositions in each.) But they are 
 to be taught all this, not only without encouraging, 
 but stifling as much as possible, the examining and 
 questioning spirit. The disposition which should 
 be encouraged is that of receiving all on the au- 
 thority of the teacher. The Positivist faith, e^en 
 in its scientific part, is la foi demontrable, but ought 
 by no means to be la foi toujour s demontree. The 
 pupils have no business to be over-solicitous about 
 proof. The teacher should not even present the 
 proofs to them in a complete form, or as proofs. 
 The object of instruction is to make them under- 
 stand the doctrines themselves, perceive their 
 mutual connexion, and form by means of them a 
 consistent and systematized conception of nature. 
 As for the demonstrations, it is rather desirable 
 than otherwise that even theorists should forget 
 them, retaining only the results. Among all the 
 aberrations of scientific men, M. Comte thinks 
 none greater than the pedantic anxiety they show 
 for complete proof, and perfect rationalization of 
 scientific processes. It ought to be enough that 
 the doctrines afford an explanation of phenomena, 
 consistent with itself and with known facts, and 
 that the processes are justified by their fruits. This 
 over-anxiety for proof, he complains, is breaking 
 down, by vain scruples, the knowledge which 
 seemed to have been attained ; witness the present 
 state of chemistry. The demand of proof for what 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 179 
 
 has been accepted by Humanity, is itself a mark of 
 " distrust, if not hostility, to the sacerdotal order " 
 (the naivete of this would be charming, if it were 
 not deplorable), and is a revolt against the tradi- 
 tions of the human race. So early had the new 
 High Priest adopted the feelings and taken up the 
 inheritance of the old. One of his favourite aphor- 
 isms is the strange one, that the living are more 
 and more governed by the dead. As is not un- 
 common with him, he introduces the dictum in 
 one sense, and uses it in another. What he at first 
 means by it, is that as civilization advances, the 
 sum of our possessions, physical and intellectual, 
 is due in a decreasing proportion to ourselves, and 
 in an increasing one to our progenitors. The use 
 he makes of it is, that we should submit ourselves 
 more and more implicitly to the authority of pre- 
 vious generations, and suffer ourselves less and less 
 to doubt their judgment, or test by our own reason 
 the grounds of their opinions. The unwillingness 
 of the human intellect and conscience, in their 
 present state of " anarchy," to sign their own ab- 
 dication, he calls "the insurrection of the living 
 against the dead." To this complexion has Positive 
 Philosophy come at last I 
 
 Worse, however, remains to be told. M. Comte 
 selects a hundred volumes of science, philosophy, 
 poetry, history, and general knowledge, which he 
 deems a sufficient library for every positivist, even 
 of the theoretic order, and actually proposes a 
 systematic holocaust of books in general — it would 
 almost seem of all books except these. Even that 
 
 12 * 
 
180 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 to which he shows most indulgence, poetry, except 
 the very best, is to undergo a similar fate, with the 
 reservation of select passages, on the ground that, 
 poetry being intended to cultivate our instinct of 
 ideal perfection, any kind of it that is less than the 
 best is worse than none. This imitation of the 
 error, we will call it the crime, of the early Chris- 
 tians—and in an exaggerated form, for even they 
 destroyed only those writings of pagans or heretics 
 which were directed against themselves — is the 
 one thing in M. Comte's projects which merits 
 real indignation. When once M. Comte has de- 
 cided, all evidence on the other side, nay, the very 
 historical evidence on which he grounded his de- 
 cision, had better perish. When mankind have 
 enlisted under his banner, they must burn their 
 ships. There is, though in a less offensive form, 
 the same overweening presumption in a suggestion 
 he makes, that all species of animals and plants 
 which are useless to man should be systematically 
 rooted out. As if any one could presume to assert 
 that the smallest weed may not, as knowledge ad- 
 vances, be found to have some property serviceable 
 to man. When we consider that the united power 
 of the whole human race cannot reproduce a 
 species once eradicated — that what is once done, 
 in the extirpation of races, can never be repaired ; 
 one can only be thankful that amidst all which the 
 past rulers of mankind have to answer for, they 
 have never come up to the measure of the great 
 regenerator of Humanity ; mankind have not yet 
 been under the rule of one who assumes that he 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 181 
 
 knows all there is to be known, and that when he 
 has put himself at the head of humanity, the book 
 of human knowledge may be closed. 
 
 Of course M. Gomte does not make this as- 
 sumption consistently. He does not imagine that 
 he actually possesses all knowledge, but only that 
 he is an infallible judge what knowledge is worth 
 possessing. He does not believe that mankind have 
 reached in all directions the extreme limits of use- 
 ful and laudable scientific inquiry. He thinks 
 there is a large scope for it still, in adding to our 
 power over the external world, but chiefly in per- 
 fecting our own physical, intellectual, and moral 
 nature. He holds that all our mental strength 
 should be economized, for the pursuit of this ob- 
 ject in the mode leading most directly to the end. 
 With this view, some one problem should always 
 be selected, the solution of which would be more 
 important than any other to the interests of human- 
 ity, and upon this the entire intellectual resources 
 of the theoretic mind should be concentrated, until 
 it is either resolved, or has to be given up as in- 
 soluble : after which mankind should go on to 
 another, to be pursued with similar exclusiveness. 
 The selection of this problem of course rests with 
 the sacerdotal order, or in other words, with the 
 High Priest. We should then see the whole specu- 
 lative intellect of the human race simultaneously 
 at work on one question, by orders from above, as 
 a French minister of public instruction once 
 boasted that a million of boys were saying the 
 same lesson during the same half-hour in every 
 
182 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 town and village of Prance. The reader will be 
 anxious to know, how much better and more 
 wisely the human intellect will be applied under 
 this absolute monarchy, and to what degree this 
 system of government will be preferable to the 
 present anarchy, in which every theorist does what 
 is intellectually right in his own eyes. M. Comte has 
 not left us in ignorance on this point. He gives us 
 ample means of judging. The Pontiff of Positivism 
 informs us what problem, in his opinion, should be 
 selected before all others for this united pursuit. 
 
 What this problem is, we must leave those who 
 are curious on the subject to learn from the 
 treatise itself. When they have done so, they will 
 be qualified to form their own opinion of the 
 amount of advantage which the general good of 
 mankind would be likely to derive, from exchang- 
 ing the present " dispersive speciality" and " in- 
 tellectual anarchy" for the subordination of the 
 intellect to the cceur, personified in a High Priest, 
 prescribing a single problem for the undivided 
 study of the theoretic mind. 
 
 We have given a sufficient general idea of M. 
 Comte' s plan for the regeneration of human 
 society, by putting an end to anarchy, and " sys- 
 tematizing " human thought and conduct under 
 the direction of feeling. But an adequate con- 
 ception will not have been formed of the height of 
 his self-confidence, until something more has been 
 told. Be it known, then, that M. Comte by no 
 means proposes this new constitution of society for 
 realization in the remote future. A complete plan 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 183 
 
 of measures of transition is ready prepared, and lie 
 determines the year, before the end of the present 
 century, in which the new spiritual and temporal 
 powers will be installed, and the regime of our 
 maturity will begin. He did not indeed calculate 
 on converting to Positivism, within that time, 
 more than a thousandth part of all the heads of 
 families in Western Europe and its offshoots be- 
 yond the Atlantic. But he fixes the time necessary 
 for the complete political establishment of Posi- 
 tivism at thirty-three years, divided into three 
 periods, of seven, five, and twenty-one years re- 
 spectively. At the expiration of seven, the direc- 
 tion of public education in Prance would be placed 
 in M. Comte's hands. In ^.ye years more, the 
 Emperor Napoleon, or his successor, will resign 
 his power to a provisional triumvirate, composed 
 of three eminent proletaires of the positivist faith ; 
 for proletaires, though not fit for permanent rule ? 
 are the best agents of the transition, being the 
 most free from the prejudices which are the chief 
 obstacle to it. These rulers will employ the re- 
 maining twenty-one years in preparing society for 
 its final constitution ; and after duly installing the 
 Spiritual Power, and effecting the decomposition of 
 Prance into the seventeen republics before men- 
 tioned, will give over the temporal government of 
 each to the normal dictatorship of the three 
 bankers. A man may be deemed happy, but 
 scarcely modest, who had such boundless con- 
 fidence in his own powers of foresight, and ex- 
 pected so complete a triumph of his own ideas on 
 
184 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 the reconstitution of society within the possible 
 limits of his lifetime. If he could live (he said) to 
 the age of Fontenelle, or of Hobbes, or even of 
 Voltaire, he should see all this realized, or as good 
 as realized. He died, however, at sixty, without 
 leaving any disciple sufficiently advanced to be ap- 
 pointed his successor. There is now a College, and 
 a Director, of Positivism ; but Humanity no longer 
 possesses a High Priest. 
 
 What more remains to be said may be de- 
 spatched more summarily. Its interest is philo- 
 sophic rather than practical. In his four volumes 
 of " Politique Positive," M. Comte revises and re- 
 elaborates the scientific and historical expositions 
 of his first treatise. His object is to systematize 
 (again to systematize) knowledge from the human 
 or subjective point of view, the only one, he con- 
 tends, from which a real synthesis is possible. For 
 (he says) the knowledge attainable by us of the 
 laws of the universe is at best fragmentary, and 
 incapable of reduction to a real unity. An ob- 
 jective synthesis, the dream of Descartes and the 
 best thinkers of old, is impossible. The laws of 
 the real world are too numerous, and the manner 
 of their working into one another too intricate, to 
 be, as a general rule, correctly traced and repre- 
 sented by our reason. The only connecting prin- 
 ciple in our knowledge is its relation to our wants, 
 and it is upon that we must found our systematiza- 
 tion. The answer to this is, first, that there is no 
 necessity for an universal synthesis ; and secondly, 
 that the same arguments may be used against the 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 185 
 
 possibility of a complete subjective, as of a complete 
 objective systematization. A subjective synthesis 
 must consist in the arrangement and co-ordination 
 of all useful knowledge, on the basis of its relation 
 to human wants and interests. But those wants 
 and interests are, like the laws of the universe, 
 extremely multifarious, and the order of preference 
 among them in all their different gradations (for it 
 varies according to the degree of each) cannot be 
 cast into precise general propositions. M. Comte's 
 subjective synthesis consists only in eliminating 
 from the sciences everything that he deems useless, 
 and presenting as far as possible every theoretical 
 investigation as the solution of a practical problem. 
 To this, however, he cannot consistently adhere; 
 for, in every science, the theoretic truths are much 
 more closely connected with one another than with 
 the human purposes which they eventually serve, 
 and can only be made to cohere in the intellect by 
 being, to a great degree, presented as if they were 
 truths of pure reason, irrespective of any practical 
 application. 
 
 There are many things eminently characteristic 
 of M. Comte's second career, in this revision of the 
 results of his first. Under the head of Biology, 
 and for the better combination of that science with 
 Sociology and Ethics, he found that he required a 
 new system of Phrenology, being justly dissatisfied 
 with that of Gall and his successors. Accordingly 
 he set about constructing one a priori, grounded on 
 the best enumeration and classification he could 
 make of the elementary faculties of our intellectual, 
 
186 LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 
 
 moral, and animal nature ; to each of which he 
 assigned an hypothetical place in the skull, the 
 most conformahle that he could to the few positive 
 facts on the subject which he considered as estab- 
 lished, and to the general presumption that func- 
 tions which react strongly on one another must 
 have their organs adjacent : leaving the localities 
 avowedly to be hereafter verified, by anatomical 
 and inductive investigation. There is considerable 
 merit in this attempt, though it is liable to obvious 
 criticisms, of the same nature as his own upon 
 Gall. But the characteristic thing is, that while 
 presenting all this as hypothesis waiting for verifi- 
 cation, he could not have taken its truth more 
 completely for granted if the verification had been 
 made. In all that he afterwards wrote, every 
 detail of his theory of the brain is as unhesitatingly 
 asserted, and as confidently built upon, as any 
 other doctrine of science. This is his first great 
 attempt in the "Subjective Method," which, origin- 
 ally meaning only the subordination of the pursuit 
 of truth to human uses, had already come to mean 
 drawing truth itself from the fountain of his own 
 mind. He had become, on the one hand, almost 
 indifferent to proof, provided he attained theoretic 
 coherency, and on the other, serenely confident that 
 even the guesses which originated with himself 
 could not but come out true. 
 
 There is one point in his later view of the 
 sciences, which appears to us a decided improve- 
 ment on his earlier. He adds to the six funda- 
 mental sciences of his original scale, a seventh 
 
LATEE, SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 187 
 
 under the name of Morals, . forming the highest 
 step of the ladder, immediately after Sociology : 
 remarking that it might, with still greater pro- 
 priety, be termed Anthropology, being the science 
 of individual human nature, a study, when rightly 
 understood, more special and complicated than 
 even that of Society. For it is obliged to take 
 into consideration the diversities of constitution 
 and temperament (la reaction cer^brale des visceres 
 veg^tatifs) the effects of which, still very imper- 
 fectly understood, are highly important in the 
 individual, but in the theory of society may be 
 neglected, because, differing in different persons, 
 they neutralize one another on the large scale. 
 This is a remark worthy of M. Comte in his best 
 days ; and the science thus conceived is, as he 
 says, the true scientific foundation of the art of 
 Morals (and indeed of the art of human life), 
 which, therefore, may, both philosophically and 
 didactically, be properly combined with it. 
 
 His philosophy of general history is recast, and 
 in many respects changed; we cannot but say, 
 greatly for the worse. He gives much greater 
 development than before to the Fetishistic, and to 
 what he terms the Theocratic, periods. To the 
 Fetishistic view of nature he evinces a partiality, 
 which appears strange in a Positive philosopher. 
 But the reason is that Fetish-worship is a religion 
 of the feelings, and not at all of the intelligence. 
 He regards it as cultivating universal love : as a 
 practical fact it cultivates much rather universal 
 fear. He looks upon Fetishism as much more akin 
 
188 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 to Positivism than any of the forms of Theology, 
 inasmuch as these consider matter as inert, and 
 moved only by forces, natural and supernatural, 
 exterior to itself : while Eetishism resembles 
 Positivism in conceiving matter as spontaneously 
 active, and errs only by not distinguishing activity 
 from life. As if the superstition of the Fetishist 
 consisted only in believing that the objects which 
 produce the phaenomena of nature involuntarily, 
 produce them voluntarily. The Fetishist thinks 
 not merely that his Fetish is alive, but that it can 
 help him in war, can cure him of diseases, can 
 grant him prosperity, or afflict him with all the 
 contrary evils. Therein consists the lamentable 
 effect of Fetishism — its degrading and prostrating 
 influence on the feelings and conduct, its conflict 
 with all genuine experience, and antagonism to all 
 real knowledge of nature. 
 
 M. Comte had also no small sympathy with 
 the Oriental theocracies, as he calls the sacerdotal 
 castes, who indeed often deserved it by their early 
 services to intellect and civilization ; by the aid 
 they gave to the establishment of regular govern- 
 ment, the valuable though empirical knowledge 
 they accumulated, and the height to which they 
 helped to carry some of the useful arts. M. Comte 
 admits that they became oppressive, and that the 
 prolongation of their ascendancy came to be in- 
 compatible with further improvement. But he 
 ascribes this to their having arrogated to them- 
 selves the temporal government, which, so far as 
 we have any authentic information, they never 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 180 
 
 did. The reason why the sacerdotal corporations 
 became oppressive, was becanse they were or- 
 ganized : because they attempted the " unity " 
 and " systematization " so dear to M. Comte, and 
 allowed no science and no speculation, except with 
 their leave and under their direction. M. Comte's 
 sacerdotal order, which, in his system, has all the 
 power that ever they had, would be oppressive in 
 the same manner ; with no variation but that 
 which arises from the altered state of society and 
 of the human mind. 
 
 M. Comte's partiality to the theocracies is 
 strikingly contrasted with his dislike of the Greeks, 
 whom as a people he thoroughly detests, for their 
 undue addiction to intellectual speculation, and 
 considers to have been, by an inevitable fatality, 
 morally sacrificed to the formation of a few great 
 scientific intellects, — principally Aristotle, Archi- 
 medes, Apollonius, and Hipparchus. Any one who 
 knows Grecian history as it can now be known, 
 will be amazed at M. Comte's travestie of it, in 
 which the vulgar est historical prejudices are 
 accepted and exaggerated, to illustrate the mis- 
 chiefs of intellectual culture left to its own 
 guidance. 
 
 There is no need to analyze further M. Comte's 
 second view of universal history. The best chapter 
 is that on the Homans, to whom, because they 
 were greater in practice than in theory, and for 
 centuries worked together in obedience to a social 
 sentiment (though only that of their country's 
 aggrandizement), M. Comte is as favourably af- 
 
190 LATER SPECULATIONS OP M. COMTE. 
 
 fected, as he is inimical to all but a small selection 
 of eminent thinkers among the Greeks. The 
 greatest blemish in this chapter is the idolatry of 
 Julius Caesar, whom M. Comte regards as one of 
 the most illustrious characters in history, and of 
 the greatest practical benefactors of mankind. 
 Caesar had many eminent qualities, but what he 
 did to deserve such praise we are at a loss to 
 discover, except subverting a free government : 
 that merit, however, with M. Comte, goes a great 
 way. It did not, in his former days, suffice to 
 rehabilitate Napoleon, whose name and memory he 
 regarded with a bitterness highly honourable to 
 himself, and whose career he deemed one of the 
 greatest calamities in modern history. But in his 
 later writings these sentiments are considerably 
 mitigated : he regards Napoleon as a more estimable 
 " dictator " than Louis Philippe, and thinks that 
 his greatest error was re-establishing the Academy 
 of Sciences ! That this should be said by M. 
 Comte, and said of Napoleon, measures the depth 
 to which his moral standard had fallen. 
 
 The last volume which he published, that on 
 the Philosophy of Mathematics, is in some respects 
 a still sadder picture of intellectual degeneracy 
 than those which preceded it. After the admirable 
 resume* of the subject in the first volume of his 
 first great work, we expected something of the 
 very highest order when he returned to the subject 
 for a more thorough treatment of it. But, being 
 the commencement of a Synthese Subjective, it 
 contains, as might be expected, a great deal that is 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 101 
 
 much more subjective than mathematical. Nor of 
 this do we complain : but we little imagined of 
 what nature this subjective matter was to be. M. 
 Comte here joins together the two ideas, which, of 
 all that he has put forth, are the most repugnant 
 to the fundamental principles of Positive Philo- 
 sophy. One of them is that on which Ave have just 
 commented, the assimilation between Positivism 
 and Petishisrti. The other, of which we took notice 
 in a former article, was the f< liberte facultative " of 
 shaping our scientific conceptions to gratify the 
 demands not solely of objective truth, but of intel- 
 lectual and a?sthetic suitability. It would be an 
 excellent thing, M. Comte thinks, if science could 
 be deprived of its sec/ieresse, and directly associated 
 with sentiment. Now it is impossible to prove 
 that the external world, and the bodies composing 
 it, are not endowed with feeling, and voluntary 
 agency. It is therefore highly desirable that we 
 should educate ourselves into imagining that they 
 are. Intelligence it will not do to invest them 
 with, for some distinction must be maintained 
 between simple activity and life. But we may 
 suppose that they feel what is done to them, and 
 desire and will what they themselves do. Even 
 intelligence, which we must deny to them in the 
 present, may be attributed to them in the past. 
 Before man existed, the earth, at that time an 
 intelligent being, may have exerted " its physico- 
 chemical activity so as to improve the astronomical 
 order by changing its principal coefficients. Our 
 planet may be supposed to have rendered its orbit 
 
192 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 less excentric, and thereby more habitable, by 
 planning a long series of explosions, analogous to 
 those from which, according to the best hypotheses, 
 comets proceed. Judiciously reproduced, similar 
 shocks may have rendered the inclination of the 
 earth's axis better adapted to the future wants of 
 the Grand Etre. A fortiori the Earth may have 
 modified its own figure, which is only beyond our 
 intervention because our spiritual ascendancy has 
 not at its disposal a sufficient material force." 
 The like may be conceived as having been done by 
 each of the other planets, in concert, possibly, with 
 the Earth and with one another. " In proportion 
 as each planet improved its own condition, its life 
 exhausted itself by excess of innervation ; but with 
 the consolation of rendering its self-devotion more 
 efficacious, when the extinction of its special 
 functions, first animal, and finally vegetative, 
 reduced it to the universal attributes of feeling 
 and activity."* This stuff, though he calls it 
 fiction, he soon after speaks of as belief (croyance), 
 to be greatly recommended, as at once satisfying 
 our natural curiosity, and " perfecting our unity " 
 (again unity !) " by supplying the gaps in our scien- 
 tific notions with poetic fictions, and developing 
 sympathetic emotions and aesthetic inspirations : 
 the world being conceived as aspiring to second 
 mankind in ameliorating the universal order under 
 the impulse of the Grand Etre." And he obviously 
 intends that we should be trained to make these 
 fantastical inventions permeate all our associations, 
 
 * Synthese Subjective, pp. 10, 11. 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 193 
 
 until we are incapable of conceiving the world and 
 Nature apart from them, and they become equiva- 
 lent to, and are in fact transformed into, real beliefs. 
 
 Wretched as this is, it is singularly character- 
 istic of M. Comte's later mode of thought. A 
 writer might be excused for introducing into an 
 avowed work of fancy this dance of the planets, 
 and conception of an animated Earth. If finely 
 executed, he might even be admired for it. No 
 one blames a poet for ascribing feelings, purposes, 
 and human propensities to flowers. Because a con- 
 ception might be interesting, and perhaps edifying, 
 in a poem, M. Comte would have it imprinted on 
 the inmost texture of every human mind in ordin- 
 ary prose. If the imagination were not taught its 
 prescribed lesson equally with the reason, where 
 would be Unity ? " It is important that the 
 domain of fiction should become as systematic as 
 that of demonstration, in order that their mutual 
 harmony may be conformable to their respective 
 destinations, both equally directed towards the 
 continual increase of unity, personal and social."* 
 
 Nor is it enough to have created the Grand 
 Fetiche (so he actually proposes to call the Earth), 
 and to be able to include it and all concrete ex- 
 istence in our adoration along with the Grand Etre. 
 It is necessary also to extend Positivist Eetishism 
 'to purely abstract existence ; to " animate " the 
 laws as well as the facts of nature. It is not 
 sufficient to have made physics sentimental, mathe- 
 matics must be made so too. This does not at first 
 
 * Synthese Subjective, pp. 11, 12. 
 13 
 
191 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 seem easy ; but M. Comte finds the nieaiis of ac- 
 complishing it. His plan is, to make Space also 
 an object of adoration, under the name of the 
 Grand Milieu, and consider it as the representative 
 of Fatality in general. " The final unity disposes 
 us to cultivate sympathy by developing our grati- 
 tude to whatever serves the Grand Etre. It must 
 dispose us to venerate the Eatality on which re- 
 poses the whole aggregate of our existence." We 
 should conceive this Natality as having a fixed 
 seat, and that seat must be considered to be Space, 
 which should be conceived as possessing feeling, 
 but not activity or intelligence. And in our ab- 
 stract speculations we should imagine all our con- 
 ceptions as located in free Space. Our images of 
 all sorts, down to our geometrical diagrams, and 
 even our ciphers and algebraic symbols, should 
 always be figured to ourselves as written in space, 
 and not on paper or any other material substance. 
 M. Comte adds that they should be conceived as 
 green on a white ground. 
 
 "We cannot go on any longer with this. In 
 spite of it all, the volume on mathematics is full of 
 profound thoughts, and will be very suggestive to 
 those who take up the subject after M. Comte. 
 What deep meaning there is, for example, in the 
 idea that the infinitesimal calculus is a conception 
 analogous to the corpuscular hypothesis in physics ; 
 which last M. Comte has always considered as a 
 logical artifice ; not an opinion respecting matters 
 of fact. The assimilation, as it seems to us, throws 
 a flood of light on both conceptions ; on the physi- 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 195 
 
 cal one still more than the mathematical. We 
 might extract many ideas of similar, though none 
 perhaps of equal, suggestiveness. But mixed with 
 these, what pitiable niaiseries ! One of his great 
 points is the importance of the " moral and in- 
 tellectual properties of numbers." He cultivates a 
 superstitious reverence for some of them. The first 
 three are sacred, les nombres sacre's : One being the 
 type of all Synthesis, Two of all Combination, 
 which he now says is always binary (in his first 
 treatise he only said that we may usefully repre- 
 sent it to ourselves as being so), and Three of all 
 Progression, which not only requires three terms, 
 but as he now maintains, never ought to have any 
 more. To these sacred numbers all our mental 
 operations must be made, as far as possible, to ad- 
 just themselves. Next to them, he has a great 
 partiality for the number seven ; for these whimsi- 
 cal reasons : " Composed of two progressionsfollowed 
 by a synthesis, or of one progression between two 
 couples, the number seven, coming next after the 
 sum of the three sacred numbers, determines the 
 largest group which we can distinctly imagine. 
 Reciprocally, it marks the limit of the divisions 
 which we can directly conceive in a magnitude of 
 any kind." The number seven, therefore, must be 
 foisted in wherever possible, and among other 
 things, is to be made the basis of numeration, 
 which is hereafter to be septimal instead of de- 
 cimal : producing all the inconvenience of a 
 change of system, not only without getting rid of, 
 but greatly aggravating, the disadvantages of the 
 
 13 * 
 
196 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 existing one. But then, he says, it is absolutely 
 
 necessary that the basis of numeration should be a 
 
 prime number. All other people think it absolutely 
 
 necessary that it should not, and regard the present 
 
 basis as only objectionable in not being divisible 
 
 enough. But M. Comte's puerile predilection for 
 
 prime numbers almost passes belief. His reason is 
 
 that they are the type of irreductibility : each of 
 
 them is a kind of ultimate arithmetical fact. This, 
 
 to any one who knows M. Comte in his later 
 
 aspects, is amply sufficient. Nothing can exceed 
 
 his delight in anything which says to the human 
 
 mind, Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. Il 
 
 prime numbers are precious, doubly prime numbers 
 
 are doubly so ; meaning those which are not only 
 
 themselves prime numbers, but the number which 
 
 marks their place in the series of prime numbers is 
 
 a prime number. Still greater is the dignity of 
 
 trebly prime numbers ; when the number marking 
 
 the place of this second number is also prime. The 
 
 number thirteen fulfils these conditions : it is a 
 
 prime number, it is the seventh prime number, and 
 
 seven is the fifth prime number. Accordingly he 
 
 has an outrageous partiality to the number thirteen. 
 
 Though one of the most inconvenient of all small 
 
 numbers, he insists on introducing it everywhere. 
 
 These strange conceits are connected with a 
 highly characteristic example of M. Comte's frenzy 
 for regulation. He cannot bear that anything 
 should be left unregulated : there ought to be no 
 such thing as hesitation ; nothing should remain 
 arbitrary, for VarUtraire is always favourable to 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 197 
 
 egoism. Submission to artificial prescriptions is as 
 indispensable as to natural laws, and he boasts 
 that under the reign of sentiment, human life may 
 be made equally, and even more, regular than the 
 courses of the stars. But the great instrument of 
 exact regulation for the details of life is numbers : 
 fixed numbers, therefore, should be introduced into 
 all our conduct. M. Comte's first application of 
 this system was to the correction of his own 
 literary style. Complaint had been made, not un- 
 deservedly, that in his first great work, especially 
 in the latter part of it, the sentences and paragraphs 
 were long, clumsy, and involved. To correct this 
 fault, of which he was aware, he imposed on him- 
 self the following rules. No sentence was to exceed 
 two lines of his manuscript, equivalent to five of 
 print. No paragraph was to consist of more than 
 seven sentences. He further applied to his prose 
 writing the rule of Prench versification which for- 
 bids a hiatus (the concourse of two vowels), not 
 allowing it to himself even at the break between 
 two sentences or two paragraphs ; nor did he per- 
 mit himself ever to use the same word twice, 
 either in the same sentence or in two consecutive 
 sentences, though belonging to different para- 
 graphs : with the exception of the monosyllabic 
 auxiliaries.* All this is well enough, especially 
 the first two precepts, and a good way of breaking 
 through a bad habit. But M. Comte persuaded 
 himself that any arbitrary restriction, though in no 
 
 * Preface to the fourth volume of the " Systeine de Politique 
 Positive." 
 
198 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 way emanating from, and therefore necessarily dis- 
 turbing, the natural order and proportion of the 
 thoughts, is a benefit in itself, and tends to im. 
 prove style. If it renders composition vastly more 
 difficult, he rejoices at it, as tending to confine 
 writing to superior minds. Accordingly, in the 
 Synthase Subjective, he institutes the following 
 " plan for all compositions of importance." " Every 
 volume really capable of forming a distinct treatise" 
 should consist of " seven chapters, besides the in- 
 troduction and the conclusion ; and each of these 
 should be composed of three parts." Each third 
 part of a chapter should be divided into " seven 
 sections, each composed of seven groups of sen- 
 tences, separated by the usual break of line. Nor- 
 mally formed, the section offers a central group of 
 seven sentences, preceded and followed by three 
 groups of five : the first section of each part re- 
 duces to three sentences three of its groups, 
 symmetrically placed ; the last section gives seven 
 sentences to each of its extreme groups. These 
 rules of composition make prose approach to the 
 regularity of poetry, when combined with my pre- 
 vious reduction of the maximum length of a sen- 
 tence to two manuscript or five printed lines, that 
 is, 250 letters." " Normally constructed, great 
 poems consist of thirteen cantos, decomposed into 
 parts, sections, and groups like my chapters, sav- 
 ing the complete equality of the groups and of the 
 sections." " This difference of structure between 
 volumes of poetry and of philosophy is more ap- 
 parent than real, for the introduction and the con- 
 
LATER SPECULATIONS OE M. COMTE. 199 
 
 elusion of a poem should comprehend six of its 
 thirteen cantos," leaving, therefore, the cabalistic 
 number seven for the body of the poem. And all 
 this regulation not being sufficiently meaningless, 
 fantastic, and oppressive, he invents an elaborate 
 system for compelling each of his sections and 
 groups to begin with a letter of the alphabet, de- 
 termined beforehand, the letters being selected so 
 as to compose words having " a synthetic or sym- 
 pathetic signification," and as close a relation as 
 possible to the section or part to which they are 
 appropriated. 
 
 Others may laugh, but we could far rather 
 weep at this melancholy decadence of a great in- 
 tellect. M. Comte used to reproach his early 
 English admirers with maintaining the " con- 
 spiracy of silence " concerning his later perform- 
 ances. The reader can now judge whether such 
 reticence is not more than sufficiently explained 
 by tenderness for his fame, and a conscientious 
 fear of bringing undeserved discredit on the noble 
 speculations of his earlier career. 
 
 M. Comte was accustomed to consider Des- 
 cartes and Leibnitz as his principal precursors, 
 and the only great philosophers (among many 
 thinkers of high philosophic capacity) in modern 
 times. It was to their minds that he considered 
 his own to bear the nearest resemblance. Though 
 we have not so lofty an opinion of any of the three 
 as M. Comte had, we think the assimilation just : 
 these were, of all recorded thinkers, the two who 
 bore most resemblance to M. Comte. They were 
 
200 LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE. 
 
 like him in earnestness, like him, though scarcely 
 equal to him, in confidence in themselves; they 
 had the same extraordinary power of concatena- 
 tion and co-ordination ; they enriched human 
 knowledge with great truths and great concep- 
 tions of method ; they were, of all great scientific 
 thinkers, the most consistent, and for that reason 
 often the most absurd, because they shrank from 
 no consequences, however contrary to common 
 sense, to which their premises appeared to lead. 
 Accordingly their names have come down to us 
 associated with grand thoughts, with most import- 
 ant discoveries, and also with some of the most 
 extravagantly wild and ludicrously absurd concep- 
 tions and theories which ever were solemnly pro- 
 pounded by thoughtful men. We think M. Comte 
 as great as either of these philosophers, and hardly 
 more extravagant. Were we to speak our whole 
 mind, we should call him superior to them : 
 though not intrinsically, yet by the exertion of 
 equal intellectual power in a more advanced state 
 of human preparation ; but also in an age less 
 tolerant of palpable absurdities, and to which those 
 he has committed, if not in themselves greater, at 
 least appear more ridiculous. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 * RECEIVED. V « 
 
 JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. 
 
 
 
POSITIVI ST PUBL ICATIONS. 
 
 A GENERAL VIEW OF POSITIVISM. By 
 
 Auguste Comte. Translated by Dr J. II. Bridges. Crown 
 8vo. 8s. 6d. 
 
 By Richard Congreve, M.A. 
 
 THE CATECHISM OF POSITIVE RELIGION, 
 
 translated from the French of Auguste Comte. 6s. 6d. 
 
 INDIA, is. 
 
 THE ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE WEST. 4s. 
 
 THE NEW RELIGION IN ITS ATTITUDE 
 
 TOAYAEDS THE OLD. A Sermon. Is. 
 
 THE PROPAGATION OF THE RELIGION OF 
 
 HUMANITY. A Sermon. Is. 
 
 ITALY AND THE WESTERN POWERS. 6d. 
 THE LABOUR QUESTION. 4d. 
 ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND. 2s. 6d. 
 GIBRALTAR, OR THE FOREIGN POLICY 
 
 OE ENGLAND. 2nd Edition. 
 
 COMTE'S POSITIVIST CALENDAR. By Henry 
 
 Edger. 2s. 6d. 
 
 MODERN TIMES. THE LABOUR QUESTION 
 
 AND THE EAMILY. By the same. 3d. 
 
 Ouvrages d } Auguste Comte. 
 
 SYSTEME DE POLITIQUE POSITIVE, OU 
 
 TEAITE DE SOCIOLOGIE INSTITUANT LA EE- 
 LIGION DE L'HUMANITe. 4 Vols. in-8. 30f. 50c. 
 
 TRAITE ELEMENTAIRE DE GEOMETRIE 
 ANALYTIQUE. 1 Yol. in-8. 7f. 
 
 TRAITE PHILOSOPHIQUE D'ASTRONOMIE 
 
 POPULAIEE. 1 Yol. in-8. 6f. 
 
 DISCOURS SUR L'ENSEMBLE DU POSI- 
 
 TIYISME. 1 Yol. in-8. 4f. 50c. 
 
2 Positivist Publications. 
 
 APPEL AUX CONSERVATEURS. l Vol. in-8. 3f. 
 CATECHISME POSITIVISTE. l Vol. in-12. 3f. 
 SYNTHESE SUBJECTIVE. TOME PREMIER, 
 
 CONTENANT LE SYSTEME DE LOGIQUE POSI- 
 TIVE, OU TEAITE DE PHILOSOPHIE MATHEMA- 
 TIQTJE. I Vol. in-8. 9f. 
 
 REFLEXIONS SYNTHETIQUES AU POINT 
 
 DE VUE POSITIVISTE SUE LA PHILOSOPHIE, LA 
 MOEALE, ET LA EELIGIONE. Par M. de Constant 
 Eebecque. 1 Vol. 8f. 
 
 APPRECIATION POSITIVE DE LIMITATION. 
 
 Par le meme. 5f. 
 
 ESSAI SUE LA PRIERE. Par M. Joseph 
 
 Lonchampt. Brochure. 
 
 APERgUS GENERAUX SUR LA DOCTRINE 
 
 POSITIVISTE. Par M. de Lombrail. 1 Vol. 3f. 50c. 
 
 TRAITE D'ANATOMIE GENERALE ; THE- 
 
 OEIE DE LA STEUCTUEE. Par L. A. Seoond. 1 Vol. 
 in-8. 6f. 
 
 HISTOIRE ET SYSTEMATISATION DE LA 
 
 BIOLOGIE. Par le meme. 1 Vol. 2f. 50c. 
 
 COURS PHILOSOPHIQUE SUR L'HISTOIRE 
 
 GeNeEALE DE L'HUMANITE, discoues 
 D'OTJVEETUEE. Par M. Pierre Laeeitte. 2f. 50c. 
 
 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE 
 
 COMTE. By Harriet Martineau. 2 Vols. 8vo. 16s. 
 
 NOTICE SUR LES TRAVAUX ET LA VIE 
 
 D'AUGUSTE COMTE. Par le Dr Eoblnet. 8vo. 
 
 LA CHINE. CONSIDERATIONS SUR L'EN- 
 
 SEMBLE DE LA CIVILISATION CHINOISE. Par M. 
 Pierre Lafeitte. 3f. 
 
 APPEL AUX MEDECINS. Par le Dr Audiffrent. 
 
 3f. 
 DANTON. MEMOIRE SUR SA VIE PRIVEE 
 
 (APPUYE DE PIECES JUSTIEICATIVES). Par le 
 Dr Eobinet. 8vo. 6f. 
 
 N. TRUBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.