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 en
 
 THE 
 
 SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND EELIGION OF 
 
 COMTE
 
 FUBr.ISHKD BV 
 
 JAMES MACI.EHOSE AND SONS. GLASGOW, 
 Ptililtshrrs to the antbfrsitu. 
 
 MACMII.LAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK. 
 
 Lo^idon, ■ ■ - Shnpkin, Hamilton and Co. 
 
 Cambridge, ■ - Macmillan and Bmves. 
 
 Edinburgh, - ■ Douglas and Foulis. 
 
 MDCCCXCIII.
 
 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND 
 RELIGION OF COMTE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD CAIRD, LL.D., D.C.L. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OLASQOW 
 LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORIl 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 GLASGOW 
 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS 
 
 publishers to the gJnibcvsitg 
 
 1893 
 
 149343
 
 
 WITH AFFECTION AND ESTEEM, 
 MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE 
 
 JOHN NICHOL.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 a 
 
 g GENERAL ACCOUNT OF COMTE's PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 __i f! mntp\<i fii.ndamp.ntal princip les — Their heariiui_on_}m viQiV of 
 
 2 history — Decay of theology and of the social system founded 
 
 ^ on it — Metaphysic>t, its strength for destruction and weakness 
 
 t3 for construction — // prcjiares the v:ay for positive science, on 
 
 O 'which the social system of the future must he based — Necessity 
 
 W for a new religion based on scie7ice — Humanity the true object 
 
 of worship — The social system corresponding to the religion of 
 
 Humanity — Man's intellectual and moral poivers evolved in 
 
 conflict with nature — The nature of the social organization 
 
 and the three forms of society, the Family, the State, and the 
 
 Church — The Priesthood of Humanity and its office. 1-46 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF COMTE's PHILOSOPHY HIS 
 
 OPPOSITION TO METAPHYSIC AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 Growth of a nevj view of the social organism opposed at once to 
 Individualism and Socialism — Comte and the (j£xma7i Idealists
 
 -iii CONTENTS. 
 
 —Meaning of his attack on Metaphysics— His real agreement 
 with modern metaphysicians— He adopts Locke's principles as 
 to knowledge, yet is opposed to the Individualism of Locke's 
 French disciples— He attacks Realism as a Nominalist and 
 yomn\{lii\\\\ lilil i\~1^mUnt, iritinT if rriTi'i^iri qtiidcd h " higher 
 principle than either — His mistaken attitude towards the 
 '^Ut\ia( l^los6p7iy^Relutio7i...u;^^-Pkiim0pIi^.Jo. Science— It 
 makes men conscious of their guiding principles — Comte's un- 
 consciousness of the categories that g^iide his thought — Con- 
 sequent defects in his view of the development of Religion, of 
 Philosophy, and of Science— Mr. Spencer's criticism and 
 Littr€s answer — Ambiguity in the opposition between the uni- 
 versal and the particular 47-93 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE POSITIVE OR CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE OF COMTE's PHILO- 
 SOPHY — HIS SUBSTITUTES FOR METAPHYSIC AND 
 THEOLOGY. 
 
 His recognition of the need of substitutes for Theology and 
 Metaphysic — His assertion that his ph ilosopku-is relative and 
 su bjective — Double meaning of the relativity (f knowledge, as 
 involving the assertion or the denial of real or absolute know- 
 ledge — Collision of Comte's earlier and later views on this 
 point — Comte's stibjective synthesis not subjective in the sense 
 of Individualism, nor yet in the sense that a conscious subject 
 is implied in all objects — His compromise between these opposite 
 theories — His doctrine that man sees th e viojildAxi ordine ad 
 hominem but not in ordme,-ad, _unive rsum — Impossibility of 
 separating nature from man or of criticising the whole system 
 to v)hich man belongs — Defects of Comte's religion according 
 to his own idea of religion — Schisms in the school of Comte. 
 
 94-148
 
 CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 comte's view of the relation of the intellect to 
 
 THE heart ITS EFFECT ON His CONCEPTION OK 
 
 HISTORY AND OF THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 
 
 The necessity for unity in man's intellectual and moral lift — 
 Nature of the conflict heticeen the intelligence and the heart — 
 It is really a conflict of intelligence with itself — Criticism of 
 Comte's doctrine that the intelligence must he subjected to the 
 heart — Its efect upon his conception of history, especially of 
 the history of Christianity — The two elements in Christianity, 
 their conflict and reconciliation in its development — The nega- 
 tive tendencies of mediceval Catholicism and the positive tend- 
 encies of the modern era — Comte's imperfect conception of the 
 Reformation and the Revolution— His restoration of the 
 mediceval ideal — His general position as a Philosopher. 
 
 149-210
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This volume consists of a series of articles wliicli 
 have already appeared in the Contemporary Review, 
 and which the proprietors of that Eeview have 
 kindly permitted me to republish. A few para- 
 graphs have been re-written, and a few verljal 
 changes introduced, to remove obscurity or in- 
 accuracy, but the general substance of the articles 
 remains unaltered. 
 
 In the following exposition and criticism of 
 Comte's philosophy I have considered it mainly, 
 though not exclusively, in its ethical and religious 
 aspects. I have not attempted to deal with the 
 detailed discussion of the nature and methods of 
 the sciences in Comte's FhilosojjJiie Positive, except 
 in so far as is necessary for the understanding 
 of the Politique Positive, in which the social and 
 religious aims of his philosophy are for the first 
 time explicitly stated. Not, indeed, that there 
 is any very marked division between his earlier 
 and his later treatises. The changes observal^le 
 in the latter do not show, as has sometimes 
 been represented, a sudden revolution of opinion :
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 they are only the last result of tendencies which 
 had been gaining ground in Comte's mind as his 
 work advanced, and gradually carrying him away 
 from his original principles, or at least greatly 
 modifying their first significance, I have preferred, 
 however, to confine myself, in the main, to the 
 social philosophy of Comte and the restoration of 
 religion connected therewith, partly because I have 
 not sufficient scientific knowledge to estimate the 
 value of his critical review of mathematics and 
 physics, chemistry and biology ; and partly because, 
 so far as I know, there has been very little serious 
 criticism of that part of his work which he regarded 
 (I think justly) as the most important and original. 
 In his earlier treatise, or at least in the greater 
 part of it, Comte was working upon lines which 
 are common to him with all the representatives 
 of what in the last century was termed " Enlight- 
 enment," and now most often goes by the names 
 of " Positivism " or " Agnosticism." But the dis- 
 tinctive _jDeculiaiil^L_iiLJlkLiiil^^ does not 
 , stop at that negation of metaphysics and theology 
 whi ch is charact eristic o f this~~school, but ' that his 
 PositivLsm reproduces^ both, though in a new form. 
 It fs7 indeed, just this new eleliient in Comte which 
 gives a truly " positive " meaning to his well-known 
 law of development, which in its first form might 
 more truly be described as " negative." For in 
 that form all that it distinctly tell s us abo ut the 
 deve lopment of t he_Jm man mind is that man on ce 
 beli eved in theolog ical oi^ me taphysi cal fictions, an d 
 that lie h as now_£eased, or is gradually ceasing,
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 to believe in them. In his later writings, however, 
 Comte has come to see that l>otli Theology and 
 Metaphysics are based upon perennial wants of man's 
 spiritual nature, wants which, as man, he cannot 
 but feel, and for which a real and not merely a 
 fictitious satisfaction can be provided. He teaclies 
 us, ther efore, to regard the progress of man as a 
 true devel opment, in which the passing away of 
 the first for ms of his higher life is incidental to 
 the lurther~jnanifestation__o ^^ spirit which w as 
 once exp ressed in th em. Hence the last or " posi- 
 tive " stage of thought is conceived to be a negation 
 and abolition of the past, in which all that gave ^^-/C- 
 the past its value is reaflirmed and maintained. 
 It is a hJCThpr "pnsitivp /' w hich IS re ached th rough 
 the neo-ation of the lower, but it is itself a great 
 deal" more "than thatnegation. 
 
 ^owTthe ultimate interest of Comte's philosophy 
 lies in the success or failure of this attempt of 
 his to find a new satisfaction for those higher wants 
 of humanity, which Th eology and Metaphysic, or, ^ 
 as I should prefer to say, E eligion and Philosophy, , 
 have so long been supposed to satisfy. It is not 
 difficult to describe, at least in general terms, what 
 these wants are. Philosophy professes to seek and 
 to find the principle of unity which underlies all 
 the manifold particular truths of the separate sciences, 
 and in reference to which they can be brought 
 together and organized as a system of knowledge. 
 And Eeligion, while it also is concerned with an 
 absolute principle of reality, diflers from Philosophy 
 mainly in this, that it is not merely or primarily
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 theoretical. For Iveligion, what is required is such 
 a conviction as to the ultimate basis of our exist- 
 ence as shall enable us to find therein at once an 
 adequate object of affection and a sufficient aim for 
 all our practical endeavours. Now a scientific Ag- 
 nosticism, such as is common at the present day, 
 means either that there are no such wants in man, 
 or that, if they exist, no provision is made for 
 their satisfaction. Such an Agnosticism could scarcely 
 find a better expression for itself than the Comtean 
 .^ law of intellectual development ; for, as that law is 
 commonly understood, it implies that the whole pro- 
 gress of man has been just his gradual awakening 
 to the necessity of renouncing all effort to penetrate 
 to the reality which is hidden behind the veil of 
 phenomena. On this view, it is vain for man to ask 
 any longer the question of Philosophy, or to attempt 
 to find a support for his life in the faiths and 
 hopes of religion. Man is but a link or a series 
 of links in the endless chain of phenomenal causes ; 
 his utmost knowledge cannot reach beyond the re- 
 lations of particular things to each other and to 
 his own particular existence ; and whatever he may 
 desire, to these relations he must be content prac- 
 tically to limit himself. Tccutii hahita et noris quam 
 sit tihi curta supdlex. 
 
 Now the peculiarity of Comte's position is that 
 he admits the principle on which this Agnostic view 
 is based, and yet at the same time rejects the 
 \ conclusions which are usually and naturally drawn 
 from it. He accepts the situation as he under- 
 stands it. He admits and contends that Philosophy
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 is defeated in its attempt to reacli an al).solute 
 principle — a principle of unity, whitli is at once 
 the real or objective centre of the universe, and the 
 subjective centre for our knowledge of it. He 
 admits and contends that there is a great gulf 
 fixed between the absolute reality of things and 
 our consciousness of them. Nevertheless, he holds 
 that, in a sense, we may still aspire to that en- 
 cyclopaedic or universal view of things which 
 Philosophy pretended to give ; for, though we cannot 
 reach an objective principle of unity in things, we 
 can still gather knowledge to a subjective centre, 
 by regarding all things in relation to our own 
 needs and uses. This, however, does not mean 
 that we are to view everything in relation to our 
 own individual pleasures and pains. For the indi- 
 vidual is essentially related to his race ; or rather, ' 
 to use Comte's own expression, the " individual 
 man is a mere abstraction, and there is nothing 
 real but Humanity." Hence, in knowledge and in 
 feeling we are carried beyond ourselves ; and as in 
 our moral life we can rise from egoism to altruism, 
 so in our intellectual life we can learn to regard 
 the world from the point of view, not of the 
 individual, but of the race. And the same change 
 brings with it the restoration of religion. The 
 " objective " or absolute God, the God who made 
 all things work together for good to His creatures, 
 has disappeared with the fictions of childhood. 
 'But His place has been taken by Humanity, con- 
 ceived as a great providential existence, which 
 sustains and controls the life of the individual
 
 xvi PREFACE. 
 
 man, and in wliich he finds a sufficient object for 
 all his devotion. Looking to this Great Being, 
 man need not feel the want of any other God. 
 He has before his eyes One who can help him 
 and whom he can love and serve. Or if he 
 should still feel something wanting, as an object 
 of worship, in a Being who is not the Absolute 
 l>eing, he is at liberty to indulge in the poetic 
 illusion which makes Nature, as well as Humanity, 
 the friend of man. If he does so, however, he 
 must remember that he is yielding to an illusion, 
 which is not supported by anything we know of 
 Nature ; for Nature, apart from the action of man 
 upon it, shows itself as a mere fatality, which is 
 . altogether indifferent to his weal or woe. 
 
 Even this short sketch of Comte's system — for 
 the detailed exposition of which the reader is re- 
 ferred to the following chapters — may suffice to 
 show where the vital spot, the Achilles' heel, of 
 Comte's philosophy lies. It lies in the idea of a 
 '^^ " s ubjective synthe sis " or relative centre of know- 
 ledge. This idea for Comtists is the articulus 
 stantis vel cadentis philosophiac. If this central 
 principle can be securely defended, it matters little 
 to the orthodox Positivist how many of the subor- 
 dinate elements of Comte's thought may have to be 
 abandoned or modified. If it has to be surrendered, 
 however numerous and valuable may be the separate 
 truths and suggestions which are discoverable in 
 every part of Comte's works, his philosophy as a 
 whole must be given up. From what I have read 
 of the works of Comte's most zealous and discerning
 
 / 
 
 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 followers, I am disposed to think that tliey would 
 be ready to accept this issue. Os'ow Conitu's position ' 
 has generally been attacked, if one might so express 
 it, from the rear, i.e., by those whose views accord 
 most with his earlier doctrine expressed in the 
 Philosophic Positive, and who regard liini as aban- 
 doning the true Positivism when he admits any 
 philosophical or religious synthesis whatever, whetlier 
 subjective or objective, whether relative or absolute^ 
 It is in this way that Comte was assailed by 
 Littr(^, the most eminent of his French disciples ; 
 and it is in this way also that he was criticized 
 by Mill and Lewes, who, without being strictly 
 his disciples, accepted most of the leading ideas of 
 his earlier work. ' If there is any novelty in the"1 
 criticism contained in the following pages, it is that V 
 it starts from the opposite point of view, and seeks 
 to show that the true synthesis of philosophy must"~"" 
 be objective as well as sul)jective, and that there 
 can be no religion of Humanity, which is not also 
 a religion of God, And this means that it is 
 logically impossible to go beyond the merely 
 individualistic point of view with which Comte 
 started, except on the assumption that the intelli- 
 gence of man is, or involves, a universal principle 
 of knowledge. The same arguments, in fact, which 
 break down the division between man and man, 
 break down also the division between man and 
 nature ; for, if all mankind be considered as 
 organically united, it becomes impossible not to 
 recognize in nature an essential relation to man, 
 which makes it in some sense a part of the same
 
 XVlll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 organism. The history of the development of 
 Comte's thought is itself, as I endeavour in the 
 sequel to show, an evidence of this principle ; for 
 it is the history of a development which ends by 
 all but retracting the negations with which it 
 
 Jjegins. And when, in his Synthase Subjective, 
 Cointe sanctions the poetic treatment of Space and 
 the Earth, as divine friends of man and members 
 of a kind of Trinity in which Humanity is the 
 third person, he comes very near to a complete 
 return upon himself. It has, indeed, been contended 
 by Dr. Bridges * that this is but the ordinary 
 license of poetry, such, for instance, as we find in 
 Shelley's Earth-hymn in the " Prometheus Unbound." 
 " Supposing any one had taken Shelley seriously 
 to task for maintaining that the Earth is alive, 
 should we not think him curiously dull and 
 pedantic ? " True, it may be answered : but, 
 supposing any one had maintained that the earth 
 is not in any sense the expression of that spiritual 
 principle which expresses itself in a higher way 
 in living beings, and above all in man, and that, 
 therefore, there is nothing hut fiction in the 
 ascription of life to it, should we not be entitled 
 to say that he had lost hold of the sense in which 
 poetry is truth ? Should we not consider that 
 he had degraded poetry from a sensuous and there- 
 fore partly fictitious presentment of ideal truth, into 
 a mere plaything of fancy which bodies forth things 
 that are not as if they were ? In Comte's case 
 
 f^^the interest of the poetic fiction consists in this, 
 * " Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrine," p. 60.
 
 PREFACE. xix 
 
 that it was the huaginative anticipation of a truth 
 towards which he was moving, l)iit which hi' 
 had not distinctly recognized. His imagination 
 had already emancipated him from the limits of 
 those earlier opinions of his, which still held good 
 for his understanding. If he had taken one step 
 farther, the wheel would have " come full circle " ; 
 and he would have restored lioth Theology and 
 Philosophy to the place from which he expelled 
 them, j He would have "burnt what he had adored, 
 and adored what he had burnt." 
 
 I cannot say so much in criticism of Comte's 
 views without adding — what every new reading of 
 his works and especially of the Politique Fosithc 
 makes me feel more strongly — that the value of 
 his teaching is by no means to be estimated by 
 its mere logical result. Whatever may be said 
 of his philosophy as a whole, he possessed that 
 unmistakable instinct for truth which renders 
 even the errors and inconsistencies of men of 
 genius more instructive than the most unexception- 
 able reasonings of many judicious persons, who 
 follow the beaten tracks of thought and, tlierefore, 
 " need no repentance." 
 
 EDWARD (JAIRD. 
 
 University ov Glasgow, 
 March, 1885.
 
 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND 
 RELIGION OF COMTE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF COMTE'S PHlLOSOrHV. 
 
 Comte^s fundamental principles — Their hearing on his vieiv of 
 history — Decg,y of theology and of the social system founded 
 on it — Metaphysics, its strength for destruction aiid weakness 
 for construction — It prepares the vmy for positive science, on 
 which the social system of the future must be based — Necessity 
 for a new religion based on science — Humanity the true object 
 of worship — The social system corresponding to the religion of 
 Humanity — Maris intellectual and moral poioers evolved in 
 conflict with nature — The nature of the social organization 
 and the three forms of society, the Family, the State, and the 
 Church — The Priesthood of Humanity and its office. 
 
 It is impossible to understand the errors of a great 
 writer unless we do justice to the truth which under- 
 lies them. In judging of Comte's philosophy, and 
 especially of his social philosophy, this law of 
 criticism has often been neglected, even by those 
 who, from their general philosophical point of view,
 
 2 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 might seem best qualified to appreciate him. Dis- 
 agreeing as I do with many of his conclusions, I 
 cannot hope to be entirely successful in doing him 
 justice. But the attempt to do so may have its use, 
 if only in bringing to light the relationship of philo- 
 sophies which are commonly regarded as having no 
 connection with each other. The spirit of tlie time 
 is greater than any of its expressions, and it moulds 
 them all, under whatever outward diversity of form, 
 to a common result. If there is anything which 
 the history of philosophy teaches with clearness, it 
 is that contemjjoraneous movements of the human 
 spirit, even those which appear to be most inde- 
 pendent or antagonistic, are but partial expressions 
 of a truth which is not fully revealed in any one 
 of them, and which can be adequately appreciated 
 only by a later generation. The present is said to 
 be par excellence the age of historical criticism ; but 
 the historical imagination is worth little if it does 
 not enable us to discover identity of nature under 
 the most varied disguises, and, instead of being con- 
 fined to the formulae of any one philosophy, to remould 
 and renew our own ideas by entering into the minds 
 of others. In order to prepare the way for a just 
 appreciation of the teaching of Comte, I shall, in 
 this chapter, give a short sketch of his philosophy, 
 and more particularly of his social philosophy, as 
 far as possible from his own point of view, reserving
 
 RELATION TO ROUSSEAU. 
 
 for subsequent chapters what I liave to say i 
 way of criticism. 
 
 There are two inaiu thouijhts which rule the 
 
 ■ -.::o 
 
 the 
 
 
 of Comte, and are the sources of luusL of the j)eculi- cJ,',Tto!' 
 ;iviti('s of his system. Tlie one is " tlie hiw of the 
 three stages "| the other is tlic suljordination of 
 science_to_uiaa?s social well-being, or, as he expresses ~~^ 
 it, of the intellect tt) the heart. The first of these f ^ 
 thoughts eniliodii's his ciiicrinu of l<uo\v]c(l'_;v ; the J 
 \second is the principle by which he seeks to system- \ 
 atize knowledge, and to estimate the relative value . ' 
 of its parts. The relation of these two points in 
 the mind of Comte will be best understood if we 
 recall his historical position and the early course of 
 his mental development. As with most educated 
 Frenchmen of his time, Comte's first thoughts on 
 social politics were suggested by the llevolution ; 
 and his youthful connection with St. Simon showed 
 that he shared in that reaction against the individ- 
 ualistic philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, which 
 gave rise to so many socialistic and communistic 
 theories. In the school of St. Simon, Comte learned 
 the falsehood of the gospel of Eousseau — that last ^ 
 quintessence of the philosophy which found reality 
 only in the individual, and which, therefore, idealized 
 the natural man as he is apart from, and prior to, 
 all society, and regarded all social inlluence as de- 
 teriorating from his original purity. The hollowness 
 
 i^V 

 
 4 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 of that theory had l)cen written in letters of blood 
 on the page of recent history, and tliat too plaiidy 
 to be ignored by the most hopeful theorist on social 
 sulijects, Nor could anyone who had read it there, 
 fail to perceive also the less striking failure of the 
 same doctrines in tlieir economical form. The libera- 
 tion of the individual liad nut brought to man political 
 salvation, l)ut had rather revealed his essential weak- 
 \ , ness when emancipated from the restraints of social 
 order. " Laissez faire " had not, as was expected, 
 introduced an economic millennium ; but had rather 
 given rise to a struggle of interests, which, if not 
 moderated by any higher principle, might end in 
 the dissolution of society. Hence the mere irrational 
 movement of reaction drove the mass of men to 
 bind again upon themselves the fetters which the 
 Eevolution had broken, and taught those who, like 
 De Maistre, represented the ideas and interests of 
 the past, the speculative strength of their position. 
 De Maistre saw clearly that mere individualism is 
 anarchy, and that the moral education of man is 
 possible only through some binding social force. Xor 
 was it difficult for a skilful special pleader like him 
 to confound this truth with the doctrine that the 
 only safety for civilization lay in a renewed submis- 
 sion to the medineval order of Church and State. On 
 the other hand, men who were too nuich imbued 
 with the modern spirit to be moved l)y this re-
 
 RELATION TO THE SOCIALISTS. .-, 
 
 actionary k)f,dc, were led to detach the socialistic 
 idea from the special form it had taken in past 
 history, and to seek for some new form of political 
 organization, in which individual freedom should be 
 again subordinated to social order. Such men were 
 St. Simon and Fourier — not, in any sense, great or 
 comprehensive thinkers, but writers who were effec- 
 tive and influential for the moment simply because 
 they represented the abstraction which was then 
 rising into favour, and which liad at least this to 
 recommend it, that it was the opposite abstraction 
 to that of the IJevolutionists. Comte was too roliust 
 and manysided to remain long under the inHuence 
 either of the concrete or of the abstract reactionaries 
 ■ — either of those who sought to return to the form, 
 or of those who sought to return to the spirit, f)f 
 the past. But his temporary subjection to St. 
 Simon, and his ultimate revolt against him, hel]) us 
 in some measure to understand that double move- ^^;;- 
 
 men'E of thought out of which his system sprung. 
 His subjectionT indicated that he had seen the in- 
 sufficiency and unreality, the abstract and unhistorical 
 character, of the gospel of mere rebellion. His 
 emancipation from St. Simon indicated his discovery 
 that the simple repression of reliellion, the mere 
 closing up of the ranks of society under a social 
 despotism, was an utterly inadequate solution of the 
 difficulty. The problem before him, therefore, was
 
 6 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 to do justice to the element of truth in each of 
 these movements — to the social imj^ulse on the one 
 hand and to the critical movement of intelligence on 
 the other, — and to reconcile them in a higher unity. 
 Socialism had taught him that social enthusiasm might 
 be separated from the religious and political institu- 
 tions on which it had rested in the past ; and the 
 progress of science had taught him that intelligence 
 has a constructive as well as a critical influence. 
 The solution, therefore, was simply to take the 
 former, as determining the end and goal of all prac- 
 tical effort ; and the latter, as pointing out the 
 proper means for its attainment. The enthusiasm 
 of humanity guided by science, science directed so 
 as to secure the highest happiness of humanity, were 
 thus the two ideas by which the course of his 
 thoughts was determined, 
 hl'g'^on'hrs' -'■'^ ^^® ^^^^ place these ideas gave to Comte what 
 history. secmcd to him a perfect key to the history of the 
 past. Man he conceives of as a being who at first 
 is divided between weak social tendencies which 
 l)ind him to his fellows, and strong selfish, or, as 
 he calls them, personal instincts, which make liim 
 their rival and their enemy ; yet without the triumph 
 of the former over the latter there can be no security 
 for his welfare or even for his existence. This 
 triumph of social sympathy is the first necessity 
 of civilization ; and in an early age any theory of
 
 THE NEED FOR A THEOLOGY. 7 
 
 life must l>e welcome which promises to secure it. 
 The first social leaders of mankind, even if such an 
 idea could have presented itself to them, could not 
 wait with patience till experience had revealed to 
 them the true nature of man and the world he 
 lives in. Their ignorance and their benevolent haste 
 to organize society, and to bind men together in 
 the bonds of a definite faith, made them eagerly 
 grasp at the first explanation of the universe which 
 imagination suggested ; and that first explanation 
 was of course anthropomorphic. " As they watched 
 nature, as their eyes wandered over the surface of 
 the profound oceau, instead of the bed hidden under 
 the waters, they saw nothing but the refiection of 
 their own faces."* Hence the first moral order and 
 social discipline established among men was based 
 upon a theological explanation of the universe. Nor 
 did the insecurity of the foundation seem for a long 
 time to interfere with the firmness of the super- 
 structure. The union of men was like the union 
 of an army — a union of men bound together for 
 life and death, though the bond that united thfim 
 was but a fairy tale. Yet, in the long run, it was 
 impossible that criticism should not make itself heard. 
 Advancing experience, as it disclosed that the world 
 is no plaything of arbitrary wills but an order of 
 fixed law, gradually limited the free play of imagin- 
 *Tur<i;ot.
 
 8 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 ation, and removed the gods to a greater and 
 greater distance. When, therefore, jihenomena were 
 seen to group themselves in large genera, with 
 permanent attributes and relations, Polytheism rose 
 out of Petichism ; and when the ideas of the unity 
 of nature and of the general persistency of its 
 laws began to prevail, theology was inevitably 
 reduced to the conception of one, overruling will 
 which, directly or by its ministers, controlled the 
 whole movement of things. Up to this point the 
 theological form of thought persisted : in one point 
 of view it might even be said that, up to this point, 
 
 -* it was strengthening its hold upon men. For, 
 every successive concentration of the divine power 
 made the idea of it a firmer and more comprehensive 
 bond of social order, until at length the levelling 
 and organizing genius of Eome laid the foundation 
 of the universal empire, and Christian Monotheism 
 broke down all the walls of division between races 
 and nations. 
 thet?ogy?i'^ But this apparent advance of the theological 
 
 j spirit was illusive, for it was really due to an 
 intellectual movement, which must, in the long run, 
 prove fatal to that spirit. The concentration of 
 Fetichism into Polytheism, and of Polytheism into 
 Monotheism, was really the gradual withdrawal of 
 theology from the exj^lanation of the universe, till, 
 finally, it was driven to its last stronghold, its most
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THEOLOGY. J) 
 
 general and abst ract form. Ilonce. the liour of 
 its greatest social triumph was that whieli preceded 
 its decisive fall. The same growing jjcrceplion of 
 the order of the world inuhn* general laws, whidi 
 had forced the theologian first to substitute a 
 limited for an indetinite number of divine wills, 
 and then to substitute one will for this limited 
 number, necessarily and inevitably awakened a doubt 
 whether there is in nature any indication of will 
 at all. Monotheism had represented the world as 
 a general order of iixed laws, only interrupted by 
 exceptional miracles ; but increasing knowledge made 
 miracles more and more incredible, till at last the 
 theologians were reduced to the assertion that 
 their God had once performed them, but that he 
 performed them no longer. AVhen this point was 
 reached, it was not difficult to see that the whole 
 anthropomorphic explanation of things was on the 
 eve of disappearing. A God, who was nearer man 
 in the past than he is in the present, could not 
 be the God of the future. 
 
 But even before this period, the growing weakness And ..( the 
 
 social Older 
 
 of the theoretical basis of belief had bc^ain to affect connected 
 
 ' with it. 
 
 the practical life of men. The social order was built 
 upon theology, and therefore the advance of the 
 critical spirit was continually loosening its founda- 
 tions. Hence the fierce hostility of the representatives 
 of that order to the freedom of the intelligence.
 
 10 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 That hostility, however, is to be attributed not so 
 much to their indignation at unbelief in itself, as to 
 their alarm at the dissolution of social order which 
 was its practical result. Nor was it altogether inex- 
 cusable, so long as the assailants of the old faith 
 were unable to propound any theoretical principles 
 which could be made the basis of reconstruction. 
 Now the metaphysical principles to which such 
 assailants appealed were really negations pretending 
 to be affirmations, and their purely negative char- 
 acter must reveal itself as soon as their victory 
 was achieved. Men in whom the practical and 
 organizing impulse was strong, who felt the necessity 
 for a moral order, could not but see that such ropes 
 of sand were no real substitute for the old frame- 
 work of social and political life, and they were 
 therefore tempted to shut their eyes to the intel- 
 lectual claims of a truth which could be fertile only 
 n/ in destruction. Thus arose t hat fatal division b e- 
 t ween the heart an d the intellect which has lasted 
 down to the present day, and which must last till 
 the intellect shows itself capable of producing a 
 new system that can sustain the social order more 
 securely, and satisfy the affections and spiritual 
 aspirations of men more completely, than the fic- 
 tions of theology, 
 nfetii.hysi- '^^^^ truth of this view will be more clearly seen 
 of thlught. if we examine the nature of that intermediate system
 
 VICTOR V OF ME TA Pll J \SIC. \ \ 
 
 of critical thought which was tlio great weapon of 
 attack upon theology. This system was, in iacl, 
 only the last abstraction of the theological antliru- 
 pomorphism itself. As in one department of human 
 thought after another the knowledge of the uniform 
 and unchangeable order of things prevailed over the 
 conception of accident ami arbitrary change, the idea 
 of will became attenuated, until it ultimately dis- 
 appeared altogether_ from the ^ explanat io n of natu re. 
 Bui it left behind a kind of spectre of abstraction. 
 Instead of being dominated b y go^d^T'l^^ieiiomena 
 were supposed_to__be_(3 qui i rm,f-.pfri'>y es sences and 
 powers, which, ho wever, were merely eene^i-al nanu's 
 for thes e very phenomena. How abstractions came 
 to be thus substantiated as real entities, separate 
 from the phenomena from which they were derived, 
 might be diificult to understand, if we did not 
 remember that they were but the residua of what 
 had once been individualized pictures of imagination. 
 The essences of the Schoolmen were but the dry 
 bones of the living creatures of poetry which the 
 understanding had slain. " The human mind," as 
 Mill puts it, " 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 disembodiment of a Fetich." Keally, there- 
 fore, these essences and powers were nothing more 
 than the disembodied ghosts, the negative reHexions,
 
 12 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 of the gods whose places they took. They had no 
 positive content of their own. As mere negatives 
 - they had no value except in relation to the corre- 
 sponding affirmatives, although in the first instance 
 imagination was strong enough to give them the 
 semhlance of positive principles occupying the place 
 of the beliefs they expelled. And it was just this 
 temporary illusion which made them such power- 
 ful weapons of destruction. For the revolutionary 
 passion can never be sustained by negations which 
 it recognizes as such. It is impossible to march 
 with enthusiasm to the attack upon the institutions 
 of the past, without the conviction that there is 
 something more to be gained than the destruction 
 of those institutions. 
 men*t of" '^'^^^ metaphysical philosophy, as the necessary fore- 
 
 runner of the philosophy of experience, gradually 
 extended its destructive powder over all branches of 
 human knowledge. At first it laid its hand on the 
 sciences that deal with inorganic nature, and of these, 
 first of all on those that deal with the phenomena 
 furthest from man, and least subject to his control. 
 For man discovers that the phenomena of the heavens 
 are not ruled by arbitrary will, long before he dis- 
 cerns the absence of caprice from the general course 
 of nature. In like manner, he is sensible that inor- 
 ganic things have fixed and unchangeable relations, 
 while as yet the spontaneity of animal life seems to 
 
 Metapliysic.
 
 THE IDEA OF NA TURE. \ ;j 
 
 be as unlimited as that whicli lir attributes to his 
 own will. And cnily last of all iloes it dawn upon 
 him that his own life also is limited and controlled 
 by something, which is neither his own will imr the 
 will of a being like himself whom he can propitiate 
 or persuade — something which is both within and 
 without him, to which he nuist conform himself, 
 seeing it will not conform to him. The last sub- 
 stantiated abstraction, therefore, which is ])ut in the 
 place of the divine powers, is Nature. A nd Nature 
 is only a name for the ge neral course of things, 
 th ough it is regarded by metaphysics a s existing ' 
 apart from and controlling them. But as Nature 
 succeeds to the place of a C^od whom men were 
 conceived to be bound to obey, but able arbitrarily 
 to disobey, so it is represented as the source of a 
 law distinct from the actual course of human life, 
 and to which it does not necessarily conform. The 
 law of nature, in this view, is a law written on 
 man's heart, but not necessarily realized in his actions. 
 In truth, however, it is but the negation of that 
 .order of social life which was based upon the theo- 
 logical idea, though its negative character is neces- 
 sarily hidden from those who believe in it. 
 
 This becomes evident whenever we examine the itspowcrfor 
 
 . destruction. 
 
 main articles contained m this supposed law of nature. 
 For these are simply negations of different parts of 
 that social order which was based upon theology.
 
 14. THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 The first of these articles is the right of private 
 judgment — that is, the right of every individual to 
 emancipate himself from all spiritual authority, and 
 to judge of everything for himself. This principle 
 is merely "a sanction of the state of anarchy, which 
 intervenes between the decay of the old discipline 
 and the formation of new spiritual ties." In other 
 words, it is not a new principle of order, but the 
 abstract expression of the ungoverned state of mere 
 individual opinion, " for no association whatever, even 
 of tlie smallest number of persons and for the most 
 temporary objects, can subsist without some degree 
 of intellectual and moral agreement between its 
 members." In the next place, among the articles 
 of the law of nature, stands the doctrine of e ciualit y, 
 which ha s a mean ing only as the negation of the 
 ol d hierarchy, the old social and political order, but 
 which, taken absolutely, is the negation of all order 
 w jiatev er. For if society is anything more than a 
 collection of unrelated atoms, if it is an organic 
 unity, it must have different organs for its different 
 functions ; and it is as impossible that these organs 
 should all be equal, as that they should all be the 
 same. Th is doctrine, therefore, is but the abstract 
 pr oclamation of social anarchy. To these articles 
 are commonly added the doctrines of national inde- 
 pendence, and of the sovereignty of the people. 
 The former is nothing more than the negation of
 
 THE FORMULAS OF ANARCHY. 15 
 
 that spiritual supremacy of the Church, which in 
 the Middle Ages mediated between the nations ol 
 Europe and made them one community ; hut, taken 
 absolutely, it would imply national isolation and ' 
 international anarchy. The latter is the transference 
 to the governed of that fiction of divine right which 
 was formerly supposed to reside in the governor, 
 and it has no meaning except as the negation of 
 that fiction. For the people cannot rule themselves ; 
 and even to make them choose their ruler, that is, 
 __ to make the inferior and less wise to choose the 
 superior and wiser, cannot be regarded as more 
 than a provisional expedient for anarchic times. 
 
 The articles of the law of nature, then, like alpt» «>•«''• 
 
 ness for 
 
 metaphysical principles, are merely principles of tJ'","*"'"'^' 
 insurrection and revolt. They have no positive 
 validity ; for they are just the ultimate abstractions, 
 or, so to speak, the speculative phantoms of the 
 system which they destroy. As it is said th at a_ 
 man dies when he has seen his own gliost, ?n, arcord- 
 
 " ing to Comte, the destroyer of theology i- ju-l the 
 ghost of itself, raised by abstraction. But the ghost 
 
 *Tilso vanishes when its victim is fairly buried, 
 leaving the field to the growing strength of positive 
 science. 
 
 Positive science, then, is the real cause of all Jf p«-epnro» 
 
 — =».^M^^-^::7 ' . - the way for -^ 
 
 intellectual progres s, and its advance constitute^ the ^"*'"'"^" 
 
 ni8U8 formativus that is concealed be neath the surfa ce i /
 
 10 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 struggle of theology and metaphysics. For, even in 
 the earliest theological era, there was a certain 
 element of positive science, that is, of knowledge 
 of the permanent relations of things. The most 
 arbitrary will is not all arbitrary, but presupposes 
 something of a fixed order without or within ; and 
 therefore the anthropomorphic analogies by which 
 phenomena were interpreted, still left some space 
 for the idea of law. And this space was continually 
 being widened, at the expense of the arbitrary and 
 the accidental. While metaphysics seemed simply 
 to be substituting one transcendent explanation for 
 anothcv, it was really disguising the abandonment 
 of all transcendent explanations whatever, and the 
 introduction of positive explanations in their place. 
 The doubts expressed in the metaphysical criticism 
 were really due to a growing sense of law, which, 
 when it became clear and self-conscious, produced 
 the positive philosophy. Hence there was, for a 
 long time, an intimate alliance between the scientific 
 and the metaphysical spirit, though the former was 
 merely " critical," and the latter " organic." And 
 this alliance was the more easily maintained, because, 
 in the first instance, neither the negative character 
 of the former nor the positive character of the latter 
 was distinctly discerned. Metaphysic was not seen 
 to be merely " critical," because its abstractions were 
 taken to be real entities. And science could not
 
 METAPHYSIC ALLIED WITH SCIENCE. 17 
 
 be seen to be "organic," that is, to contain (ho 
 principle of a new organization of society, till it rose 
 from the contemplation of the inorganic work! to 
 the study of life, and especially of human life. 
 History, however, shows tliat science has always 
 reaped the fruits of every victory won over theology 
 by metaphysic, and on the other hand that metaphysic 
 has never succeeded in maintaining any position 
 against theology, which has not soon been occupied 
 by science. The great metaphysical movement of 
 the Greeks left for its sole permanent result the 
 sciences of Geometry and Astronomy ; while their 
 premature speculations on Psychology and Sociology 
 were suppressed or forgotten by the mediicval church, 
 which directed all the intelligence of the world to 
 the practical work of civilizing and organizing men 
 by means of the monotheistic idea. When thought 
 was again awakened, the abstract metaphysic of the 
 Schoolmen was only the forerunner of the renewed 
 study of natural science, especially of Physics and 
 Chemistry, which at first _j ippeared un der the forms 
 of Astrology and Alch emy ; and the v ictory of Nom- 
 inalism over Eealism, in which the scholastic philo- 
 sophy ended, was the indication of another triumph 
 of the scientific spirit. For Nominalism is simply 
 the negation of that tendency to personify abstrac- 
 tions, which is the essence of metaphysic. Finally, 
 as a consequence of that development of science
 
 18 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 which cuhiiinatecl in Newton^_jneta£hxsic__ceased_to 
 apply its_m ethod to the extern al world, and confin ed 
 itself to the sphere of Biology and Sociology, from 
 which i t is now beiii g___gmdiial]x^4lJv§IJ.- ^^ ^^^ 
 last of these applications, its power for criticism 
 and destruction, and its weakness for reconstruction 
 and reorganization, were proved by the decisive experi- 
 ment of the French Revolution, in which the ideas 
 of the rights of man and the law of nature were 
 tried and found wanting. Since that time political 
 life has fluctuated between the theological and the 
 metaphysical principlet;, and therefore between the 
 opposite dangers of reaction and revolution, finding 
 *" no security for order but in the former, and no 
 security for progress but in the latter. But the 
 advance of Sociology into the jDositive stage, which 
 has been inaugurated by Comte, has, in his view, 
 shown that the opposite interests of order and progress 
 may be equally secured, if only we base both upon 
 a knowledge of the laws by which the existence 
 and activity of man are ruled, and not on the 
 fictions of the imagination, or on the still emptier 
 fictions of the understanding. 
 On science The aim of the future, then, is one with the aim 
 
 the social ' ' 
 
 thffXr/e of the past. That social passion which in all great 
 
 based. constructive periods of human history, and especially 
 
 in the Middle Ages, took hold of theological beliefs 
 
 and made them a means to organize and discipline
 
 A IV IS I-: AGXOSTICISM. 19 
 
 mankind, is still to be tlie .uuidiiiLi; motive of all 
 speculation and action. lUit the svsteiii nf tliou-jjil /'-^\ ' 
 
 which it uses for this end must inevitahly be cliaiii^'ed. 
 Eenouncing the theological and metaphysical interpre- 
 tations of things, which have been jtroveil to be either 
 inconsistent with facts or at least incapable of being 
 verified by facts, we must now base our effort to 
 improve man's estate upon the laws of the resem- 
 blance, the coexistence, and the succession of plieno- 
 mena as these are determined by science. And nn 
 the other hand, as we recognize that all the sciences 
 tend to lose themselves in the multiplicity of a 
 universe, where every path leads to the infinite, we 
 must seek also to organize and discipline the hitherto 
 dispersive efforts of science, so that they may be 
 directed entirely to the relief and furtherance of 
 man's estate. In this way scientific knowledge and 
 social benevolence will act and react, at once limiting 
 and supporting each other, and amid all the darkness 
 of a universe which alisiihiirjii is unknowable, and 
 even rdativdy to liiiiisclf, is only partially knowable, 
 man can yet give a kind of unity and completeness 
 to his transitory existence. For all he needs to know 
 'is that which experience has constantly been teaching, 
 the uniformity and constancy of the laws of pheno- 
 mena. By means of this knowledge, so far as he 
 can obtain it, and without any need to penetrate 
 into the transcendent causes of things, he can fore- 
 
 LV
 
 20 
 
 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Necessity 
 for a new 
 religion. 
 
 Religious 
 basis of 
 life. 
 
 sec many phenomena, like those of the heavens, 
 over which he has no control whatever, and also 
 many phenomena, like those of his own nature and 
 his immediate environment, which he can, to a certain 
 degree, change and modify. And thus he can learn, 
 with continually growing certainty, what are the 
 means he must use to bring within his reach the 
 highest good which the system of things allows him 
 to attain, detaching his thoughts and interests more 
 and more from the unfathomed abyss beyond, which 
 he now knows to be by him unfathomable. 
 
 Is it, then, possible for men to sketch out the 
 programme of an existence limited to this " bank 
 and shoal of time," to conceive it as a complete system 
 in itself, and re'-organiscr sans Dieu ni roi, 'par Ic culte 
 sysMmatique de VhumaniU? Can they, surrendering 
 the belief in " a Divinity that shapes their ends, rough 
 hew them how they will," "constitute a real provi- 
 dence for themselves, in all departments, moral, intel- 
 lectual, and material " ? Comte answers that they 
 can ; and in the " Politique Positive " he tries to 
 exhibit the main outlines of that social system of 
 the future by which this end is to be attained. 
 
 His starting point is — strange as at first it may 
 seem — the idea of religion. " Since religion embraces 
 all our existence, its history must be an epitome of 
 the whole history of our development." Beneath 
 and beyond all the details of our ideas of things.
 
 RELIGION Gl VES L W'l EV 70 L ZEE. •_> 1 
 
 there is a certain "esprit d'ensemble," a general d in- 
 ception of the world without and the world within, 
 in which these details gather to a head. If ijjis 
 conception or picture be coherent witli itself, and 
 if at the same time it he such as to present an 
 object on which our affections can rest, and an end 
 in the pursuit of which all our powers and capacities 
 may be exercised, then our life will have that unity 
 and consistency with itself which is necessary for the 
 highest efficiency and happiness. Such a harmony 
 of existence, in which all its elements are titly co- 
 ordinated, is what, in Comte's view, constitutes a 
 religion. And, since man is both an individual and y 
 a social being, this harmony is seen to in\'()lvc two 
 things. It involves a subordination of all the 
 elements of man's individual nature to some ruling 
 tendency, and it involves a certain adaptation of 
 men to, and a combination of tliem with, each other. 
 Further, this harmony of humanity with itself must 
 also be a harmony of man with the world in which 
 he exists.^^— In other words, the individual can attain 
 his highest perfection and happiness only in so far ^ 
 
 as he is, at once and by virtue of the same principle, 
 in harmony with the world, with his fellow-men, ^ 
 and with himself. 
 
 Now, this harmony cannot be produced by the Kiemenu 
 
 •^ i ./ iiccesHsry 
 
 sway of personal or egoistic motives ; for these are rJi^jo,,. 
 in fatal disagreement with each other, and they set
 
 22 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 each man in antagonism to all other men, and even 
 to the natural conditions of his own existence. The 
 regulation and harmonizing of the nature of the 
 individual man, therefore, implies his attachment or 
 self-surrender to an oly'ect which is without him, and 
 to which he is necessarily related — to some object in 
 tliat world of persons and things wliich hems him 
 in on every side, and which must needs be his 
 *' enemy so long as he is ruled by egoism. Further, 
 if the principle of religion is thus to be found with- 
 out and not within the individual man, it must be 
 found in some object to which he submits as a 
 superior power, and on which, at the same time, 
 his affections can rest. -* Submission and love are 
 both necessary to religion, for if we have merely 
 the former, the utmost we can feel is resignation 
 to a fatality ; and this, though it involves a certain 
 limitation of the selfish tendencies, can never over- 
 come them, or substitute a new motive for them. 
 To retain the energy of egoism and combine it with 
 resignation to a power greater than ours, we must 
 love that power to which we submit. Finally, this 
 submission and self-surrender must be consistent 
 with a certain relative sense of independence, for 
 no feeling is really powerful which does not result 
 in action. Hence, to submission and love, we must 
 add the belief that we can make ourselves useful 
 to that Being to whom we submit and whom we
 
 THREE ELEMENTS OE RELIGION. 23 
 
 love. Only thus, when veneration for that which 
 is above us, is combined with love for that which 
 is the constant source of good to us, and with bene- 
 volence towards that which needs our help,* can 
 we rise above the unreal and imperfect unity of 
 selfishness into the perfect unity of religion. Or, 
 to put it more shortly, in Comte's own language, 
 " the principal religious difficulty is to secure that 
 the external shall regulate the internal without afiect- . , 
 ing its spontaneity " ; to secure, that is, that the free 
 subjective principles of love and benevolence shall 
 attach to the power to which we believe our existence 
 to be subordinated. For if our faith be not one 
 with our love, or if our love be not a principle of 
 activity, we cannot be, in the full sense of the word, 
 religious. 
 
 Now the difficulty of attaining such a harmony or scieutifu- 
 
 •1 o •/ basis for 
 
 unity of existence cannot but be obvious to those ■••^I'sfj*'"- 
 who live in a period when " the intelligence is in 
 insurrection against the heart ; " when what men 
 desire and love is not by any means one with what, 
 on the authority of science, they believe. If, how- 
 ever, we follow the course of advancing knowledge, 
 we shall see that this state of things is merely tem- 
 porary, and that completed positive science gives us 
 back air that in the course of its development it 
 seemed to take away. Science, indeed, from its 
 * Cf. Goethe's " Three Eeverences."
 
 24 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 verv (lawn, when it discovers that there is a fixed 
 order and law in the movement of the heavenly 
 bodies, gives support to one element of religion, the 
 sense that we are in the hands of a superior power. 
 It reveals to man an ultimate necessity which bounds 
 and determines his life — a necessity which, from the 
 nature of the case, he cannot modify. And as the 
 idea of law is gradually extended to physical, chemical, 
 and vital phenomena, this necessity is seen to limit 
 and control him on every side. Phenomena, there- 
 fore, can no longer be regarded as the expressions 
 of the wills of fictitious beings endowed with the 
 qualities most admired in humanity, and therefore 
 capable of being loved. And the natural effect of 
 this is to reduce religion into a mere resignation to 
 an irresistible fate, which is incapable of awaking 
 or responding to human affection. With the rise 
 of sociology, however, science changes its aspect, and 
 begins to restore to us more than all that was con- 
 tained in the dreams of mythology which it has 
 destroyed. For this cul minating science teaches u s 
 to regard the whole ra ce of man as an organic and 
 self-developing unity, in whi ch_we , as individu als, 
 are parts or members. Between our own life and 
 the merely external necessity of nature we see a 
 spiritual power which modifies it and adapts it to 
 \/ our wants. Between the individual and the world 
 stands humanity, and the " main pressure of external
 
 SOCIOLOGY AND RIJ.IGIOX. 2.') 
 
 fatality does not full upon the rdrnier directly, but 
 only through the interposition of the latter." In 
 passing through this medium, hrute necessity is 
 changed more and more into a saving providence. 
 To be convinced of this we need only to observe 
 that, after we go beyond the fixed order of the 
 celestial system, which is the ultimate necessity of 
 our lives, and which lies entirely beyond the reach 
 of our interference, we come upon various orders of 
 phenomena — physical, chemical, and vital — which are 
 capable of modification, and are continuously sub- 
 jected to it by man, and even by plants and animals. 
 So soon as life begins, order becomes the basis of 
 progress : for the living l)eing not only adapts itself 
 to the medium in which it lives, but continually 
 reacts upon that medium, in order to render it more 
 suitable for its wants ; and in the case of man, 
 inasmuch as his existence has a connection and a 
 continuity that binds the whole race together through 
 the long succession of ages, this reaction is cumu- 
 lative. The life of the individual in any age is 
 what it is, by reason of the whole progressive move- 
 ment of humanity ; and the later the time of his 
 appearance tlie more he owes to his race. " The 
 living are always more and more dominated by the 
 dead." On this great benefactor, therefore, his 
 thoughts can rest, as a power which moderates and 
 controls his wliole life, and which controls it not
 
 2G THE SOCIAL PJIILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 merely us a fate to which he must resign himself, 
 but as a providence to which his love and gratitude 
 are due. Xor will such feelings be less powerful 
 because this Providence is one which he can serve, 
 and which needs his service. Hence he is led to 
 contemplate his life in all that makes it worth living, 
 as the gift of a " Grand Etre," to whom during his 
 short term of earthly years it is his highest virtue to 
 devote himself, and with whom it is his final reward 
 to become incorporated. For his " ohjective " or 
 actual existence in time has no valuable result, unless 
 it add to the " suhjcdive " existence of humanity, to 
 the influences and memories which mould for good 
 the lot of subsequent generations. His religion, in 
 short, is to consider himself as a useful link in the 
 chain between the past and future of the race, a 
 soldier of humanity in the continual struggle whereby 
 it adapts itself to its sphere of action, and its sphere 
 of action to itself, so as to realize an ever richer 
 and more harmonious social existence, 
 iiumanity Jt, \^ truc Indccd that Humanity has no absolute 
 
 tlie only •' 
 
 power, that it is hemmed in by a fatality which it 
 can only partially modify. " This immense and 
 eternal Being has not created the materials which 
 its wise activity employs, nor the laws which deter- 
 mine the results of its action." But it is as vain 
 to attempt to raise our hearts beyond this immediate 
 benefactor, as to carry the mind beyond the circle 
 
 true God.
 
 RELIGION OF HUM A MT\ '. 27 
 
 \ 
 
 of experience within wliicli it is necessarily enclosed. 
 Nay, it is not only vain, but hurtful. " The pro- 
 visional r(^'ginie which ends in our day has only too 
 clearly manifested the gravity of this danger, for 
 during it the words of gratitude addressed to a 
 fictitious Being have constituted so many acts of 
 ingratitude to Humanity, the sole author of the 
 benefits for which thanks were given." If the 
 adoration of fictitious powers was morally indispens- 
 able, so long as the true ' Grand Etre ' that rules 
 our lives could not clearly manifest himself, now at 
 least it would tend to turn us away from the sole 
 worship that can improve us. Those who would 
 prolong it at the present day are forgetting its 
 legitimate purpose, which was simply "to direct pro- 
 visionally the evolution of our best feelings, uiulcr \ 
 the regency of God during the long minority of ' 
 Humanity." Of this worship, the Christian doctrine 
 of the incarnation might be regarded as an anticipa- 
 tion, and still more perhaps the mediaeval worship 
 of the Virgin ; for women, as the sex characterized 
 by sympathy, are the fit representatives of Humanity. 
 They mediate between Humanity and man, as Hu- 
 manity mediates between man and the world. 
 
 But the worship of Humanity is only the general The social 
 principle from which the new life of " Sociocracy " \^l^ °° 
 must spring, it is not " Sociocracy " itself. We have '^*^ '*^°"' 
 therefore to inquire what is the order of life that
 
 28 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 corresponds to this new religion. How does it 
 modify our ideas of the relation of men to each 
 other and to the world ? And what light does it 
 cast upon tlie various forms of social existence, upon 
 the Family, the .State, and the Church ? I can only 
 give a brief resume of Comte's answers to these 
 questions, 
 conflict ^11 civilization or improvement depends ulti- 
 
 nature. matcly ou mau's control over material resources, 
 over the powers and products of nature. And, on 
 the other liaiul, it is the reactive influence upon 
 himself of the effort by which he appropriates and 
 adapts these resources to his purposes, which first 
 civilizes and educates him. Man can only conquer 
 nature by obeying her laws, and to obey these laws 
 he must know them. Hence it is the necessities of 
 the practical life which excite the first efforts after 
 scientific knowledge, and it is under the pressure of 
 the same necessities that man first learns to sur- 
 render self-will to the discipline of regular labour, 
 and of co-operation with his fellows. We might 
 indeed imagine a different kind of education for 
 the human race. If, like some of the richer 
 classes, all mankind were placed in circumstances in 
 which, without effort or struggle, they could at once 
 satisfy all their natural wants and desires, we might 
 imagine that social sympathies and intellectual tastes 
 would soon prevail over all the personal or egoistic
 
 MAN AND NATURE. 29 
 
 tendencies. For though the hitter were at first far 
 the strongest, they would gradually die out for lack 
 of occasions for exercise. Losing thus the powerful 
 stimulus of self-interest, which now drives men to in- 
 vestigate the laws of nature, the intellectual activity 
 of such beings would take an {esthetic direction, and 
 would be devoted mainly to the task of providing 
 forms of expression for the social symjiathies. These 
 social sympathies would be greatly intensified, for they 
 would occupy the whole of life. But they would 
 in the first instance be confined in the circle of 
 the family ; for the social life of States gains its 
 principal interest from the everwidening co-operation 
 which is required in the struggle for existence 
 against external difficulties. The natural creed of 
 men would be an iesthetic Fetichism ; and this, in 
 the course of time, when men had learned to dis- 
 tinguish between action and life, would be changed 
 into Positivism without needing to pass through the 
 long intermediate stages of theology and metaphysics ; 
 while, in the practical life, the affection of the family 
 would broaden to the love of humanity, omitting 
 the middle term of nationality. Finally, as the 
 heart and the intelligence would continually gain a 
 more marked ascendency over the practical activity, 
 it would be natural that the spiritual power should 
 rule the temporal, and that women should have the 
 supremacy over men.
 
 30 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 Uses of Tliis ideal picture, however, only serves to illus- 
 
 this con- *- 
 
 *''"'*• trate by contrast the real course of things, which 
 
 continually advances towards the same goal, but by 
 a far longer and more stormy path, a path not of 
 untroubled and peaceful growth, but of conflict, 
 division, and pain. We shall find, however, as a 
 kind of recompense for this hard process of media- 
 tion, that the final reconciliation of humanity with 
 the world and with itself is far more perfect and 
 conclusive ; as it is a reconciliation which disciplines 
 while it satisfies, all the different elements of his 
 nature. For a " sociality," reared on the basis of 
 a fully developed yet conquered " j)ersonality," is a 
 far higher ideal than such an imagined paradise, in 
 which the struggle for existence, with all the in- 
 tellectual and physical exertion which it involves, 
 would be made unnecessary, 
 ind^i^dp^ Our personal tendencies are strongest at first, and 
 moral' iu tliclr dircct action they might lead, and do 
 indeed often lead, to a sacrifice of society to the 
 individual, and to the development in him of an 
 extravagant pride and self-will, by which both heart 
 and reason are corrupted. But man soon finds that 
 he must 'stoop to conquer'; that he must submit his 
 action to the laws of nature, if he would make nature 
 the servant of his purposes ; that he must himself be 
 instrumental to the well-being of others, ere he can 
 make them instruments of his own well-beins. And 
 
 nature.
 
 NECESSITY MAKES US FREE. 31 
 
 in this submission of caprice and passion to reason 
 and law, and of his own life to social ends, he 
 gradually developes his intellectual powers and social 
 sympathies, till they gain a supremacy over those 
 egoistic tendencies to which in tlie first instance 
 they were subordinated. The highest ideal of man's 
 life is to systematize this spontaneous process, and 
 to turn into a conscious aim that moral and in- 
 tellectual discipline of his nature, which in the past 
 has been the unforeseen result of his effort after 
 personal ends. "We must, however, remember that 
 this result would not have been possible unless the 
 beginnings of these higher tendencies had existed in 
 man from the iirst. No empirical i)i-ocess could 
 ever have developed social sympathies in him, if he 
 had been by nature utterly selfish, any more than 
 it could have produced reason in a being who was 
 devoid of even the germ of intelligence. But the 
 whole history of human progress is just an account 
 of the process whereby feeble social affections, using 
 as a fulcrum the outward necessities of man's life, 
 gradually secure to themselves the direction of all 
 his activity. "The principal triumph of humanity 
 consists in drawing its best means of perfecting 
 itself from that very fatality which seems at first 
 to condemn us to the most brutal egoism." For 
 "so soon as the personal instincts have placed us 
 in a situation proper to satisfy our social tendencies,
 
 32 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 these, in virtue of tlieir irresistible charm, commonly 
 guide us to a course of conduct which they could 
 not have had at first the force to dictate." 
 and'socilT'' These principles find their illustration in certain 
 progress. gpQj;jQj^-ji(,r^i truths. In uiost conditions in which 
 human beings are placed, the individual is capable 
 of producing more than is immediately necessary for 
 his wants ; or, in other words, of accumulating wealth. 
 Such accumulations make social existence possible, 
 and coming, by gift or conquest, into the hands of 
 the heads of society, become the means of realizing 
 a division of labour, and providing the different 
 classes of labourers with sustenance and instruments 
 of production. Division of labour, again, while it 
 secures increased efficiency, makes continually greater 
 demands upon science for guidance, and thus stimu- 
 lates the development of the intellectual life. Thus 
 the hard external conditions under which man has 
 to seek the satisfaction of his wants become a 
 beneficent necessity, which forces him to increase 
 his knowledge, and to co-operate with an ever- 
 widening circle of his fellow-men. This co-operation, 
 indeed, is not always conscious ; and, even when it 
 is conscious, it is not necessarily accompanied by 
 social sympathy, as is shown by the fierce industrial 
 struggles of capital with labour at the present day. 
 Yet it is inevitable that it should in the long run 
 produce a sense of the solidarity of mankind. "As
 
 THE FORMS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 33 
 
 each one really labours for the others, in the end 
 he must acquire the consciousness that lie does so 
 labour," and the consciousness of beini^' a part in 
 a greater whole must produce a willingness to serve 
 it and live for it. Thus, a movement beginning in 
 the reactive inHuence on man's activity of the 
 physical conditions of his life, extends its effects 
 gradually to his intelligence and his heart, so that 
 the order of the elements of his nature becomes, as 
 it were, inverted ; the first becomes last, and the 
 last first. And, instead of the self-concentration of 
 the savage, we have the development of a social 
 impulse, which begins by setting the family before 
 the iBclividttal^ w4iicli_goes on to set the state before 
 the family, and which must end in setting humanity ^ 
 before all. 
 
 The way in which this movement is accomplished, J'*" *^''?'' 
 
 •1 i- ' forms of 
 
 and the form of social life in which it must result, ^''"''*^- 
 are determined by principles that have already been 
 suggested. T'he abstract elements of human life, of 
 which we are to take account, are material, intel- 
 lectual, and moral force, corresponding respectively 
 to the will, the intelligence, and the heart. And 
 these again correspond to three forms^gf— asseeiation 
 among men — -the State, the Church, a nd the Family; 
 three partial societies, in the union of vvhiclwlfone 
 man can attain the complete satisfaction of his 
 complex being. It is scarcely necessary to intimate. 
 

 
 34 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 however, that this general correspondence of the 
 abstract and the concrete is not meant to imply- 
 that any one of these forms of society is purely 
 material, purely intellectual, or purely based upon 
 affection. The great whole of the universal society 
 is made up of parts which are like it, and are 
 themselves wholes ; and in every one of them 
 we can make a division of material, intellectual, 
 ^ and moral powers. Still, with this reservation, we 
 may say generally that the bond which holds the 
 family together is one of affection ; that the bond 
 of the state is one of action, or material purpose ; 
 and that the bond of humanity is the spiritual 
 bond of intelligence. And we may add further, 
 that, as the tone and temper of the Family is 
 determined by the women, so the tone and temper 
 of the State is determined by the practical classes, 
 warlike or industrial ; and the tone and temper of 
 the Church by the priesthood, theological or scien- 
 tific. It is one main design of Comte's sociology to 
 organize and put in their proper relation to each 
 other the three great social powers, which have 
 successively established their claims in the long 
 history of human development. The dawn of civil- 
 ization saw the organization of the family, under the 
 guidance of Fetichism. Polytheism taught men to 
 combine in a civil society, under the guidance of a 
 power in which temporal and spiritual authority
 
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL UNION. 35 
 
 were confused together. Finally, IMonotheism separ- 
 ated the secular and spiritual powers, and established 
 a certain provisional equilibrium between them. 
 Metaphysic was powerful only to destroy ; but by 
 sapping the foundations of the theological system 
 it prepared the way for Positivism, by which Family, 
 State, and Church are finally to be distinguished and 
 harmonized, or fixed in their proper organic relations 
 to each other, so as to preclude for ever their warfare 
 or intrusion upon each other's provinces. 
 
 In determiuinfT the nature and relation of these The 
 
 ~ urKaiu- 
 
 three forms of social union, Comte lays down two gogletj"^ 
 principles. The first is, that there can be no society 
 without a government, any more than there can be 
 a government, or effective power among men, with- 
 out a society. " A true social force is the result 
 of a more or less extended co-operation, gathered up 
 into an individual organ." It is a result in which 
 many are concerned, yet which finds its final ex- 
 pression through the will of one. As to the former 
 point, that a social basis of force is necessary, Comte 
 says that " there is nothing individual, except physical 
 force"; and even physical force is very limited when 
 it is merely individual. Every other kind of power, 
 whether intellectual or moral, is essentially social, 
 dependent on the co-operation of many minds in 
 the present, and generally also on a slow accumulation 
 of energy in the past. As Goethe said, " It is not
 
 3G THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 the solitary man that can accomplish anything, but 
 only he who unites with many at the right time." 
 Nor, on the other hand, can we have social force 
 without government. The concurrence of many can 
 never be really effective, until it finds an individual 
 organ to gather it up, and concentrate it to a definite 
 result. Sometimes the individual comes first, fixes 
 his mind on a determinate purpose, and then gathers 
 to himself the various partial forces which are ne- 
 cessary to achieve it. More often in the case of 
 great social movements, there is a spontaneous con- 
 vergence of many particular tendencies, till, finally, 
 the individual appears who gives them a common 
 centre, and binds them into one whole. But in all 
 cases the effective co-operation, the real social force, 
 is not present till it has thus concentrated and 
 individualized itself. 
 Outward The second principle is one that has been already 
 
 subordina- '- '- •' 
 
 higher to illustrated. It is, in Comte's view, the law of the 
 world that the higher should immediately subordinate 
 itself to the lower. Thus the organic finds its life 
 controlled and limited by the inorganic world, and 
 man has to work out his destiny in submission to all 
 the necessities, physical, chemical, and vital, which are 
 presupposed in his existence. The higher, therefore, 
 can overcome the lower only by obedience ; if it is to 
 conquer, it must at least " stoop to conquer." And 
 this law holds equally good in the case of the social 
 
 luwer.
 
 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL RULE. 37 
 
 life of man. As it is the satisfaction of material 
 wants that is, and must be, the first motive of his life, 
 so it is in the effort to maintain his outward existence, 
 and to employ the resources of nature for the satis- 
 faction of his desires, that his powers are first excited 
 and disciplined. Hence it is the practical activities 
 — military or industrial according to the state of 
 civilization — which must bear the immediate rule in 
 his life ; not because they are the highest, but because 
 they are the indispensable basis of everything else. 
 Moral and intellectual influences can only come in 
 afterwards, in the second place, to modify the ruthless 
 energy of the practical life. They are essentially re- 
 straining, correcting, guiding, and not in the first 
 instance stimulating or originative forces. It is only 
 when they act in this indirect way that tliey are really 
 efficient, and their direct action, if it were possible, 
 would defeat itself. Their purity cannot be secured 
 except by their withdrawal from the sphere of action 
 and command ; their power is dependent on their 
 self-abnegation and rejection of immediate authority 
 and rank. They cease to influence men when they 
 try to dominate them. Nay, even if their purity were 
 secured, and they could reign without rivals, we have 
 seen that they would produce a less beneficent result 
 than when they come in as moderators. A purely 
 " altruistic " and intellectual being, in whom personal 
 motives did not exist, would have a less exalted ideal 
 
 14934.'?
 
 r^S THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 of life set before him than one in whom the personal 
 motives exist in all their energy, but are remoulded in 
 conformity with social interests. 
 
 The Family. On tliis basis we have to consider the order of the 
 Family, the State, and the Church. The family is 
 the first instrument of man's social education. It 
 takes him at the lowest point, to raise him to the 
 highest. Its life is the " only natural mediation 
 which can habitually disengage us from pure per- 
 sonality, to raise us gradually to true sociability." 
 In it the man, according to the above principle, must 
 bear rule, though it be the woman, who, "jpar I'affcctu- 
 euse reaction du conseil sur le commandement" ulti- 
 mately determines the spirit of the society. A shadow 
 also of the other spiritual power, the power of 
 intelligence, often appears in the family, especially 
 in early patriarchal societies, in the customary 
 authority given to the moderating counsel of the 
 elders who are beyond the age for active service. 
 
 The state. The State is the peculiar sphere of the active or 
 secular power, which, after being military, has now 
 become distinctly industrial. During the military 
 stage, the harmony of the different classes in the 
 State was less difficult to preserve, seeing that common 
 danger bound together the soldier classes, and con- 
 firmed their fidelity to their leaders ; while, in general, 
 the industrial offices were committed to slaves or 
 serfs, who were deprived of all political power. The
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 3D 
 
 change to an industrial order of political life brings 
 with it many dangers to the unity of the State, 
 especially as it has taken place at a time when the 
 old theological basis of belief is undermined. Hence 
 the already difficult task of organizing society, on 
 the basis of individual freedom and without the 
 external pressure of danger, is rendered still more 
 difficult. The capitalists, who are the natural leaders 
 of an industrial society, have often been wanting in 
 the consciousness of their social function, and in their 
 conduct towards their workmen, and towards each 
 other, have been given up to the action of personal 
 motives. On the other hand, the labourers, or 
 " proletaires," inspired with a new sense of inde- 
 pendence and excited by revolutionary doctrines of 
 individual right, have lost the old sense of loyalty ; 
 and their minds are filled with Utopias of equality, 
 which really involve the negation of the division 
 and co-operation of labour — i.e., of all social organiza- 
 tion. The aim of all social reform, therefore, must 
 be to bring back that willing subordination to leaders 
 inspired by the sense of social duty, which characterized 
 the military regime in its best form. Ijut this, in 
 the decay of theology, and the consequent loss of 
 influence by the Catholic Church, requires the de- 
 velopment of a new social doctrine based upon science, 
 and the rise of a new spiritual power to teach and 
 apply it to modern society. The State cannot be
 
 40 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 perfectly organized without the revival of the Church, 
 for it is the wider spiritual unity of humanity that 
 alone can give renewed strength to the bonds of 
 material order in the State. 
 The Church. The great achievement of the Middle Ages was 
 the separation of the spiritual from the temporal 
 power. This has often been taken as a historical 
 accident, but really it was the necessary expression 
 of the true relation of theory and practice, which, 
 in their demands and requirements, are essentially 
 opposed, and which therefore cannot be fully developed 
 except in relative independence of each other. Theory 
 is general, and cannot attain its highest point unless 
 it is universal. Practice is particular, and its greatest 
 success is the fruit of concentration upon special 
 circumstances and objects. Theory therefore becomes 
 stunted, and loses its freedom and impartiality, if 
 it is brought into close connection with the narrower 
 aims of the outward life. Practice, on the other 
 hand, loses little by the egoism of personal will 
 and desire, and, indeed, within proper limits requires 
 it. To gain the full benefit of this distinction, we 
 must adopt with all its consequences the mediaeval 
 division of clergy and laity, Church and State. On 
 the one hand, therefore, we must reduce the State 
 to the dimensions of a city, with its proper com- 
 plement of rural domain; "for experience has proved 
 that the city, when completed, and sufficiently
 
 THE SOCIAL ORDER. 41 
 
 supported by material resources, is the largest polit- 
 ical society that can be produced and maintained 
 without oppression " ; as it is also the society which 
 secures the most definite and specialized reaction of 
 man's social activity on the physical medium liy 
 which he is surrounded, further, within the city 
 so constituted, we must have as intensive a division 
 of labour as possible, the government being con- 
 centrated in the hands of those capitalists whose 
 occupations are of the greatest generality (/.<•., the 
 bankers) ; the other capitalists (merchants, manu- 
 facturers, and agriculturists) taking their rank accord- 
 ing to the same principle ; and the proletaires follow- 
 ing, organized in fraternal equality. Finally, the 
 various offices are to be handed down from one 
 generation to another according to the principle of 
 " heredite sociocratique," each official choosing his 
 successor, subject to the approval of his superiors ; 
 for this, and not the anarchic principle of the choice 
 of superiors by inferiors, is the true modern principle 
 of government, which succeeds to the old method 
 •of inheritance by birth. On the other hand, the 
 order of the priesthood is to be in everything the 
 exact opposite of the order of the laity. In the 
 first place, motives of personal interest are, so far 
 as possible, to be excluded from their lives. There 
 is to be no competition of trade among them, but 
 all spiritual work is to be paid by salaries Irom
 
 42 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 the public, and these salaries are to be fixed at 
 so low a rate, even in tlie case of the highest members 
 of the order, that there shall be no inducement to 
 enter the order from motives of cupidity. In the 
 second place, although a certain subordination of 
 rank is necessary, in order to secure discipline 
 and combined action — and all the priesthood will be 
 arranged in a hierarchy vmder the "grand Pretre 
 de I'Humanite " — yet there must be no specializa- 
 / tion of function, or division of labour among them. 
 In Comte's view the modern anarchy of science 
 is due to the fact, that scientific men are mostly 
 specialists ; and liis priests therefore are to be 
 trained in all science, from mathematics, through 
 physics, chemistry, and biology, to sociology and 
 morals — for which last all the other sciences are 
 to be regarded as preparatory. In this way the 
 " esprit d'ensemble " will prevail among them, and 
 science will be preserved from its present uncer- 
 tain aberrations into regions from which no gain can 
 be brought back for the furtherance of humanity. 
 Nay, Comte appears to regard even the separation 
 ' of Art from Science as a step toward anarchy, and 
 demands that his priesthood should be the artistic 
 as well as the philosophic teachers of men. At the 
 same time they must avoid, as the most fatal source 
 of corruption, all tendency to interfere more directly 
 in practical affairs. Their business is to "modify
 
 THE WORK OF THE PRIESTHOOD. 43 
 
 the wills, without ever coinnianding the acts of iiieii," 
 and they cannot preserve the universality which is 
 their characteristic without a complete renunciation 
 of the right to compel. The farthest point to which 
 they may go in this direction, is to exconiimniicate, 
 or affix a social stigma on offenders; which, however, 
 in a Positivist society, will l)e a sufficiently severe 
 punishment. 
 
 Such a priesthood will be the natural represen- The priest- 
 
 ^ ^ hood of 
 
 tatives of the unity or solidarity of mankind, as i'i"n'"»"J- 
 opposed to the particular interests of individuals 
 and classes. They will also be the representatives 
 of the continuity of the life of humanity in the 
 past and the future, as opposed to the excessive 
 claims of the present hour. It will be their duty 
 to make men conscious that their occupations are 
 social functions, and that everything that is valuable 
 in their lives has been gained for them by the long- 
 continued labours of humanity, whose gratuitous gifts 
 it is their highest privilege to preserve, and hand 
 down increased by their own contributions to posterity. 
 The clergy will thus be, as in the old system, the 
 natural allies of the women ; for what they have 
 to do is simply to generalize and support, Ijy a 
 complete scientific view of the world and of human 
 life, those lessons of the heart which are first learned 
 by man in the narrower circle of the family. By 
 their encyclopaedic view of knowledge, the intclli-
 
 44 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 gence, which under the dispersive regime of science 
 has become a rebel against the heart, is to be 
 brought back to its allegiance, and the social order 
 of the State and of Humanity to be reconstituted 
 on the type of the family. 
 Iii^work*of I" impressing such a view of life upon mankind, 
 thechure . ^^ Positivist Church will avail itself of all the aids 
 of art, and will use the power of imagination to fill 
 up those voids and imperfections which sober science 
 undoubtedly leaves in our knowledge of things. For 
 it is the function of poetry not merely to give body 
 and substance to the necessarily abstract ideas of 
 science ; it may even, justifiably, outrun the possi- 
 bilities of knowledge, though in that case we must 
 not forget the unverified nature of the illusions to 
 which it makes us yield. In the first of these uses 
 Art will give precision and force to the worship of 
 Humanity, or of its representative — Woman. It will 
 provide language for those exercises of prayer and 
 praise, by which we make vivid and real to ourselves 
 our union with others, and dedicate ourselves to a life 
 of " Altruism." It will thus intensify and deepen 
 the suhjcctive life, through which past humanity lives 
 in us, and enable us to look forward with joy to 
 our only personal reward, that of being incorporated 
 in Humanity, and living again in the subjective life 
 of others. For " toute Veducation humaine doit pre- 
 parer chacun a vivre pour autrui, a fin de vivre dans
 
 POETRY AND TRUTH. 45 
 
 autrui ;" which is the true social doctrine of immor- 
 tality, as opposed to the anti-social doctrine of an 
 objective immortality for ourselves. The other use 
 of poetry, in which it transcends the strict limits 
 of science, is to revive something like the early 
 fetichist belief that everything lives and is moved 
 by human desires and affections. Thus, as a matter 
 of fact, the inorganic world, so far as we know 
 it, is governed by a fatality which is indifferent to 
 the well-being of man. Nay, in its first action, it 
 seems to call forth those tendencies in us which 
 most need to be repressed and subdued. And it 
 is only by the providence of Humanity that this 
 very hostility and opposition of Nature are made 
 instrumental to the attainment of a higher good. 
 Yet, the victory being won, we may be allowed, at 
 least in poetic rapture, to forget the discord between 
 man and the world he inhabits ; or to regard it as 
 existing only with a view to that higher good which 
 has resulted from it. For " Vexistcnce humaine ne 
 sinformc gidre du temjys qui exigca sa pre'paration 
 S2)onta7iec." When we consider Nature as summed up 
 in man, we learn " to love the natural order as the 
 basis of the artificial order" produced by humanity; 
 and thus we "renew, under a better form, the fetichist 
 affections." In his last work, Comte carries this 
 extension of poetic license to its farthest point, and 
 bids us add to our adoration of Humanity, as the
 
 46 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 " Grand Etre," an adoration of Space, as the " Grand 
 Milieu," and of the Earth, as the "Grand Fetiche"; 
 and he would have us think of these two as 
 yearning for the birth and development of Humanity. 
 In Comte's system, therefore, as in a more familiar 
 text, " the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God"; and that 
 optimism, which is rejected at the beginning as 
 truth, is brought in at the end as poetry. Only, 
 v/ poetry is not, as with the Apostle, the anticipation 
 or foretaste of knowledge ; it is the substitute pro- 
 vided because knowledge is absent and unattainable. 
 
 For our purpose it is not necessary to go beyond 
 this point. The minute prescriptions of the fourth 
 volume of the " Politique Positive " add little or 
 nothing to the general meaning of the system. The 
 positivist New Jerusalem is as definitely determined 
 and measured as the Holy City of the Apocalypse ; 
 but the main interest of such details is for the 
 church and not for the world.
 
 47 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF COMTE'S PIIILOSOrilY HIS 
 
 OPPOSITION TO METAPHYSIC AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 Growth of a new view of the social organism opposed at once to 
 Individualism and Socialism — Comte and the German Idealists 
 — Meaning of his attack on Metaphysics — His real agreement 
 with modern metaphysicians — He adopts Locke's principles as 
 to knowledge^ yet is opposed to the Indiridualism of Locke s 
 French disciples — He attacks Realism as a Nominalist and 
 Nominalism as a Realist, and is really guided by a higher 
 principle than either^His mistaken attitude toioards the 
 Critical Philosophy — Relation of Philosophy to Science — It 
 makes men conscioits of their guiding principles — Comte's w?i- 
 consciousness of the categories that guide his thought — Con- 
 sequent defects in his view of the development of Religion, of 
 Philosophy, and of Science — Mr. Spencer^s criticism and 
 nitre's answer — Ambiguity in the opposition between the uni- 
 versal and the particular. 
 
 In the previous chapter I have given a sketch of 
 Comte's system, and especially of that part of it 
 which has attracted least attention in this country 
 — the social philosophy of the " Politique Positive." 
 In this and the subsequent chapters I propose to make
 
 48 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 a few criticisms on the system, with the view of 
 exhil)itiiig the fundamental tendencies of thought 
 which are manifested in it, and of contrasting the 
 manifestation of those tendencies in Comte, with 
 their manifestation in other writers, especially in the 
 great German idealists of the beginning of this 
 century. In these criticisms I shall observe the 
 same relative limitation as in the previous chapter, 
 and shall give most attention to the social and 
 religious results of Comte's philosophy. As, however, 
 it is impossible to separate these from the philo- 
 sophical principles upon which they are based, it 
 will be necessary, in the first place, to examine 
 the ideas of Comte as to the development of human 
 thought in general, and of science in particular. 
 Tendency of Couite, like cvcry great writer, was a son of his 
 
 Comtes ' ./ o ' 
 
 nTw vi*ewof time ; and his greatness is measured by the degree 
 organism, in wliicli he brouglit to articulate expression the 
 ideas which were unconsciously, or half consciously, 
 working upon the minds of those around him. The 
 great emancipating movement of thought in the 
 eighteenth century, which found its clearest expres- 
 sion in the works of Hume and Voltaire, and which 
 was kindled into revolutionary passion by Eousseau, 
 awakened, by way of reaction, an equally extreme 
 movement, both in theory and practice, toward the 
 reassertion of authority and social order. But in the 
 midst of this flux and reflur of the popular con-
 
 THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. 49 
 
 sciousness, and still more after the extreme limits 
 of each of these movements became clearly marked, 
 a new idea was gradually taking possession of all 
 minds that could rise above the atmosphere of party. 
 Emancipation, pushed to the extent of isolating the 
 individual from that general life through which alone 
 he can become a moral, or even a rational bein!:;, and 
 rebellion, pushed to the extent of severing the present 
 from that past upon which it is necessarily based, 
 had for their natural counterparts an equally exagger- 
 ated panic of reaction, and an equally indiscriminate 
 admiration of past forms of thought and life. Even 
 in Eousseau the idea of savage isolation is crossed by 
 longing reminiscences of the patriarchal state, and 
 of the republics of antiquity ; and the romantic spirit, 
 with its revival of mediaeval types and models, soon 
 began to S2)read through the literature of Europe, 
 and to affect its social and political life. Between 
 these opposing tendencies the conception of society 
 as a unity, yet not a mechanical but an organic unity, 
 of living and independent members, presented itself 
 as the reconciliation of socialism and individualism, 
 or, in other words, of the opposing interests of order 
 and freedom. And with this came another kindred 
 idea — the idea of development or organic evolution — 
 which made it possible to admit men's obligations 
 to the past without denying the claims of the present 
 and the future. Condorcct, Kant, and Edmund Burke
 
 50 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 are three writers of very different temper and ten- 
 dency, but in all of them we find this consciousness 
 of the organic unity and evolution of the life of 
 men and nations. All equally oppose the crude 
 theory of a Social Contract and recognize that the 
 unity of the State or of Society is something better 
 " than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper 
 and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low 
 concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, 
 and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties ; " 
 that it is, on the contrary, " a partnership in all 
 science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in 
 every virtue, and in all perfection." All equally 
 recognize that the social state, to which they look 
 forward as the ideal of the future, cannot be merely 
 an historical accident, or a success achieved by the 
 skilful contrivance of individuals ; but that it must 
 be the final realization of a principle, which has 
 been working through all the past history of man, 
 and which has underlain not only the old order of 
 European civilization but also the movement of re- 
 bellion against it.* Finally, after Kant's suggestive, 
 though imperfect, application of it to history, the 
 same idea, with a deeper metaphysical perception 
 
 * This is not strictly accurate, for Condorcet seems to except 
 from his list of the elements of progress the whole social and 
 ecclesiastical system which existed previous to the Revolution, 
 while Burke can see no element of growth or improvement in 
 the Revolution itself.
 
 RELATION TO GERMAN IDEALISM. -,1 
 
 of its meaning, became the central thouglit in the 
 philosophies of Schelling and Hegel as early as the 
 first years of this century. 
 
 Comte, ignorant for the most part of tlie work Analogous 
 of any except his French predecessors, was led to "nd'in'tho 
 the same fundamental conception by the political idcaUisu. 
 experiences of France, as well as by the conflict 
 of the opposite schools of Eousseau and St, Simon 
 with each other and with the Catholic De Maistre. 
 Yet, despite this independence, there is a certain 
 parallelism between Comte's interpretation of the 
 idea of development and that of the German ideal- 
 ists. That the first " Synthesis," or system of doctrinel^ 
 upon which man's intellectual and moral life is based, 
 was poetic or imaginative ; that it was therefore 
 disintegrated and destroyed by the critical under- 
 standing ; and that it requires to be restored and 
 reconstituted on a rational basis, a basis which shall 
 satisfy the awakened intelligence, as well as tlie 
 heart and the moral sympathies — a ll this was a ^ 
 common Dlace of German pliilosopliy long before thei 
 advent of Positivism." The coudeuniation which 
 Comte pronounced upon the individualistic and re- 
 volutionary theories of Eousseau is little more tlian 
 an echo of the GermaS attack upon the "Aufkliir- 
 
 *Cf. especially Fichte's Characteristics of the Present Age. 
 Many of Carlyle's characteristic expressions and ideas seem tu 
 have been suggested by this book.
 
 52 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 uus." Even Comte's denunciation of the " meta- 
 physical" exiiluiialion of the world by transcendenT 
 causes or " entities " which are not capable of 
 empirical verification, and his assertion that man's 
 knowledge is confined to the relative and phenomena], 
 finds a close parallel in the language of Kant. And 
 Kant's idealistic followers, though they assert the 
 possibility of a knowledge that goes beyond the 
 phenomenal, do not assert it in the sense in which 
 Comte denies it ; for with them the negation of an 
 absolute dualism between the noumenal and pheno- 
 menal is, as will afterwards be shown, only the 
 necessary result of the doctrine of the relativity of 
 knowledge itself. In all ways, therefore, the question 
 between Comte and those whom he would have called 
 metaphysicians is of a much more definite and specific 
 kind than he or his followers have generally recog- 
 nized. The general basis of thought- — which belongs 
 rather to the time than to any individual — is common 
 to him with ail the greater philosophic writers of 
 his own, and even of the preceding generation. And 
 the only point for controversy is whether he gave 
 the most consistent and satisfactory development 
 to those principles, which we cannot indeed say 
 that he derived from others, but which he was 
 certainly not the first to express. The question 
 in short is, in the first place, how far Comte had 
 a clear consciousness of the source and bearincj of
 
 HIS NEC A TIONS. 53 
 
 his own leading ideas ; and, in the second place, 
 how far he has been successful in applying them. 
 I venture to think that in both points of view a 
 careful examination of his works shows him to be 
 defective. He fails to apprehend with clearness the 
 logic by which his own thoughts are guided ; he fails 
 to follow out that logic to its legitimate result ; and 
 his system, therefore, with all its comprehensiveness, 
 ends in inconsistency and self-contradiction. 
 
 In the first place, then, C omte's starting-point was Meaning of 
 
 *■ — - ^ "^ his attack 
 
 fixed for him by the sensationalist philosophy of the o'' ™.'^^ . 
 
 ^ r r J physic and 
 
 last century. He beg ins where Hume ends, with ^''""'"fy- 
 the denial of the scientific value of metaphysics and 
 tlieplogy. This denial he only modifies so far as 
 to maintain that, while neither theology nor meta- 
 physics can be regarded as forms of real knowledge, 
 both must be regarded as necessary stages in the 
 process by which real knowledge is attained. They 
 are, in short, transitory forms of thought, which now 
 survive only as stages in the culture of childhood 
 and youth, or as prejudices in the minds of those 
 who have not yet been awakened to the spirit of 
 their time. Notwithstanding this wholesale rejec- 
 tion of metaphysic and theology, however, it may 
 easily be shown that _Comtei's own theo ry, like ever y 
 intelligible view of the world, involves a metaphysic. 
 and ends in a theolugy ; and lliat he only succeeds 
 in concealiniT this from himself, because he is un-
 
 54 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 conscious of the presuppositions he makes ; because 
 he uses the word " metaphysic " in a narrow and 
 mistaken sense ; and because he conceives it, as well 
 as theology, to be l)ound up with a kind of " trans- 
 cendentalism," which all the great metaphysicians of 
 modern times agree in rejecting. 
 His real Hostility to metaphysic, if by metaphysic be 
 
 niodeni'' meant the explanation of the facts of experience by 
 physicians, eutitics or causes, which cannot be verified in ex- 
 ]^>erience or shown to stand in any definite relation 
 to it, is the common feature of all modern phil- 
 osophy, idealist or sensationalist. It is as clearly 
 manifested in Descartes as in Bacon, in Kant and 
 Hegel as in Locke and Hume. If Bacon accuses 
 the scholastics of anticipating nature by unverified 
 / hypotheses or presuppositions not derived from the 
 study of nature, Descartes is no less emphatic in 
 his denunciation of a philosophy of authority, and 
 in his demand for a fundamental reconstruction of 
 belief. If the former leases all truth upon experi- 
 ence, does not the latter seek the evidence of his 
 principles in the most intimate of experiences, the 
 consciousness of self ? Leibni z is as ready as 
 Locke, Kan t is as ready as Hume, to maintain 
 that philoso phy must not i ntroduce ., transcendent 
 ^ principles into its explanations of experience. As 
 Luther rejected a God who did not reveal himself 
 directly to the heart and intelligence of his wor-
 
 IVHA T IS ME TA PH YSIC ? 55 
 
 shipper, but only through the mediation of a priest 
 and in an external tradition, so the greatest modern 
 philosophers of all schools are agreed in rejecting 
 all principles which do not find their evidence in 
 being an integral part of the experience of men. 
 It would be too much to say that tliey all con- 
 sistently develop this principle to its necessary 
 consequence, or that traces of scholastic modes of 
 thought are not to be found even in those of them 
 who most strongly denounce scholasticism ; on the 
 contrary, it may be admitted that no one before 
 Kant saw what was involved in the renuncialiun of 
 the transcendent as an object of knowledge. Even 
 Kant himself did not see all its consLMjuunces. Still, 
 the assertion of the principle itself, and the effort 
 to realize it, is perhaps the most general and in- 
 variable characteristic of modern philosophy. Li SQ 
 far, therefore, as vvhat_Comte. means by metaphysics 
 is anything like the scholastic philosophy, witli its 
 transcendent or authoritative principles, uo objection 
 need be taken to his assertion that metaphysic is 
 an exploded mode of thought, from which the philo-. 
 sopher and the man of science must now seek to 
 free themselves. But then it must be added that, 
 in this sense, none of the greater speculative writers 
 of modern times is, in principle, a metaphysician ; 
 and that the metaphysic which they cultivate is of 
 a totally different nature. If, indeed, we could con-
 
 , 5G THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 " V, ^ sider Comte's remarks as aimed at the great meta- 
 
 A .M.\ ^ phvsicinns of Jiis ovn fl;iv, at Kant and liis succes- 
 sors, the description, and therefore the censure 
 founded upon it, would be almost ludicrously in- 
 applicable. 
 
 To understand the bearing of Comte's denial of 
 metaphysics, however, we must keep in view his 
 historical antecedents. This negation was, as I have 
 already said, part of his heritage from the sensa- 
 tionalist philosophy of the last century, which had 
 reached its most consequent and definite expression 
 in Hume. It was a conclusion, the first step to- 
 wards which was taken by Locke in his attack 
 upon the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas. In 
 Locke's view, innate ideas were principles appre- 
 hended independently of all experience — possessions 
 of the individual mind which it finds in itself at 
 once, and apart from any process of development, 
 and apart from any intercourse with the world. And, 
 to disprove their existence, it was enough for him 
 to point to the fact that, prior to such intercourse 
 with the world, the mind has no contents at all, 
 and can scarcely be said even to exist. This obvious 
 truth, however, was immediately confused by him 
 with the doctrine that reality — the objective world 
 of individual things as such — is immediately given 
 in sense apart from any " work of the mind," and 
 that any ideas or universals added by thought to
 
 LOCKE'S NEW WAY OF IDEAS. 57 
 
 the data of sense, must, ?)wo facto, be fictions. In 
 making this assumption, Locke was yiokling to a 
 tendency of thought which had ah-eady shown itself 
 in the nominalism of Hobbes. Locke, indeed, was 
 not a nominalist, he was what is called a concep- 
 tualist; but in the Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing no distinct ground is ever stated for giving 
 to universals more than that subjective value which 
 even Hobbes allows to them. In his criticism of 
 the ideas of substance and cause, Lucktj is always 
 seeldn g to reduce fac t and rea hty to the isdlated 
 sensa tions thro ugh which, as he supposes, indiNidual 
 tningsuare given And the same tendency of thought 
 leads him also to regard the individual mind as ap- 
 prehensive only of its own ideas and sensations, and 
 excluded from all direct contact with the world. It 
 soon, however, became obvious to the followers of 
 Locke, that, on these terms, no knowledge, or even 
 semblance of knowledge, is possible ; that the in- 
 dividual mind, if it were thus confined to its own 
 isolated feelings, could never dream of the existence 
 of an objective world ; and that to make possible 
 the reference of sensations to objects, it is necessary 
 that they should be connected together according 
 to general principles. In other words, it became 
 obvious that the universal, or some substitute for 
 the universal, is required to make knowledge and 
 experience possible. And to meet this want the
 
 58 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 theory of association was devised, and the atomic 
 elements of the intelligible given in sense, were 
 supposed to be linked together by the principles of 
 resemblance, contiguity, and succession. It was not 
 perceived that in these principles there is already 
 implied the unity of the self-conscious intelligence, 
 and, indeed, the whole body of categories which the 
 theory of association is used to explain or explain 
 away. It was the work of Kant to show this ; 
 to show, in other words, that the attempt to empty 
 knowledge of its universal element must be suicidal; 
 that it must be fatal not only to theology and 
 metaphysics, but to all knowledge, even of the 
 simplest facts of experience. But Hume — and it 
 may be added most of his English followers, such 
 as Mill and Mr. Spencer — halt half-way in the 
 development of their sensationalism, and therefore 
 think it possible to maintain that, while the ulti- 
 mate reality of things is hid from us, because we 
 cannot transcend our own ideas, we can still have 
 knowledge of phenomena, because these ideas are 
 combined in the minds of all men according to the 
 same principles of association. It is from this point 
 of view that Hume tells us that the principle of 
 causality, based as it is upon mere association, may 
 be fairly used to connect phenomena with each 
 other, but that it is altogether insufficient to en- 
 able us to rise from phenomena to noumena —
 
 DIDEROT AND ROUSSEAU. 59 
 
 from the world to God. Thus tlie principles of 
 the association of ideas are to the mind of man 
 something like what wings are to the ostrich ; they 
 help him to run on the ground, but they are not 
 strong enough to make him fly. As a succedaneum 
 for that universal element in thought, whicli would 
 raise us to the knowledge of tilings as they really 
 are, they enable us to arrange the appearances — 
 the shadows of our cave — and fJud, for the practical 
 purposes of the cave, is all that we require. 
 
 While the English followers of Locke thus con- ^nd the 
 
 social Atom- 
 fined themselves to the development of his ideas ifp^ij^irby 
 
 on the theory of knowledge, his French followers i.wdiste?'"* 
 seized upon his individualistic theory of existence, 
 and used it as an instrument to undermine the 
 Catholic faith, and the whole political and social 
 system connected therewith. Diderot and D'Holbach 
 found in Atomism the readiest weapon to assail the 
 popular theology. The former writer, indeed, some- 
 times plays with the atomic theory in a way that 
 reminds us of the earth-shaking laughter of Aristo- 
 phanes. In infinite time, he asks, in the infinite 
 number of throws of the atomic dice, why should 
 not, at one moment or another, a Cosmos spring 
 out of chaos ? and the Abbe Galiani can only hint, 
 by way of answer, that, somehow or other, " les 
 des de la Nature sont pipes." Eousseau, applying 
 the same idea to Sociology, proclaims the eiuanci-
 
 GO THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 pation of the natural man, and develops the theory 
 of the Social Contract, the theory which reduces 
 the state to a creation of the individual will. Yet 
 Eousseau had some uncertain glimpses of the truth 
 that the individual has no rights or claims, except 
 so far as he is an organ of the universal ; and with 
 strange inconsistency he declares, that it is only 
 through social life that the human being " ceases 
 to be a dull and limited animal, and becomes an 
 intelligent being and a man." 
 He accepts Now it is cuHous that Comtc, while in his theory 
 
 the former, ' •' 
 
 Lue"?*^ '*'*' of knowledge he accepts many of the ideas of the 
 school of Locke, in his social theory takes up a 
 position of intense hostility to the results of the 
 same philosophy. That very individualism, which 
 in Locke and Hume had been the ground and 
 presupposition of the whole attack upon metaphysic, 
 is assailed by Comte as the very essence of metaphysic. 
 " The metaphysical spirit," he is never weary of 
 saying, " is radically incompatible with the social 
 point of view ; " it has " never been able to escape 
 from the sphere of the individual." From the em- 
 pirical philosophy Comte accepted most of its 
 negatives, especially its rejection of the possibility 
 of metaphysics or theology as sciences of things in 
 themselves, and its denial that even the principles, 
 on which experience is based, are themselves derived 
 from anything but experience. But the school of
 
 THE UNIVERSAL NOT UNREAL. CI 
 
 Locke had generally set aside the abstract universal 
 in favour of the equally abstract individual, ami 
 here Cornte declines to follow them. Individualism 
 is seen by him to be an inadequate basis for social 
 or even for biological theory, and the blame, as a 
 matter of course, is cast upon metaphysics. The 
 " fate of metaphysical theory," he declares, " is decided 
 by its inability to conceive of man otherwise than 
 individually " ; whereas " the true human point of 
 view is not individual luit social." " Man is a mere 
 abstraction, and there is nothing real but humanity, 
 regarded intellectually and yet more morally.""" It 
 is, in fact, just this thought of the unity and the 
 solidarity of men — not the mere abstract unity of 
 a genus, but the concrete unity of one life, manifesting 
 itself in many members — which enables Comte to 
 look at the history of the past in a way so different 
 from most of his predecessors, and to recognize the 
 affinity of that social synthesis of the future, whicli 
 he himself is trying to realize, with the previous 
 theological synthesis of Catholicism. It is this also 
 which leads him to create a new religion of humanity, 
 and even, in the end, to justify that poetic license 
 which seems necessary to complete the synthetic 
 view of life, and to bring nature into unity witli 
 man. In the "Politique Positive" Comte's oppos- 
 ition to metaphysics, as tending, in the language of 
 * Phil. Pos. vi. p. 692, Miss Martiueau's Trans, ii. p. 508.
 
 02 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Burke, to dissolve society "into the dust and powder 
 of individuality," becomes even more emphatic ; and 
 with it is combined a continual denunciation of the 
 " dispersive regime " of the particular sciences, which 
 in the present day he declares to be pursued by 
 mere specialists, with an extreme waste of human 
 faculty, and without any regard to the legitimate 
 end of all science, the furtherance of man's estate. 
 The conception of life and science, as a connected 
 whole, all whose parts are to be estimated and 
 developed in relation to each other and to the idea 
 of the whole, is by Comte as firmly held and as 
 resolutely carried out to its consequences as by the 
 most extreme idealist or pantheist. The only dif- 
 ference — which still shows the trace of the indi- 
 vidualistic philosophy out of which Positivism was 
 developed — is that the synthesis of Comte is, in his 
 own language, suhjedivc, not objective ; by which he 
 means that the whole, in relation to which all 
 things are to be interpreted, and of which the 
 individual man is to be regarded only as a part 
 or member, is humanity, and not the universe. In 
 other words, Comte holds that we transcend the 
 limits of knowledge when we seek to regard ourselves 
 as parts of the universal whole or system of things, 
 and therefore as living under the providence of God ; 
 but that we do not transcend the limits of knowledge 
 when we regard ourselves as parts of the one great
 
 HOMO MENSURA. 03 
 
 organism of Huiuiinity, and therefore as liviiiL,^ under 
 its continual providence. We are not, as Berkeley 
 and Hume had taught, confined to the phenomena 
 of our individual consciousness; but neither are we 
 capable of reaching a purely objective point of view. 
 We can see things from the point of view of a 
 whole, but not of the, whole : at least we cannot 
 so regard them except in that poetry of religion 
 by which the earliest fetichist affections are renewed, 
 and Space and the Earth are worshipped as the 
 friends of Humanity. This, however, is mere poetic 
 license ; for we have no reason to believe that man 
 has any friend but himself, and in its first direct 
 action upon him the world shows itself to be anything 
 but a system arranged for his benefit. 
 
 Now, without for the present discussing the truth "o^^i^T^j, 
 of this view, we may remark that it is obviously 
 the result of a compromise between the two oppo- 
 site tendencies of thought, which divided the earlier 
 history of modern philosophy. In the Cartesian 
 philosophy there was a tendency— which manifested 
 itself fully in the two greatest followers of Descartes, 
 in Malebranche and Spinoza — to regard all things 
 from the point of view of the absolute unity of the 
 Universe, and to treat the separate existence of tlie 
 parts as a fiction of abstraction. On this view, the 
 individual's consciousness of himself as an individual 
 is an illusion, and Spinoza would have said the 
 
 nes 
 ism 
 with real- 
 ism.
 
 64- THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 same thing of his consciousness of himself as a 
 member of the race. The only true consciousness is 
 that in which both man and humanity are seen as 
 absorbed in Nature, or, what is the same thing, in 
 God. The followers of Locke, again, went so far in 
 the opposite direction that they regarded the universal 
 as a fiction of abstraction, and the individual as the 
 sole reality. Hence they sought to confine the 
 individual in theory to the perception of his own 
 sensitive states, and in practice to the seeking of 
 pleasant, and the avoidance of painful, feelings. 
 Comte steers a path midway between the two ex- 
 tremes. To him, as to Locke and Hume, Nature 
 is the vainest of abstractions, the last delusion of 
 metaphysics ; and all attempts to penetrate into the 
 real being of things are the efforts of a finite creature 
 to get beyond his own limits. Yet, on the other 
 hand, to him, as to Spinoza, it seems irrational to 
 separate the individual from the whole to which 
 he belongs, and therefore. Humanity, instead of being 
 regarded as a vague abstraction like Nature, is 
 asserted to be the most real of all things or beings. 
 " Man is a mere abstraction, and there is nothing 
 real but Humanity." And Comte is so far from 
 saying that the individual is confined to the data of 
 his own individual consciousness that he rather main- 
 tains that we are unable to know ourselves, except 
 as we know something else. Thus in criticizing
 
 INTROSPECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY. G5 
 
 the psy chological metho d of internal observation — 
 which7 by the way, he supposes to lie the_ charac- 
 teristic method of metaphysics — (Joiiite says : — " This 
 pretended psychological method is essentially defec- 
 
 livp ; for consider to what suiridal ].ior(Mlures it 
 
 iiniaediatel^,..leads ; ou the one hand, it bids you 
 isolate yourself as far as possible from every external 
 perception, and therefore proliibits you from carrying 
 on any intellectual labour ; for if you are (.■mploycd 
 m^ny, even the simplest caleulalidu, wliat would 
 become of the internal observation ? On tlic < it la a- 
 hand, after h aving finally by elaborate eflort and ar- 
 rangement attained this perfect state of intellectual 
 slumber, you are called upon to watch the opera- 
 tions which are going on in your mind, when in 
 fact there is nothing going on at all."* Comte sees 
 the absurdity of a psychological method, in which 
 the mind is isolated from the world and treated as 
 one object among the others which have to be ob- 
 served, instead of being regarded as a " part of all 
 it knows," although he does not clearly indicate the 
 source of the error. But the only result, as we 
 have seen, is a compromise, in which the individual 
 is supposed to be capable of objective knowledge, 
 though only of phenomena, and capable also of an 
 objective aim, which, however, he cannot identify 
 with the absolute end of all things. We can know, 
 * Phil. Pes. i. p. 36. 
 
 £
 
 66 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE, 
 
 in Comte's opinion, not merely what is relative to 
 our individuals minds, but to the human mind ; and 
 we can seek as our end, not merely our own individual 
 pleasure but the happiness of Humanity. But we 
 cannot know what things really are, apart from 
 their appearance to us : we cannot worship any God 
 who is in nature as in man, or identify ourselves 
 with any divine purpose which reaches beyond the 
 compass of his transitory existence. Whether this 
 compromise is more than a compromise, whether it 
 is a true solution of the difficulty, or a reconcilia- 
 tion of the opposite tendencies of thought in a higher 
 unity, we have yet to consider. 
 Kulded'bv^ The point, however, to which I wish here to call 
 • Hpirth^n" attention is, that Comte's protest against metaphy sic 
 loses almost all its weight because of his ignorance 
 of the real scope and tendency of the metaphysical 
 theories of the past, and of his own relation to 
 them. He seems to have no perception of the 
 essential distinction between the two tendencies of 
 thought which he is partly opposing and partly re- 
 conciling. Beginning with a denunciation of meta- 
 physic, because it treats universals as real entities, 
 he ends by insisting on the truth that the Family, 
 State, and Humanity — though iliey undoubtedly are 
 universals — are at the same time objectively real. 
 In the attempt to rise abov e the abstra ctions of 
 earlier thought he is in harmony with the best
 
 COMTE'S ME 7 APH \ SIC. 
 
 67 
 
 metaphysics of his time. The clei'ect lies in Ills un- 
 consciousness of his own nietaphysic. i.e., of the 
 categories which rule his thought, and which cnahle 
 him to interpret the facts of experience, and especially -4^ 
 the facts of man's social life, so differently from his ' 
 predecessors. For him, indeed, there is. au eaaj 
 explanation of this difference between himself and/ ^^q^^t^" 
 trie philosophers of an earlier time. They wer e>f^«*'P V 
 " met aphysical, " whi le he is not ; they made assum p^ 
 tions, and s ubstit ute d their own ideas for the teaching 
 o f experience, w hile he has simply made hi ^ r.inul 
 into a pirrn r of nature, and stated the fa ^<-g ^s\ t^^'^y'^ 
 are. Comte forgets what his own principles led him 
 on other occasions to perceive, that the world is 
 what it is to us by the development of our own 
 thoughts, and that we find in ic only what we are 
 prepared to find. Locke also, when he attacked the 
 Cartesians, seemed to himself to be substituting 
 experience for mere ideas, reality for fiction, ^^i^ 
 did not observe that he was substit uting for the 
 presupposition that the universal alone is real, the 
 opposite presupposition tliat the individual alone is 
 j^aEpiind. that- 1 lie-- one pi'esupposition is as mueli 
 an idea as th e othe r. A nd C omte, in his turn, 
 guided by his new organic idea of social life and 
 development, advances to the attack upon the in- 
 dividualistic philosophy, with the same naive con- 
 fidence i\^ii_Jiis idea is not an idea at all, but a fact.
 
 G8 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 With all his talk of experience, he has never asked, 
 ox he has not understood the bearing of the Kantian 
 question, What_is,...^^.exience ? For if he had done 
 so, he must have discovered that his own so-called 
 positive thought was as metaphysical as that either 
 of the Eealists or of the Nominalists, and was indeed 
 possible only as the result of a development which 
 included both. 
 His view of It is truc that Comte in his " Politique Positive " 
 
 the critical 
 
 philosophy, j^gfej-s tQ Kant's criticism of experience, though in 
 a way that seems to show that his knowledge was 
 derived only from hearsay. Kant is supposed by him 
 to be the philosopher who first extended to the mind 
 the general biological truth of the action and reaction 
 of organism and jnedium up on each other. ^cause 
 of_ this, action and reaction, in which the mind modifies 
 the object, as well as the object the mind, our 
 thoughts do not correspond to the reality of things 
 in themselves ; they do not represent the object 
 as it is, but only as it appears to us, and our con- 
 ception of the world is not therefore absolute, but 
 only relative. On the other hand, we must not 
 exaggerate this truth so far as to suppose that the 
 development of our thought is purely subjective ; 
 or, in other words, that it belongs to the mind 
 apart from the action of the world upon it (a view 
 which Comte attributes to the German idealists). 
 The true theory is " to regard the world as furnish-
 
 THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 69 
 
 in»,JJiil iiiatU'i', ;iinl the iiiiinl ilir Innn, in .'very 
 positive iiniiuu. The ru>i(iii i>l' tluM' .Iniiciils cannot 
 take [ilacr except by reciplucal sai i iliccs. KxCQSS 
 of obJLTiivity would hinder every -ciKTal \ic\v, for 
 generality inijilius abstiai tion. But the__analysi§.. 
 which permits us to abstract wouhl l)e impossible, 
 unless we couUl suppress the natural excess of sub- 
 jectjyity. Ev^^ man,_jL§,. lie , compares himself witli 
 others, spontaneously takes away from his observa- 
 tions _ that which is peculiar to himself, in (inler to 
 realize that social agreement which constitutes the 
 main end of .contemplative life; but the degree of 
 subjectivity which is connuou tu all our ^^^pecie^s 
 ilgually remains, and I'emains without any serious 
 inconvenience. Nor could we reduce its amount, 
 ^ccept by intellectual inteix'ourse with the other 
 animals, an intercourse which is rare and impcrliict. 
 "Rpt^iMpq^ T-inwpypr we might restrict or diminish the 
 subjective influences that mould our thoup;hts. in the 
 
 intelli- 
 
 effo rt to come t o an understanding witi 
 Sjences unlike our o wm-.-still our conceptions could 
 np.ver at tipin tn n purr ubjectivityj It is^ tlierefore, 
 as impos8il ; )le as it is u seless to determine exactly 
 the respectiv e contributions of the internal and the 
 ^.production of knowledge."* 
 
 
 e xternal in_ 
 
 It is easy from this passage to see that Comte 
 has not fully apprehended the bearing of the Kantian 
 * Pol. Pos, ii. 38. 
 
 K.iut'B 1-cal 
 view of 
 Knowledge
 
 70 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 criticism. Ivaiit does not seek to show that know- 
 ledge springs out of the action and reaction of 
 subject and object on each other, l)ut that there 
 are certain universals, or forms of thought, by which 
 the intelligence must determine the matter of sense 
 ere we can know objects as such. The question 
 whieli he discusses is, how experience, and objects 
 of experience, as such, are possible. Kant would jiot, 
 therefore,__ apy tl^ aA— k is impos.silJe " to determine 
 exactly th e respective conli ikutiu-us of the internal 
 and the externjl_ in the^prg^Ui^tion of knowledge;" 
 but that the problem is an absur d one, since subject 
 and object are corfelairve" elements in the unity of 
 knowledge, and not two separate things, by the 
 action and reaction of which upon each other knaw- 
 ledge is ])r(jducc(l. The unity of experience is in-, 
 capalde df l_»eing transcended, and it is a false abstrac- 
 tion__b}' which we attempt to take either subject or 
 object out of that unity, and seek to determine it 
 as a thing in itself. The IntiUuji and the esse of 
 things are one, in such a sense, that it is transcend- 
 ing the limits of experience to attempt to determine 
 either of these apart from the other.* All know- 
 
 * It is, no doubt, inconsistent with this that Kant coiild 
 admit the existence of a thing in itself, which produces sensa- 
 tions in us, as in many passages lie seems to do. But it would 
 can-}' us too fai- to discuss this subject here. Comte, it may 
 be admitted, could have found many things in the letter of 
 Kant to give plausibility to his view. Cf. below p. 10^.
 
 THE WORK OF PHILOSOPHY. 71 
 
 ledge or experience implies and presupposes the unity 
 of the knowing mind and the categories through 
 which it determines its ohjects, and it is only in 
 virtue of these that there exists for us any objective 
 world of experience at all. Hence to leave out 
 the intelligence in our account of the intelligible, 
 to forget the constitutive power of thought in speak- 
 ing of existence (as is done by materialistic and so- 
 called empirical theories), is to mutilate and distort 
 the essential facts of the case. 
 
 This Kantian view of nature and experience leads i'>'ii»»"i'i'y 
 
 *■ corrcctx I lie 
 
 directly to certain important conclusions as to the ollc^^'.o^.*''" 
 work of philosophy. For, if its truth be admitted, 
 it necessarily follows that the ordinary consciousness 
 of men — even the ordinary scientific consciousness — 
 is, in its view of the world, essentially abstract and 
 imperfect. The ordinary consciousness generally, we 
 might even say invariably, deals witli objects as if 
 they were given independently of any thinking sub- 
 ject. It proceeds as if an intelligible world could 
 exist without an intelligence, and thus leaves out 
 of account an element, and indeed the most important 
 element, in the facts of experience. And the busi- 
 ness of the philosopher or metaphysician must be 
 to correct the abstractness of ordinary, even of scien- 
 tific thought, to bring to clear consciousness the 
 element which they neglect, and to determine h<»w 
 the new insight into the nature of knowledge, which
 
 72 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 by this process he has attained, must modify and 
 transform our previous view of the objects known. 
 In doing so, the metaphysician (or transcendentalist, 
 as Kant calls him) is not introducing a new method ; 
 he is simply following the method according to which 
 we are continually obliged to correct and complete 
 the results of one science by another. Science is 
 necessarily abstract, in so far as it investigates and 
 determines certain aspects and relations of things, 
 apart from their other aspects and relations. Thus, 
 in geometry, abstraction is made of everything except 
 the relations of lines and figures in space, in order 
 that the spatial conditions of things may be fully 
 determined, apart from their other conditions. And 
 in like manner, " the dynamic laws of weight would 
 still be unknown to us, unless we had first abstracted 
 all consideration of the resistance, or the motion, of 
 the atmosphere or other medium." The science of 
 political economy is based on an effort to isolate, 
 so far as is possible, the economical from all the other 
 conditions of social life. In short, all the separate 
 sciences, in this point of view, are abstract ; and they 
 tend to become more and more abstract as the scien- 
 tific division of labour increases. That is, they tend 
 to confine themselves to the investigation of certain 
 definite relations of objects, leaving out of account 
 all their other relations ; or (what comes to much 
 the same thing) to the examination of certain definite
 
 PHILOSOPHY CORRECTS ABSTRACTIOX. 73 
 
 ol3Jects, witliout takiiiL,' into account their manifold 
 relations to other objects. Now, as Conite himself 
 
 says, " iliese p roliinjpnry sim plifiQ tinns; wi^fliont which 
 
 t here could be no such thing as science in the true 
 sense of tKe word, always^ involve a corresponding 
 process of recduiposition, when pi'e\'isi(iii of actual 
 fact is called for.' To a ttain a complete \iew of 
 _tlh' truth, ^ve must return f''^"^ thf^ pi.ofv.w.f ;,,.. ,,f 
 
 t\n:__ L'solated scicuees to the unity of nature, in 
 which all these sep arate objects and relations are 
 15r ought tpajether . and iu which they modil'y and 
 detgfmifligeach other. And philosoi)hy only goes 
 a step farmer" fn the same direction, when it 
 corrects that abstraction from the thinking self, the 
 unity of knowledge, which is common to all the 
 sciences. T^e only difference is, that the abstraction 
 of science from the unity of the oljjective world, as 
 it is the result of a definite act of thought, is 
 generally conscious ; while the abstraction which 
 inliilo&o'phy seeks to correct is generally unconscioug,. 
 The geometrician cannot but see that there are 
 other than spatial conditions of existence, and that, 
 for his own purposes, he has left all such conditions 
 out of account. But it is quite possible, as every 
 day's experience proves, to investigate the laws of 
 the intelligible world, without ever adverting to its 
 necessary relation to the intelligence, and without 
 Ijeing conscious of the abstractness of a view of 

 
 74 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 things ill which this relation is left out of account, 
 rhilosophy, therefore, has to detect and bring to 
 the light of day certain facts or relations which 
 enter into the constitution of things, which indeed 
 are presupposed in all our consciousness of them, 
 but which, nevertheless, generally escape without 
 notice. Of this work of philosophy or metaphysics, 
 howt'xcr, f'Diiitc lias no idea, or he confuses it with 
 the methods of an empirical psychology, which, by 
 an opposite abstraction, would separate the thinking 
 mind from the world to which it is related. ]3ut 
 the method of philosophy is not mere abstraction ; 
 it is rather, if the expression may be allowed, con- 
 cretion. Philosophy, as Hegel said, is " thinking 
 things together " — i.e., thinking them in a unity 
 that transcends and explains their differences ; and, 
 if it ever abstractly considers the unity and move- 
 ment of thought in itself, it is only (as geometry 
 abstractly considers the relations of space) in order 
 more surely and clearly to discern that unity and 
 movement in all the objects of thought. 
 Metiipiiysic It Is to K aiit. ijrincipally, that this new wav of. 
 
 makes ■ __^„j,i.a,„„^„^ 
 
 sciouronrs st^tiiig the problem of philoso phy is due ; but it 
 principles, would be altogether a mistake to suppose that he 
 essentially changed the problem itself. Metaphy- 
 sicians, from the time of Socrates and Plato, have 
 always sought to get beyond the presuppositions of 
 the ordinary consciousness, and to remould that con-
 
 PHILOSOPHY IS SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 75 
 
 sciousness by bringing to light the principles upon 
 which it rests. One of the best definitions that 
 has been given of philosophy is " clear self-conscious- 
 ness." And it is, indeed, just this character of 
 metaphysical thought which renders plausible Comte's 
 attack upon it. It is in the metaphysical writers 
 of the past that we can most clearly discern the 
 errors of the past, for by these writers the errors 
 of the past are not merely implied and presupposed, 
 but explicitly stated. Hence such writers are con- 
 tinually suffering from that natural illusion l)y 
 which we take, as the prominent representatives of 
 an idea or tendency of thought, those authors by 
 whom it has been most distinctly expressed ; whereas 
 it is rather they who first enable us, even if they 
 do not enable themselves, to see the limitations of 
 that idea or tendency, and to transcend it. But^ 
 _as it is in the metaphysicians that we fi nd the 
 ^ clftaje &t and i nost _dj^finjt^ eyprasLsious^jTLJ^-^''''^^ -lISl. 
 fective principles of past though ^- wlv'"^^ ^^ — are 
 seeking to transcend, it is not unnatural that we 
 should ^ attribute — the — defpct, itself to Tpetaphy'sip 
 What, however, is really due to metaphysic is not 
 the error, but rather that clearness and definiteness 
 of its expression which makes our refutation of it 
 and our higher point of view possible. Thus the 
 limit of Greek thought, the point at which, by its 
 own development, it falls into error and self-contra-
 
 7G THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 diction, would have been l)y no means so easy to 
 discern, if its presuppositions had not been raised 
 into ideal clearness in the works of Plato and 
 Aristotle. The individualism of the Stoics and Epi- 
 cureans gives us a key, which we would otherwise 
 want, to those new experiences of independence and 
 isolation which came to men under the Empire of 
 Eome, after the l)reaking up of the ancient municipal 
 organization of social life. Descartes and Spinoza 
 reveal the open secret of that new view of the 
 relation of man to God, which was partly expressed 
 by Luther and Calvin, and which was so powerful 
 in moulding the political and social life, especially 
 of Protestant countries, and in awaking in them a 
 consciousness of individual and national independence, 
 combined with a still more intense consciousness 
 that the individual is nothing, except as the servant 
 of a higher power. Hence it was in a criticism of 
 these philosophies that Locke and Leibniz found 
 the starting-point for their fuller assertion of the 
 claims of the individual. Finally, it is through a 
 struggle with Individualism, especially in its fullest 
 expression in Hume and Rousseau, that Kant and 
 his successors in Germany, and Comte in France, 
 were led to that higher organic idea, in which the 
 individual and universal cease to be opposed to 
 each other as reality to fiction, and come to be 
 regarded as different but complementary aspects of
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND PROGRESS. 77 
 
 reality. If we no longer say, " The universal alone 
 is real, and the individual is an abstraction ; " or, 
 "The individual alone is real, and the universal is 
 a name ; " but, " The individual is real, but only as 
 the realization of the universal, and the universal 
 is real, but only as manifesting itself in the indi- 
 vidual," it is due to the whole past movement of 
 philosophic thought. Nor, again, would it be difticult 
 to show that the successes or failures of science at 
 different times were closely connected with the 
 sufficiency or insufficiency of the ultimate principles 
 of thinking then acknowledged or presupposed. For 
 it is the development of man's spirit which enables 
 him to ask and to answer new questions in regard 
 to the world of objects ; nor can his growing know- 
 ledge of that world be separated from his growing 
 consciousness of himself. To one who regards 
 metaphysic from this point of view, its continual 
 apparent failures will be as little suggestive of a 
 despair of philosophy as the fall of the Greek State, 
 or of the feudal system, is suggestive of a disbelief 
 in the possibility of social and political life. It 
 may even be said that no stage of culture, no 
 limited form of human thought or existence, is 
 ever completely exhausted and transcended, till it 
 has risen to a clear consciousness of itself in a 
 metaphysic, or something of the nature of a meta- 
 physic. It is the disentanglement of the principle.
 
 78 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 the central idea, the fundamental category, which 
 has previously ruled men almost without their 
 knowing it, that first enables them to see its value 
 and relation to that unity of the whole ; with which 
 it was necessarily confounded so long as it remained 
 merely a moving force in the depths of the popular 
 mind. Comte himself \vas_ metaphysical, in so far 
 as he soiight to transce nd the one-sided and im- 
 perfect categories of earlier philosophy , and to 
 reconcile them by means nf » highor t.bni]CTht. __His 
 defect lay in this, that he was not metaphysical 
 enough ; that his analysis of his-xiwn thought was 
 imperfect ; and that he was therefore tlie instrument 
 
 of a movement of human intelligeaice, of the 
 meaning of which he was never clearly conscious. 
 Otherwise he would have perceived that his "positive" 
 stage was not simjDly a negation of the metaphysical 
 and theological stages which preceded it and a 
 return to fact and experience, but that it was 
 essentially a new reading of experience, which 
 implied, therefore, a new form of metaphysics and 
 theology, 
 corate'sun- It is this unconsciousu^ss of his--&wu. fundamental 
 
 conscious- 
 
 ownguiding categories, which explaiae— 6uml(i's rtldii3ai miseon- 
 pnncipes. ggp|.JQj^ ^f l^j^g whole_ history..of tlieology and meta- 
 physics. The third stage of Positivism is not the 
 unity which transcends, while it reconciles, the 
 previous stages of human development ; on the con-
 
 DE VELOPMENT B } ' NEC. I TION. 79 
 
 trary, it involves the total renunciation of those prin- 
 ciples of thought which had prevailed during the two 
 previous stages. According to this view, all that we 
 can say is, that a germ of positive tliought existed 
 from the first, and that, by its development, theology 
 and metapliysics were gradually driven from the 
 whole sphere of knowledge. Fositivin ii] i'' t.lim:— U^^. 
 concentration of human thought within cfj^-.f^,in liin ifs 
 which at first it did not respect, but which it 
 g radually learns to be. for it. impassab le. And the 
 only result of the process is, that the whole field of 
 the non-plienomenal is abandoned to poetry, which 
 is still to be permitted under certain restrictions to 
 fill up the vacaut spaces of the unknowable with 
 shapes drawn according to our wishes. Theology 
 and metaphysics are but more or less thinly dis- 
 guised anthropomorphisms, which once subserved a 
 social purpose, and which apart from tliat purpose 
 have no value for the intelligence; nor is there 
 any element of truth in them which needs to be 
 preserved under the new intellectual regime. Their 
 history was not a development, but a purely negative 
 process — a process whereby they became attenuated 
 and dissolved, until the rich concrete meaning of 
 the first Fetichism had entirely disappeared in the 
 negations of the revolutionary philosophy. Mono- 
 theism, the last religion, was but the l)are abstract 
 residuum of theology, as tlie idea of Nature was
 
 80 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 the last abstract residuuiu of metaphysics. And th e 
 whole result of the long striving of human intelli- 
 crence to penetrate into the absolute is merely the 
 knowledge of its own limits. 
 deSfbL Now, it is not too much to say that this view 
 develop- ^^ involves a fundamental misrepresentation, and even 
 
 mMit of 1 1 • r' 1 • • TIM 
 
 reii>fion. inversioH, of the whole history or religion and phil- 
 osophv. Its plausibility at first sight arises from a 
 common confusion as to the idea of abstraction. In 
 one sense it may be said that there is no one so 
 concrete in his view of things as the child or the 
 savage ; in another seube, it may be said that there 
 is no one so abstract. The mind of the child 
 clings to the immediate images of things; it cannot 
 rise above their pictured presence in space and time ; 
 it cannot sever them in thought from their immediate 
 surroundings. On the other hand, the child's thought 
 is abstract and simple ; it confuses all things together; 
 it scarcely distinguishes at first between animate 
 and inanimate, between man and animal. With 
 Comte we may call the child a Fetichist ; not because 
 his imagination raises all things to the level of man, 
 but because he still lives in a simplicity or confusion 
 of thought for which there are no distinct differences 
 of level. On the other hand, as the child advances 
 to maturity, the pictures of sense may partially fade, 
 but his ideas of things become more complex and 
 adequate. It ceases to be impossible for him to
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION. 81 
 
 separate objects from the definite circumstances of 
 space and time, in which they have Ijeen at first 
 perceived ; but at the same time, his knowledge of 
 those objects, in their unity and difference — their 
 permanent nature and their manifold phases and 
 aspects — is continually growing. If, therefore, the 
 movement of his thought, in one point of view, is 
 toward greater generality and al^stractness, in another 
 point of view it is toward greater particularity and 
 concreteness. To use a favourite modern phrase, 
 the development of human thought is by differen- 
 tiation and integration, by induction and deduction 
 at once. Now Comte's history of theology and meta- 
 physics is greatly distorted by the fact that he 
 detects in it only a movement of generalization and 
 abstraction ; and not also a movement towards 
 greater complexity and completeness. Yet, even a 
 superficial glance at the development of religion is 
 enough to let us see that the Christian idea of God 
 in man is less simple and abstract than Jewish 
 Monotheism or Oriental Pantheism. If, indeed, we 
 were to judge of a religion by mere wealth of 
 fantastic sensuous symbolism, it might seem possible 
 to regard the earliest religions as the richest ; though 
 even this might be disputed, seeing that the fancy 
 of the savage Fetichist, while capricious and way- 
 ward, is at the same time singularly monotonous 
 and uninventive. But to anyone who would classify
 
 82 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 religions according to the complexity and depth of 
 the thought involved in them, it must be apparent 
 that they become more full and definite — not more 
 vague and simple — as time advances. Their progress 
 toward greater universality is at the same time a 
 progress toward greater specification. In the Indian 
 faith we discern, from very early times, the presence 
 of an idea of the divine unity. But it is a vague 
 and abstract idea, and for that very reason it stands 
 side by side with, or produces, a lawless Polytheism, 
 in which there is neither method nor meaning ; 
 which, as Goethe says, does not subserve the true 
 purposes of a religion, since it adds another chaotic 
 element to life, instead of supplying a guiding prin- 
 ciple through all its confusion and difficulty. In 
 the Jewish religion we have a true Monotheism, in 
 which the unity is no longer that of an abstract 
 substance, but of a spiritual or self-conscious being 
 — a personal will which manifests itself in a definite 
 purpose, in a moral government of men and nations. 
 In Christianity, finally, we have the idea of a God, 
 who is not merely an absolute substance — not merely 
 a Creator and Euler of the world, but a self-revealing 
 Spirit; a Spirit who reveals himself in, as well as 
 to, his creatures — an idea which combines in one 
 the earlier Pantheistic and Monotheistic conceptions. 
 To regard the process in which these are three of 
 the main stages as merely a process of abstraction
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY. S3 
 
 and negation is surely to take a most external and 
 superficial view of it. The truth is, that this and 
 the similar sketch in Hume's " Dialogues on Natural 
 Eeligion " are rather based on a preconceived theory 
 as to the development of human thought in religion, 
 than on the phenomena of religious history. And 
 in Comte's " Social Dynamics," he has frequently to 
 mention facts which are altogether inconsistent 
 with it. 
 
 Nor is Comte's view of the history of metaphysic Defect in 
 
 his view of 
 
 less fictitious and inaccurate. Accordinc; to that *^'^ dev-eiop- 
 
 o ment of 
 
 view, the earliest philosophies ought to be the most P'"^'"*°i'^y- 
 concrete and complete, and the latest, the most 
 simple and abstract ; but the very reverse is the 
 fact. It is in the dawn of speculation that men 
 are content to explain the universe by such ab- 
 stractions as "being" and "becoming." The ancient 
 philosophy contrasts with the modern, as simple 
 with complex ; for while the former is occupied 
 with questions about " the one " and " the many," 
 the " universal " and the " particular," the latter is 
 concerned from the first with the relations of 
 self-consciousness to the objective world. Again, 
 confining ourselves to modern philosophy, we find 
 the abstract Universalism (if we may use the 
 expression) of Descartes and Spinoza, yielding in 
 the next generation to two opposite forms of In- 
 dividualism, and ending in the attempt of Kant
 
 84 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 iind his successors " to read Locke with the eyes 
 of Leibniz, and Leibniz with the eyes of Locke,"* 
 and (we may add) to unite the elements of truth 
 in both by a deeper view of the principle imperfectly 
 expressed in Spinoza. In short, the whole move- 
 ment of philosophy is a movement towards a more 
 complex, and at the same time towards a more 
 systematic, view of the world. Philosophical thought 
 is ever seeking on the one hand to distinguish, and 
 even to oppose to each other, the different sides of 
 truth which were at first confused together ; and 
 again, on the other hand, to show that what were 
 at first supposed to be contradictory, are really 
 complementary, aspects of things. This progress of 
 philosophy by differentiation and integration Comte's 
 theory does not explain, but it explains him. For, 
 as has been indicated, Comte's whole view of the 
 relation of the individual to society, and of the 
 present to the past, manifests that same effort to 
 concentrate and combine in one view different and 
 even opposed motives of thought, which is shown in 
 the idealistic philosophy of Germany. Only, as Comte 
 is not conscious of this affiliation of his thought, 
 but, on the contrary, supposes Positivism to be 
 the simple negation of metaphysics, his possession 
 of the higher idea shows itself, not in a new meta- 
 physic, but only in a better comprehension of the 
 * Green's Introduction to Hume's Works, § 3.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE. 85 
 
 social life and development of the race. Hence, 
 also, he sees no positive connection between his 
 own speculations and the previous history of phil- 
 osophy, but connects it solely with the past progress 
 of physical science. 
 
 This inadequacy of Conite's__yiew of the history Defect in 
 
 ' his view of 
 
 of philosophy and theology leads to an opposite ^^i^"^ ^ev'jiop- 
 inadequacy in his view of the history of scienc^e. '''^^°"'=^- 
 As the former is conceived by him to be a mere 
 process of abstraction, which ends in nothing, so 
 the latter is conceived by him — at least, in his first 
 general account of it — purely as a movement from 
 the abstract and general to the concrete and par- 
 ticular. There are thus two laws for the progress 
 of the human mind — the law of its progress to 
 science, and the law of its progress in science. The 
 progress to science is merely the gradual destruction 
 of the imaginative synthesis in which civilization 
 began ; the process in science consists in the gradual 
 building up of the scientific synthesis in which 
 civilization must end. Science begins with the con- 
 sideration of the simplest and most abstract relations 
 of things, with arithmetic and geometry, and it ends 
 with the investigation of their most complex and 
 concrete relations, with sociology and morals. This, 
 with slight modifications, is the historical order of 
 the genesis of the sciences, and, what is even more 
 important in Comte's eyes, it is the order of their
 
 8G THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 logical dependence or filiation, and therefore the 
 order of a duly arranged scientific education. For 
 each of the successive sciences — mathematics, astro- 
 nomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and 
 morals — includes a deductive part, in which it de- 
 pends on previous sciences, and an inductive part, 
 in which it makes a fresh start from experience for 
 itself ; and therefore no one can be fully equipped 
 for the investigation of the more complex, who has 
 not made himself master of the laws of the simpler, 
 phenomena. Like Plato, Comte would write over 
 the portals of science, fxi] ayeo^iJ.erptjTO'i eialroD, and 
 he would add, — Let no one enter upon the study of 
 chemistry who is not a master of the principles of 
 physics ; upon the study of biology, who is not a 
 master of the principles of chemistry ; nor upon the 
 study of sociology, who is not a master of the 
 principles of all the previous sciences. 
 Mr spcn- This view of the historical and logical filiation of 
 
 cer's criti- 
 cism of that ^i^Q sciences has been attacked with considerable 
 
 view. 
 
 force in an Essay by Mr. Spencer upon the " Genesis 
 of Science." In that Essay, Mr, Spencer points out, 
 what, indeed, Comte himself had very fully acknow- 
 ledged, that historically every science in turn has 
 been an instrument in the development of the 
 others. Even in the time of Aristotle politics and 
 biology had made no inconsiderable advance, while 
 as yet physics and chemistry could scarcely be said
 
 MR. SPENCER'S CRITICISM. 87 
 
 to be in existence. And this is only what was to 
 be expected, for some knowledge of the conditions of 
 social order is a practical condition of the develop- 
 ment of any other kind of science ; and the neces- 
 sary art of medicine forced men at a very early 
 period to pay some attention to physiology. As- 
 tronomy had to wait for optics to furnish it not 
 only with instruments but with definite conceptions 
 of the dispersion and refraction of light ; and physical 
 investigation could not proceed very far without 
 some kind of solution of biological and even 
 psychological questions in relation to sense per- 
 ception. It was the advance of geometry that led 
 to the invention of algebra, and the transcendental 
 analysis of Newton and Leibniz was directly sug- 
 gested by the problems of physics. These and 
 many other facts of the same kind seem to show 
 that a serial arrangement of the sciences misrepre- 
 sents at once the historical order of their develop- 
 ment and the logical order of their dependence. 
 And in both points of view it would be nearer the 
 truth to regard the different sciences (as Comte 
 himself sometimes regards them) as " les diverses 
 branches d'un tronc unique." Tor this " suggests 
 the facts that the sciences had a common origin, 
 that they have been developing simultaneously, and 
 that they have been from time to time dividing 
 and subdividing." Yet even this metaphor is in-
 
 88 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 adequate, for "it does not suggest the yet more 
 important fact that the divisions and subdivisions 
 thus arising do not remain separate, but nov^ and 
 again reunite in direct and indirect ways. They 
 inosculate; they severally send off and receive con- 
 necting grov^ths ; and the intercommunion has been 
 ever becoming more frequent, more intricate, more 
 widely ramified. There has all along been higher 
 specialization that there might be a larger general- 
 ization ; and a deeper analysis that there might be 
 a better synthesis. Each larger generalization has 
 lifted sundry specializations still higher ; and each 
 better synthesis has prepared the way for still 
 deeper analysis."* 
 Littr/toMr. To these objections, Comte would probably have 
 rjpencer. answered,t as Littre has answered for him, that 
 there is a difference between the determination of 
 some of the laws of a particular class of phenomena 
 and the constitution of a science of these phenomena ; 
 and that a science cannot be regarded as constituted 
 till its inductive and deductive parts are separated. 
 It cannot be denied that physics involves all the 
 relations discussed in mathematics, and something 
 more ; that chemistry involves all the relations dis- 
 cussed in physics, and something more ; that biology 
 involves all the relations discussed in physics and 
 
 * Spencer's "Essays," i. p. 145. 
 
 tCf. Pol. Pos. i., Introduction Fondamentale.
 
 THE UNIVERSAL AND THE GENERAL. 89 
 
 chemistry, and sometliini;- more ; and that sociology 
 involves the relations discussed in all the previous 
 sciences, and something more. Now, it is a hopeless 
 task for tlie weak human intellect to deduce this 
 " something more " in the more complex, from the 
 principles of the less complex sciences, even if 
 absolutely such a deduction is possible. Hence 
 we cannot regard a science as constituted, until 
 its special subject-matter has been separated from 
 the subject-matter of the simpler sciences, and 
 until, in relation to that subject-matter, certain 
 laws have been determined which cannot be de- 
 duced from the principles of those sciences. Thus, 
 in Comte's opinion, biology was not constituted 
 as a science until, in quite modern times, the 
 phenomena of life were seen at once in their 
 relative dependence on, and their relative separation 
 from, physical and chemical phenomena. Nor could 
 sociology be constituted as a science until, by Comte 
 himself, the law of social development was deter- 
 mined, and the phenomena of human life were 
 thereby separated from phenomena of life in general, 
 which fall under the province of biology. Jn this 
 sense, therefore, it is argued that the historical and 
 the logical order of the sciences are coincident ; and 
 that, while it is quite true that the advance of one 
 of the simpler sciences is often stimulated by re- 
 quirements of the more complex sciences, it is
 
 J)0 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 equally true that tlie more complex science has to 
 wait for the development of the simpler science, ere 
 it can rise above its first empirical stage. 
 Ambiguity It would bo bevond the scope of this volume, 
 
 of tho oppo- •' *■ 
 
 'tween 'the Gvcn if it wcrc in the power of the writer, to dis- 
 "nd'thr cuss in all their bearings these different views as to 
 
 p:ii-tifular. 
 
 the arrangement of the scdences ; but it may be 
 remarked that the most important of Mr. Spencer's 
 objections are directed, not against the specific account 
 which Comte gives of the historical and logical 
 relations of the sciences, but rather against his asser- 
 tion that science progresses from the general to the 
 particular, from the abstract to the concrete. That 
 progress, he maintains, is " at once from the special 
 to the general, and from the general to the special." 
 If arithmetic comes before geometry, and geometry 
 before physics ; on the other hand it is equally true, 
 that geometry comes before algebra, and algebra 
 before transcendental analysis, in which mathematics 
 reaches its highest generalization. The " special " 
 geometry of the ancients is contrasted by Comte him- 
 self with the "general" geometry of the moderns; 
 and the Newtonian theory of gravitation was more 
 general than the laws of Kepler, by the aid of 
 which it was discovered. Now, looking at such 
 illustrations as these by which Mr. Spencer supports 
 his case, we cannot but think that the controversy 
 really turns upon the ambiguity of " general " or
 
 THE UNIVERSAL AS PRINCIPLE. 91 
 
 "abstract," to which reference has l)cen made; and 
 that — in spite of what both Comte and his critic 
 have said about the different meanings that may be 
 given to these words, neither of them has consist- 
 ently kept in view the difference between the 
 " general " with which science begins, and that with 
 which it ends. In one sense of the word, trans- 
 cendental analysis is more " general " than arithmetic 
 and algebra, but in another sense it is more specific. 
 For transcendental analysis includes and explains 
 both arithmetic and algebra, and casts its light even 
 beyond their sphere ; but it does so, not by becom- 
 ing vaguer and less definite, but quite the contrary. 
 It is a universal that does not leave out of account 
 the differences of the particulars included under it, 
 but rather determines them more fully. And the 
 same thing may be said of the laws of Newton as 
 contrasted with the laws of Kepler. It is easy 
 enough to reach the general, if all that is wanted 
 is a common element ; for in that case we need 
 only to abstract from everything but the simple 
 idea of " being," and we have at one step reached 
 the top of the logical tree of Porphyry, the highest 
 universal of thought. But the universal of science 
 and philosophy is something different from this ; it 
 is not merely a generic name, tinder which things 
 are brought together, but a principle which unites 
 them and determines their relation to each other.
 
 92 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 It is a unity, the thought of which does not exclude, 
 but rather is correlative with, a knowledge of the 
 differences. In this point of view the Platonic 
 view of science, as a search for unity and the 
 universal, and the Aristotelian view of it as a search 
 for difference and the particular, are but opposite 
 .sides of the shield of knowledge, which cannot be 
 separated from each other. Now the defect of 
 Conite's general description of the progress of science 
 is, that he has chosen to look solely at one side of 
 the shield, and to regard it merely as a movement 
 of specification ; and the consequence is, that in the 
 sequel he is obliged continually to correct himself, 
 and to observe in particular cases that it involves 
 also a movement of generalization. Mr, Spencer sees 
 both sides, and therefore progress is for him a 
 movement at once of differentiation and integration ; 
 yet in his criticism of Comte, and in his " First 
 Principles," there are passages in which he seems 
 to confuse the universal of science with a mere 
 abstraction or logical genus, and to overlook the 
 essential correlativity and interdependence of the 
 two opposite movements of thought.'" The defects 
 
 *Mr. Spencer, it may be remarked, takes, like Comte, a 
 negative view of the progress of religion, and to him, therefore, 
 the last religion is the worship of the Unknown, and, indeed, 
 of the Unknowable. But Comte practically retracts this view 
 when he makes the worship of Humanity the last form of 
 religion.
 
 CO MTE'S NEGATIONS. 93 
 
 of l)otli writers, however, lie mainly on the meta- 
 physical side ; in their analysis of the idea of 
 development rather than in their application of 
 it. And it is the power and fertility of resource 
 with which they apply it to life and history, which 
 gives them, and especially which gives Comte, a 
 claim to an important place among modern philo- 
 sophical writers. 
 
 In this chapter I have tried to trace to their 
 origin Comte's ideas of social and intellectual de- 
 velopment, and to examine the motives which led 
 him to reject theology and metaphysics, as legitimate 
 forms of science. In the following chapter I shall 
 go on to consider more fully the subjective synthesis 
 by which he would supply their place.
 
 94 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE POSITIVE OR CONSTEUCTIVE SIDE OF COMTE's PHILO- 
 SOPHY — HIS SUBSTITUTES FOR METAPHYSIC AND 
 THEOLOGY. 
 
 His recognition of the need of substitutes for Theology and 
 Metaphysic — His assertion that his philosophy is relative and 
 subjective — Double meaning of the relativity of knowledge as 
 involving the assertion or the denial of real or absolute hiotv- 
 ledge — Collision of Gonitis earlier and later views on this 
 point — Comte's subjective synthesis not subjective in the sense 
 of Individualism, nor yet in the sense that a conscious subject 
 is implied in all objects — His compromise between these opposite 
 theories — His doctrine that man sees the world in ordine ad 
 hominem but not in ordine ad universum — Impossibility of 
 separating nature from man or of criticising the tohole system 
 to which man belongs — Defects of Comte's religion according 
 to his own idea of religion — Schisms in the school of Comte. 
 
 Ix the preceding chapter I have tried to explain 
 how Comte was led to treat Metaphysics and 
 Theology as merely transitional forms of human 
 thought, and to show that this view not only involves 
 a false conception of their nature, but also necessi- 
 tates an entire misrepresentation of the course of
 
 HIS VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT. 95 
 
 •* their historical development. To regard the liistory 
 of Metaphysics and Theology as a purely nr(/ative 
 process, by which the first concrete fulness of religious 
 conceptions was gradually attenuated till nothing re- 
 mained but the bare abstract idea of Nature ; and, 
 on the other hand, to think of the history of science 
 as the corresj)onding jyositivc process, by which the 
 
 ' mind of man advanced from the general to the 
 special, from the investigation of the simplest 
 numerical and spatial relations of things to the 
 knowledge of the complex social nature of man — this 
 is a view of man's intellectual history, recommended 
 by its simplicity and clearness, as well as by its 
 correspondence with the most popular philosophy of 
 the present time^ But, as we have seen, it involves 
 a one-sided conception of the movement of human 
 thought in its scientific, and still more in its 
 theological and metaphysical, aspect. Comte him- 
 self enables us to see that his first description of 
 the history of science is incomplete, if not misleading ; 
 and that its movement is towards greater generality 
 as well as towards more definite specification. Now, 
 as Metaphysic is only the clearest form of self-con- 
 sciousness, and as man's consciousness of himself 
 deepens and widens with his consciousness of the 
 o1)jective world, we might expect to find that Meta- 
 physic also develops at once towards the universal 
 and towards the particular ; autl when we look at
 
 90 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE 
 
 the facts of the history of Philosophy we find this 
 expectation amply realized. Nor is it otherwise 
 with religion — which is to the heart and the imagi- 
 native intuitions of man what philosophy is to his 
 self-conscious intelligence; for the latest religion is 
 at once the deepest and the richest, the most com- 
 plex and the most universal. 
 Need of su))- We caunot, however, give a completely satisfactory 
 
 stitntes for 
 
 and tu'eT''' answer to Comte's criticism of Metaphysics and Theo- 
 '°^*' logy without considering more fully the substitutes 
 
 which he would put in their place. For Comte is 
 not simply an Agnostic ; K^ ^lr^*>»^*^i^r]<^ny f-hp rfflll'tY 
 of Lhc wants which Metaphysics and Theolog^JtiaXfi-. 
 hitliertu striven to satisfy ; nor does he hold that . 
 these wants are, by the nature of things and of the 
 human intelligence, for ever precluded from satisfac- 
 tion^ He does not, lil-ce some modern writers, reduce 
 philosophy into a consciousness of the limits of the 
 hm^iqTi mind, and religion into a vague awe_ oL.tbe 
 Unknowable. On the contrary, he holds that Positiv- 
 ism for the first time supplies complete satisfaction 
 to all the tendencies of the many-sided nature of 
 man ; whereas all earlier systems had been obliged 
 to purchase one kind of culture at the expense of 
 another, — to gratify the affections by the sacrifice 
 of intellectual freedom, or to cultivate the intelli- 
 gence to the neglect of the claims of the heart. 
 'I'll tlie Metaphysician he grants the necessity of a
 
 NEED OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 97 
 
 systematizing of knowledge in relation to one general 
 principle, which sliall iurnisli at once its first pre- 
 supposition and its end. To the Theologian he 
 grants that that inner harmony with self and with 
 the world, which wc call religion, can only be se- 
 cured by a firm belief and trust in some " Grand 
 Etre " who transcends and comprehends our narrow 
 individuality, " in whom we live, and move, and 
 have our being." But while (in opposition to the 
 tendencies of that scientific empiricism, to which 
 the name of Positivism is usually given) Comte 
 thus recognizes those claims of the intelligence and 
 of the heart for which Philosophy and Theology 
 had tried to provide, he still adopts as his own 
 the empiricist condemnation of Ijoth, and seeks to 
 show that, o n the basis of Q nipjririisi'^ it.aaL£r-j«a-umv 
 secure the complete satisfaction of all our spiritual 
 w ants. It is to this claim of Comte, fu orcujiv 
 in the name of Science the place from which 
 Theology and Metaphysics have been expelled, that 
 we must now direct our attention. 
 
 The contrast vvhich Comte draws between his own Distinctions 
 
 - - - — ■ ' ~ of subjec- 
 
 philosopby and religion, and those of his predecessors, ^^''.''^•^^?^g 
 is expressed in the words " relative " and " subjec- av'so/ilte,""** 
 tive." His purpose, he tells us, is a " sub iecti\:ii ''^" 
 s ynthesis^ " while his predecessors had aimed at an / 
 
 " objective synthesis " — i.e., ^Acy had__endeaA:our<Ml \a) 
 
 comprehend the world in itself, by carrying its
 
 98 THE SOCIAL r HI LO SOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 phenomena back to an objective, principle to which 
 theT-^fTall 'equally related, and of which they-^re- 
 all the manifestations ; while he is content to take 
 hir'sta'nd on the subjective unity of the human 
 race, a unity which has grown out of the conscious 
 or unconscious co-operation of all past generations, 
 and which now manifests itself in the love and 
 reverence of men for each other, and for the GraTid 
 Eire, Humanity, that comprehends them all* I For 
 the existence of this Great Being is a fact which 
 we can empirically verify, although we are totally 
 unal)le to discover the meaning of that wider objec- 
 tive fatality, to which ultimately the fortunes and 
 life of mankind are subjected. Again, Comte con- 
 trasts his own philosophy with that of his predecessors, 
 as "relative" with _^labsolute. " \\ By tlni he rne^s 
 t hat Positivism does not seek to base i tself on al^soTute 
 knov/ledge, i.e., on that knowledge of noumenai causes 
 which was claimed __l2y rnp.tfl ph ysic, but merely o n 
 a knowl edge of the laws of phenomena ; and th at, 
 therefore, the only centre to which our knowledge 
 can be referred and by reference to which it can 
 be organized is the relative centre of Humanity, and 
 l^not the real or absolute centre of the universe\> 
 Comte also often uses the word " relative " in a 
 
 * I need not do more than refer to Comte's view of Humanity 
 as " incorporating " only its best members with itself. Some- 
 thing will be said of this below.
 
 RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 99 
 
 slightly modified sense to indicate that his phil- 
 osophy takes due accouut of all llio various cou- 
 ditious under which humanity progresses towards 
 its ideal, and does not seek to set up an absolute 
 standard of perfection without reference to the 
 necessary limitations of each stage of development. 
 Now, as it is always best to criticize a writer l)y 
 reference to his own principles and aims, I shall 
 attempt to show that the main errors of Comte 
 arise from his being not " subjective," not " relative " 
 enough, even in the sense which he himself gives 
 to these words. He is not " subjective " enough ; 
 for in the development of his theory he admits a 
 kind of separation between thought and existence, 
 which a logical development of his own principles 
 must have led him to reject. And he is not " rela- 
 tive " enough ; for he starts from philosophical 
 principles which involve the denial of any neces- 
 sary connection between man and the world, and 
 even between the different elements in the nature 
 of man ; and he ends with a religion in which 
 poetry is divorced from truth, and truth from 
 poetry. 
 
 In the first place, however, it is necessary to A^{j'X'J,*^y 
 clear up a certain ambiguity as to the idea of '■°'^*''"'^'- 
 relativity. It is a commonplace of the sensation- 
 alist and empiricist school at the present day, that 
 we are confined to the knowledge of phenomena,
 
 100 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 and cannot rise to the knowledge of noumena, or 
 things in themselves. Conite usually expresses this 
 idea by saying that science is limited to the in- 
 vestigation of the laws of phenomena, and that it 
 was the error of Theology and Metaphysics to 
 seek to determine their causes. When, however, 
 we try to ascertain the exact force of this oppos- 
 ition, we find that it may have two distinct mean- 
 ings. For it is one thing to say, that Theology 
 and Metaphysics gave false answers to a legiti- 
 mate question, which was afterwards more correctly 
 answered by science ; and it is quite another thing 
 to say that they attempted to answer a question 
 different from the c^uestion of science, and which 
 it is beyond the powers of the human mind to 
 
 answer. Now, Comte sometimes sp paV« g« if tihp 
 
 error of the Theologians w ere {i a J,Tfip^,7 til'-'^^' ^■^^^ 
 sought to explain all phenomena by regarding, thefla 
 as the expres sions of divine wills and intelligences 
 analogous to our own; and us il' tlie error of Uiu 
 Metaphysicians were simply that they repeated this 
 "explanation in a more irrational form, substituting 
 personified abstractions for Gods. At other tinies__ 
 he speaks as if the error of Theology and Meta- 
 physics were that they attempted to determine the 
 real nature of things, wliich can be known bv u s 
 only in tlieir phenomena. On the former view , 
 Theolo-y and Metaphy.sica._are provisional hypo-
 
 riVO VIEWS OF RELATIVITY. 
 
 101 
 
 t reses, in relation to the objects of exp erience ; 
 which lose credit when it iff Hisnn vp.rp.fl^ tjmt many 
 •t^f" "t'h6^e ob.lfiCts.,,_w luch were ill tint nnniiTiirl to 
 be like ma" , j^j-f> -jm mau} waya^ milike him. ( ) n^ 
 the latter view^ they arc i^nviiMnlcil scicin'c-., \\liii;h_^ 
 do not re late to the iilu'iionn'iial dlijccts nf ex- 
 perience at all, but to (H'llaiu realities, supposed 
 to be beneath or holiind ilu'ui. When we dis- 
 enlEangTe'" these two dillerent views i'loni each otlier, 
 wa'U ftd' tlhali theY d" in't rest on the same Irigical 
 bas is, and that ^^ the v do nut l)y any means imply 
 each other. T he former view im i'lics oidy that 
 our ideas of the world are confused aud niiperfeet, 
 and rc4uire tu be coutiniially corrected by fresh 
 t houjoht and experi ence. The latter implies that 
 there are certain objects other than phenomena, 
 tlie existence of wliieh we know, Init the nature 
 of wliieli w o gradually discover ourselves to be 
 incapable of deti'rmining. It implies, in fact, .,that 
 our intelligence can discern its own limits ;^^or, 
 what is the same thing, can know that there is 
 something beyond those limits. Now wliile, with 
 certain modifications we might not licsitate to -raut 
 the truth o f the former of these doctrines, we sliould 
 r equire sonie- proQf of the lat ter, or even of its 
 logical possibility . J]or b y it wc are brought face 
 to face with the difficulty of conceiving how we 
 
 should be able to ask fj[uestions, which — not from
 
 1(,2 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 external circumstances^ but from the essential nature 
 of our'TrTtelllgeiQce — are alto-eUur uii;iiis\Yerab]e, and 
 which therefore, we can say with certainty, we shall. 
 never be able to answer^ . ^'bis wbic]^ ^/Tv gponr^^i^ 
 at tempts_ to^ro ye — by very inadequate reaso nings as^ 
 seems to me^^-Comte^jjSSume^wi^^ut^^a^ 
 
 Hence, while h e pretends to ren mmp.ft Tnp.ta,- 
 '-'^prysics, he has committed himself to one. of the most 
 indefensible of all metaphysical positions. / For the 
 assertion that we know only phenomena, has no mean- 
 ing except in reference to the doctrine that there are, 
 or can by us be conceived to be, things in themselves — 
 i.e., things unrelated to thought ; and that, while we 
 know them to exist, we cannot know what they are. 
 Now this dogma is siinply the scholastic realism, or 
 wliat (_'(»iiit(; (Tills nu'tapliysics, in its most al)stract a^d 
 irrational form. It is a residuum of bad metaphysics, 
 which, by a natural nemesis, seems almost invariably 
 to haunt the minds of those writers who think they 
 have renounced metaphysics altogether. 
 Idealistic The authority of Kant is often quoted in support 
 
 view of the • •' ^ -'--'- 
 
 kn^wiedk'e°^ of the doctriue of the existence of things in themselves: 
 indeed, it seems to be the doctrine which is most 
 generally associated with his name. But, in spite 
 of some ambiguities, Kant was precisely the writer 
 who, by the general direction and tendency of his 
 thought, did most to free modern speculation from 
 such an illusion. For it was his main aim and
 
 IDEALISTIC VIEW OF RELA TIVITY. 103 
 
 purpose t(i sliiiw tliLit the duLcnuiiiulinu df (^ibiects 
 as such, is p(jssil)le <iiil3' iii rckilidu In ilic uiij^jYof 
 apperception, or, in other words, ol' sc il'- cnusciuusness, 
 and b) means of certain universal principles of- 
 tllUUght' "which he calls the Calc-nric^. l\;iiii, iiidred, 
 says tliat the objects thus kuowu are merely pheno- 
 mena, and that things in themselves are unknowable. 
 But even things in themselves are not, in his view, 
 altogether out of relation to consciousness. They 
 are thinkable, though they are not knowable ; we 
 have a consciousness of them through the ideas of 
 reason, though they are not objects of experience ; 
 and our moral life, bringing with it a consciousness 
 of freedom, turns the thought of them into a con- 
 viction of their reality. Further, the later German 
 philosophers, who sought to develop the principles 
 of Kant to further issues, and to clear away the 
 inconsistencies of his first expression and application 
 of them, found it necessary to bridge over the gulf, 
 which Kant had left, between faith and reason, 
 between noumena and phenomena. Accordingly we 
 find them insisting upon the correlation between 
 object and subject, and pointing out that, if this 
 correlation be taken strictly, it is a false abstraction 
 to speak at all of things in themselves which are 
 not relative to thought, or of a noumenon which 
 is a mere negation of the phenomenal. There can 
 be no absolute opposite or negative of that unity
 
 104 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 of thought and being, which is presupposed in all 
 knowledge and experience, and even to speak of its 
 existence is to use words without meaning. As Heine 
 says, " The distinction of oljjects into phenomena and 
 noumena, i.e., into things that for us exist, and things 
 that for us do not exist, is an Irish bull in philosophy." 
 Comte sometimes, especially in the Politique Positive, 
 comes near to the perception of this truth, but his full 
 apprehension of it is prevented by the presuppositions 
 from which he started, and from which he could 
 never completely free himself Thus in a passage 
 quoted in the previous chapter,'" Comte's idea seems 
 to be that the images of things — individual objects 
 as such — are immediately given in sense ; that the 
 mind reacts, in the processes of abstraction and 
 generalization, to raise perception into knowledge ; 
 and that this knowledge, just because of its generality, 
 is subjective or relative knowledge. Now this seems 
 to be only a revival of Locke's view that general 
 ideas are necessarily fictitious, because they are the 
 
 *In Pol. Pos. i. 439, Comte seems to come still nearer to 
 the Kantian principle that all existence is existence for a 
 conscious self, but (1) he confounds this principle with the 
 idea that there is an action and reaction between subject and 
 object, which are identified with the organism and the environ- 
 ment respectively ; and (2) he does not draw the necessary 
 inference that the thing in itself is a fiction of abstract thought, 
 or, in other words, that there is no meaning whatever in 
 speaking of an existence which is not relative to the thinking 
 self. Cf. Pol. Pos. iii., p. 18 seq.
 
 UNCERTAINTY OF COMTE'S LANGUAGE. 1();5 
 
 " work of the miiul." Yet, in tlie same parai^raph, 
 Comte goes on to speak as if the one defect of our 
 knowledge, which prevents it from being adequate 
 to reality, were that our point of view is not riuite 
 universal, and that we are incapable of entirely 
 freeing it from what is subjective. By comparing 
 our views with those of other men, we can rise above 
 individual and national prejudices ; but we cannot 
 free our views from those idola tribus, which are 
 common to the whole human race, because we are 
 unable to establish any satisfactory conniiunication 
 with the animals. Whatever may be thought of 
 the last suggestion, the passage at least shows a 
 view of the hindrances to knowledge which is not 
 consistent with any absolute division between pheno- 
 mena and noumena. For, if man can escape from 
 the necessity of viewing things in ordine ad indi- 
 vidimm, i.e., in relation to his individual self, he 
 is at least on the way towards regarding them in 
 ordine ad universum. This point, however, will be 
 considered below, when we come to treat more 
 directly of the sense in which Comte's synthesis is 
 " subjective." Here we need only call attention to 
 the difference of this view from tliat which is 
 suggested by other passages (especially in his ex- 
 position of the " law of the three stages ") in which 
 the knowledge of relations of phenomena is con- 
 trasted with the knowledge of causes. From such
 
 100 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 The noil- 
 nicnal, ur 
 tiling; ill 
 itself, is 
 really the 
 universal, 
 
 and, there- 
 fore, can be 
 known. 
 
 passages we should gather that causes belong to an 
 order of reality, which is absolutely hidden from 
 us, and to the knowledge of which all our acquain- 
 tance with phenomena does not enable us to make 
 any approximation. 
 
 The truth seems to be that the absolute distinction 
 of phenomena and noumena — resting as it does on 
 an irrational separation between thought and being — ' 
 is tenable only from the point of view of a philosophy 
 which regards the individual as the only reality, 
 and the universal as a name or an abstraction. From 
 the point of view of Individualism, it was natural 
 and even necessary for Comte to assail a metaphysic 
 which claimed to apprehend a reality beyond and 
 beneath the phenomenal individuals and their ex- 
 ternal relations to each other, and which found in 
 this reality the vera causa of all phenomenal existence. 
 It was natural for him to maintain that such reality 
 is unknowable for us, and that the general terms 
 which seem to express it are mere collective names 
 for individuals, or, at best, abstract ideas of elements 
 common to many individuals. 
 
 But when Comte had so far changed his point of 
 view as to hold that " man is a mere abstraction, 
 and that there is nothing real but humanity," he 
 had lost the right to use such language. He had 
 seen that the individual is an abstraction, and he 
 was even in danger of forgettino' that the mere
 
 CA USES AND LA WS. 107 
 
 universal is an abstraction also. ISTow modern nieta- 
 physic, by showing the relativity of objects to a 
 thinking subject, has banished the idea of real entities, 
 or things in themselves, lying liehind and l)eyond 
 the phenomena ; and, at the same time and by the 
 same process of reasoning, it has proved that the 
 individual cannot be separated from the universal, 
 any more than the universal can be separated from 
 the individual. In other words, it has proved that 
 the world cannot be conceived in the spirit ol" 
 abstract nominalism as a collection of individual 
 objects and events, related merely as similar or 
 dissimilar, or co-existent or successive, any more 
 than it can be conceived in the spirit of scholastic 
 realism, as a mere phenomenal appearance of certain 
 noumenal substances, which correspond to general 
 terms. From this point of view, the universal is 
 at once a law and a cause ; for it is a principle 
 of unity, which manifests itself in the differences 
 of particulars, and through their relations binds them 
 into one individual whole. IfComte had realized 
 the meaning of the categories by which he was 
 really guided, he must have altered his whole con- 
 ception of the relation of metaphysic to positive 
 scieiice. For it was his own best achievement to 
 apply this idea of the unity of the universal and 
 the particular to one great department of science. It 
 was to show that society, whether in the form of
 
 108 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 the family, of the nation, or of humanity, is not 
 merely a collection of similar individuals, but a 
 unity of organically related members ; and that its 
 development is not merely a succession of events, 
 but the evolution of one life which remains identical 
 with itself through all its changes. And in this 
 he was not refuting metaphysic, but following directly 
 in the course of the great metaphysicians of the pre- 
 ceding generation. It might, indeed, be shown, that 
 none of the greatest names in philosophy — not Plato 
 or Aristotle, not Spinoza or Leibniz — was, strictly 
 speaking, either a scholastic realist or a scholastic 
 nominalist, though in all before Kant there were 
 tendencies to one or other of these extremes. 
 But the idealistic movement that took its origin 
 with Kant — and which Comte should have criti- 
 cized, if his criticism on metaphysic was to be, 
 according to his own frequent phrase, "on the 
 level of his age " — had set before itself as its 
 distinctive purpose and aim, to transcend this 
 opposition. In that philosophy Comte would have 
 found just what he wanted — a way of assert- 
 ing the reality of the universal, which should not 
 involve the denial of the reality of the individual. 
 For want of this principle, the end of his system 
 <3omes into contradiction with its beginning. For 
 while Comte begins with a vehement denial of the 
 luniversal as existent in itself, — a denial which is
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS. 109 
 
 expressed in the individualistic language of tlie 
 school of Locke, — he ends with an equally vehement 
 assertion of the social universal against the individ- 
 ualism of Eousseau. And his " subjective synthesis," 
 even its latest form, is embarrassed by hesitations 
 and inconsistencies, which are due mainly to his 
 inability to shake himself free from that implicit 
 nominalism with which he had started. 
 
 It is to this last point that we must now direct "vesyn-^'^ 
 
 TTT-i 1 /^ i 1 • tliesis is not. 
 
 our attention. What does Comte mean by saying sensational- 
 
 ism. 
 
 that the ultimate synthesis of knowledge is " not 
 objective but subjective " ? If we took the words 
 in their most natural meaning, we should be led to 
 suppose that Comte held that theory of subjec- 
 tive individualism, which was the logical result of 
 Berkeley's so-called idealism, and the basis of the 
 scepticism of Hume. Among later writers this theory 
 has Ijeen most fully expressed in some of the works 
 of J. S. Mill, and it is still offered by Mr. Spencer 
 and Professor Huxley as one of the two alternative 
 theories (the other being materialism) between which 
 philosophy must for ever fluctuate. According to 
 this view, the individual directly knows nothing 
 except the states of his own subjectivity ; or, if he 
 seems to know anything else, it is through a process 
 of association, the result of which can never be 
 verified, seeing that no one can go beyond the 
 bounds of his own consciousness. Now it is obvious
 
 110 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 that, if tliis be the truth, " the subjective " and " the 
 individual" go together and imply each other; for, 
 if we cannot transcend our own individuality, so as 
 to apprehend other things, or come into communica- 
 tion with other beings, then we must live a purely 
 subjective life. And if, on the other hand, it can 
 be shown that we know other things and beings 
 as directly and immediately as we know ourselves, 
 then our subjectivity is no longer a limit to us, 
 but a " subjective synthesis " may be at the same 
 time " objective." Now, it was one of the principal 
 results of the German idealism to show that this 
 latter view was the true one, and that thought is 
 not merely a state of the individual subject as such. 
 To speak of the consciousness of the individual as 
 limited to the apprehension of his subjective states, 
 is, indeed the reverse of the truth ; for the con- 
 sciousness of self implies the consciousness of the 
 not-self, and grows with it, and by means of it. 
 We are " a part of all that we have known," and all 
 that we have known is a part of us. Our life 
 widens with our world, and is indeed the same 
 thing from an opposite point of view. When we 
 realize this correlativity of subject and object in 
 knowledge, we can no longer contemplate a think- 
 ing being as merely one individual among the other 
 individuals of the world. We are forced to recognize 
 that the consciousness of self lifts him to a universal
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE WHICH IS OBJECTIVE. \\\ 
 
 or central point of view, — a point of view which is 
 central, not merely in relation to his own feelings and 
 states, but central also in relation to the objective 
 world. The being who knows himself as an individual 
 is, for that very reason, not merely individual ; lie can 
 know a reality, which is not merely that of his 
 own subjective states or sensations, and lie can 
 identify himself with an end, which is not merely 
 his own expected pleasure. The possibility of an 
 intellectual life for us, indeed, lies just in this, that 
 we can regard — nay, that to a certain extent we 
 cannot hut regard — our own individuality from an 
 " objective " point of view, — a point of view in 
 which it has no more importance than other indi- 
 vidualities ; or in which, at least, all its importance 
 is derived from its relation to the whole of which 
 it is a part. And the poet who said, — 
 
 "Unless above himself lie can 
 Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man ! " 
 
 had truly discerned that moral life also is dependent 
 on the transformation of man's individuality by this 
 universal consciousness with which it is linked and 
 bound up. 
 
 Now this view of self-consciousness, as ol)jective N'oryetisit 
 
 Idealism. 
 
 in spite of its subjectivity, universal in spite of its 
 individuality, necessarily leads to a conception of 
 man, not merely as one of the many existences in 
 the manifold universe, but as the existence in which
 
 112 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 all the others are summed up, and through which 
 they are to l)e explained. On one side of his 
 being, indeed, we must regard him as a "part of 
 this partial world";* and, in this point of view, we 
 can understand his life only in relation to the other 
 things and beings which limit him on every side. 
 Nay, as he is the most complex and dependent of 
 existences, we can only rise to a satisfactory know- 
 ledge of him, after we have laid a basis for this 
 knowledge in the study of the simpler phenomena 
 of the organic and inorganic world. But, on the 
 other hand, the possibility of all this objective 
 science — of the knowledge by man of that which 
 is not man — lies in this, that he is not merely 
 part of the whole, — not merely the most complex 
 existence in the world, — but that the universal 
 principle, the principle which gives unity to the 
 world, manifests itself in him. It is because, as 
 has been said, " Nature becomes conscious of itself 
 in man," that man in his turn can read the open 
 secret of Nature. In spelling out the meaning of 
 nature and history, he is taking the true way, and 
 indeed the only way, to the knowledge of himself; 
 l)ut this knowledge would be to him impossible, if 
 the self-consciousness that makes him man were not 
 also the principle of unity in the objective world. 
 Comte himself has an obscure perception of this 
 *Cf. Green's Introduction to Hume's Works, S 152.
 
 MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM. 113 
 
 truth when he says that, " strictly speaking there is 
 no phenomenon within our experience which is not 
 in the truest sense human ; and that, not merely 
 because it is man that takes cognizance of it, but 
 also because, from a purely objective point of view, 
 man sums up in himself all the laws of the world, 
 as the ancients truly felt."* If Comte had only 
 brought together the subjective and the objective 
 unity — the unity of knowledge, and the unity of 
 existence — both of which he here finds in man, 
 and if he had recognized the necessary relation of 
 the two, he would have reproduced the highest 
 lesson of German idealism. Tor that lesson is that 
 the subjective unity, the unity of self-consciousness, 
 which is presupposed in all knowledge or experi- 
 ence of the world, must at the same time be re- 
 garded as the objective principle of its existence. 
 The macrocosm, to use an ancient conception, of 
 which Comte somewhere speaks with approval, can 
 be comprehensible only to the microcosm, which 
 finds in the great world the means of understanding 
 itself, just because in another way it has in itself 
 the key for the understanding of the world. Man 
 can know that which is not himself, because from 
 another point of view there is nothing in which he 
 
 does not, or may not, find himself. For ideal- 
 
 ism doea not 
 
 It follows from this that the last science, the oppose the 
 
 subjective 
 
 *Pol. Pos. iv. 181 ; Traiisl. IGl. objective 
 
 H
 
 114 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 science of man, in so far as it is also the science 
 of mind, cannot merely be built upon and added to 
 the physical and natural sciences, but must react 
 upon them and transform them. For, though the 
 knowledge of man presupposes the knowledge of 
 nature, yet, on the other hand, the knowledge of 
 nature which we get when we abstract from its 
 relation to man, is imperfect and incomplete. The 
 true idea of nature cannot be attained except when 
 it is viewed in relation to that being who is at 
 once its culmination and its explanation. Or, to 
 put this in another point of view, the intelligence 
 which appears in man is presupposed in every 
 object of the intelligible world. Self-consciousness 
 is not, therefore, an episodic appearance in a world, 
 which is unprepared for it, and which might exist, 
 or be understood, without it. It is the revelation 
 of the meaning of all that went before. What 
 Dr. Tyndall stated not long since as the modern 
 view of Materialism, that matter contains in itself 
 " the promise and the potency " of life and even 
 of mind, may be willingly accepted as an expres- 
 sion of their own doctrine by Idealists ; for the 
 converse of this proposition is, that mind is the 
 ■"realization," and therefore the only key to the 
 ultimate nature, of matter. Hence all the sciences 
 which treat of the mathematical, physical, chemical, 
 and vital relations of things, must be regarded as
 
 IDEALISTIC TENDENCIES IN COMTE. 115 
 
 hypothetical and based upon abstraction ; for tliought, 
 spirit, mind, is implied in all such relations, nor 
 can a complete or adequate conception of them be 
 attained, until we have regarded the self-conscious- 
 ness that makes us men as, in this point of view, 
 not only the last, but also the first, not merely 
 the end, but also the beginning of nature. In this 
 sense the analytic separation of the sciences from 
 each other and from tliought must be modified and 
 corrected in a final synthesis, which will indeed 
 be " subjective," in so far as it brings into view 
 the unity of the subject presupposed in all know- 
 ledge. But to one who has understood the full 
 meaning of the process, this " subjective synthesis " 
 will also be objective ; and, indeed, it alone will 
 be able to vindicate, while it explains, the limited 
 objectivity of the other sciences. 
 
 Now it is Comte's merit that he altogether re- He ends, 
 
 therefore, in 
 
 pudiates that false subjective synthesis, which was •^1°™'"^°' 
 the natural result of the principles of Locke and 
 Berkeley. Ptcjecting the doctrine that what we 
 know immediately is only the states of our own 
 consciousness, he takes his stand at an objective 
 point of view, and arranges the sciences in an 
 objective order, which begins with the inorganic 
 world, and ends with man as the most complex 
 of all existences. On the other hand, it is also 
 his merit that he sees the necessity of that true
 
 116 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 ' subjective synthesis " wliich arises from the reaction 
 of the last science, the science of man, upon those 
 that went before it ; or, in other words, from the 
 perception that man is not merely the end, but 
 also in a sense the beginning of nature. But this 
 ultimate correction and re-organization of science 
 from a subjective point of view appears in Comte 
 in a distorted and imperfect form, in a form that 
 leaves " subjective " and " objective " synthesis still 
 opposed to each other, or only gives room for an 
 artificial or external reconciliation between them. 
 For Comte (in spite of all he says of relativity) 
 does not clearly recognize the subjectivity implied 
 in our first objective knowledge of the world ; * and, 
 hence, when he goes on to speak of the subjective 
 side of that knowledge, he seems to be introducing a 
 new and independent point of view, and not simply 
 to be bringing into clear consciousness what was 
 presupposed in the previous movement of thought. 
 In other words, the subjective synthesis of Comte 
 does not arise from a perception that the sub- 
 jectivity of men is universal, and therefore objec- 
 tive. On the contrary, he denies the possi- 
 bility of discovering any principle of unity in 
 the objective world, and maintains that the objec- 
 tive sciences, when left to themselves, tend to- 
 wards the " divagations indefinies " of a wayward 
 * Pol. Pos. i. 420.
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE PRINCIPLE. 117 
 
 and lawless curiosity. Hence the principle of unity, 
 which is necessary to l)ring order and system into 
 our knowledge, must be imported into these sciences 
 from without. On this view, we can organize know- 
 ledge only in reference to a subjective principle 
 supplied by the altruistic affections, — affections which 
 bind men together so as to make all humanity 
 through all space and time into one great organism, 
 and which thus supply a definite end and aim to 
 all the intellectual, as well as to all the active, 
 energies of the individual. This subjective principle, 
 in Comte's view, has been the unconscious stimulus 
 of all the efforts of the social and intellectual 
 leaders of men in the past ; it has been the source 
 of all that organized co-operation of families and 
 nations on which man's physical and moral progress 
 has depended. Positivism has only to make it into 
 the direct aim and conscious purpose of human 
 endeavour, and thereby to check that vain and 
 wasteful application of man's limited powers, which 
 has prevailed in the past, especially during the 
 revolutionary period of transition now coming to 
 an end. Hence Comte condemns, not only meta- 
 physicians, who search into things altogether out 
 of the reach of man, but also scientific men, 
 who seek to extend the knowledge of their 
 special subjects indefinitely, in every direction sug- 
 gested by an empty curiosity, without regard to
 
 118 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 the practical end of all science. The Mathematician, 
 who wastes himself in the discovery of forms and 
 methods which have no relation to the requirements 
 of physics ; the Biologist, who speculates on the 
 origin of species, forgetting how little light such 
 inquiries can throw on the development of man ; 
 even the Sociologist, who pursues remote investiga- 
 tions into the history of climate and race, " before 
 such studies are made necessary by the practical 
 difficulty of extending the civilization of the West, 
 regenerated by Positivism, to the populations that 
 are less advanced in civilization " — are all brought 
 under the Comtist anathema, as guilty of wasting 
 the small powers of man on questions which are 
 not immediately necessary or useful. " The public 
 and its teachers should always refuse to recognize 
 investigations which do not tend either to deter- 
 mine more precisely the material and physical laws 
 of man's existence, to throw greater light on the 
 modifications which these laws admit, or at least 
 to render the general method of investigation more 
 perfect." * " It is necessary that the sciences should 
 in the first instance be studied independently ; but 
 this study should in each case be carried only so 
 far as is necessary to enable the intellect to take 
 a solid grasp of the science next above it in the 
 scale, and thus to rise to the systematic study of 
 *Pol. Pos. i. 370.
 
 KNOWLEDGE NOT AN END IN ITSELF. HO 
 
 Humanity, its only permanent field." ' On this 
 principle, the priests of Positivism are not to be 
 specialists ; nor, indeed, are any of them to devote 
 their lives to scientific investigation alone ; except, 
 it may be, a few distorted and unbalanced natures, 
 in whom an abnormal tendency to intellectual pur- 
 suits has stunted the growth of the moral sympathies. 
 To make scientific men renounce the intellectual life 
 as an end in itself, and to direct all their energies 
 to the solution of those problems which seem to 
 have most immediate relation to the improvement 
 of man's estate, is one of the main objects which 
 Comte has in view in restoring the spiritual power. 
 A free development of each science for itself apart 
 from the rest, and a free development of science 
 as a whole, without reference to action for ends 
 determined by social sympathy, are equally opposed 
 to the Comtian ideal. The world and all objects 
 in it are to be regarded by the Positivist merely 
 as means, which we seek to know not for them- 
 selves, but only in order that we may use them 
 for a predetermined end. For, according to Comte, 
 the energies of the intelligence run to waste except 
 when they are directed by an es'prit cV ensemble; and 
 the only totality, with reference to which such sys- 
 tematic direction is possible, is the " subjective " 
 totality of humanity. 
 
 * Pol. Pos. i. 383.
 
 120 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 f'omte I iifive already indicated to some extent the 
 
 'idmits a *' 
 
 !n1n*'whicil' grounds on which I would criticize this theory of 
 merely " subjcctive svnthesis." It implies, for one thing, 
 
 individual. o j „ , • 
 
 that there is no natural convergence of the sciences, 
 due to the unity of the parts of the intelligible 
 world with each other and with the intelligence ; 
 but that the synthesis of knowledge is artificial, 
 and forced upon it from without. Man, in Comte's 
 point of view, is not a microcosm, who finds himself 
 again in the macrocosm. He is like a stranger in 
 a foreign country, who seeks to arm himself with 
 such fragments of knowledge about it as are neces- 
 sary for his protection and his own private ends. Yet 
 this statement, without qualification, would not be 
 altogether just to Comte ; for, in his view, the 
 individual man docs find himself in the presence 
 of one " object," which is also " subjective," — of one 
 Great Being, whom he has not to treat as an ex- 
 ternal means to ends of his own, but rather in 
 whom he has to find his own end. The synthesis 
 of knowledge, therefore, is not subjective so far 
 as Sociology and Morals* are concerned, whatever 
 it may be in regard to the other sciences. The 
 unity, in reference to which knowledge is to be 
 organized, is not merely the unity of man's nature 
 
 *The distinction made in the Politique Positive between 
 Sociology and Morals, depending as it does on the opposition 
 of the intellect to the heart, will be discussed afterwards.
 
 THE SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW. 121 
 
 as an indi\'idii;il, but i-allier as a "collective" heiiit,' 
 (a bad adjective surely to apply to mankind, when 
 they are regarded as " members one of anotlier "). 
 Comte thus I'epeats the "homo mcnsvra" in tlie 
 sense that Humanity is for each man I lie measure 
 of all things (though things in themselves escape 
 all our measuring). "We can transcend ourselves 
 so far as to take the point of view of humanity, 
 though not so far as to take the point of view 
 of the objective unity of the world. Xay, it may 
 even be said that we must so transcend ourselves, 
 for Comte denies that the individual can separate 
 himself from his race, except by a forced and ille- 
 gitimate abstraction. " Man, as an individual," he 
 declares, " cannot properly be said to exist except 
 in the too abstract brain of modern metaphysicians ; " 
 and the same principle on its ethical side leads 
 him to condemn the doctrine of absolute personal 
 rights, and to say that " individuals should be re- 
 garded not as so many distinct beings, but as organs 
 of the one Great Being." According to these prin- 
 ciples it would be impossible for ns either to know 
 ourselves as men, or to live a life in accordance 
 with our nature, if we were confined within the 
 limits of a purely individual consciousness. Our 
 consciousness of ourselves is essentially social, and 
 the individualistic point of view is the result of 
 a false abstraction, which can never be more than
 
 122 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 ;i partial abstraction. For, strive as we will, we 
 cannot in thought, any more than in reality, isolate 
 the individual from society, without at the same 
 time taking from him all that characterizes him 
 even as an individual. To speak, therefore, of 
 knowing man, except as a member of the family, 
 of the nation, of the race, is irrational. The science 
 of man would be impossible if we were not able 
 to get beyond our individuality, and to look at 
 it, as well as at all other individualities, from the 
 point of view of humanity. \ 
 Yet it is not Xo sucli a conccption of the essentially social 
 
 a universal ■■■ '' 
 
 principle, mature of man few, at the present day, would object. 
 But a " metaphysician " might wish to carry it a 
 little further, and to recognize not only the essen- 
 tial relation of man to man, but also the essential 
 relation of man to the universe. If it is a fiction of 
 abstraction to separate the individual from society, 
 is it a less fiction to isolate him from the world in 
 which he lives, and in relation to which all his 
 powers and tendencies have been developed ? Can 
 we really apply the idea of organic unity to the 
 life of man witliout extending it so as in some 
 sense to include also the environment in which 
 that life develops ? To ask what man would have 
 been in a different world is surely as absurd a 
 question as to ask what he would have been had he 
 not lived with his fellow-men. If it be allowed and
 
 THE UNIVERSALITY OF THOUGHT. 123 
 
 asserted that the objective or universal point of 
 view is possible, or even necessary, in relation to 
 humanity, there seems to be no good ground for 
 denying that it is possible and necessary in relation 
 to the universe. Once admit that the individual 
 can, and even nmst, so transcend his own individ- 
 uality as to regard himself as part of a greater 
 whole and to measure his actions by another standard 
 than his own pleasures and pains, and you are no 
 longer free to reject the possibility of an objective 
 synthesis. If the relativity of man to man makes 
 it imj^ossible to know him except from the point of 
 view of humanity, the relativity of man to the 
 world makes it impossible to know humanity except 
 from the point of view of the unity of the whole. 
 To stop short at the universal of humanity is a 
 mere compromise, which, like many compromises, is 
 less rational than either of the extremes between 
 which it stands. All knowledge implies the uni- 
 versality of • thought, i.e., it implies that man, as a 
 thinking being, can, and indeed must, apprehend 
 the world from a subjective, which is also an 
 objective point, of view. For man's consciousness 
 of himself is at the same time a consciousness of 
 the not-self, and of the unity to wliieli both these 
 correlative elements belong. From the dawning of 
 self- consciousness he is thus lifted above his own 
 separate and partial existence as an individual ; hi-
 
 124. THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 lives a life which is not merely his own life, but 
 
 the life of the world. He is, and can become more 
 
 and more completely, the organ of that universal spirit 
 
 which transcends and includes all things, which 
 
 "Lives through all life, extends to all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent." 
 
 It is this that makes him capable of science, of 
 morality, and of religion ; for in so far as he speaks 
 his own words, or does his own deeds, or thinks 
 his own thoughts, he speaks and acts and thinks 
 folly and evil ; and it is only in so far as he 
 becomes the instrument of some universal power 
 or interest, that his individual action, or thought, 
 or utterance can have any dignity or value. It 
 shows an imperfect apprehension of this truth to 
 say with Comte that Humanity and not God is 
 the universal power in whose service the individual 
 is to find spiritual freedom ; and that, therefore, the 
 ultimate synthesis must be subjective and not ob- 
 jective. For the only philosophical difficulty is to 
 conceive how man can transcend his individual 
 subjectivity at all ; and, if that- is shown to be for 
 him possible, and even necessary, there is no reason 
 whatever to deny that he can and must rise to the 
 knowledge of God, the absolute or objective unity 
 comte'8 of the world. 
 
 changing 
 
 reL-^ionof^ Comtc, howcvcr, is hindered from recognizing this 
 man.'^^ ° truth by another class of considerations. In opposi-
 
 A BENEFICENT NECESSITY. 125 
 
 tion to that external optimistic teleology, which 
 was so common at the end of last century, and at 
 which the Encyclopedists aimed so many blows, he 
 was led in his Philosophic Positive to dwell upon 
 the fact that, from the point of view of human 
 happiness, the arrangements of the universe, astro- 
 nomical, physical, and biological, are anything but 
 perfect. Poetry, indeed, may be allowed to imagine 
 that the powers of nature are the friends of man ; 
 but Science, according to Conite, must recognize that 
 the world in which man's lot is cast is far from 
 furnishing the best conceivable sphere for his exist- 
 ence and development ; and that it has only become 
 so favourable to his progress as it at present is, by 
 the long " providential action " of man himself. At 
 this point, however, there is a crossing of opposite 
 lines of thought in Comte's philosophy. For it is 
 one of the leading conceptions of the Politique Posi- 
 tive that the influence of an external limiting fatality, 
 which forces upon man the surrender of his natural 
 self-will, was the necessary condition of the develop- 
 ment of all his higher powers of intelligence and 
 heart. Comte is never weary of showing that the 
 growing preponderance of the altruistic affections, 
 which alone can give unity to human life, is depend- 
 ent upon the existence of those limits which are 
 put upon the desires of man by the external world. 
 " Without this continual ascendant," he declares,
 
 126 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 " mail's feelings would Ijecome vague, his intelligence 
 wanton, and his activity sterile. If this yoke were 
 taken away, the problem of human life would 
 remain insoluble, since altruism could never conquer 
 egoism. But assisted by the supreme fatality, uni- 
 versal love is able habitually to secure that person- 
 ality should be subordinated to sociality. The 
 sophisms of human pride cannot hinder the positive 
 spirit from recognizing that all revolt springs from 
 egoistic impulses. A forced submission tends in- 
 directly to make altruism prevail by the very fact 
 that it represses egoiiLiu. But this moral reaction 
 is supremely efficacious when obedience becomes 
 voluntary, because then sympathy is directly de- 
 veloped, and no jarring emotion any longer hinders 
 us from getting the benefit of our subjection.'"^'' 
 From this point of view the external fatality can 
 no longer be called unfriendly, or even indifferent 
 to man ; rather, its immediate appearance as his 
 enemy is the condition of its being, in a higher 
 sense, his friend. Kant, in his short treatise on 
 history (with which Comte was acquainted, and which 
 probably had no little influence upon the Politique 
 Positive), applies a similar thought to the struggle 
 and competition of mankind with each other. The 
 very selfish rivalry of men, he contends, is in the 
 
 * Synthese Subjective, p. 16 ; cf. Pol. Pos. i. p. 414 seq., 
 and above, p. 30 seq.
 
 GOOD OUT OF EVIL. 127 
 
 long run the means of developing a higher sociality 
 than could have existed among a race of beings 
 with whom personal feeling was at first less intense. 
 Egoism itself becomes the means of elevating men 
 above egoism. Thus in both cases, conditions whicli, 
 in the first instance, seemed to be hostile to the 
 intellectual, and still more to the moral, development 
 of man, become, because of the inner reaction which 
 they call forth in his nature, the best means to that 
 development. " Out of the eater comes forth meat ; 
 out of the strong sweetness." On such a view it 
 seems a fair criticism to make that it looks very 
 like a proof that those things which seem in the 
 first instance to be evils, and which, indeed, taken 
 by themselves, mx evils, are the necessary, though 
 negative, conditions of higher good. But a negative 
 condition is still a condition, and the gods are not 
 envious because they refuse man a lower good in 
 order to make him seek one which is higher. No 
 conclusion unfavourable to Optimism, in any high 
 sense of the word, can be founded on the fact that 
 the world is not arranged for the immediate happi- 
 ness of man, if that immediate happiness would 
 have been purchased by his moral degradation ; or 
 even if it would have been less powerful to call 
 forth the higher energies of his nature. If the 
 noblest love is a transmuted and transcended egoism, 
 then even an infinite benevolence would not seek
 
 128 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 directly to stop the unlovely and selfish struggle 
 whicli darkens and poisons the life of man on earth. 
 The best kind of optimism — the optimism, if we 
 may so term it, of the deepest and tenderest spirits 
 who have called themselves Christian — has not been 
 based upon a shallow and imperfect view of the 
 misery, still less of the moral evil, of man's life. 
 Eather it has been attained through the clearest 
 perception of l)oth. It lias been an Optimism that 
 " descended into the grave " of human happiness, 
 and even, if we miglit so interpret the creed of 
 Christendom, into the " hell " of human guilt, that 
 it might rise again " leading captivity captive." * 
 And Comte, who in his primary opposition to theology 
 and metaphysics, had rejected all absolute or theo- 
 logical conceptions of the world, is led by the 
 natural development of his thought to find a higher 
 design in the immediate negation of design, and to 
 extend to the universe that idea of unity which in 
 the first instance he had applied only to humanity. 
 But, as he could never quite forget the negations 
 with which he had started, his recognition of this 
 unity was imperfect, and he was ultimately forced 
 to cast upon poetry the office for which science 
 seemed to be inadequate, 
 tionaiityof ^^^ truth to whicli these inconsistencies of Comte 
 criticisu^*^ point is, that all criticism of the whole system of 
 * Cf. Von Hartmann's Selhst-zersetzung des Christenthums.
 
 OPTIMISM RATIONAL-IN WHAT SENSE? 129 
 
 things to which we belong is, from a truly " relative " 
 point of view, irrational. For the critic, and the 
 standard by which he criticizes, cannot be separated 
 from that system. To criticize things as particulars 
 is not unreasonable, because we can test the parti- 
 culars by the universal ; but to criticize the general 
 'sy.stem of which they and we are parts, and by 
 which our development — and of course among other 
 things, the development of our moral standard — is 
 made possible, is to stand on our own heads and to 
 leap off our own shadow. If, indeed, we could assifme 
 an individualistic point of view, if we could isolate 
 ourselves at once from the world which is our only 
 sphere of activity, and from the social life of the 
 race which is the source of all our culture, we 
 might then take the pleasures and pains, tlie feelings 
 that belong to us as sensitive individuals, as a 
 standard by which to criticize the world. But in 
 any other point of view, criticism is possible only 
 as a reference of the individual to the universal, of 
 the part to the whole, of the various elements and 
 phases of the system of things to the idea, which 
 forms the unity of that system and the principle of 
 its development. It has often been pointed out that 
 a logical scepticism cannot be universal, for every 
 intelligible view of things implies an ultimate unity 
 of thought and of existence, of the e&se anil the 
 intelligi. Doubt must rest on a basis of certitude.
 
 130 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 or it will destroy itself. But it is not less true, 
 though it is less frequently noticed, that all criticism 
 of the world, while it detects evil in particular, im- 
 plies an ultimate optimism. Tor, if such criticism 
 pretends to be more than the utterance of the tastes 
 and wishes of an individual, it must claim to be 
 the expression of an objective principle — a principle 
 which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, is 
 realizing itself in the world. If, as Hegel said, 
 the " history of the world is the judgment of the 
 world," then, conversely, every true moral judgment 
 is an anticipation of history : it is a discovery of 
 the hidden forces that are already working out their 
 triumph in the world, even by means of that which 
 seems most to oppose them : it is a prophetic 
 sympathy with the " spirit of the years to come," 
 which is "yearning to mix itself with life." It is 
 this objective character which often makes the words 
 of genius carry with them such weight and power. 
 " He spake as one having authority and not as the 
 scribes," could be truly said only of one, whose 
 .speech was like some natural force in its independence 
 of merely individual and of temporary influences. 
 On the other hand, it is the limited and subjective 
 character of many of the ordinary moral judgments 
 of men — of much of their fault-finding with the 
 conditions of existence, the defects of their neigh- 
 bours, and the errors and evils of the time — which
 
 SUBJECTIVE CRITICISM OF LIFE. 131 
 
 makes us treat such judgments with iiidiilcreuce. 
 We feel that they are in great part the expression 
 of personal likes and dislikes, though clothing them- 
 selves in the lion's skin of a moral censorship ; 
 and that the only answer which they deserve is, 
 that " there is no disputing about tastes." Much 
 of the superficial pessimism of our day is the 
 offspring, not of deep sympathy with the real evils 
 of humanity, but of a weakness of moral fibre, which 
 might tempt us to cut the knot of difficulty with 
 the apparently unfeeling words of St. Paul, " Shall 
 the thing formed say to him who has formed it, 
 Why hast thou made me thus ? " But there is 
 another moral judgment than this, which is not 
 the mere expression of the tastes and wishes of 
 individuals, but of the inner law and the necessity 
 of things; or, in other words, of the universal spirit 
 of man, which in the long struggle of development 
 is becoming more and more clearly conscious of 
 itself and of the law of the world. It is only as 
 the organ of this spirit that the individual can 
 claim to " judge the world " ; nor can he make that 
 claim without taking up the ground of a philo- 
 sophical optimism, and acknowledging that the " soul 
 of the world is just." For the sentiment or idea 
 of good implied in such judgment, must either l»e 
 the last result of the development of man in the 
 world — in which case the system of things that
 
 132 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 conditioned the result cannot be criticized by it : 
 or it must be the pure utterance of individual 
 feeling, in which case it has no objective value 
 whatever. To suppose with Comte that it is 
 ohjcdive, as being something which belongs not to 
 the individual but to the race, yet subjective, as 
 being something that belongs to human nature and 
 not to the nature of things in general, is a hopeless 
 attempt to combine in one two inconsistent points 
 of view — the point of view of the philosophy of 
 Locke, by which the individual consciousness is 
 conceived as confined to the apprehension of its 
 own states, and the point of view of modern idealism, 
 according to which the consciousness of the thinking 
 subject, as such, is universal and objective. 
 coSws'^^''^ At this point it may be useful to look back 
 tencfeT and to sum up the various contradictions, or let 
 us rather say, the various forms of the same con- 
 tradiction, which aj)pear and reappear in different 
 parts of the system of Comte. Beginning with 
 the rejection of metaphysics, because it treats uni- 
 versals as real entities, and with the individualistic 
 definition of science as having to determine only 
 the successions and resemblances of phenomena, 
 Comte soon has to point out that in sociology and 
 even in biology we have to deal with existences 
 whose parts and successive phases are indefinable, 
 except in and through the whole to which they
 
 OBJECTIVE CRITICISM OF LIFE. 133 
 
 belong. Beginning with objective science, and tlius 
 unconsciously assuming that the subjectivity of 
 thought is not inconsistent with the knowledge of 
 objects as such, he ends by asserting that only a 
 " subjective synthesis " is possible. Yet this sub- 
 jective synthesis is itself objective, for its point 
 of view is determined, not by the sensations and 
 feelings of the individual subject as such, Init by 
 the idea of humanity as a corporate unity. Thus 
 the opposition between subject and object reduces 
 itself to a dualism between the world and man. 
 Hence, in place of the worship of God, the absolute 
 unity to which all thought and existence are referred, 
 Comte would substitute the worship of Humanity, 
 " the real author of the benefits for which thanks 
 were formerly given to God." Finally, even this 
 dualistic view of the world is practically withdrawn. 
 For the negative relation of the external fatality 
 to man's immediate wishes, is proved to be instru- 
 mental to his ultimate attainment of a still higher 
 good. And — as if this were not enough — poetry is 
 called in to give completeness to the synthetic view 
 of the world, and to reconcile the two independent 
 sentiments which must combine in order to produce 
 a religion, submission and love. For, although 
 Comte at first thinks it sufficient to say that the 
 necessity of nature is mediated to us by Humanity, 
 yet in the end he feels that there will be an 
 
 -<;
 
 134 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 essential imperfection in his religious system, if it 
 cannot identify the ultimate fatality to which we 
 must submit with the Great Being whom we are 
 to love and serve. On this point a few additional 
 remarks may be useful. 
 Defects of Comte defines religion (and we cannot but ac- 
 
 Conito'sreli- 
 
 fn°'tohT/'^' knowledge the substantial truth of the definition) 
 ovmidea ^^ ^^^ Concentration of the three altruistic affections 
 — of Eeverence towards that which is above us, 
 Love towards that which helps and sustains us, 
 and Benevolence towards that which needs our aid. 
 It is impossible to give the highest unity to the 
 inward and outward life of man, except by devotion 
 to a Being in relation to whom these three affections 
 are identified. Nor can it be denied that a faith 
 which has more or less perfectly fulfilled these 
 conditions, has been the mainspring of human life 
 in all those periods of history in which man has 
 shown the highest powers of his spirit. " The deepest, 
 nay, the one theme of the world's history," says 
 Goethe, " to which all others are subordinate, is 
 the conflict of faith and unbelief. The epochs in 
 which faith, in whatever form it may be, prevails, 
 are the marked epochs of human history, full of 
 heart-stirring memories, and of substantial gains 
 for all after-times. On the other hand, the epochs 
 in which unbelief, in whatever form it may be, 
 gains its unhappy victories, even when for the
 
 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 135 
 
 moment they put on a semblance of glory and 
 success, inevitably sink into insignificance in the 
 eyes of a posterity which will not waste its thoughts 
 on things barren and unfruitful." The tenderest 
 harmonies of affection, the highest achievements of 
 passionate energy, the deepest glances of insight 
 into men and things, the greatest powers of inspired 
 utterance, cannot be reached except by minds 
 which are consciously at one with themselves and 
 with the law of the universe ; and this oneness is 
 what we call a religion. Man can do his best 
 work only when he feels that he is the organ 
 or instrument of a power or spirit which is uni- 
 versal, and therefore irresistible ; which embraces 
 and subordinates even that which seems to resist it. 
 Whether such a faith in its widest sense is still 
 possible to man, or whether Christianity is the last 
 vanishing form of it, and we have now to look about 
 for such substitute for it as may still be within our 
 reach, may be a question. But it can scarcely be 
 questioned, that the Comtist worship of Humanity 
 is only such a substitute, and not the thing itself. 
 Eeligion, as Comte himself maintains, implies a com- 
 bination of spontaneity in the worshipper with 
 complete submission and self-surrender to the higher 
 power that controls his life — a combination which 
 can be attained only by one who loves the power 
 to which he submits. But man's life is ultimately
 
 136 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 limited and determined by cosmical and physical 
 conditions, and in these Comte sees only a fatality 
 which cannot possibly be made the object of love. 
 This difficulty, as we have seen, he tries to escape 
 by showing that the ultimate fatality is mediated to 
 us by Humanity, which, in the long process of its 
 history, has been gradually adapting the sphere of 
 our existence to our physical and moral necessities. 
 He feels, however, that this is only a partial answer, 
 and that the idea of an indifferent outward necessity 
 must be a hindrance to the perfect combination of 
 submission and love. Hence he calls in the aid of 
 poetry to revive the spirit of Fetichism, and to 
 reanimate the dead world by the image of benevolent 
 divine agencies. " The Cultus of Space and of the 
 Earth, completing that of Humanity, makes us see 
 in all that surrounds us the free auxiliaries of 
 Humanity." Comte therefore ends in what some 
 one has called the system of " spiritual book-keeping 
 by double entry," in which imagination is allowed 
 to revive, for practical purposes, the fictions which 
 science has destroyed. In this way poetry has not 
 merely to give sensuous form and life to our creed, 
 by enabling us to see in the part what reason could 
 otherwise find only in the whole ; it has also to 
 supply the defects of a truth which is too hard and 
 painful to satisfy the heart of man. It has to make 
 us forget in our worship the dualism of Nature and
 
 AN ARTIFICIAL RELIGION. 137 
 
 Humanity, and to reconcile us to Fate by givin,L( it 
 the semblance of a Providence. It is obvious that 
 poetry is thus made into a kind of deliberate super- 
 stition, which stimulates the outflow of religious 
 feeling by hiding from us, for the moment, the 
 realities of our position. But the explanation is that 
 Comte was driven by the ultimate development of 
 his own thought to seek for a kind of unity in the 
 universe, which yet he could not admit without 
 recognizing the error of his original presuppositions. 
 There is a certain irony of fate in the process of 
 unconscious dialectic, by which Comte, the enemy of 
 theology, was led to set up that strange " Trinity in 
 Unity," which is the last word of Positivism. 
 
 In Comte's re-construction of religion there seems ^{,^^^i"^ter*"^ 
 to be something artificial and factitious, something 
 " subjective," in the worst sense. It is a religion 
 made, so to speak, out of malice prepense. " We 
 have derived," he seems to say, " from the experience 
 of our own past and of the past of humanity, a clear 
 idea of what a religion should be : and we also 
 know from the same experience that, without a 
 religion, we cannot have that fulness of spiritual life 
 of which we are capable. Go to, let us make a 
 religion, as nearly corresponding to the definition of 
 religion as modern science will permit. ' Gather up 
 the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.' 
 God, the Absolute Being, is hidden from us, but
 
 138 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Humanity will serve for a ' relative ' or ' subjective ' 
 kind of God : or rather not Humanity, but the 
 selected members of the race, whose services entitle 
 them to our recognition, and whom therefore we, in- 
 corporate in the ' Great Being.' And as for the 
 inscrutable fatality that bounds all our views, and 
 on which in the last resort the fate of humanity 
 must depend, to it we can but submit; or (since 
 such a separation of submission from love is so far 
 irreligious) we can invoke the powers of imagination 
 to hide it from our eyes. To Humanity, as repre- 
 sented to us by the good and wise of the past, we 
 can present the old offerings of praise and prayer, 
 in a spirit that is perfectly disinterested ; for we 
 have no reason to believe that tliey exist except in 
 our memory of them, or that the ' Great Being,' in 
 whom they are incorporated, has any gift to bestow 
 upon us in the future except a similar life in the 
 memory of others. For, after all, the ' Great Being,' 
 who alone makes things work together for our good 
 and whom alone we can love, is not absolute or objec- 
 tive ; and of the real Absolute Being or Principle of 
 the Universe, we know nothing, except perhaps that 
 He or It is not what men call good." 
 ^ifkm^il ^-"^ ^^^ earlier part of this chapter I have tried 
 no religion. ^^ show that Comtc's vicw of the limits of knowledcre 
 cannot be maintained except on principles which 
 would be fatal to the existence of knowledoe alto-
 
 RELIGION MUST BE ABSOLUTE. 139 
 
 gether; and, on the other hand, tliat the possibility 
 of a subjective synthesis, such as he demands and 
 supposes himself to have achieved, would involve 
 also the possibility of an objective or absolute 
 synthesis. Here I wish only to point out, that if 
 Comte's general view of things be admitted, religion, 
 according to his own definition of it, is impossible. 
 A " relative " religion is not a religion at all : it is 
 at best a morality, trying to gather to itself some 
 of the emotions which were formerly connected with 
 religious belief. If there is no warrant for the 
 Christian faith which finds God in man, and man 
 in God, which makes us regard the Absolute Being 
 as finding his best name and definition in what we 
 most reverence and love ; or, what is the same thing 
 from the other side, makes us see in that growing 
 idea of moral perfection, which is the highest result 
 of human development, the interpretation or revela- 
 tion of the Absolute ; then we must give up the 
 hope of a revival of religion, and of that har- 
 monious energy to which religion alone can awake 
 the soul of man. In this point of view Mr. Spencer 
 and Comte seem to divide the elements of the truth 
 between them. Mr. Spencer, regarding the Absolute L 
 as unknowable, and perceiving that religion implies 
 a relation to the Absolute, reduces religion to the 
 bare feelings of awe and mystery. Comte, also 
 regarding the Absolute as unknowable, seeks to find
 
 140 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 an object nearer home for the emotions that hitherto 
 have been directed to God. But the religion of Mr. 
 Spencer, if it ever could become a reality, would be 
 a renewal of the superstitious pantheism of India, 
 the worship of a power without moral or spiritual 
 attributes. And the religion of Comte could scarcely 
 become more than a pious aspiration, unless the 
 poetic license of worship were carried to the point 
 of self-deception. Of this Comte seems to be par- 
 tially aware, when in his latest works he insists so 
 strenuously on the theme that art, rather than science, 
 is the true field for man's intelligence; and that it 
 is a desirable and useful thing to allow our minds 
 to dwell on ideal conceptions, which are beyond the 
 reach of scientific proof, provided these conceptions are 
 favourable to the development of altruistic senti- 
 ment. " The logic of religion," he declares, " when 
 freed from scientific empiricism, will not restrain 
 itself any longer to the domain of hypotheses which 
 are capable of verification, though these alone were 
 compatible with the Positive preparation for it. 
 It must in the end find its completion in the domain, 
 much wider and not less legitimate, of those con- 
 ceptions which, without offending the reason, are 
 peculiarly suited to develop the feelings. Better 
 adapted to our moral wants, the institutions of true 
 Poetry are as harmonious as those of sound Philo- 
 sophy with the intellectual conditions of the relative
 
 POETRY AND TRUTH. 141 
 
 synthesis. They ought therefore to obtain as great 
 extension and intluence in our efforts to systematize 
 our thoughts ; and Positivism permits of their doing 
 so without any danger of confusion between the 
 two distinct methods of thinking, which it openl}' 
 consecrates, the one to reality and the other to 
 ideality." ■^'" Is it possible to express more clearly a 
 desire to combine the advantages of believing, with 
 the advantages of disbelieving, in the accordance of 
 objective reality with our highest feelings and 
 aspirations ? But a worship of fictions, confessed 
 as such, is impossible. Art, indeed, is kindred with 
 Eeligion ; and Art, as Plato said, is " a noble untruth." 
 This, however, means only that Art is untrue to the 
 immediate appearances of things, in order that it 
 may suggest the deeper reality that underlies them. 
 But,rTn Comte's view, the service of imagination isj/ 
 to supply wants of the heart, which cannot be 
 supplied by reality, either in its superficial or in 
 its deeper aspect ; it is to nurture our moral nature 
 on conceptions that are purely fictitious. It is not 
 difficult to prophesy that the schism of the head 
 and the heart thus introduced must end in the 
 sacrifice either of the one or of the other ; either 
 in the dogmatic assertion of the optimism of poetry, 
 or in a violent recoil from it, which will separate, 
 not only man from the world, but also the individual 
 * Synthase Subjective, p. 40.
 
 142 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 I'ruiu the race ; and which must ultimately reduce 
 Humanity from an object of worship into a subjective 
 moral ideal. For religion, as Comte himself rightly 
 saw, cannot exist except where thought and feeling, 
 intelligence and heart, are harmonized in a con- 
 sciousness of the highest siibjcctive ideal, as being at 
 the same time the ultimate objective reality. What, 
 indeed, is the use of religion, if it does not plant 
 our feet upon the " IJock of Ages," but leaves 
 us still on the " sandbank " of the contingent 
 and the temporal ? \__ " All the nations," says Hegel, 
 " have felt that the religious consciousness was that 
 in which they possessed truth, and it is for this 
 reason that they have ever regarded it as that 
 which gives dignity and consecrated joy to their 
 lives. All that awakes doubt and anguish, all sorrow 
 and care, all the limited interests of finitude, the 
 religious spirit leaves behind on the sandbank of 
 time. And as, on the highest top of a mountain, 
 removed from definite view of the earth below, we 
 peacefully overlook all the limitations of the landscape, 
 so to the spiritual eye of man in this pure region, 
 the hardness of immediate reality dissolves into a 
 semblance, and all the divisions, the crude lights 
 and shadows of the world are softened to eternal 
 peace by the beams of the spiritual sun."- , If we 
 cannot any longer have this consciousness of things 
 sub specie ceternitatis, — in that highest truth and 
 
 \
 
 MILL AND LITTRE. 143 
 
 unity in which all (lillieulties and clissoiianccs an' lost^ 
 — without self-deception, it would be l)etter lor us 
 to forswear it altogether than to connect our highest 
 feelings with a poetic illusion. 
 
 It is a natural question to ask whether and how ^^'''T" *!' 
 
 '- the school 
 
 far the history of Comte's philosophy illustrates any "^*^"'"*''" 
 of the difficulties and contradictious which we have 
 found in the writings of its author. The first 
 schism in the ranks of those who are commonly 
 called Positivists was that which is connected in 
 France with the name of Littre, perhaps the most 
 distinguished of Comte's disciples ; and in England, 
 with the names of Mill and Lewes — who, however, 
 were never, strictly speaking, his disciples at all. 
 These writers broke away from Comte, whenever 
 Comte decidedly broke away from the individual- 
 istic philosophy of the last century. In their 
 eyes Comte's great achievements were the law 
 of the three stages of mental development ami the 
 arrangement of the sciences ; and if they accepted 
 his sociological speculations — even those which appear 
 in his first great work — it was with many reserves. 
 Mill regards Comte's continual denunciation of 
 metaphysics as objectionable, so soon as he finds it 
 to be directed against the individualists* as well as 
 against the scholastic realists ; and he thinks Comte's 
 " inordinate demand for unity and systematization " 
 * Mill's Comte and Positivism, jj. 73.
 
 144 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 only an instance of " an original mental twist very 
 connnon in French writers, and by which Comte 
 was distinguished above them all." * Littre finds 
 little to object to in Comte's first great work, and 
 is not unwilling to admit that the " individual man 
 is an abstraction, and that there is nothing real but 
 humanity;" but he recoils when Comte begins to 
 speak of the " Great Being," and to change his 
 philosophy into a religion. Both attack the " sub- 
 jective synthesis " as a new variety of metaphysics, 
 seeing clearly that, as Comte states it, it involves a 
 desertion of the point of view of science ; and 
 neither of them is able to admit any other point 
 of view from which the subjective unity might 
 itself be seen to be objective. 
 Mr. Con- ^ jess important schism has recently t occurred 
 
 greve and ^ '' 
 
 M. Lafitte. ^yj^^jj^j^ \\^q Positivist Church, or, in other words, 
 among those who accept the system of Comte in 
 its entirety, as a religion no less than as a philo- 
 sophy. Mr. Congreve, and those who think with 
 him, have broken away from the general body of 
 Positivists under M. Lafitte, who was appointed to 
 be its head, or, at least, its provisional head, after 
 the death of Comte. The difference, however, is 
 one only of policy, and not of principle. " There 
 exists no difference," says Mr. Congreve, " in regard 
 to the doctrine, taken as a whole ; it is only as to 
 * Id. p. 140. t Written in 1879.
 
 METHODS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING. 145 
 
 the manner of presenting that wliole tliat we are 
 at variance." At the same time this " schism," 
 thougli, as M. Lafitte says, it is not a " heresy," 
 might easily lead to one, if there be any truth in 
 what has been said above as to the ultimate 
 opposition of poetry and philosophy in the system 
 of Comte. ' M. Lafitte contends tliat the Positivist i, 
 priesthood should, in the first instance at least, 
 seek to address the heart through the intelligence ; 
 " for it is clear that their direct sentimental (or 
 moral) action would want a basis, and could indeed 
 have no serious result, unless general opinion had 
 previously been modified to a certain degree by 
 Positive teaching." On the other hand, Mr. Congreve 
 argues that Positivism must triumph in the first 
 instance, like Christianity, by a direct " appeal to 
 the women and the proletaries " ; which means that 
 an effort must be made to influence " the heart," 
 without waiting for the intelligence ; and that, in 
 the words of Comte himself, the " weapon of per- 
 suasion is to be used in preference to that of ( 
 conviction^ , " What we seek to constitute," says 
 Mr. Congreve,* "is a union of the faithful, a 
 Church in the highest sense of the term, i.e., a 
 society in which the religious element will pre- 
 ponderate ; will, indeed, be so decisively and boldly 
 
 *I translate from the French, as I have not seen the English 
 edition of Mr. Congreve's circular. 
 
 K
 
 146 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 emphasized, as to leave no doubt of our intentions; 
 a society which can rally to itself all who feel the 
 need of shelter or support, of the consolation of an 
 active and sympathetic faith. It is thus that we 
 conceive ourselves bound to commence the preaching 
 of Humanity as a principle of union, with the 
 view of gathering together a solid body, made up 
 mainly of the women and the populace, which may 
 serve as a foundation for the rest. In this body 
 the order of instructors could find their support 
 (and by an order of instructors I mean naturally a 
 priesthood and priests, and not, what seems to be 
 offered in its place, professors and a professoriate) ; 
 as, on the other hand, without the stimulating 
 reaction of such an audience, they would want a 
 solid basis as well as a sphere of activity." It 
 would be an impertinence for any one who is not 
 a member of the Positivist Church to say anything 
 on the personal or semi-private questions, which 
 are necessarily involved in such a division as this 
 between those who are otherwise united. But there 
 can be no intrusion in saying that, if Positivism is 
 ever to become an effective Church, it must find 
 some such direct way of addressing the people as 
 Mr. Congreve suggests, without waiting for those who 
 have time to be instructed in the principles of the 
 six or seven sciences of the Positivist system ; and 
 Mr. Dix Hutton has sufficiently shown that Comte
 
 THE HEART AND THE HEAD. 147 
 
 himself would have approved of such a policy.'"' 
 " God hath chosen the weak things of the world 
 to confound the mighty ; " and it may be safely 
 said that no great moral or spiritual movement 
 will ever be accomplished, if its leaders wait till 
 they have convinced the mass of the educated 
 classes. The only question which suggests itself to 
 one who has considered the difticulties of the 
 " subjective synthesis " is, whether the appeal made 
 to the heart would not necessarily contain elements 
 which afterwards it would be impossible to justify 
 to the head. For if it were so, " the old quarrel of 
 the poets and the philosophers," of faith and reason, 
 would repeat itself again in the Positivist Church ; 
 and it would not be less bitter from the fact 
 that that Church was founded expressly with the 
 design of putting an end to the quarrel alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Can there be a division of the intelligence against Tiie heart 
 
 " ° and the 
 
 the heart, which is not more properly described as ^^^"^ 
 division of the intelligence against itself ? This is a 
 question which is inevitably suggested by the whole 
 tenor of Comte's later works. In my final chapter 
 I shall say something upon this question, and shall 
 
 * I have to offer to Mr. Dix Hutton my best thanks for liis 
 courtesy in furnisliing me with copies of the circulars and 
 letters of himself, of Mr. Cougreve, and of M. Lafitte, on 
 the subject of the division among the Positivists.
 
 148 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 then try to show how Comte's defective answer to 
 it naturally led to other defects in his view of 
 the history of the past, especially of Christianity, 
 and also in his view of the social ideal of the 
 future.
 
 149 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 comte's view of the relation of the intellect to 
 
 THE heart its EFFECT ON HIS CONCEPTION OF 
 
 HISTORY AND OF THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 
 
 The necessity for unity in man's intellectual and moral life — 
 Nature of the conflict between the intelligence and the heart — 
 It is really a conflict of intelligence with itself — Criticism of 
 Comte's doctrine that the intelligence must be subjected to the 
 heart — Its effect upon his conception of history, especially of 
 the history of Christianity — The ttoo elements in Christianity, 
 their conflict and reconciliation in its development — The nega- 
 tive tendencies of mediceval Catholicism and the positive tend- 
 encies of the modern era — Comte's imperfect conception of the 
 Reformation and the Revolution — Ris restoration of the 
 mediceval ideal — His general position as a Philosopher. 
 
 In the last chapter I considered the subjective 
 synthesis of Comte, or, in other words, his attempt 
 to systematize human knowledge in relation to the 
 moral life of man. For it is his view, as we have 
 seen, that science can never yield its highest fruit 
 to man unless it be systematized — i.e., unless its 
 different parts be connected together and put in
 
 150 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 their true place as parts of one whole. Scattered 
 lights give no illumination ; it is the esprit d' ensemUe, 
 the general idea in which our knowledge begins and 
 ends, that ultimately determines the scientific value 
 of each special branch of knowledge. But while 
 synthesis is necessary, it is not necessary, according 
 to Comte, that the synthesis should be objective. 
 The error of mankind in the past has been that 
 they supposed themselves able to ascertain the real 
 or objective principle which gives unity to the 
 world, and able, therefore, to make their system 
 of knowledge an ideal repetition of the system of 
 things without them. Such a system, however, is 
 entirely beyond our reach. The conditions of our 
 lot, and the weakness of our intelligence, make it 
 impossible for us to tell what is the real principle 
 of unity in the world, or even whether such a 
 principle exists. The attempts to discover it, made 
 by Theology and Metaphysics, have been nothing 
 more than elaborate anthropomorphisms, in which 
 men gave to the unknown and unknowable reality 
 a form borrowed from their own self-conscious nature. 
 They saw in the clouds about them an exaggerated 
 and distorted reflection of themselves, and regarded 
 this Brocken spectre as a controlling power whose 
 activity was the source and explanation of every- 
 thing. Positivism, on the other hand, arises when- 
 ever men come to recognize the nature of this
 
 HOW TO SYSTEMATIZE KNOWLEDGE. Ml 
 
 illusion, and to confine their ambition to that whicli 
 is within the limit of their intelligence. All that 
 we can know is the resemblances and successions of 
 phenomena, and not the things in themselves that 
 are their causes ; and if we seek to find a principle 
 of unity for these phenomena, we must find it in 
 ourselves and not in them. We must organize 
 knowledge with reference to our own wants, rather 
 than with reference to the nature of things. We 
 must regard everything as a means to an end, 
 which is determined by some inner principle in 
 ourselves — not as if we supposed that the world 
 and all that is in it were made for us, or found 
 its centre in us — but simply because this is the 
 only point of view from which we can systematize 
 knowledge, as it is indeed the only point of view 
 from which we need care to systematize it. 
 
 It may be asked why system is necessary at all, unftTand"^ 
 why we should not be content with a fragmentary *y^'^™' 
 consciousness of the world, without attempting to 
 gather the dispersed lights of science to one central 
 principle. To critics like J. S. Mill, Comte's effort 
 after system seems to be the result of an " original 
 mental twist very common in French thinkers," of 
 " an inordinate desire of unity." " That all perfec- 
 tion consists in unity, Comte apparently considers to 
 be a maxim which no sane man thinks of question- 
 ing : it never seems to enter into his conceptions
 
 1.52 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 that any one could object db initio, and ask, why 
 this universal systematizing, systematizing, system- 
 atizing ? Why is it necessary that all human life 
 should point but to one object, and be converted 
 into a system of means to a single end ? " * To 
 this Mr. Bridges answers that unity in Comte's sense 
 is "the first and most obvious condition which all 
 moral and religious renovators, of whatever time and 
 country, have by the very nature of their office set 
 themselves to fulfil." t In other words, all moral 
 and spiritual life depends upon the harmony of the 
 individual with himself and with the world, A 
 divided life is a life of weakness and misery ; nor 
 can life be divided intellectually, without being, or 
 ultimately becoming, divided morally. Such unity, 
 indeed, does not exclude — and in a being like man 
 who is in course of development cannot altogether 
 exclude — difference and even conflict. In the most 
 steadily growing intellectual life there are pauses of 
 difficulty and doubt ; in the most continuous moral 
 progress there are conflicts with self and with others. 
 But such doubts and difficulties will not greatly 
 weaken or disturb us, so long as they are partigd, 
 so long as they do not aft'ect the central principles 
 of thought and action, so long as there is still some 
 fixed faith which reaches beyond the disturbance, 
 
 * "Comte and Positivism," p, 140. 
 
 t " The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrine," p. 26,
 
 THE WEAKNESS OF DOUBT. 153 
 
 some certitude which is untouched by the doubt. 
 If, however, we once lose the consciousness that 
 there is any such principle, or if we try to rest on 
 a principle which we at the same time feel to be 
 inadequate, our spiritual life, in losing its unity or 
 harmony with itself, must at the same time lose its 
 purity and energy. It must become fitful and 
 uncertain, the sport of accidental influences and 
 tendencies ; it must lower its moral and intellectual 
 aims. This, in Comte's view, is what we have seen 
 in the past. The decay of the old faiths, and of 
 the objective synthesis based upon them, has eman- 
 cipated us from many illusions, but it has, as it 
 were, taken the inspiration out of our lives. It 
 has made knowledge a thing for specialists who 
 have lost the sense of totality, the sense of the 
 value of their particular studies in relation to the 
 whole ; and it has made action feeble and wayward 
 by depriving men of the conviction that there is 
 any great central aim to be achieved by it. And 
 these results would have been still more obvious, 
 were it not that men are so slow in realizing what 
 is involved in the change of their beliefs ; were it 
 not that the habits and sympathies developed by a 
 creed continue to exist long after the creed itself 
 has disappeared. In the long run, however, the 
 change of man's intellectual attitude in relation to the 
 world must bring with it a change of his whole lil'e.
 
 154 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Ceasing to have faith in the creed whicli once recon- 
 ciled him to the world and bound him to his fellows, 
 he must be thrown back upon his own mere individu- 
 ality, unless he can find another Qreed of equal or 
 greater power to inspire and direct his life. And 
 mere individualism is nothing but anarchy. This, 
 indeed, was not seen by those who first expressed 
 the individualistic principle ; on the contrary, they 
 seemed to themselves to find in the assertion of 
 individual right, not only an instrument for destroy- 
 ing the old faith and the old social order, but also 
 the principle of a better faith, and the means of 
 reconstructing a better order of life. But to us who 
 have outlived the period when it could be supposed 
 that the destruction of old, involves in itself the 
 construction of new, forms of life and thought, it 
 cannot but be obvious that the j)rinciples of private 
 judgment and individual liberty are nothing more 
 than negations. JFor, as the real problem of our 
 intellectual life is how to rise to a judgment which 
 is more than private judgment, so the real problem 
 of our practical life is how to realize a liberty that 
 is more than individual license. Hence it is that 
 Comte speaks of the last three centuries as a period 
 of the insurrection of the intellect against the heart, 
 an expression by which he means to indicate at once 
 the gain and the loss of the revolutionary movement ; 
 its gain, in so far as it emancipated the intelligence
 
 THE HEART AGAINST THE HEAD. 155 
 
 from superstitious illusions : and its loss, in so far 
 as it destroyed the faith wliicli was the bond of 
 social union, without substituting any other faith 
 in its room. At the same time, this expression 
 points to a peculiarity of Comte's Psychology, which 
 affects his whole view of the history, and especially 
 of the religious history, of man ; and which it is 
 therefore necessary to subject to a careful examina- 
 tion. 
 
 Is it possible for the intellect to be in insurrection Possibility 
 
 of conflict 
 
 against the heart ? In the sense already indicated "^^.^l^^ 
 this is possible. It is possible, in short, that the ""'^ ^^'"^■ 
 moral and intellectual spirit of a belief may still 
 control the life of one who, so far as his explicit 
 consciousness is concerned, has renounced it. Hooted 
 as the individual is in a wider life than his own, 
 it is often but a small part of himself that he can 
 bring to distinct consciousness. Purther, so little 
 are most men accustomed to self-analysis, that they 
 are seldom aware what it is that constitutes the 
 inspiring power of their beliefs. Generally, at least 
 in the first instance, they take their creed in gross, 
 without distinguishing between essential and unessen- 
 tial elements. They confuse, in one general consecra- 
 tion of reverence, the primary principles which give that 
 creed its spiritual value, and the local and temporary 
 accidents of the form in which it was first presented 
 to them ; and they are as ready to accept battle (l
 
 15C THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Voutrance for some useless outwork as for the citadel 
 itself And, for the same reason, they are ready to 
 think that the citadel is lost when the outwork is 
 taken ; to suppose, e.g., that the spiritual nature of 
 man is a fiction, if he was not directly made by 
 God out of the dust of the earth ; or that the 
 Christian view of life has ceased to be true, if a 
 doubt can be thrown on the possibility of proving 
 miracles. Yet, however little the individual may 
 be able to separate the particulars which are assailed 
 from the universal with which they are accidentally 
 connected, his whole nature must rebel against the 
 sacrifice which logical consistency seems in such a 
 case to demand from him. It is a painful experience 
 when the first break is made in the implicit unity of 
 early faith, and it is painful just in proportion to 
 the depth of the spiritual consciousness which that 
 faith has produced in the individual. Unable to 
 separate that which he is obliged to doubt from 
 that in which lies the principle of his moral, and 
 even of his intellectual, life, he is " in a strait 
 betwixt two " ; and no course seems to be open to 
 him which does not involve the surrender, either of 
 his intellectual honesty, or of that higher conscious- 
 ness which alone " makes life worth living." Such 
 a crisis is commonly described as a division between 
 the heart and the head, because in it the articulate 
 or conscious logic is generally on the side of dis-
 
 THE HEART WISER THAN THE HEAD. 157 
 
 belief, while the resisting conviction takes the form 
 of a feeling, an impulse, an intuition, whidi tlie 
 individual has for himself, but which he is unable 
 to communicate in the same force to another. And, 
 as such feelings and intuitions of the individual are 
 necessarily subject to continual variation of intensity 
 and clearness, so the struggle between doubt and 
 faith may be long and difficult, the objections, which 
 at one time seem as nothing, at another time ap- 
 pearing to be almost irresistible. Not seldom the 
 result is a broken life, in which youth is given to 
 revolt, and the rest of existence to a faith which 
 vainly strives to be implicit. There is, indeed, no 
 final and satisfactory issue from such an endless 
 internal debate and conflict, until the " heart " has 
 learned to speak the language of the " head," — i.e., 
 until the permanent principles, which underlay and 
 gave strength to faith, have been brought into the 
 light of distinct consciousness, and until it has been 
 discovered how to separate them from the accidents, 
 with which at first they were necessarily identified. 
 The hard labour of distinguishing, in the traditions 
 of the past, between the germinative principles out 
 of which the future must spring, and those external 
 forms and adjuncts which every day is making more 
 incredible, must be undertaken by any one who 
 would restore the broken unity of man's life. We 
 begin our existence under the shadow and influence
 
 158 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 of a faith which is given to us as it were, in 
 our sleep; but in no age, and in this age less 
 than any other, can man possess spiritual life as 
 a gift from the past without reconquering it for 
 himself 
 ^f^thr^**"'" In this sense, then, we can understand how Comte 
 opposi ion. j^-gj^|. speak of an insurrection of the intelligence 
 against the heart, which must be quelled ere the 
 normal state of humanity could be restored ; for 
 this would be only another way of saying that, in 
 the modern conflict of faith and reason, the sub- 
 stantial truth, or at least the most important truth, 
 had, up to Comte's own time, been on the side of 
 the former. In this view, the deep unwillingness of 
 those nourished in the Christian or Catholic faith 
 to yield to the logical battery of the Encyclopedists 
 was not merely the result of an obscurantist hatred 
 of light ; it was also in great part due to a more 
 or less definite sense of the moral, if not the in- 
 tellectual, weakness of the principles which the 
 Encyclopffidists maintained. For, while the insur- 
 rection was justified in so far as it asserted the 
 claims of the special sciences, it was to be condemned 
 in so far as it involved the denial of all synthesis 
 whatever, and also in so far as it was blind to the 
 elements of truth in the imperfect synthesis of the 
 past. It thus tended to destroy the spirit of totality 
 and the sense of duty {Vesprit cVenseinble et le sentiment
 
 CAN HEART CONTRADICT HEAD? 159 
 
 du devoir)!^ It practically denied the existence of 
 any universal principle which could connect the 
 different parts of knowledge with each other, of 
 any general aim which could give unity to the 
 life of man. Its analytic spirit was fatal, not only 
 to the fictions of theology, but also to that growing 
 consciousness of the solidarity of men of which 
 theology had been the accidental embodiment. The 
 reluctance of religious men to admit the claims of 
 what appeared to be, and, indeed, to a certain extent 
 was light, was thus due to a more or less distinct 
 perception that their own creed, amid all its partial 
 errors, contained a central truth more important than 
 all the partial truths of science. In clinging to the 
 past they were preserving the germ of the future ; 
 and the final victory of science could not come 
 until this germ had been disengaged from the husk 
 of superstition under which it was hidden. Till 
 that was done, the logic of the heart in clinging 
 to its superstitions was better than the logic of 
 the head in rebelling against them. In other words, 
 the implicit reason of faith was wiser than the 
 explicit reason of science. 
 
 But this is not all that Comte means. For him Koeiing 
 
 apart frmu 
 
 the appeal to the heart is not merely the appeal intciugence 
 to feelings and intuitions, which are the result of t^'JI^" '^°"' 
 the past development of human intelligence, and 
 *Pol. Pos. iii. 499; Trail a. 419.
 
 160 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 especially of the long discipline by which the 
 Christian Church has moulded the modern spirit ; it 
 is an appeal to the altruistic affections, as original 
 or " innate " tendencies in man which are altogether 
 independent of his intelligence. It is not that the 
 reason of man often speaks through his feelings, but 
 that feeling and reason have in themselves different, 
 and even it may be opposite, voices. In this sense, 
 the attempt has often been made in modern times 
 to stop the invasions of critical reflection by setting 
 up the heart as an independent authority. From 
 the Lutheran theologian who said, " Pectus theologum 
 facit," down to the poet of In Memoriam, appeals 
 have constantly been made to the feelings to resist 
 the intrusion of doubt : — 
 
 " If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 
 
 I heard a voice, ' believe no more ' . . . 
 
 A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And like a man in wrath, the heart 
 
 Stood up and answered, ' I have felt ' : " 
 
 Such appeals, however, cannot be regarded as other- 
 wise than provisional and self-defensive. " The heart 
 knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not 
 intermeddle with its joy " ; but just for that reason 
 it has no general content or independent authority 
 of its own. Whether the phrase " I feel it " mean 
 little or much, depends upon the individual who
 
 THE HEART BY ITSELF SAYS NOTHING. 101 
 
 utters it. It may be the concentrated expression 
 of a long life of culture and discipline, or it may 
 be the loud but empty voice of untrained passion 
 and prejudice. The " unproved assertions of the 
 Vv^ise and experienced," as Aristotle tells us, have 
 great value, especially in ethical matters ; but it is 
 not because they are unproved assertions, but because 
 we know that the speakers are wise and experienced. 
 To appeal to the heart in general, without saying 
 " wliosc heart," either means nothing, or it means 
 an appeal to the natural man, i.e., to man as he is 
 before he has been sophisticated by culture and 
 experience. But of the natural man, in this sense, 
 nothing can be said. The farther we go back in 
 the history of the individual or the race the more 
 imperfect does their utterance of themselves become ; 
 and when we reach the beginning, we find that 
 there is no manifestation or utterance at all. The 
 natural man of Eousseau was simply an ideal crea- 
 tion, inspired with that intense and even morbid 
 consciousness of self and that fixed resolve to submit 
 to no external law, which were characteristic of 
 Eousseau himself, and which in him were the last 
 product and quintessence of the individualism of the 
 eighteenth century. The simplicity of this ideal 
 figure is not the first simplicity of nature, but the 
 simplicity of a spirit which has returned upon itself 
 and asserted itself against the world ; a kind of 
 
 L
 
 162 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 simplicity which never existed, at least in the same 
 form, before the great Protestant revolt. The unhis- 
 torical character of this idea becomes doubly evident 
 when we find that, as time goes on and the spirit 
 of the age alters, the qualities of the natural man 
 also are changed. To St. Simon and Fourier, as to 
 Eousseau, man is good by nature, and it is bad 
 institutions or bad external influences which are 
 the source of all the ills that flesh is heir to. But 
 while to the latter the natural man is a solitary, 
 whose chief good lies in the preservation of his 
 independence ; to the former he is essentially social, 
 and what is wanted for his perfection and happi- 
 ness is only to contrive an outward organization in 
 which his social sympathies shall have free play. 
 Comte, as we might expect, rises above these imper- 
 fect theories, in so far as he refuses to attribute 
 all the evils of humanity to its external circum- 
 stances ; but he does not free himself from the 
 essential error which was common to them all, the 
 error of seeking for the explanation of the higher 
 life of humanity in the feelings of the natural man 
 — feelings which are prior to, and independent of, 
 the exercise of his reason, and which supply all 
 the possible motives for that exercise. There are, 
 in his view, two sets of " innate " feelings or desires, 
 between which man's life is divided — the egoistic 
 and the altruistic tendencies, each separate from the
 
 THE NA TURAL MAN. \ 03 
 
 others as well as from the iiitellifjeiice, and havinsr 
 its " organ " in a separate part of the brain. The 
 egoistic feelings at first exist in man in far greater 
 strength than the altruistic ; l)ut by the reaction 
 of circumstances, and the influence of men upon 
 each other, the latter have in the past gradually 
 attained to greater power ; and it is the ideal of the 
 future to make their victory complete. Meanwhile, 
 the intelligence is necessarily the instrument of desire, 
 and its highest good is to be the instrument of 
 altruistic as opposed to egoistic desire. For it has 
 at best only a choice of masters, and the emanci- 
 pation of the intelligence from the heart could mean 
 only its becoming a slave of personal vanity.* 
 Comte's appeal, therefore, is still to the natural man, 
 or rather to one element in him, which, however, 
 as he acknowledges, is never so weak as it is in 
 man's earliest or most natural state. 
 
 The psychology implied in this theory is substan- Hume's 
 
 view of the 
 
 tially that which found its fullest expression in relation of 
 
 •^ '^ reason and 
 
 Hume's " Treatise on Human Nature." Hume, with p^^"°°- 
 that tendency to bring things to a distinct issue 
 which is his best characteristic, declares boldly that 
 " reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions, 
 and can never pretend to any other office than to 
 serve and obey them." The passions or desires are 
 tendencies of a definite character which exist in man 
 *Pol. Pos. i. 421.
 
 164 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 from the first ; and the awaking intelligence cannot add 
 to their number, or essentially change their nature. 
 It can only take account of what they are, and 
 calculate how best to satisfy them. " We speak 
 not strictly and philosophically when we talk of 
 the combat of reason and passion," for while reason 
 determines what is true and what is false, it sets 
 nothing before us as an end to be pursued and 
 avoided. It does not constitute, and it cannot trans- 
 form, the desires, which are given altogether apart 
 from it : nor is the will anything but the strongest 
 desire. When we say that reason controls the pas- 
 sions, what we mean is simply that a strong but 
 calm tendency of our nature, which has reference 
 to some remote object, overcomes a violent impulse 
 towards a present delight ; but for intelligence to 
 contend with passion is, strictly sj)eaking, an impos- 
 sibility, 
 modmifation The modifications which Comte makes in this view 
 
 of Hume's /• ,• • i • m • tt i 
 
 view. 01 motive are comparatively trmmg. He does not, 
 
 indeed, like Hume, call reason the slave of the 
 passions ; rather he says that " Vcsprit doit etre le 
 ministre du cceur, mais jamais son esclavc " ; but this 
 change of language does not involve any important 
 modification of Hume's theory. The intelligence 
 may give the heart much information about the 
 means whereby it may attain its ends, but the ends 
 have to be determined solely by the heart itself. 
 
 Comte's
 
 THE SUBORDINA TION OF REASON. \ (J5 
 
 In Comte's language the intellect is a " slave," when 
 theology makes it acknowledge the existence of ficti- 
 tious supernatural beings whose natures are in accord- 
 ance with our desires, our hopes, or our fears ; it 
 is a "master," when it pursues its inquiries into 
 the phenomena of the objective world, at the bidding 
 of an errant curiosity, without reference to the 
 well-being of man ; it is in its true place as a 
 " servant " when it studies the objective world freely, 
 but only with reference to the end fixed for it by 
 the affections. " L'univers doit etrc dtudii non pour 
 liii-meme, mais pour Vhomme, on pluiot pour Vhuman- 
 iU" ; and this, Comte thinks, will not be done if the 
 intelligence be left to itself, but only if it be made 
 subordinate to the heart. To say, therefore, that 
 the intelligence is not to be a slave but a servant, 
 implies merely that it is to be left free to collect 
 information about the means of satisfying the desires, 
 without having its judgment anticipated by the 
 imagination or the heart ; l)ut that, on the other 
 hand, it must be kept strictly to its position as an 
 instrument to an end out of itself. For if it once 
 emancipates itself from the yoke of feeling, it soon 
 becomes altogether lawless, and disperses its efforts 
 in every direction in the satisfaction of an idle curi- 
 osity. The intelligence, as the scholastic theologians 
 said, is in itself, or when left to itself, a source 
 of anarchy and confusion ; it must be, not indeed
 
 IGG THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 1 
 
 the serva, Ijut the ancilla field, otherwise it will 
 defeat its own ends. The intellectual life, as such, 
 is an unsocial, even a selfish existence ; for, as 
 reason is guided by no definite objective aim derived 
 from itself, it must find its real motive in the satis- 
 faction of personal vanity and self-conceit, whenever 
 it is not subjected to the yoke of the altruistic 
 affections. 
 Ave the ten- This theory (which, as we shall see, underlies 
 
 dencies of ./ v - 
 
 purely dis°* Comtc's wholc conccption of history) suggests two 
 persive. questions. It leads us to ask, in the first place, 
 whether the tendenciv^s of the intellectual life are 
 thus dispersive and opposed to the social tendencies : 
 and, secondly, whether the social tendencies in the 
 form which they take with man, are not necessarily 
 determined to be what they are by his intelligence. 
 The former question really resolves itself into another : 
 Is the intelligence of man a mere formal power of 
 apprehending what is presented to it from without, 
 so that, when it is left to itself, it can only lose 
 its way amid the infinite multiplicity of individual 
 objects in the external world ? or does it carry within 
 it any synthetic principle, any idea of the whole, 
 by which it can reduce to unity and order the differ- 
 ence and confusion of phenomena ? Against Comte's 
 assertion that the natural tendency of the intelligence 
 is to lose itself in difference without end, we might 
 quote the well-kuown saying of Bacon, that the
 
 TENDENCIES OF THE INTELLECT. 1G7 
 
 tendency of the " intcllcctus sibi pcrmissus " is rather 
 towards a premature synthesis. " Intdlcdus humamis 
 ex proprietate sua facile sup2wnit majorcm ordincm ct 
 cequalitatcm in rebus qnam invcnit." Surely, if we 
 may speak of tendencies of the intellectual life as 
 separated from the life of feeling, the tendency to 
 unity and the universal belongs to it quite as much 
 as the tendency to difference and the particular ; 
 just as, in the life of feeling, the tendency to isolation 
 and self-assertion against others is combined with the 
 tendency to society and union with others. From 
 the first moment of intellectual life the world is to 
 us a unity ; subjectively a unity, as all its varied 
 phenomena are gathered up in the consciousness of 
 one self, and objectively a unity, as every object and 
 event is conceived as definitely placed in relation 
 to the other objects and events in one space and 
 one time. The development of knowledge is, no 
 doubt, the continual detection of new differences and 
 distinctions in things, but the phenomena which are 
 distinguished from other phenomena are at tlie same 
 time put in relation to them. Nor can the intelli- 
 gence find complete satisfaction until this relation 
 is discovered to be necessary, and thus difference 
 passes into unity again. Individual minds, indeed, 
 may be more of the Aristotelian, or more of the 
 Platonist, order, may tend more to divide what at 
 first is presented as unity, or to unite what at first
 
 1G8 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 is presented as difference. But it is absurd to talk 
 of either tendency as belonging, more than the other, 
 to the intelligence in itself: seeing that it is as 
 much beyond the powers of thought to conceive of 
 an undifferentiated unity, as to conceive of a chaos 
 of differences without some kind of relation. In this 
 regard, indeed, we may bring Comte as a witness 
 against himself; for, while he declares that the 
 sciences which deal with the inorganic world are 
 mainly analytic in their tendencies, he at the same 
 time maintains that the sciences of Biology, and, still 
 more, of Sociology ard Morals, are synthetic, since 
 they deal with objects in which the whole is not 
 a mere aggregation or resultant of the parts, but 
 in which rather the parts can be understood only 
 in and through the whole. Hence it would seem 
 that the dispersive tendencies of science are confined 
 to the lower steps of the scientific scale ; and that 
 the final science admits and necessitates a synthesis, 
 which is not merely subjective but also objective. 
 For Comte does not hold that we are to regard 
 other men merely as means, or to seek to understand 
 them only so far as is necessary for the gratification 
 of some desire in ourselves as individuals. We are, 
 on the contrary, to seek to know man in and for 
 himself; and when we do so know him, we find 
 that he is essentially social, and that the individual, 
 as such, is a mere " fiction of the metaphysicians."
 
 IS ALTRUISM INNATE. 169 
 
 Here again, therefore, wo find that Conite's system 
 ends in a compromise between opposite tendencies 
 of thought. As his subjective syntlicsis after all 
 was found to be objective, at least so far as man- 
 kind were concerned, so in like manner liis oppo- 
 sition of the intellect to the heart turns out to be 
 only partial ; ' for when the intelligence is directed 
 to psychology and sociology, it gives us an idea of 
 humanity, according to which all men are " members 
 one of another." The warfare of the heart and tlic 
 intelligence thus resolves itself into another expres- 
 sion of that dualism between the world and man, 
 which we have already considered. 
 
 The second question — whether tlie altruistic a flee- Arc not the 
 
 •'■ social iinec- 
 
 tions of man do not imply, or are not necessarily mhlcd'^v"^ 
 connected with, the development of his reason or 
 self-consciousness — is even more important. Comte, 
 like Hume, took all the desires, higher and lower, 
 as tendencies given apart from the reason, whicli 
 can only devise the means of satisfying them, and 
 is, therefore, necessarily their servant. lieason itself 
 on this view does not essentially affect the character 
 of those tendencies which it obeys. " Cupiditas est 
 appetitus cicm ejusdem conscientia," says Spinoza, and 
 immediately he goes on to speak as if the "conscientia" 
 made no change in the character of the " appetitiis." 
 But if we think of appetites or desires — some of 
 them tending to the good of the individual, others
 
 170 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 to the good of the species — as existing in an animal 
 which is not conscious of a self, these appetites will 
 neither be selfish nor unselfish in the sense in which 
 we apply these terms to man. Where there is no 
 c(jo there can be no alter ego, and therefore neither 
 egoism nor altruism. The consciousness of the self 
 as a permanent unity to which all the different 
 tendencies are referred, and the consequent rise of 
 a new desire for the good or happiness, as distinct 
 from the desires of particular objects, are essential 
 to egoism. The consciousness of an alter ego, i.e., of 
 a community with others which .makes their interests 
 our own, and hence the consequent rise of a love 
 for them, — which is not disinterested merely as the 
 animal appetites are disinterested, because they tend 
 directly to their objects without any thought of self, 
 but disinterested in the sense that the thought of 
 self is conquered or transcended, — is essential to 
 altruism. Each of these tendencies may coincide in 
 its matter, or rather in its first matter, with the 
 appetites ; viewed from the outside, they may seem 
 to be nothing higher than hunger or thirst, and 
 sexual or parental impulse ; but their form is 
 different. In becoming combined with self-conscious- 
 ness, they are changed as by a chemical solvent, 
 which dissolves and renews them ; nay, as by a 
 new principle of life, whose first transformation of 
 them is nothing but the beginning of a series of
 
 REASON AS A SOCIAL PRINCIPLE. 17 1 
 
 transformations both of tlieir matter and tlieir form; 
 so that, in the end, tlie simpK' direct tendency to 
 an object — the uneasiness wliicli sought its cure 
 without reflection either upon itself or upon anything 
 else — is transmuted, on the one side, into a gigantic 
 ambition and greed, which would make the whole 
 world tributary to the lust of the individual, and, 
 on the other side, into a love of humanity in whicli 
 self-love is altogether transcended or absorbed. 
 Neither of these, however, nor any lower form of 
 either, is in such wise external to reason, that we 
 can talk of them as determining it to an end 
 which is not its own. Both are simply the expres- 
 sion in feeling of that essential opposition of the 
 self to the not-self, and at the same time that 
 essential unity of the self with the not-self, which 
 are the two opposite^_j3ut complementary, aspects of 
 the life of reason. I And the progressive triumph 
 of altruism over egoism, which constitutes the moral 
 significance of history, is only the result of the fact 
 that an individual, who is also a conscious self, 
 cannot find his happiness in his own individual life, 
 but only in the life of the whole to which he 
 belongs. A selfish life is for such a being a con- 
 tradiction. It is a life in which he is at war with 
 himself as well as with others ; for it is the life of 
 a being who, though essentially social, tries to find 
 satisfaction in a personal or individual good. His
 
 172 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Bearing of 
 this oppo- 
 sition ou 
 Comte's 
 view of 
 history. 
 
 " intelligence " and his " heart " equally condemn such 
 a life ; it is for him not only a crime but a blunder. 
 For a spiritual being, as such, is one who can save 
 his life only by losing it in a wider life, one who 
 must die to himself in order that he may live. In 
 the progress of man's spirit, therefore, there is no 
 necessary or possible schism between the two parts 
 of his being; but, on the contrary, the development 
 of the one implies the development of the otlier. 
 It is the more comprehensive idea, as well as the 
 higher social purpose, which always triumphs ; and 
 if what is called intellectual culture sometimes seems 
 to have the worse in the struggle for existence, it 
 is because it is a superficial or formal culture, which 
 [does not really represent the most comprehensive idea^\ 
 This leads us to observe that the opposition of 
 the heart to the intelligence is Comte's key to the 
 whole history of the past, especially in relation to 
 religion. Theology is to him a system growing out 
 of a natural, though partially erroneous, hypothesis, 
 an hypothesis which in its first appearance was well 
 suited to excite the nascent intelligence and satisfy 
 the primary affections of man, but which, in its 
 further development, tended to secure moral and 
 social ends at the expense of truth, and became 
 more and more irrational as it became more and 
 more useful. Fetichism, the first religion, was the 
 spontaneous result of man's primitive tendency to 
 
 
 -v/ 
 
 t2- 
 
 / 
 
 /'
 
 FALSE SYNTHESIS OF THEOLOGY. 173 
 
 exaggerate the likeness of all tliin,i,'.s to himself. It 
 is "less distant from Positivity " than any other sort 
 of theology,* for its only error is that it supposes 
 the existence of life wherever it finds activity, an 
 error which can " easily be brought to the test of 
 verification " and corrected. " We can show it to 
 be an error, and so get rid of it." But Polytheism, 
 seeking for greater generality, refers phenomena, not 
 directly to beings who are identified with them, 
 but indirectly to " wills belonging to beings purely 
 imaginary," whose " existence can no more be de- 
 cisively disproved than it can be demonstrated." 
 Further, Polytheism extends to the order of man's 
 life that kind of explanation which Fetichism neces- 
 sarily confined to nature, because the latter sought 
 to explain everything by man, and never thought 
 of man himself as requiring explanation. But this, 
 while it has the advantage of bringing human life 
 within the domain of speculation, at the same time 
 reduces theology into a palpable instance of reasoning 
 in a circle. For " Humanity cannot legitimately be 
 included in the synthesis of causes, from the very 
 fact that its type is found in man."t Last of all 
 comes Monotheism, concentrating slill I'urther the 
 theological explanation of the universe, but rendering 
 it still more incoherent and irrational, for " the con- 
 
 *Pol. Pos. iii. p. 85: Trans, p. 71. 
 tPol. Po9. iii. p. 261: Trans, p. 218.
 
 174- THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 ception of a single God involves a type of absolute 
 perfection complete in each of the three aspects of 
 human nature, affection, thought, and action. Now, 
 such a conception unavoidably contradicts itself; for 
 either this all-powerful Being must be inferior to 
 ourselves, morally or intellectually ; or else the world 
 which He created must be free from those radical 
 imperfections which, in spite of Monotheistic sophis- 
 try, have been always but too evident. And even 
 were this second alternative admissible, there would 
 remain a yet deeper inconsistency. Man's moral 
 and mental faculties have for their object to sub- 
 serve practical necessities, but an omnipotent Being 
 can have no occasion either for wisdom or for good- 
 ness."* 
 Monotheism What reconcilcs mankind, and especially the ' men 
 
 the great 
 
 instrument of light and leading,' to these intellectually unsatis- 
 
 ot social " "^ '' 
 
 "°^*^' factory conceptions of God, is their practical value 
 in extending and strengthening the social bond. 
 Polytheism was superior to Fetichism, because it 
 lent itself to the formation of that wider community, 
 which we call the State, whereas Fetichism tended 
 rather to confine the sympathies of men to the 
 narrower limits of the family. And Monotheism 
 was the necessary basis of that still wider society 
 which binds men to each other simply as men, 
 and apart from any special ties of blood or language. 
 *Ibid. iii. p. 431: Trans, p. 365.
 
 SOCIAL USES OF THEOLOGY. \-^:^ 
 
 This at least was the ease so Ioiil; as the truth (»!' 
 the unity of humanity had not yet assumed a scien- 
 tific form, and therefore still needed an external 
 support. But when the sciences of sociology and 
 morals arise, this external scafiblding ceases to be 
 necessary, and must even become injurious, as, in- 
 deed, Theology at the best is ill-adapted to the 
 social end it has been made to subserve. 
 
 This last point deserves special attention. Ac- Though, in 
 
 '^ ^ itself, it i» 
 
 cording to Comte, Theology, and above all, Mono- un'ioc.illj; 
 theistic Theology, is a system the direct influence 
 of which is altogether unfavourable to the social 
 tendencies, although indirectly — by the course of 
 history, and through the wise modifications to which 
 it has been subjected by the leaders and teachers of 
 mankind — it has become the main instrument in 
 developing altruism. The increasing generality of 
 theological belief, indeed, was a necessary condition 
 of the establishment of social unity ; but, by directing 
 the eyes of men not to themselves but to super- 
 natural beings, by making the issues of life turn 
 on the favour or disfavour of such beings rather 
 than on the social action and reaction of men upon 
 each other, and by reducing this world into a 
 secondary position, and subordinating its concerns 
 to those of another world. Theology tended to dis- 
 solve rather than to knit closer the bonds of society. 
 The relation of the individual to God isolated him
 
 176 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 from his fellows. Especially was this the case with 
 the Christian form of Monotheism, with its tremen- 
 dous future rewards and penalties, and the direct 
 relation which it established between the soul of 
 the individual and the Infinite Being. " The im- 
 mediate effect of putting personal salvation in the 
 foremost place was to create an unparalleled selfish- 
 ness, a selfishness rendering all social influences 
 nugatory, and thus tending to dissolve public life."'" 
 " The Christian type of life was never fully realized 
 except by the hermits of the Thebaid," who, "by 
 narrowing their wants to the lowest standard, were 
 able to concentrate their thoughts without remorse 
 or distraction on the attainment of salvation. "t What 
 else, indeed, but egoism could be awakened by the 
 worship of a God who is himself the supreme type 
 of egoism ? For " the desires of an omnipotent 
 Being, being gratified as soon as formed, can consist 
 in nothing but pure caprices. For Him there can be 
 no appreciable motive either from within or from 
 without. And above all, these pure caprices must of 
 necessity be purely personal ; so that the meta- 
 physical fornmla, To live in self for self, would be 
 alike applicable to the two extreme grades of the 
 vital scale. This type of divinity approximates 
 to the lowest stage of animality, the only shape in 
 
 *Pol. Pos. iii. p. 411 : Trans, p. 348. 
 t Ibid. iii. p. 454 : Trans, p. 383.
 
 THEOLOG V SUBDUED TO A L TR UJSM. 177 
 
 which life is purely individual, because it is reduced 
 to the one function of nutrition."* The natural 
 result of such a religion was, therefore, to discourage 
 the altruistic affections : as, indeed. Monotheism has 
 systematically denied that such affections form part 
 of the nature of man. 
 
 The alchemy which, according to Comte, turned H"wit8 
 this poison into wholesome food, was found in the °!!"J"^e^t. 
 altruistic affections of the teachers of mankind, which 
 led them to limit and modify the doctrine they 
 taught, so as to subserve man's moral improvement. 
 This, however, would not have been sufficient, if 
 these teachers had not at an early period ceased 
 to be a theocracy, or, in other words, if the practical 
 government of mankind had not been wrested from 
 their hand by the military classes. By this change, 
 which contained in itself the germ of the separation 
 of the Church from the State, of theory from practice, 
 of counsel from command, the priests, prophets, or 
 philosophers, who were the intellectual leaders of 
 men, were reduced to that position of subordination 
 in which alone they can concentrate their attention 
 upon their proper work. For the influences of the 
 intellect, like those of the affections, must be indirect 
 if they are to be pure. "No power, especially if it 
 be theological, cares to modify the will, unless it 
 finds itself unable to control action." But when 
 
 * Ibid. iii. p. 446 : Trans, p. 376. 
 M
 
 178 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 the theoretic class were subordinated to the practical 
 class, they became the natural allies of the womne, 
 and, like them, had to substitute counsel for com- 
 mand. At tirst, indeed, their subjection was too 
 absolute, for the military aristocracies of Greece and 
 Eome did not leave to tlie priesthood sufficient in- 
 dependence, or at least sufficient authority, to permit 
 even of counsel. But with the rise of Catholic 
 Monotheism, supported as it was by a new revelation 
 based upon the idea of an incarnation of God, the 
 separation of Church and State was definitely estab- 
 lished, and the Intellectual life was put in its proper 
 relation to the life of action. 
 Howciuis- Xhe consequence is that the theolocrical priesthood 
 
 tian Mono- •'• or 
 
 hunmiiled. havc Continually sought to counteract the natural 
 influences of their doctrine by making additions 
 which were inconsistent with its " absolute " principle, 
 but which rendered it better fitted for the purpose 
 of binding men together. This was especially the 
 case under Monotheism, where, as we have seen, 
 such counteraction was most necessary. From this 
 source arose a series of supplementary doctrines, 
 generally tending to connect God with man, and 
 men with each other, i St. Paul, " the real founder 
 of Catholicism," took the first step in reducing Mono- 
 ^ theism into a shape in which it could act as an 
 " organic " doctrine ; and his successors followed 
 steadily in the same path. If the omnipotence of
 
 NATURE AND GRACE. 179 
 
 God raised Him above all human sympathy, ami 
 tended to destroy human sympathy in his worship- 
 pers, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation 
 again brought God near to men, and taught them 
 to reverence in themselves a humanity which was 
 raised into unity with God. In the Feast of the 
 Eucharist all men celebrated and enjoyed their unity 
 with this exalted and deified humanity. The same 
 influence, in its further development, led to the 
 adoration of the saints, and al)Ove all of the Virgin 
 Mother, in whom Christian devotion really worshipped 
 Humanity, in its simplest and tenderest affections. 
 Finally, if benevolent sympathies were denied to 
 nature, St. Paul found a place for them by attributing 
 them to grace, " which Thomas a Kempis admirably 
 defines as the equivalent of love — gratia sive dilectio 
 — divine inspiration being substituted for human 
 impulse."* And the struggle between egoism and 
 altruism was expressed in the doctrines of the Fall 
 and Redemption of mankind.t Thus the social pas- 
 sion which, according to the theory, could not be 
 derived from human nature, was conceived to flow 
 from a divine influence, and became ennobled, at 
 least as a means of salvation, in the eyes of those /*• 
 who would otherwise have suppressed it. At the 
 same time, as Gomte also contends, these additions 
 
 * Pol. Pos. iii. p. 447 : Trans, p. 378. 
 + Ibid. iii. p. 409 : Trans. 346.
 
 180 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 or corrections of the original doctrine were incon- 
 sistent or imperfect in themselves, and inadequate to 
 the social purpose for which they were destined ; 
 and they naturally disappeared whenever, by the 
 emancipation of the intelligence, the immense egoism, 
 which Monotheism consecrated in God and favoured 
 in man, was let loose from the bonds in which the 
 Church had confined it. Protestantism was the first 
 • indication of this change ; for Protestantism is but 
 an organized anarchy, and the only elements of order 
 in it are derived from an instinctive conservatism, 
 clinging to the fragments of a past doctrinal system 
 which, in principle, has been abandoned. It contains 
 no organic elements of its own, and it has made 
 no positive contribution to the progressive life of 
 humanity ; it is simply the first result of that 
 metaphysical individualism which, in its ultimate 
 form, freed from all the limits of the Catholic 
 system, expressed itself theoretically in Eousseau 
 and Voltaire, and practically in the Prench Ee vo- 
 lution, rriie hope of mankind, however, lies in 
 ithe new synthesis of Positivism, which alone can 
 give due value to the innate altruistic sympathies 
 of man ; for it alone can place on a permanent 
 scientific basis that social order, which the medi- 
 aeval church attempted in vain to found on the 
 essentially egoistic and anarchic doctrine of Mono- 
 theism. 
 
 z
 
 TWO ELEMENTS IN CHRISTIAXITY. 181 
 The fundamental conception, tlien, which underlies <»i>i><"'Hio.. 
 
 i ' ' 111 (.-loiucnti 
 
 Comte's view of progress is, that every past religion, |."„Vm ouiic 
 with the partial exception of Fetichisni, has heen ''"" 
 an amalgam of two radically inconsistent elements, 
 of which only one was due to the theological prin- 
 ciple itself; while the other was due, ])artly to the 
 practical instinct of its priests, which led them to 
 modify the logical results of that principle in con- 
 formity with the social wants of man ; and partly 
 also to their subordinate position, which obliged 
 them to use the spiritual means of conviction and 
 persuasion instead of the ruder weapons of material 
 force. To criticize this theory fully would be to 
 re-write Comte's history of religion. It will be suffi- 
 cient here to point out that his view of modern 
 history begins in a false interpretation of Christianity, 
 and ends in an equally false interpretation of the 
 Protestant Reformation. 
 
 Christianity from its origin has two aspects or Did tins di»- 
 
 <> ^ ^ cord exist ill 
 
 elements ; and if we compare it with earlier religions, ci'nstian- 
 we may call these its Pantheistic and its Monothe- 
 istic elements. But these elements are not, as Comte 
 asserts, joined together by a mere external necessity. 
 They are necessarily connected in the inner logic of 
 the system ; nor can we regard one of them as 
 more or less essential than the other. In the 
 simplest words of the Gospels we find already ex- 
 pressed a sense of reconciliation with Clod, and
 
 182 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 therefore with tlie worhl and self, which is alien 
 to pure Monotheism, though there is some faint 
 anticipation of it in the later books of the Old 
 Testament. For a spiritual Monotheism, while it 
 awakens a consciousness of the holiness of God, and 
 the sinfulness of the creature, tends to make fear 
 prevail over love, and the sense of separation over 
 the sense of union. The idea of the unity of the 
 Divine and the Human — an original unity which 
 yet has to be realized by self-sacrifice — and the 
 corresponding idea that the individual or natural life 
 must be lost in order to save it, were presented for 
 the first time, as in one great living picture, in 
 the life and death of Jesus. And what was thus 
 directly presented to the heart and the imagination 
 in an individual, was universalized in the writings 
 of St. Paul and St. John; in other words, it was 
 there liberated from its peculiar national setting, and 
 used as a key to the general moral history of man. 
 The Messiah of the Jews was exalted into the Divine 
 Logos, and the Cross became the symbol of an 
 atonement and reconciliation between God and man, 
 which has been made " before the foundation of the 
 \vorld," yet which has to be made again in every 
 human life. The work of the first three centuries 
 was to give to this idea such logical expression as 
 was then possible, in the doctrines of the Incarnation 
 and the Trinity. It is true that this idea of the
 
 SEPARATION OF CHURCH AA'I) ST AT J-. 1.S3 
 
 unity of man with (Jod was not iniinediatcly carried 
 out to any of the consequences wliich might seem 
 to be contained in it. It remained for a time a 
 religion, and a religion only ; it did not show itself 
 to be the principle of a new social or political 
 order of life. Rather it accepted tlie old order 
 represented by the Roman Empire, and even conse- 
 crated it as "ordained of God," only demanding for 
 itself that it should be allowed to purify the innei- 
 life of men. Such a separation of the things of 
 Cjesar and the things of God was then inevitable ; 
 for it is impossible that a new principle can ever 
 be received, simply and without alloy, into minds 
 which are at tlie same time occupying themselves 
 with its utmost practical or even its utmost theo- 
 retical consequences. In this sense there is much 
 truth in what Comte says about the value of the 
 separation of the spiritual from tlie temporal autho- 
 rity. The power of directly realizing a new religious 
 principle, just because it draws away attention from 
 the principle itself to the details of its practical 
 application, is likely to prevent that application being 
 either a complete or even a true expression of the 
 principle. Practical inferences from such a principle 
 cannot safely be drawn by mere logical deduction ; 
 they will be drawn with certainty and effect only 
 by those whose whole spiritual life the principle has 
 remoulded. The decided withdrawal of tlie Christian
 
 the middle 
 ages, 
 
 184 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Church from the sphere of " practical politics " was, 
 therefore, not merely a necessity forced upon it from 
 without ; it was a condition which its best members 
 gladly accepted, because without it the inner trans- 
 formation of man's life by the new doctrine would 
 have been impossible. If Christianity had raised a 
 servile insurrection, it never could have put an end 
 to slavery. 
 duaiTsm^n ^^^ whilc this withdrawal was necessary, it con- 
 tained a great danger ; for the inner life cannot be 
 separated from the outer life without becoming 
 narrowed and distorted. Confined to the sphere of 
 religion and private morality, the doctrine of unity 
 and reconciliation necessarily became itself the source 
 of a new dualism. What had been at first merely 
 neglect of the world was gradually changed into 
 hostility to worldly interests ; and the germs of a 
 positive morality, reconciling the flesh and the spirit, 
 which appear in the New Testament, were neglected 
 and overshadowed in the growth of asceticism. 
 Christianity, even in its first expression, had a 
 negative side towards the natural life of man ; while 
 it lifted man to God, it yet taught that humanity 
 " cannot be quickened except it die." But the 
 mediaeval Church, while it constantly taught that 
 humanity must die to all its natural impulses, had 
 almost forgotten to hope that it could be quickened. 
 Its highest morality — the morality of the three vows
 
 MEDIAEVAL ASCETICISM. 185 
 
 — was the negatiou of all social olilij^ations ; its 
 science was the interpretation of a tixod dogma 
 received on authority ; its religion tended to become 
 an external service, an opus opcratum, a preparation 
 for another world, rather than a principle of action 
 in this. Its highest act of worsliij), iJie Eucharist, 
 in which it celebrated the revealed unity of men 
 with each other and with God, was reserved in its 
 fulness for the clergy ; and even with them it was 
 reduced to an external act by the doctrine of tran- 
 substantiation, in which poetry " became logic," and 
 in becoming logic, ceased to be trutli. 
 
 Now, Comte seeing the working of this nefiative uuityofti.. 
 
 ° ° ° twocle- 
 
 tendency in mediaeval Catholicism, and regarding it "j"|gtiin 
 as the natural work of j\Ionotheism, is obliged to '*^' 
 treat all the positive side of Christianity as an 
 external addition suggested by the practical wisdom 
 of the clergy. St. l*aul is supposed l>y him to have 
 invented (and Comte's language would even suggest 
 that he consciously invented*) the doctrine of grace, 
 in order to reconsecrate those social afl'ections which 
 Monotheism, in its condemnation of nature, had either 
 denied to exist, or, what is nearer the truth, had 
 treated as having no moral value, liut this only 
 shows how imperfectly Comte had grasped the Pauline 
 conception of the moral change which religion pro- 
 duces. fThe idea that the immediate untamed and~ 
 
 *Pol. Pos. iii. p. 409: Trans, p. 346. 
 
 Y
 
 I] 
 
 186 T//E SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 undisciplined will of the natural man is not a 
 principle of morality, and that therefore man must 
 die to live, must rise above himself to be himself, 
 is one which has in it nothing discordant with the 
 claims of social feeling. It is the commonplace of 
 every powerful writer on practical ethics, from the 
 Gospels to Thomas a Kempis, and from Luther to 
 Goethe. 
 
 " Und so lang du das iiicht hast, 
 Dieses : Stirb and Werde, 
 Bist du nur eiii triiber Gast 
 Auf der dunkelu Erde." 
 
 St. Paul adds that this death to self is possible 
 only to him in whom another than his own natural 
 will lives ; " so then it is not I that live, but 
 Christ that liveth in me." Comte would accept the 
 words of St. Paul with the substitution of Humanity 
 for Christ. But either substitution involves the 
 negation of the natural tendencies, whether individ- 
 ual or social, in their immediate natural form ; and 
 Comte himself, when he placed not only the sexual 
 but even the maternal impulse among those that 
 are merely " personal or egoistic," virtually acknow- 
 ledged that the natural or instructive basis of the 
 altruistic affections is not in itself moral."" But 
 because he begins with a psychology which treats 
 the egoistic and altruistic desires, and again the 
 *Ibid. i. p. 726: Trans, p. 562.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 S7 
 
 intellect and the heart, as distinct and independent 
 entities, he is nnable to do justice to an account 
 of moral experience whicli involves that they are 
 essentially related elements in one whole, or neces- 
 sarily connected stages of its development. 
 
 In the form in which it was first presented, the ''!''"-•''■ "pp"- 
 
 *■ ' KitlOU 111 ith 
 
 teaching of Christianity was undoubtedly ambiguous ; lll'Jut"'' 
 as, indeed, every doctrine in its first and simplest 
 form must be. In that form we cannot, without 
 limitations, call it either social or anti-social ; it is 
 anti-social and ascetic, because of its negative re- 
 lations to the previous forms of life and culture ; 
 it is social and positive, in so far as in its primary 
 doctrine of the unity of the divine and human — of 
 divinity manifested in man and humanity made 
 perfect through suffering — it contains the promise 
 and the necessity of a development by which nature 
 and spirit shall be reconciled. The progressive tend- 
 ency of Christendom was based on the fact that 
 from the earliest times the followers of Christ were 
 placed in the dilennna, either of denying their primary 
 doctrine of reconciliation between (Jod and man and 
 going back to pure Monotheism, or of advancing to 
 the reconciliation of all those other antagonisms of 
 spirit and nature, the world and the Church, which 
 arose out of the circumstances of its first publication. 
 And modern history is more than anything else the 
 history of the long process whereby this logical
 
 188 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 necessity manifested itself in fact. The negative 
 spirit of the ]\Iiddle Age, its asceticism, its dualism, 
 its formalism, its tendency to transform the moral 
 opposition of natural and spiritual into an external 
 opposition between two separate worlds, present and 
 future, and thus to suljstitute " other-wordliness " for 
 worldliness, instead of substituting unworldliness for 
 both — all these characteristics were the natural 
 results of the fact that the idea of Christianity, in 
 its first abstract form, could not include, and there- 
 fore necessarily became opposed to, the forms of 
 social life and organization with which it came into 
 contact. But while the early Christians looked for 
 the realization of the kingdom of Heaven in some 
 immediate earthly future, and the Middle Age post- 
 poned it to another life, Jesus had already taught the 
 truth, which alone can turn either of these hopes into 
 something more than the expression of an egoistic 
 desire — the truth that " the kingdom of God is in the 
 midst of us." The reaction of the social necessities 
 of mediaeval society on the doctrine — which Comte 
 quite correctly describes as leading to the gradual 
 elevation of humanity and of human interests — found 
 its main support in the principles of the doctrine 
 itself, so soon as its lessons had been absorbed into 
 the mind of the people. And the irresistible force 
 of the movement, whereby at a later period the 
 intelligence was emancipated from authority, and
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. lyQ 
 
 the claims of tlie Family and llio State were asserted 
 against the Church, lay above all in this, that Chris- 
 tianity itself was felt to involve tlic consecration of 
 human life in all its interests and relations. Luther's 
 appeal to the New Testament and to the earliest 
 ages of Cliristianity was in some ways nnhistorical, 
 but it expressed a truth. Protestantism was not 
 a return to the Christianity of the first century ; 
 it was an assertion of the relation of the individual 
 to God, which was itself made possible only by the 
 long work of Latin Catholicism. But the develop- 
 ment of a doctrine, if it has in it any germ of 
 truth which is capable of development, involves a 
 continual recurrence to its first, and therefore its 
 most general, expression. The elements successively 
 developed in the Catholic and the Protestant, the 
 Latin and the Germanic forms of Christianity, were 
 both present in the original germ, and the exagger- 
 ated prominence given in the former to the ncrjative 
 side of Christianity could not but lead, in the 
 development of thought, to a similarly exaggerated 
 manifestation of its j^ositive side. But it is nearly 
 as absurd to say, as Comte does, that the true 
 logical outcome of Christianity is to be found in the 
 " life of the hermits of the Thebaid," as it would 
 be to say that its true logical outcome is to be 
 found in those vehement assertions of nature — naked 
 and unashamed — as its own sufficient warrant, which
 
 190 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 poured almost with the force of inspiration from 
 the lips of Diderot. Both extremes are equally 
 removed from that special moral temper and tone 
 of feeling which we call distinctively Christian — 
 the former by its want of sympathy and tenderness, 
 no less than the latter by its want of purity and 
 self-command. Eeassertion of nature through its 
 negation, or to put it more simply, the purification 
 of the natural desires by the renunciation of their 
 immediate gratification, is the idea that is more or 
 less definitely present in all phases of the history 
 of Christianity ; and, though swaying from one side 
 to the other, the religious life of modern times has 
 never ceased to present both aspects. Even a St. 
 Augustine recoiled from the Manichreism by which 
 nature was regarded, not simply as fallen from its 
 original idea, but as essentially impure. And, on 
 the other hand, even Kousseau's Savoyard vicar, 
 who freed himself from the negative or ascetic ele- 
 ment as completely as is possible for any one still 
 retaining any tincture of Christianity or even of 
 religion, and who insists so strongly on the text 
 that " the natural is the moral," is yet forced to 
 recognize that nature has two voices, and that the 
 raison commune has to overcome and transform the 
 natural inclinations of the individual. In the life 
 of its Founder, the Christian Church has always 
 had before it an individual type of that harmony
 
 EGOISM A ND ALTRUISM. \ f) 1 
 
 of the spiritual and natunil life, wliicli it is its 
 ideal to realize in all the wider social relations of 
 man ; nor, till that ideal is reached, can it be said 
 that the Christian idea is exhausted, or that the 
 place is vacant for a new religion, — great as may 
 be the changes of form and expression through which 
 Christianity must pass under the chahged conditions 
 of modern life. 
 
 That Conite was not able to discern this, arose, i'o«ntc-» 
 
 own 
 
 as we have seen, from the fact that he lield to '•""''''"'■ 
 a kind of Mauichansm of his own, ^To him the ( 
 egoistic and the altruistic desires were two kinds 
 of innate tendencies, both of which exist in man 
 from the first, though with a greater preponderance 
 on the side of egoism.* Moral improvement simply 
 
 *Comte insists with great force on tlie danger of taking 
 an organism as the mere sum of its parts, or its life as 
 merely the resultant of their external action and reaction 
 upon each other ; but in his psychological analysis, he often 
 seems to forget this principle. If he recognizes that, as we 
 rise in the scale of animal life, there is a continually advanc- 
 ing differentiation of the simple unity we find in the lowest 
 organisms, he does not always remember that this implies 
 and necessitates a correspondent integration. Hence in the 
 end the unity which he establishes between the different 
 elements, e.g.^ between the intellect and the heart, or between 
 the egoistic and the social impulses, is external and artificial. 
 In his Psychology the fact that it is / who think, / who 
 feel, / who desire, finds no sufiicient place, and, therefore, in 
 his Ethics he can I'each no ideal except that of an external 
 harmony of the different faculties and tendencies. Where
 
 192 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 consists in altering the original proportions in favour 
 of altruism, and moral perfection would be the com- 
 plete extinction of egoism (which with Comte would 
 naturally mean the extinction of all the desires 
 classified as personal). Hence there is a somewhat 
 ascetic tendency in some of the ideas of the Politique 
 Positive — i.e., asceticism sometimes appears in it, not 
 simply as a transitionary process through which 
 certain natural desires are to be purified, but as 
 ' an attempt, so far as possible, to extinguish thern^ 
 A deeper analysis would have shown that the desires 
 in themselves, as mere natural impulses, are neither 
 egoistic nor altruistic, neither bad nor good ; and 
 that if, as they appear in the self-conscious life of 
 men, they are necessarily infected with egoism, yet 
 that the ego is not absolutely opposed to the alter 
 ego, but rather implies it. A spiritual or self- 
 conscious being is one who can realize his own in- 
 dividual good only as he realizes the good of others: 
 but, in seeking to realize such a good, it is not 
 needful that he should renounce any natural desire 
 as impure ; for there is no natural desire which may 
 not become an expression of the better self, which 
 
 the primary unity below the diflPerence and conflict of the 
 parts is not recognized, it becomes impossible to see beyond 
 their antagonism to its reconciliation in a final unity. 
 
 See especially Comte's sketch of Psychology in the third 
 chapter of the Introduction Fondamentale. Pol. Pos. i. 685, 
 seq.
 
 IS CHRISTIANITY OTHER-WORIDUNESS ? lOH 
 
 is ego and alter ego in one. But Comte, unable 
 from the limitations of his psychology to see the 
 true relation of tlie negative and the positive side 
 of ethics, is obliged to treat the ascetic tendency 
 of Christianity as involving a denial of the existence 
 in man of innate social sympathies ; and on the 
 other hand, to regard the efforts of the Christian 
 Church to cultivate such sympathies, as the result 
 of an external accommodation. His idea of Chris- 
 tianity practically coincides with the definition of 
 virtue given by Paley ; it is " doing good to man, 
 in obedience to the will of God, with a view to 
 eternal happiness." On this view the Christian life 
 is the pursuit of a selfish end by means in tiiem- 
 selves unselfish, or it is selfishness turned to un- 
 selfish action in view of the pleasures and pains 
 of another world ; and so soon as doubt is cast 
 upon these supernatural rewards and punishments, 
 the false show of benevolence must disappear and 
 leave bare selfishness in its place. Hence Comte 
 is just neither to Catholicism nor to Protestantism ; 
 for, while he maintains the former to be only in- 
 directly social, he regards the latter as the first 
 step in a scepticism which, taking away the fears 
 and hopes of another world, must at the same time 
 take away all restraint upon selfishness. And, just 
 because he is unable fully to understand either the 
 negative spirit of the earlier, or the positive spirit
 
 194 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 of the later, phase of modern life, he has an im- 
 perfect appreciation of that social ideal to which 
 both are tending, and which must combine in itself 
 the true elements of both. Yet we cannot say that 
 he is equally unfair to Catholicism and to Protes- 
 tantism. It is the temptation of writers on social 
 subjects to be least just to the tendencies of the 
 time which precedes their own, and against the 
 errors of which they have immediately to contend. 
 Hence we are not surprised to find that Comte 
 does more justice to Catholicism than to Protes- 
 tantism, or to that Individualism which grew out 
 of Protestantism. The Reformation and the so- 
 called Enlightenment he regards solely on their 
 destructive side, as successive stages in the modern 
 movement of revolt, while he fails to appreciate 
 the constructive elements involved in each of them. 
 Hence also, in his attitude towards this great move- 
 ment, he all but identifies himself with Catholic 
 writers like De Maistre ; and his own scheme of 
 the future is essentially reactionary. The restoration 
 of the spiritual power to its mediaeval position was 
 for Comte a natural proposal, because he could 
 see in the Protestant revolt nothing more than 
 an insurrectionary movement, which might clear 
 the way for a new social construction, but which 
 in itself was the negation of all government what- 
 ever.
 
 TM^O ASPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. l!)") 
 
 But what was Protestantism? '\\^ llie Protestant T}io'ie/ocu 
 it seemed to be simply a return to the original ^""'""■ 
 purity of the Christian iaith ; to the Catholic, it 
 seemed to be a fatal revolt against the only organiz- 
 ation by which Christianity could be realized. Ifeally 
 it partook of both characters. It involved a danger- 
 ous misconception of the social conditions, under 
 which alone the religious life can be realized and 
 developed ; but it involved also a deeper and truer 
 apprehension of that religion, which first recognized 
 the latent divinity, or universal capacity, of every 
 spiritual being as such, and which, therefore, seemed 
 to impose upon every individual man the right, or 
 rather the duty, of living by the witness of his own 
 spirit. Comte saw only the former of these two 
 aspects of it. Hence he regarded the Frencli Re- 
 volution as a practical refutation of the individualism 
 which grew out of the Protestant movement, and 
 not, as it was in truth, a critical event, which forced 
 men to distinguish and separate its true from its 
 false elements. He drew from it, indeed, a true 
 lesson — the lesson that the individual as such has 
 no moral or religious life of his own, and that it 
 is only in proportion as he transcends his own in- 
 dividuality and lives in the life of humanity, that 
 his spiritual life can have any depth or riches in 
 it.' "We are afraid to put men to live and trade 
 each on his own private stock of reason, because
 
 19G THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 we suspect that the stock in each man is small, 
 and that the individuals would do better to avail 
 themselves of the general bank and capital of nations 
 and of ages." The truth expressed in these words 
 was seen as clearly by Comte as by Burke. And 
 because he saw it, Comte regarded the Protestant 
 Individualism which throws individuals back upon 
 themselves, as tending merely to empty their minds 
 of all real interests, and to deliver them over to 
 their own caprices. ■ Private judgment and popular 
 ^ government were to him only pretentious names for 
 intellectual and political anarchy ; and his remedy 
 for the moral diseases of modern times was the 
 restoration of that division of the spiritual and 
 temporal authorities, which existed in the Middle 
 I Ages, - 
 The good There is, however, another aspect of the Protes- 
 
 side of Pro- 
 testantism, tantism and of the apparently anarchical doctrines 
 
 derived from it, to which Comte pays no attention. 
 Catholicism, as we have seen, had developed one 
 aspect of Christianity, until, by its exclusive pro- 
 minence, the principle of Christianity itself was on 
 the point of being lost. It had changed the division 
 between laity and clergy, world and Church, from a 
 relative to an absolute division ; it had presented 
 Christian doctrine, not as something which the spirit 
 of the individual may ultimately verify for itself, 
 but as something which it must submissively accejDt
 
 CATHOLICISM IMPERFECT CHRISTIANITY. I!l7 
 
 without any VL'ritication. k had made Christian 
 worship into an oyus operatum, a work done by 
 the priest for the people, instead of a means through 
 which the feelings of the people could be at once 
 drawn out and expressed. Now, it is as opposed 
 to these tendencies that the I'rotestant movi'mcnt 
 had its highest value. Each of the so-called anarchic 
 doctrines, against which Comte protests, has a good 
 as well as a bad meaning. If, c.fj., it is nothing 
 less than intellectual anarchy for every individual 
 to claim to judge for himself, on subjects for which 
 he has not the requisite training or discipline, it 
 is a slavery scarcely less corrupting in its elfect 
 than anarchy, when he is made to regard the differ- 
 ence between himself and his teachers as a permanent 
 and absolute one. In the former case, he has no 
 sufhcient feeling of his want to make him duly 
 submissive to teaching ; in the latter, he has no 
 sufficient consciousness of his capacity to be taught, 
 to permit a due reaction of his thought upon the 
 matter received from his teachers. Again, the 
 doctrine of the sovereignty of the people is the 
 negation of all government and social order, if it 
 be taken to mean that the uninstructed many sliould 
 govern themselves by their own insight, and tliat 
 the instructed few should simply be their servants 
 and their instruments. But where the people are 
 not recognized as the ultimate source of power.
 
 198 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 where their consent is not in any regular way made 
 necessary to the proceedings of their governors, they 
 are by that very fact kept in a perpetual tutelage, 
 and cannot possibly feel that the life of the state 
 is their own life. Now, the most important effect 
 of the Protestant movement was just this, that it 
 awakened in the individual the consciousness of his 
 universal nature, or, in other words, the conscious- 
 ness that there is no external power or sovereignty, 
 divine or human, to which he has absolutely and 
 permanently to submit, but that every outward claim 
 of authority must ultimately be justified by the 
 inner witness of his own spirit. The freedom of 
 man consists in this, that his obedience to the 
 State, to the Church, even to God, is the obedience 
 of his natural to his spiritual self. The essential 
 truth of the lieformation lay in its republication 
 of the doctrine that the voice of God speaks not 
 only without but also within us, and indeed that 
 " it is only by the God within that we can com- 
 prehend the God without." And the nations, which 
 had learned that lesson in religion, soon hastened 
 to apply it to the social and political order of life. 
 It is undoubtedly a lesson which is liable to mis- 
 apprehension ; as may be seen, not only from the 
 tendency of many Protestant sects to put the inner 
 life in opposition to the outer, and so to deprive 
 the former of all wider contents and interests ; but
 
 THE TRUTH IN PROTESTANTISM. iQf) 
 
 also from the ultimate substitution, by Kousseau 
 and others, of the assertion of the natural, fur the 
 assertion of the spiritual, man. By such writers 
 the mere capacity of man for a higher life is treated 
 as if it were the higher life itself: and it is for- 
 gotten that the capacity is notliing unless it be 
 realized, and that its realization requires the sur- 
 render of individual liberty and private judgment 
 to the guidance and teaching of those, in whom 
 that realization has already taken place. But it 
 is not the less true that the consciousness of the 
 capacity, and consequently of the duty, of becoming 
 not merely a slave or instrument, but an organ, 
 of the intellectual and moral life of mankind, is 
 the essential basis of modern life. " Henceforth, I 
 call ye not servants, for the servant knoweth not 
 what his lord doeth ; but I have called you friends," 
 is a word of Christ which scarcely began to be 
 verified till the Eeformation. And while its veri- 
 fication cannot mean the negation of that division 
 of labour upon which society rests, — cannot mean 
 that each one should know and judge, any more 
 than that each one should do, everything for him- 
 self, — it at least means that every power and autho- 
 rity should henceforth be, in the true sense of the 
 word, a spiritual power, and should, therefore, rest 
 for its main support upon the opinion of those who 
 obey it. It is because he has not appreciated this
 
 •200 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 truth that Comte so decidedly breaks with the demo- 
 cratic spirit of modern times, and seeks to set up 
 an aristocracy in the State and a monarchy in the 
 Church. Yet the spirit of the age is, after all, too 
 strong for him, and while he refuses to the governed 
 any regular and legitimate way of reacting upon 
 the powers that govern them, he recognizes that 
 the ultima ratio, the final remedy for misgovern- 
 ment, lies in their irregular and illegitimate action. 
 As regards the State, he declares that " the right 
 of insurrection is the ultimate resource with which 
 no society should allow itself to dispense." * And 
 as regards the Church he says that if " the High 
 Priest of Humanity, supported by the body of the 
 clergy, should go wrong, then the only remedy left 
 would be the refusal of co-operation, a remedy which 
 can never fail, as the priesthood rests solely on 
 conscience and opinion, and succumbs, therefore, to 
 their adverse sentence." The civil government, in 
 fact, can bring the spiritual power to a dead- lock, 
 by " suspending its stipend, for in cases of serious 
 error popular subscriptions would not replace it, 
 unless on the supposition of a fanaticism scarcely 
 compatible with the Positive faith, where there is 
 enthusiasm for the doctrines, rather than for the 
 teachers."*!* Comte also desiderates a strong reactive 
 
 *Cf. Pol. Pos. i. 128 se^. 
 tPol. Pos. iv. 337 : Trans. 294.
 
 CHURCH A ND ST A TE. •_>( ) 1 
 
 influence of public opinion from llie proletariate, Ijy 
 which the officers, both of Church ami Slate, may 
 be kept faithful to their work. lUit if thi« is 
 desirable, why should the proletariate have no re<,'ular 
 means of making their will felt ? An " organic " 
 theory of the constitution of society nuist surely 
 provide every real force with a legitimate form of 
 expression ; if a social theory embodies in itself the 
 idea of revolution, it is self-condemned. 
 
 Comte's social ideal is in many respects a close cmte's imr- 
 
 ■^ ^ tiul rovlvul 
 
 reproduction of the mediaival system, with its renimc °^ *'l" , 
 dispcrsif of feudalism in the world, and its Papal ^•"■*^™- 
 concentration of authority in the Church. For him, 
 the establishment of the national State is as great 
 an error in secular politics, as is the increasing 
 division of labour in the spiritual kingdom of science. 
 Still more strongly, if possible, does he reprobate 
 that mingling of the functions of Church and State, 
 that interference of the secular authority with spir- 
 itual matters, such as the education of the people 
 and its religious life, which has been the natural 
 consequence of the failure of the niedi;eval Church 
 to maintain its old authority. Notwithstanding his 
 worship of Humanity, the idea of a " parliament of 
 man, a federation of the world," by which all the 
 powers of mankind should be united for the attain- 
 ment of the highest material and spiritual good, has 
 no attraction for him. To reduce the State to the
 
 202 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 dimensions of a commune, and to confine it to the 
 care of purely material interests, is his first political 
 proposal. France, England, and Spain (and we may 
 now add Germany and Italy) are, in his view, 
 ' factitious aggregates without solid justification," and 
 they will only become " free and durable States," when 
 they are broken up into fragments, each with a popu- 
 lation of two or three millions, and a territory not 
 exceeding that of Belgium or Tuscany, The "West" 
 will thus be divided into seventy republics, and the 
 earth into five hundred ; and the main work of the 
 patriciate will be to diroct and regulate the industrial 
 life of the community ; each member of the banker tri- 
 umvirate, who are to be at the head of the State, 
 having one of the great industrial departments under 
 his special superintendence. On the other hand, the 
 unity of humanity is to be represented solely by 
 the spiritual power, in whose hands is to be left 
 the whole work of advancing science, teaching the 
 people, and exercising a moral censorship over all 
 Governments and individuals. And while this spir- 
 itual power is, for practical purposes, to be strictly 
 organized on the model of the mediaeval Church, 
 it is also, like that Church, to remain, for scientific 
 purposes, inorganic. In other words, it is to admit 
 no division of labour in science, but every scien- 
 tific man, like a mediteval doctor, is to profess all 
 science, adding to this the priestly office, which,
 
 CHURCH A ND S TA TE. 20:} 
 
 with Comte, includes both the cure of souls and of 
 bodies. 
 
 To criticize the details of this scheme seems to sepumtion 
 
 of N)ilritual 
 
 be unnecessary after what has been already said. "^'^J,?^'""''"'" 
 It is not to be denied that the division of Church 
 . and State in the Middle Ages was a most important 
 and even a necessary condition of proj^ress. Chris- 
 tianity could never have been impressed upon the 
 minds of men, if the concrete application of its 
 principles had been too rapid. The essential con- 
 dition of such application was that men should not 
 concern themselves too prematurely with it. For 
 the consequences of a moral and religious principle 
 cannot be reached by direct logical deduction ; it 
 is like a living germ, in which, by no analysis or 
 dissection, you can discover the lineaments of the 
 future plant. To find out what it really is, or 
 involves, you must plant it in the minds of men, 
 and let it grow. Hence the mediaeval Church was 
 strong in its weakness, and it was its very victories 
 over the temporal power that were its greatest danger. 
 It became corrupt and lost its hold upon the minds 
 of men, just when it seemed to have established 
 its right to an absolute supremacy. Comte, following 
 De Maistre, attaches great importance to the posi- 
 tion of the Popes as arbiters between the sovereigns 
 and nations of mediaeval Europe. But he forgets 
 that in claiming and maintaining this position, the
 
 204 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 Popes were distinctly ceasing to be a spiritual power, 
 if it be the function of a spiritual power to inculcate 
 principles rather than to use them to solve practical 
 difficulties. A power interfering in this way with 
 the immediate struggle of interests could not but 
 be invaded by the passions they excite ; and it was 
 the more certain to be corrupted by these passions, 
 because it conceived them to be evil, and pretended 
 altogether to renounce them. The authority acquired 
 by the Church in the Middle Ages might have its 
 value, as an anticipation of the peaceful federation 
 of the nations under one supreme Government, but 
 it was undoubtedly the first step towards the erasing 
 of the distinction between the temporal and the 
 spiritual power. 
 Their neces- ^hc truth sccms to be that the distinction of 
 
 sary con- 
 flict, when 1 1 • -i. 1 J. • J.T. 
 
 separated, sccular and Spiritual powers, except m the sense 
 already indicated, is essentially irrational, and that 
 the attempt to realize it in practice must involve, 
 as it did involve in the Middle Ages, a continual 
 internecine struggle. To set up two regularly con- 
 stituted powers face to face with each other, one 
 claiming man's allegiance in the name of his spiritual, 
 and the other in the name of his temporal, interests, 
 is to organize anarchy. So long as man's body and 
 soul are inseparable, it will be impossible to divide 
 the world between Ctesar and God ; for in one point 
 of view all is Ctesar's, and in another all is God's.
 
 THE SECULAR AND SPIRITUAL POWERS. 205 
 
 Tn the Middle Ages the conflict of two despotisms 
 was necessary to the growth of freedom ; hut, when 
 government ceases to be despotic, the need for such 
 division of power passes away. The relative separa- 
 tion between the speculative and the practical 
 classes — between the scientific and moral teachers of 
 mankind, who have to discover and inculcate prin- 
 ciples, and the statesmen or administrators, who have 
 to determine what improvements it is possible at 
 a definite time to make in the organization of man's 
 social and political life — is a division of labour which 
 can surely be secured without breaking up the unity 
 of the social body. It is not desirable that the 
 philosopher, or priest, or man of science, should be 
 king (and we may even acknowledge that, if in- 
 were a king, he would probably be a very bad one) : \ 
 on the other hand, it is desirable that he should 
 have his due influence, as the teacher of those 
 general truths out of which all practical improvement \ 
 must ultimately spring. But the natural difference 
 of the tastes and capacities of men should, in a 
 well-organized State, be sufficient to secure due in- 
 fluence to those who are the natural representatives 
 of man's spiritual interests (whether they be relig- 
 ious, philosophic, or scientific), without tempting 
 them from their proper task of discovering and 
 teaching the truth, to the less appropriate work of 
 determining how much of it comes within " the
 
 206 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 sphere of practical politics." Comte, indeed, by 
 organizing them as an independent power apart 
 from, and outside of, the State, would make such 
 a perversion extremely probable. A hierarchy of 
 priests under a despotic Pope would soon cease to 
 be, in any sense, a spiritual jDower ; it would de- 
 generate just as the Papacy degenerated in the 
 fourteenth century ; and this would be only the 
 more certain if, by the Comtist denunciation of 
 specialism, the priests were prohibited, in their own 
 peculiar sphere of scientific research, from any divi- 
 sion of labour according to capacity. For by this 
 prohibition their attention would be diverted from 
 inquiries about the truth of their doctrines to their 
 immediate practical application; not to mention that, 
 in the case of all but a few comprehensive minds, the 
 natural result would be an omniscient superficiality, 
 which would be the enemy of all real culture. 
 Deprived of its natural object as a scientific order, 
 the Comtist Priesthood would inevitably throw itself, 
 with all its energy, into the task of directly influenc- 
 ing the practical life of men ; and, if Comte's polit- 
 ical ideas were carried out, it would find itself in the 
 presence of a number of communal States, none of 
 them large enough to offer any effective resistance. 
 Positivism must indeed alter human nature, if such 
 a priesthood would not seek to make itself despotic, 
 especially if it could wield such a formidable weapon
 
 THE CHURCH AGAINST THE STATE. 207 
 
 as the Positivist excommunication is sui)pused to 
 be.* 
 
 The truth is that Comte commits the same error comto-s 
 
 Hocial ideal 
 
 which misled Montesquieu when he supposed that "r^^^'^jj."^ 
 the great security of a free State lay in the separation 
 of the legislative, executive, and judicial ])owers, — 
 i.e., in treating the dillerent organs thrctugli wliich 
 the common life expresses itself as if they were 
 independent organisms. He forgot that if such a 
 balance of power was realized, the effect must either 
 be an equilibrium in which all movement would cease, 
 or a struggle in which the unity of the State would 
 be in danger of being lost. The true security 
 against the dangers involved, on the one hand, in 
 the direct application of theory to practice, and, on 
 the other hand, in the too great separation of practice 
 from theory, must lie, not in giving them independent 
 positions as spiritual and temporal powers, but in 
 subordinating them to the organic unity of the whole 
 society, whether it be communal, national, or universal. 
 And organic unity, though it does not mean any 
 special form of government, means at least two things: 
 in the first place, that each great class or interest 
 should have for itself a definite organ, and sliould 
 therefore be able to act on the whole body in a 
 regular and constitutional manner, so as to use 
 all its force without revolutionary violence ; and, 
 * Pol. Pos. iv. p. 292.
 
 208 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 in the second place, that no class or interest should 
 have suc]i an independent position, as to exclude 
 every legal or constitutional method of bringing it 
 into due subordination to the common good. But 
 Corate, losing his balance in his jealousy of the 
 individualistic and democratic movement of modern 
 society, has built up a social ideal, which fails in 
 both these points of view, and which, indeed, is a 
 revival of the inorganic structure of mediaeval society, 
 comte's j^ would not be fair to conclude these chapters, 
 
 position as a ■•■ 
 
 philosopher, ^i-jjyj-^ have necessarily been devoted in great part 
 to criticism and controversy, without expressing a 
 sense of the power and insight which are shown in 
 the works of Comte, especially in the Folitiqtce 
 Positive. Controversy itself, it must be remembered, 
 is a kind of homage ; for, as Hegel says, " It is 
 only a great man that condemns us to the task 
 of explaining him." But if we can sometimes look 
 down upon such men, it becomes us to remember 
 that we stand upon their shoulders. Comte seems 
 to me to occupy, as a writer, a position in some 
 degree analogous to that of Kant. He stands, or 
 rather moves, between the old world and the new, 
 and is broken into inconsistency by the effort of 
 transition. Like Kant, he is embarrassed to the 
 end by the ideas with which he started, and of 
 which he can never free himself so as to make 
 a new beginning. Comte, indeed, had only a small
 
 COMTE AND AV/A'7. :^0L> 
 
 portion of that power ol' speculative analysis whith 
 characterized his great predecessor, but he luul much 
 of his tenacity of thought, his power of continuous 
 construction ; he had the same conviction of the all- 
 importance of morals, and the same determination 
 to make all theoretic studies subordinate to the 
 solution of the moral problem. Also, partly because 
 he lived at a later time and in the midst of a 
 society which was in the throes of a social revolu- 
 tion, and partly because of the keenness and strength 
 of his own social sympathies, he gives us a kind of 
 insight into the diseases and wants ol' modern society, 
 which we could not expect from Kant, and which 
 throws new light upon the ethical speculations oi' 
 Kant's idealistic successors. To believe that his 
 system, as a whole, is inconsistent with itself, that 
 his theory of historical progress is insufficient, and 
 that his social ideal is imperfect, need not prevent 
 us from recognizing that there are many valuable 
 elements in his historical and social theories, and 
 that no one who would study such subjects can 
 afiford to neglect them. A mind of such power 
 cannot treat any subject without throwing upon it 
 much light, which is independent of his special 
 system of thought; and, above all, without doing 
 much to show what are the really imi)onant diffi- 
 culties in it which need to be solved. And, espec- 
 ially in such subjects, to discover the right question
 
 210 THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF COMTE. 
 
 is to be half-way to the answer. Further, as 
 Comte himself somewhere says, it is an immense 
 advantage in studying any complex subject to have 
 before us a distinct and systematic attempt to explain 
 it ; for it is only by criticism upon criticism that 
 we can expect to reach the truth, in which its 
 different sides and aspects are brought to a unity. 
 
 THE END 
 
 GLASGOW; FRIMEU 41' THt; IXIVEKSITV FliESS iiV RUBEIU MACLEHOSE.
 
 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
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 2 VOLS. EX. POST 8vo. 14s. Nf;TT. 
 
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 tion of ideal Christian it\ras the final term of the evolution." — The Times, 
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