A General View of Positivism Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life · Auguste Comte
CHAPTER II
Intellectual and Moral progress, then, is the only kind really distinctive of our race. Individual animals sometimes show it, but never a whole species, except as a consequence of prolonged intervention on the part of Man. Between these two highest grades, as between the two lower, we shall find a difference of value, extent, and difficulty; always supposing the standard to be the manner in which they affect Man’s well-being, collectively or individually. To strengthen the intellectual powers, whether for art or for science, whether it be the powers of observation or those of induction and deduction, is, when circumstances allow of their being made available for social purposes, of greater and more extensive importance, than all physical, and, _a fortiori_ than all material improvements. But we know from the fundamental principle laid down in the first chapter of this work, that moral progress has even more to do with our well-being than intellectual progress. The moral faculties are more modifiable, although the effort required to modify them is greater. If the benevolence or courage of the human race were increased, it would bring more real happiness than any addition to our intellectual powers.
Therefore to the question, What is the true object of human life, whether looked at collectively or individually? the simplest and most precise answer would be, the perfection of our moral nature; since it has a more immediate and certain influence on our well-being than perfection of any other kind. All the other kinds are necessary, if for no other reason than to prepare the way for this; but from the very fact of this connexion it may be regarded as their representative; since it involves them all implicitly and stimulates them to increased activity. Keeping then to the question of moral perfection, we find two qualities standing above the rest in practical importance, namely, Sympathy and Energy. Both these qualities are included in the word _Heart_, which in all European languages has a different meaning for the two sexes. Both will be developed by Positivism, more directly, more continuously, and with greater result, than under any former system. The whole tendency of Positivism is to encourage sympathy; since it subordinates every thought, desire, and action to social feeling. Energy is also presupposed, and at the same time fostered, by the system. For it removes a heavy weight of superstition, it reveals the true dignity of man, and it supplies an unceasing motive for individual and collective action. The very acceptance of Positivism demands some vigour of character; it implies the braving of spiritual terrors, which were once enough to intimidate the firmest minds.
Progress, then, may be regarded under four successive aspects: Material, Physical, Intellectual, and Moral. Each of these might again be divided on the same principle, and we should then discover several intermediate phases. These cannot be investigated here; and I have only to note that the philosophical principle of this analysis is precisely the same as that on which I have based the Classification of the Sciences. In both cases the order followed is that of increasing generality and complexity in the phenomena. The only difference is in the mode in which the two arrangements are developed. For scientific purposes the lower portion of the scale has to be expanded into greater detail; while from the social point of view attention is concentrated on the higher parts. But whether it be the scale of the True or that of the Good, the conclusion is the same in both. Both alike indicate the supremacy of social considerations; both point to universal Love as the highest ideal. I have now explained the principal purpose of Positive Philosophy, namely, spiritual reorganization; and I have shown how that purpose is involved in the Positivist motto, Order and Progress. Positivism, then, realizes the highest aspirations of mediaeval Catholicism, and at the same time fulfils the conditions, the absence of which caused the failure of the Convention. It combines the opposite merits of the Catholic and the Revolutionary spirit, and by so doing supersedes them both. Theology and Metaphysics may now disappear without danger, because the service which each of them rendered is now harmonized with that of the other, and will be performed more perfectly. The principle on which this result depends is the separation of spiritual from temporal power. This, it will be remembered, had always been the chief subject of contention between the two antagonistic parties.
Inevitable as this consequence of our revolutionary position is, it has never been understood, except by the great leaders of the republican movement in 1793. Of the various governments that we have had during the last two generations, all, except the Convention, have fallen into the vain delusion of attempting to found permanent institutions, without waiting for any intellectual or moral basis. And therefore it is that none but the Convention has left any deep traces in men’s thoughts or feelings. All its principal measures, even those which concerned the future more than the present, were avowedly provisional; and the consequence was that they harmonized well with the peculiar circumstances of the time. The true philosopher will always look with respectful admiration on these men, who not only had no rational theory to guide them, but were encumbered with false metaphysical notions; and who yet notwithstanding proved themselves the only real statesmen that Western Europe can boast of since the time of Frederick the Great. Indeed the wisdom of their policy would be almost unaccountable, only that the very circumstances which called for it so urgently, were to some extent calculated to suggest it. The state of things was such as to make it impossible to settle the government on any permanent basis. Again, amidst all the wild extravagance of the principles in vogue, the necessity of a strong government to resist foreign invasion counteracted many of their worst effects. On the removal of this salutary pressure, the Convention fell into the common error, though to a less extent than the Constituent Assembly. It set up a constitution framed according to some abstract model, which was supposed to be final, but which did not last so long as the period originally proposed for its own provisional labours. It is on this first period of its government that its fame rests.
The plan originally proposed was that the government of the Convention should last till the end of the war. If this plan could have been carried out, it would probably have been extended still further, as the impossibility of establishing any permanent system would have been generally recognized. The only avowed motive for making the government provisional was of course the urgent necessity of national defence. But beneath this temporary motive, which for the time superseded every other consideration, there was another and a deeper motive for it, which could not have been understood without sounder historical principles than were at that time possible. That motive was the utterly negative character of the metaphysical doctrines then accepted, and the consequent absence of any intellectual or moral basis for political reconstruction. This of course was not recognized, but it was really the principal reason why the establishment of any definite system of government was delayed. Had the war been brought to an end, clearer views of the subject would no doubt have been formed; indeed they had been formed already in the opposite camp, by men of the Neo-catholic school, who were not absorbed by the urgent question of defending the Republic. What blinded men to the truth was the fundamental yet inevitable error of supposing the critical doctrines of the preceding generation applicable to purposes of construction. They were undeceived at last by the utter anarchy which the triumph of these principles occasioned; and the next generation occupied itself with the counter-revolutionary movement, in which similar attempts at finality were made by the various reactionist parties. For these parties were quite as destitute as their opponents of any principles suited to the task of reconstruction; and they had to fall back upon the old system as the only recognized basis on which public Order could be maintained.
The absolute doctrines of the last century which inspired such intense conviction, can never regain their strength, because, when brought to the crucial test of experience as well as of discussion, their uselessness for constructive purposes and their subversive tendency became evident to every one. They have been weakened, too, by theological concessions which their supporters, in order to carry on the government at all, were obliged to make. Consequently the policy with which they are at present connected is one which oscillates between reaction and anarchy, or rather which is at once despotic and destructive, from the necessity of controlling a society which has become almost as diverse to metaphysical as to theological rule. In the utter absence, then, of any general convictions, the worst forms of political commotion are not to be feared, because it would be impossible to rouse men’s passions sufficiently. But unwise efforts to set up a permanent system of government would even now lead, in certain cases, to lamentable disorder, and would at all events be utterly useless. Quiet at home depends now, like peace abroad, simply on the absence of disturbing forces; a most insecure basis, since it is itself a symptom of the extent to which the disorganizing movement has proceeded.
This singular condition must necessarily continue until the _interregnum_ which at present exists in the moral and intellectual region comes to an end. As long as there is such an utter want of harmony in feeling as well as in opinion, there can be no real security against war or internal disorder. The existing equilibrium has arisen so spontaneously that it is no doubt less unstable than is generally supposed. Still it is sufficiently precarious to excite continual panics, both at home and abroad, which are not only very irritating, but often exercise a most injurious influence over our policy. Now attempts at immediate reconstruction of political institutions, instead of improving this state of things, make it very much worse, by giving factitious life to the old doctrines, which, being thoroughly worn out, ought to be left to the natural process of decay. The inevitable result of restoring them to official authority will be to deter the public, and even the thinking portion of it, from that free exercise of the mental powers by which, and by which only, we may hope to arrive without disturbance at fixed principles of action.
The cessation of war therefore justifies no change in republican policy. As long as the spiritual interregnum lasts, it must retain its provisional character. Indeed this character ought to be more strongly impressed upon it than ever. For no one now has any real belief in the organic value of the received metaphysical doctrines. They would never have been revived but for the need of having some sort of political formula to work with, in default of any real social convictions. But the revival is only apparent, and it contrasts most strikingly with the utter absence of systematic principles in most active minds. There is no real danger of repeating the error of the first revolutionists and of attempting to construct with negative doctrines. We have only to consider the vast development of industry, of esthetic culture, and of scientific study, to free ourselves from all anxiety on this head. Such things are incompatible with any regard for the metaphysical teaching of ideologists or psychologists. Nor is there much to fear in the natural enthusiasm which is carrying us back to the first days of the Revolution.
It will only revive the old republican spirit, and make us forget the long period of retrogression and stagnation which have elapsed since the first great outbreak; for this is the point on which the attention of posterity will be finally concentrated. But while satisfying these very legitimate feelings, the people will soon find that the only aspect of this great crisis which we have to imitate is the wise insight of the Convention during the first part of its administration, in perceiving that its policy could only be provisional, and that definite reconstruction must be reserved for better times. We may fairly hope that the next formal attempt to set up a constitution according to some abstract ideal, will convince the French nation, and ultimately the whole West, of the utter futility of such schemes. Besides, the free discussion which has now become habitual to us, and the temper of the people, which is as sceptical of political entities as of Christian mysteries, would make any such attempts extremely difficult. Never was there a time so unfavourable to doctrines admitting of no real demonstration: demonstration being now the only possible basis of permanent belief. Supposing then a new constitution to be set on foot, and the usual time to be spent in the process of elaborating it, public opinion will very possibly discard it before it is completed; not allowing it even the short average duration of former constitutions. Any attempt to check free discussion on the subject would defeat its own object; since free discussion is the natural consequence of our intellectual and social position.
This hypothetical view of changes which might have taken place in the Conventional government, may be applied to the existing condition of affairs. It is the policy best adapted for the republican government which is now arising in all the security of a settled peace, and yet amidst the most entire anarchy of opinion. The successors of the Convention, men unworthy of their task, degraded the progressive dictatorship entrusted to them by the circumstances of the time into a retrograde tyranny. During the reign of Charles X, which was the last phase of the reaction, the central power was thoroughly undermined by the legal opposition of the parliamentary or local power. The central government still refused to recognize any limits to its authority; but the growth of free thought made its claims to spiritual jurisdiction more and more untenable, leaving it merely the temporal authority requisite for public order. During the neutral period which followed the counter-revolution, the dictatorship was not merely restricted to its proper functions, but was legally destroyed; that is the local power as represented by parliament took the place of the central power. All pretentions to spiritual influence were abandoned by both; their thoughts being sufficiently occupied with the maintenance of material order. The intellectual anarchy of the time made this task difficult enough; but they aggravated the difficulty by unprincipled attempts to establish their government on the basis of pure self-interest, irrespectively of all moral considerations. The restoration of the republic and the progressive spirit aroused by it has no doubt given to both legislative and executive a large increase of power: to an extent indeed which a few years back would have caused violent antipathy. But it would be a grievous error for either of them to attempt to imitate the dictatorial style of the Conventional government. Unsuccessful in any true sense as the attempt would be, it might occasion very serious disturbances, which like the obsolete metaphysical principles in which they originate, would be equally dangerous to Order and to Progress.
We see, then, that in the total absence of any fixed principles on which men can unite, the policy required is one which shall be purely provisional, and limited almost entirely to the maintenance of material order. If order be preserved, the situation is in all other respects most favourable to the work of mental and moral regeneration which will prepare the way for the society of the future. The establishment of a republic in France disproves the false claims set up by official writers in behalf of constitutional government, as if it was the final issue of the Revolution. Meantime there is nothing irrevocable in the republic itself, except the moral principle involved in it, the absolute and permanent preponderance of Social Feeling; in other words, the concentration of all the powers of Man upon the common welfare. This is the only maxim of the day which we can accept as final. It needs no formal sanction, because it is merely the expression of feelings generally avowed, all prejudices against it having been entirely swept away. But with the doctrines and the institutions resulting from them, through which this dominion of social feeling is to become an organized reality, the republic has no direct connexion; it would be compatible with many different solutions of the problem. Politically, the only irrevocable point is the abolition of monarchy, which for a long time has been in France and to a less extent throughout the West, the symbol of retrogression.
That spirit of devotion to the public welfare, which is the noblest feature of republicanism, is strongly opposed to any immediate attempts at political finality, as being incompatible with conscientious endeavours to find a real solution of social problems. For before the practical solution can be hoped for, a systematic basis for it must exist: and this we can hardly expect to find in the remnants left to us of the old creeds. All that the true philosopher desires is simply that the question of moral and intellectual reorganization shall be left to the unrestricted efforts of thinkers of whatever school. And in advocating this cause, he will plead the interests of the republic, for the safety of which it is of the utmost importance that no special set of principles should be placed under official patronage. Republicanism then, will do far more to protect free thought, and resist political encroachment, than was done during the Orleanist government by the retrograde instincts of Catholicism. Catholic resistance to political reconstructions was strong, but blind: its place will now be more than supplied by wise indifference on the part of the public, which has learnt by experience the inevitable failure of these incoherent attempts to realize metaphysical Utopias.
The only danger of the position is lest it divert the public, even the more reflective portion of it, from deep and continuous thought, to practical experiments based on superficial and hasty considerations. It must be owned that the temper of mind which now prevails would have been most unfavourable for the original elaboration of Positivism. That work, however, had already been accomplished under the Constitutional system; which, while not so restrictive as the preceding government, was yet sufficiently so to concentrate our intellectual powers, which of themselves would have been too feeble, upon the task. The original conception had indeed been formed during the preceding reign; but its development and diffusion took place under the parliamentary system. Positivism now offers itself for practical application to the question of social progress, which has become again the prominent question, and will ever remain so. Unfavourable as the present political temper would have been to the rise of Positivism, it is not at all so to its diffusion; always supposing its teachers to be men of sufficient dignity to avoid the snare of political ambition into which thinkers are now so apt to fall. By explaining, as it alone can explain, the futility and danger of the various Utopian schemes which are now competing with each other for the reorganization of society, Positivism will soon be able to divert public attention from these political chimeras, to the question of a total reformation of principles and of life.
Positivists would be the last to deny that education ought to be regularly organized. Only they assert, first, that as long as the spiritual interregnum lasts, no organization is possible; and secondly, that whenever the acceptance of a new synthesis makes it possible, it will be effected by the spiritual power to which that synthesis gives rise. In the meantime no general system of State education should be attempted. It will be well, however, to continue State assistance to those branches of instruction which are the most liable to be neglected by private enterprise, especially reading and writing. Moreover, there are certain institutions either established or revived by the Convention for higher training in special subjects; these ought to be carefully preserved, and brought up to the present state of our knowledge, for they contain the germs of principles which will be most valuable when the problem of reorganizing general education comes before us. But all the institutions abolished by the Convention ought now to be finally suppressed. Even the Academies should form no exception to this rule, for the harm which they have done, both intellectually and morally, since their reinstalment, has fully justified the wisdom of the men who decided on their abolition.
Government should no doubt exercise constant vigilance over all private educational institutions; but this should have nothing to do with their doctrines, but with their morality, a point scandalously neglected in the present state of the law. These should be the limits of state interference in education. With these exceptions it should be left to the unrestricted efforts of private associations, so as to give every opportunity for a definitive educational system to establish itself. For to pretend that any satisfactory system exists at present would only be a hypocritical subterfuge on the part of the authorities. The most important step towards freedom of education would be the suppression of all grants to theological or metaphysical societies, leaving each man free to support the religion and the system of instruction which he prefers. This, however, should be carried out in a just and liberal spirit worthy of the cause, and without the least taint of personal dislike or party feeling. Full indemnity should be given to members of Churches or Universities, upon whom these changes would come unexpectedly. By acting in this spirit it will be far less difficult to carry out measures which are obviously indicated by the position in which we stand. As there is now no doctrine which commands general assent, it would be an act of retrogression to give legal sanction to any of the old creeds, whatever their former claim to spiritual ascendancy. It is quite in accordance with the republican spirit to refuse such sanction, notwithstanding the tendency that there is to allow ideologists to succeed to the Academic offices held under the constitutional system by psychologists.
This last feature is of the highest importance, and is likely to become every day more marked. Whereas the local or legislative power, not having its functions clearly defined, is very apt to interfere in theoretical questions without being in any sense qualified for doing so. Its preponderance would, then, in most cases be injurious to intellectual freedom, which, as it feels instinctively, will ultimately result in the rise of a spiritual authority destined to supersede its own. On the strength of these tendencies, which have never before been explained, Positivists have little hesitation in siding in almost all cases with the central as against the local power. Philosophers, whom no one can accuse of reactionist or servile views, who have given up all political prospects, and who are devoting themselves wholly to the work of spiritual reorganization, need not be afraid to take this course; and they ought to exert themselves vigorously in making the central power preponderant, limiting the functions of the local power to what is strictly indispensable. And, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, republicanism will help to modify the revolutionary feeling on this point.
It removes the distrust of authority caused naturally by the retrograde spirit of the old monarchy; and it makes it easier to repress any further tendencies of the same kind, without necessitating an entire change in the character of our policy for the sake of providing against a contingency, of which there is now so little fear. As soon as the central power has given sufficient proof of its progressive intentions, there will be no unwillingness on the part of the French public to restrict the powers of the legislative body, whether by reducing it to one-third of its present numbers, which are so far too large, or even by limiting its functions to the annual vote of the supplies. During the last phase of the counter-revolution, and the long period of parliamentary government which followed, a state of feeling has arisen on this subject, which is quite exceptional, and which sound philosophical teaching, and wise action on the part of government, will easily modify. It is inconsistent with the whole course of French history; and only leads us into the mistake of imitating the English constitution, which is adapted to no other country. The very extension which has just been given to the representative system will bring it into discredit, by showing it to be as futile and subversive in practice as philosophy had represented it to be in theory.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.