Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 329, March, 1843
What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of society than that of property?—a law which so justly governs all our political reasonings, and determines the character of our political measures the most prospective—a law which M. Comte has not failed himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress? That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted. Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the participated prosperity of the general body—where the good of the whole should be felt as the interest of each. How such a principle is to be established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and establish such a principle—this is what no scientific mind would venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of activity, nor need it, nor can it, pass beyond that sphere. We know that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we know this also, that at no time can its opposite principle be established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. Our convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?
"The great Aristotle himself," says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of his age—"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of ancient times, (la plus forte tête de toute l'antiquité,) could not conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."—Vol. iv. p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a fundamental law.
There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte's work, (we cannot now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the comparative happiness of the savage and the civilized man. He will not entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and contents himself with asserting the fuller development of his nature displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind—of the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are, for the most part, practically decided by those who have to feel; but to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to establish a standard measure for human felicity.
We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science. A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the moralist, the jurist, and the politician—though it is worthy of observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author, for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and obeyed.
With relation to the past, and in one point of view—namely, so far as regards the development of man in his speculative career—our Sociologist has endeavoured to supply a law which shall meet the peculiar exigencies of his case, and enable him to take a scientific survey of the history of a changeful and progressive being. At the threshold of his work we encounter the announcement of a new law, which has regulated the development of the human mind from its rudest state of intellectual existence. As this law lies at the basis of M. Comte's system—as it is perpetually referred to throughout his work—as it is by this law he proceeds to view history in a scientific manner—as, moreover, it is by aid of this law that he undertakes to explain the provisional existence of all theology, explaining it in the past, and removing it from the future—it becomes necessary to enter into some examination of its claims, and we must request our readers' attention to the following statement of it:—
"In studying the entire development of the human intelligence in its different spheres of activity, from its first efforts the most simple up to our own days, I believe I have discovered a great fundamental law, to which it is subjected by an invariable necessity, and which seems to me capable of being firmly established, whether on those proofs which are furnished by a knowledge of our organization, or on those historical verifications which result from an attentive examination of the past. The law consists in this—that each of our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different states of theory: the theologic, or fictitious; the metaphysic, or abstract; the scientific, or positive. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature, employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic method, then the metaphysical, and last the positive method. Hence three distinct philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which mutually exclude each other; the first is the necessary starting-point of the human intelligence; the third is its fixed and definite state; the second is destined to serve the purpose only of transition.
"In the theologic state, the human mind, directing its researches to the intimate nature of things, the first causes and the final causes of all those effects which arrest its attention, in a word, towards an absolute knowledge of things, represents to itself the phenomena as produced by the direct and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the apparent anomalies of the universe.
"In the metaphysic state, which is, in its essence, a modification of the former, the supernatural agents are displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena—whose explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its corresponding entity.
"At last, in the positive state the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the search after the origin and destination of the universe, and the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is to say, their invariable relations of succession and of similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established between the various individual phenomena and certain general facts, the number of which the progress of science tends continually to diminish.
"The theologic system has reached the highest state of perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted the providential action of one only being for the capricious agency of the numerous independent divinities who had previously been imagined. In like manner, the last term of the metaphysic system consists in conceiving, instead of the different special entities, one great general entity, nature, considered as the only source of all phenomena. The perfection of the positive system, towards which it unceasingly tends, though it is not probable it can ever attain to it, would be the ability to represent all observable phenomena as particular cases of some one general fact; such, for instance, as that of gravitation."—Vol. I. p. 5.
After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought whatever, he proceeds thus:—
"It is easily conceivable that our understanding, compelled to proceed by degrees almost imperceptible, could not pass abruptly, and without an intermediate stage, from the theologic to the positive philosophy. Theology and physics are so profoundly incompatible, their conceptions have a character so radically opposed, that before renouncing the one to employ exclusively the other, the mind must make use of intermediate conceptions of a bastard character, fit, for that very reason, gradually to operate the transition. Such is the natural destination of metaphysical conceptions; they have no other real utility. By substituting, in the study of phenomena, for supernatural directive agency an inseparable entity residing in things, (although this be conceived at first merely as an emanation from the former,) man habituates himself, by degrees, to consider only the facts themselves, the notion of these metaphysical agents being gradually subtilized, till they are no longer in the eyes of men of intelligence any thing but the names of abstractions. It is impossible to conceive by what other process our understanding could pass from considerations purely supernatural, to considerations purely natural, from the theologic to the positive régime."—P. 13.
We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition that theology is not the last, as well as the first, of our forms of thought—against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work, made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject, though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with this protest, and with adding—as a fact of experience, which, in estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted on—that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident. Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great article of religion—that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times, men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their inductive labours by assigning that unity and correlation which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read thought in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.
Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration of the new law. That there is, in the statement here made of the course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a law—a scientific law—which from its nature admits of no exception; at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger commixtures than this, they should "mutually exclude each other"—that, in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and proportions, both theologic and positive.
What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the succession of these several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here called the positive method of thought is not equally spontaneous to the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified, or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have been a portion of his experience entertained merely as experience. The very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?
Or does M. Comte mean this only—which we presume to be the case—that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity? If so, what necessity for this metaphysic apparatus for the sole purpose of transition? If each of these great modes, the positive and theological, has its independent source, and is equally spontaneous—if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though in different stages of development, the function attributed to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it; there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of a law of succession in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of invariable sequence, between the phenomena?
Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are not equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition, it would follow—since the mind, or organization, of man remains from age to age the same in its fundamental powers—that, at this very time, no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic. Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a theology of the rudest description—a result certainly not contemplated by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they are equally spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed to the metaphysic of effectuating a transition between them? And how can we describe that as a scientific law in which there is confessedly no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or laws, capable of explaining it.
Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps, concluded that this author could not have here required their assent, strictly speaking, to a law, but that he used the term vaguely, as many writers have done—meaning nothing more by it than a course of events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth contained in it than to cavil at the form of the statement. But indeed M. Comte uses the language of science in no such vague manner; he requires the same assent to this law that we give to any one of the recognized laws of science—to that of gravitation for instance, to which he himself likens it, pronouncing it, in a subsequent part of his work, to have been as incontrovertibly established. Upon this law, think what we may of it, M. Comte leans throughout all his progress; he could not possibly dispense with it; on its stability depends his whole social science; by it, as we have already intimated, he becomes master of the past and of the future; and an appreciation of its necessity to him, at once places us at that point of view from which M. Comte contemplates our mundane affairs.
It is his object to put the scientific method in complete possession of the whole range of human thought, especially of the department, hitherto unreduced to subjection, of social phenomena. Now there is a great rival in the field—theology—which, besides imparting its own supernatural tenets, influences our modes of thinking on almost all social questions. Theology cannot itself be converted into a branch of science; all those tenets by which it sways the hopes and fears of men are confessedly above the sphere of science: if science, therefore, is to rule absolutely, it must remove theology. But it can only remove by explaining; by showing how it came there, and how, in good time, it is destined to depart. If the scientific method is entirely to predominate, it must explain religion, as it must explain every thing that exists, or has existed; and it must also reveal the law of its departure—otherwise it cannot remain sole mistress of the speculative mind. Such is the office which the law of development we have just considered is intended to fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing its purpose we must now leave our readers to decide.
Having thus, as he presumes, cleared the ground for the absolute and exclusive dominion of the positive method, M. Comte proceeds to erect the hierarchy, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which presume the existence of other laws; in such manner that at every stage of our scientific progress we are supporting ourselves on the knowledge acquired in the one preceding.
"The positive philosophy," he tells us, "falls naturally into five divisions, or five fundamental sciences, whose order of succession is determined by the necessary or invariable subordination (estimated according to no hypothetical opinions) of their several phenomena; these are, astronomy, mechanics, (la physique,) chemistry, physiology, and lastly, social physics. The first regards the phenomena the most general, the most abstract, the most remote from humanity; they influence all others, without being influenced by them. The phenomena considered by the last are, on the contrary, the most complicated, the most concrete, the most directly interesting to man; they depend more or less on all the preceding phenomena, without exercising on them any influence. Between these two extremes, the degrees of speciality, of complication and personality, of phenomena, gradually increase, as well as their successive dependence."—Vol. I. p. 96.
The principle of classification is excellent, but is there no rank dropt out of this hierarchy? The metaphysicians, or psychologists, who are wont to consider themselves as standing at the very summit—where are they? They are dismissed from their labours—their place is occupied by others—and what was considered as having substance and reality in their proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician, with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte considers the mind as one of those abstract entities which it is the first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man, of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his mind. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the metaphysic stage of theorizing. "There is no place," he cries, "for this illusory psychology, the last transformation of theology!"—though, by the way, so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the metaphysic condition of our knowledge appears to be quite as old, quite as primitive, as any conception whatever of theology. Now, whether M. Comte be right in this preference of the phrenologist, we will not stay to discuss—it were too wide a question; but thus much we can briefly and indisputably show, that he utterly misconceives, as well as underrates, the kind of research to which psychologists are addicted. As M. Comte's style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole class of Parisian savans, added something to the piquancy of the style?
"Such has gradually become, since the time of Bacon, the preponderance of the positive philosophy; it has at present assumed indirectly so great an ascendant over those minds even which have been most estranged from it, that metaphysicians devoted to the study of our intelligence, can no longer hope to delay the fall of their pretended science, but by presenting their doctrines as founded also upon the observation of facts. For this purpose they have, in these later times, attempted to distinguish, by a very singular subtilty, two sorts of observations of equal importance, the one external, the other internal; the last of which is exclusively destined for the study of intellectual phenomena. This is not the place to enter into the special discussion of this sophism. I will limit myself to indicate the principal consideration, which clearly proves that this pretended direct contemplation of the mind by itself, is a pure illusion.
"Not a long while ago men imagined they had explained vision by saying that the luminous action of bodies produces on the retina pictures representative of external forms and colours. To this the physiologists [query, the physiologists] have objected, with reason, that if it was as images that the luminous impressions acted, there needed another eye within the eye to behold them. Does not a similar objection hold good still more strikingly in the present case?
"It is clear, in fact, from an invincible necessity, that the human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own. For by whom can the observation be made? It is conceivable that, relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe himself in regard to the passions which animate him, from this anatomical reason, that the organs which are the seat of them are distinct from those destined to the function of observation. Though each man has had occasion to make on himself such observations, yet they can never have any great scientific importance; and the best means of knowing the passions will be always to observe them without; [indeed!] for every state of passion very energetic—that is to say, precisely those which it would be most essential to examine, are necessarily incompatible with the state of observation. But as to observing in the same manner intellectual phenomena, while they are proceeding, it is manifestly impossible. The thinking individual cannot separate himself in two parts, of which the one shall reason, and the other observe it reasoning. The organ observed and the organ observing being in this case identical, how can observation be carried on?
"This pretended psychological method is thus radically absurd. And only consider to what procedures profoundly contradictory it immediately conducts! On the other hand, they recommend you to isolate yourself as much as possible from all external sensation; and, above all, they interdict you every intellectual exercise; for if you were merely occupied in making the most simple calculation, what would become of your internal observation? On the other hand, after having thus, by dint of many precautions, attained to a perfect state of intellectual slumber, you are to occupy yourself in contemplating the operations passing in your mind—while there is no longer any thing passing there. Our descendants will one day see these ludicrous pretensions transferred to the stage."—P. 34.
They seem transferred to the stage already—so completely burlesqued is the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them, in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering, in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate, this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in search—something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences; observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology, let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the fundamental principles of Gall's system, but repudiates, as consummately absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the cranium, and establish a more reasonable one, unless by a course of craniological observations directed and confirmed by those internal observations which he is pleased here to deride?