II.
The first solution at first sight appears to be the most acceptable. Why should not the positive investigation of the divers orders of natural phenomena be reconciled with a theological or metaphysical conception of the universe? Nothing prevents one from conceiving the phenomena as governed by invariable laws, and from seeking at the same time, by another method, for the reason which renders nature in general intelligible. Positive science liberated at last from theology and metaphysics, would assure them of the independence which she claims for herself. Thus, with growing precision would be fixed the boundaries on the one hand of the domain proper of positive science, and on the other that of the speculation which goes beyond experience.
This reconciliation, says Comte, has for a long time been considered legitimate, because for a long time it was indispensable. Up to the present time Theology and Metaphysics have been the only comprehensive conceptions of the world which the human mind has formed. They have fulfilled a necessary function. Moreover, without them positive science could neither have originated nor have been developed. But, as she is their heiress, she is also their antagonist. Her progress necessarily involves their downfall. The parallel history of religions and metaphysical dogmas on the one hand and of positive knowledge on the other shows that the conciliation between them has never been a lasting one.
Not that the antagonism between the two modes of thought can be solved by a supreme dialectical struggle in which the theological and metaphysical dogmas would be worsted. It is not thus that dogmas come to an end. They disappear, according to Comte’s striking expression, by desuetude, as is the case with forsaken methods. As a matter of fact, have they not been as methods for the human mind, which sought within a single point of view to embrace the universality of things before they had been sufficiently studied? Man demanded from his imagination at first sight an absolute knowledge of the real, which reason could only give him at a later stage, on a very modest scale, entirely relative and after the patient labour of the sciences. But by degrees, as he has advanced in the positive study of phenomena, he has forsaken the theological and metaphysical “explanations.” Without relinquishing altogether the search after causes, he has taken the habit of relegating them to more and more remote regions. Already, in what concerns phenomena whose concept has reached a positive stage we can very well do without any assumption of causes. It suffices for us to represent these phenomena to ourselves as subject to laws. When all the phenomena of all orders are habitually conceived in this way, when the idea of their laws, whatever they may be, will have become equally familiar to us, the metaphysical mode of thought will have disappeared.
In a word, as soon as the whole of science shall have become positive, philosophy will necessarily be positive also: For we only have at our disposal one point of view concerning things. All our real knowledge bears upon phenomena and their laws. If, therefore, considered one by one, all the orders of phenomena are conceived according to the positive mode of thought, how could it be that considered together, and in their totality, they should be conceived according to a mode of thought completely different, and even inconsistent with the former one?
As a matter of fact, the coexistence of these two modes of thought lasts so long as the positive spirit has not reached its complete expansion, so long as a more or less considerable portion of natural phenomena is still explained by their essence, their cause, or their end. But this cannot be indefinitely prolonged. The more the positive spirit progresses, the more the theological and metaphysical conception of the world loses ground, and it becomes more evident that we must make our choice. The unity of the understanding the perfect logical coherence, are at this price.
The conciliation being set aside, the alternative either to think solely or not at all, according to the positive mode, presents itself. The traditionalists, and especially Joseph de Maistre, saw this aspect of the problem very clearly. Comte gives them very great credit for it. De Maistre admits no salvation for our society except in the complete return to the theological mode of thought. He thus attacks at its very source, or to put it more plainly, in its many sources, the spirit of modern philosophy. He does not spare Locke any more than the philosophers of the XVIII. century who proceed from him, Bacon any more than Locke; the promoters of the Reformation any more than Bacon. He understood that the XVIII. century came as a mighty conclusion of which the XVI. and XVII. centuries were the premisses, and that the great destructive syllogism had originated in a work of decomposition which began as early as the XIV. century. He is therefore perfectly consistent with himself, when he endeavours to combat this diabolical work, and to bring Europe back to the mental and religious condition of the Middle-ages. The re-establishment of the spiritual supremacy of the Pope would put an end to mental and moral anarchy. The catholic doctrine would restore to men’s minds that unity which is their supreme need.
This solution fulfils ideally the conditions of the problem, but, as a matter of fact, the solution is impracticable. The tide of history cannot flow back. In order to bring men’s minds once again under the sway of that spiritual power which they freely accepted in the Middle-ages, we should also have to reconstitute the totality of the conditions in which they lived at that time. How can we wipe from the pages of history the discovery of America, the invention of printing, and so many other great social facts? How can we pretend that Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and all the heralds of positive Science never existed? And if, presuming what is impossible, we should succeed in restoring the mental and moral unity of Christian society in the Middle-ages, how could we prevent the natural laws which have once brought about its decomposition, from producing again the same result?
We are thus necessarily brought to the third and last solution. Since the conciliation between the positive mode of thought and the other one is impossible; since the exclusive ascendency of the theologico-metaphysical mode of thought is out of the question; since when all is said the human mind needs a philosophy, it follows that that philosophy can only proceed from the positive mode of thought itself. There is nothing, a priori, to prevent this solution from being realised. For the last positions of the theologico-metaphysical spirit are surely not impregnable. This spirit, “fictitious” in its essence, never could become “real.” The positive spirit is only accidentally “special.” It is quite capable of acquiring the universality which it lacks. The new philosophy would then be founded, and the problem of perfect logical coherence would be solved.
The whole difficulty thus appears to be in “universalising” the positive mode of thought. To do this it must be extended to those phenomena which are still habitually conceived according to the theologico-metaphysical mode, that is to say, to the moral and social phenomena. This will be Comte’s crowning discovery. He will found “social physics.” By so doing he will take from theology and metaphysics the last reason of their existence. He will make possible the transition from a positive science to an equally positive philosophy. Thus will be realised “the unity of the understanding,” and this mental harmony will carry with it as its consequence the moral and religious harmony of humanity.
[CHAPTER II]
THE LAW OF THE THREE STATES
In Comte’s system the constitution of sociology may be considered at the same time as a terminus and as a starting point. One sees the positive method attaining with it to the order of the highest, the most “noble,” the most complicated phenomena: in this sense sociology is the term reached by the positive spirit in its ascent. It thus reaches the summit of the hierarchy of the sciences, and henceforth rules over them all. On the other hand, positive philosophy, possible from this moment, will make this a starting point for establishing the principles of morality and of polity.
“Through the foundation of sociology,” says Comte at the beginning of the Cours, “positive philosophy will acquire that universal character which it still lacks, and will thus become qualified to take the place of theological and metaphysical philosophy, whose only real property to-day is this universality,”[10] and at the end of the Cours he concludes: “The creation of sociology endows with fundamental unity the entire system of modern philosophy.”[11]
This creation, upon which everything else depended, dates from the time when Comte discovered the law of the three states as it is called. For, once this law is established, “social physics” ceases to be a mere philosophical conception, and becomes a positive science. This law had been anticipated and even already formulated in the XVIII. century by Turgot, then by Condorcet, and by Dr. Burdin. Comte, nevertheless, takes to himself the merit of the discovery. As he is generally most precise in doing full justice to his “precursors,” we must admit that, according to him, none of them had seen the scientific importance of this law. It certainly is one thing to gather the notion of a law out of a number of facts, and another to understand its capital importance, and to discern in it the fundamental law which governs the whole of the evolution of humanity.
This is the way in which Comte enounces it, in the Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société (1822).
“According to the very nature of the human intellect every branch of our knowledge must necessarily pass successively in the course of its progressive development, through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictitious state, the metaphysical or abstract state, finally the scientific or positive state.”[12]
In the first lesson of the Cours de philosophie positive, after having reproduced this statement, Comte adds: “In other words the human mind, by its nature, in each one of its researches makes use successively of three methods of philosophising, essentially different and even opposed to each other: firstly, the theological method, next, the metaphysical, and lastly the positive. Hence we find three kinds of philosophies, or general systems of conceptions of the totality of phenomena, which mutually exclude each other. The first is the necessary starting-point of human intelligence, the third, its fixed and final state; the second is solely destined to serve as a transition.”[13]
The words “theological” and “metaphysical” are here taken in a particular sense, strictly defined.
Comte calls “theology” a general system of conceptions concerning the universality of phenomena, which explains the appearance of these phenomena by the will of gods. He has not in his mind theological speculation as one usually understands it, as a rational or sacred science. He does not in the least dream of a study of revealed truth. He only designated by this name an interpretation of natural phenomena by means of supernatural and arbitrary causes. Theological—that is to say—fictitious. Elsewhere Comte calls this mode of explanation “imaginary” or “mythological.” It is in this sense that he could ask if each one of us did not remember having been in regard to his most important notions, a theologian in his infancy, a metaphysician in his youth, and a physicist in his manhood?[14] Comte does not allude to the religious traditions which the child receives from his parents, but indeed to the spontaneous tendency which causes him in the first place to explain natural phenomena by wills, and not by laws. Theology is here synonymous with anthropomorphism in the conception of causes.
Similarly Comte does not take the word “metaphysics” in the most usual extension of its meaning. The science of Being as such, the science of Substance or of first Principles, is not here in question, at least directly. He only refers to a certain mode of explaining phenomena given in our experience. For example, in physics, the hypothesis of an ether to explain optical and electrical phenomena is metaphysical. So it is in physiology with the hypothesis of a vital principle, or, in psychology, with the hypothesis of a soul. “Metaphysical or abstract,” says Comte. At bottom this mode of explanation is no other than the preceding one, but more and more pale and colourless, vanishing, so to speak, as natural phenomena, better observed, are referred no longer to capricious wills, but to invariable laws.
Let us then be careful not to give here to the words “metaphysics” and “theology” their full meaning. For instance, to conclude from the law of the three States that the evolution of humanity ever carries it further from theology, to end in a final state wherein religion should have no place is singularly to misapprehend Comte’s doctrine. On the contrary the evolution of humanity is leading it to a state which will be pre-eminently religious. In it religion will regulate the whole life of man. Comte perhaps would not refuse to define man, as has often been done, as a religious animal. The history of humanity may be represented, in a sense, as an evolution which proceeds from primitive religion (fetichism) to final religion (positivism). But the object of the law of the three States is not to express the religious evolution of humanity. It is only concerned with the progress of the human intellect. It sets forth the successive philosophies which that intelligence has been obliged by turn to adopt in the interpretation of natural phenomena. It is, in a word, the general law of the evolution of thought.
Those who made a mistake about it probably only considered this law in the first lesson of the Cours, where it is separately presented. But the error is no longer possible when one refers to the fourth volume of the Cours, where the law is put in its place, in social dynamics, especially in the fifty-eighth lesson, in the sixth volume.
It is not, however, without reason that Comte set forth this law in the first pages of his Cours de philosophie positive. In sociology as he conceives it, the law of the intellectual evolution of humanity, that is to say the law of the three States is the essential law of dynamics, and therefore of the whole of social science. For, of all the social factors of which the concomitant and joint evolution constitutes the progress of humanity, the intellectual factor is the most important. It is the dominant one, in the sense that the others depend far more upon it than it does upon them. The history of art, of institutions, of morals, of law, of civilisation in general could not be understood without the history of intellectual evolution, that is to say of science and of philosophy, whereas this one, strictly speaking, would still be intelligible without the others. This evolution is therefore the principal axis around which the other series of social phenomena are arranged. Thus the law which expresses it is the most “fundamental,” the most “general,” in the precise sense in which Comte understands this word. In enunciating this law he declares legitimate by anticipation the existence of a social science. He proves ipso facto not only that it is possible, but that it already exists. Hence the eminent position which he gives to the law of the three states.