II.
The position taken by Comte may be briefly defined in a few words. Seeing that philosophy, such at least as it had been conceived until the XIX. century, could not assume the characteristics of science, he asks himself whether one would not succeed better by endeavouring to give the characteristics of science to philosophy. Like Kant, he might have compared the revolution he was attempting to that accomplished by Copernicus in astronomy, had he not preferred to present it as prepared and gradually brought about by the very “progress” of science and philosophy.
According to his own expression then he endeavours “to transform science into philosophy.” But on what conditions will the transformation be effected? If science were to lose in it its characteristics of positiveness, of reality, and of relativity, to assume those of a metaphysical doctrine, this change would be neither desirable nor possible. The transformation will simply consist in giving to science the philosophical character which it does not yet possess, namely universality. While thus acquiring a new property, positive science should lose none of those which it already possesses, and which constitute its value.
Thus, in the “transformation of science into philosophy,” what is transformed at bottom is not science which remains itself while becoming general from being special: it is philosophy rather which is transformed. The latter will henceforth undoubtedly be conceived as the highest and most comprehensive form of positive knowledge, but as constituting a part of that knowledge. It has been said that Comte does away with philosophy, by reducing it to being merely the “generalisation of the highest results of the sciences.” This is not a proper interpretation of his thought. Up to the present time the duties performed by the philosophical doctrines have been indispensable. Comte intends that his system shall fulfil them in future. Beside science properly so-called, which is always special, philosophy which represents the “point of view of the whole” must arise. On this condition alone can the government of minds and the “perfect logical coherence” become possible.
Philosophy will then not merely be a “generalisation of the highest results of the sciences.” The synthesis of the sciences must be brought about according to a principle to which they will be all related. It must really be a “summing up of experience.” But if this philosophy thus coalesces with science it must also be real like it, and all real knowledge is necessarily positive and relative. In short, the distinction between science and philosophy implies no specific difference between these two kinds of speculation. On the contrary, there exists between them homogeneity of doctrine and unity of method.
Therein lies the novelty of Comte’s system. The question was, without leaving the scientific point of view, to discover a single universal conception of the whole of Reality as we find it in experience. The solution of this problem was found on the day when Comte created social science. For indeed, in the first place, sociology makes the positive method universal by extending it to the highest order of natural phenomena accessible to us. Moreover, once it is established as a special science, ipso facto it assumes the character of a universal science, and consequently of a philosophy. Under a certain aspect, sociology is the sixth and last of the fundamental sciences. Under another aspect it is the only science, since the other sciences may be regarded as great sociological facts, and since the whole of what is given to us is subordinated to the supreme idea of humanity.
Such is the way in which the transformation of science into philosophy takes place. If it dates from the foundation of sociology, it is because, once this last positive science has been created, nothing remains in nature of which we conceive the possibility of obtaining an absolute knowledge. “The relative character of scientific conception is necessarily inseparable from the true notion of natural laws, in the same way as the chimerical tendency to absolute knowledge spontaneously accompanies whatever use we make of the logical fictions or of metaphysical entities.”[370]
Considered as a whole, the object of positive science, according to Comte, necessarily coincides with that of philosophy. For both of them it is the whole of the reality given to us. The human mind cannot exert itself in a vacuum. What it might draw from itself, without the help of experience, (if such a conception be not absurd), is purely fictitious, and has no objective value. If then the human mind remains attached to a metaphysical philosophy, this can only be in so far as the mind still conceives the whole or a part of reality from the absolute point of view, that is to say in so far as it still fails to understand that the laws of phenomena alone are within its reach, and persists in seeking the essence and the first or final cause for some among them. There was a time when the whole of reality was so understood. The conception of the world was then entirely metaphysical or partly theological. But the human mind has gradually constituted the positive science, first of the more simple and more general phenomena, and then of the more complicated ones. Finally the most complex of all, that is to say, the moral and social phenomena alone remained untouched by the scientific form. Let us suppose that this last order of facts is conquered by the positive method: the metaphysical mode of thought being no longer possessed of real objects, ipso facto disappears. At the same time the positive mode of thought becomes universal, and positive philosophy is founded.
In this way two great connected facts which occupy a considerable place in the philosophical history of our century are explained. We understand: 1. that the fate of metaphysics appears to be closely bound up with that of psychology, of ethics of the philosophy of history and of the moral sciences in general, while the connection between physics, for instance and metaphysics seems to be very weak; 2. that the foundation of sociology determines that of positive philosophy. So long as psychology speculates upon the nature of the soul and upon the laws of thought; ethics, upon the final cause of man, the philosophy of history, upon the final cause of humanity; metaphysics remains standing. Indeed it seems better able than positive knowledge to lead the human mind to a conception of the whole of the real. It appears to be all the more appropriate for doing this in that the point of view of the Absolute can be easily made to harmonise with the point of view of the Universal, in the same way as the conception of substance, whatever it may be, leads without any difficulty to the conception of the unity of substance. But, from the day when we no longer should seek anything but the laws of psychical, moral and social facts, refraining from any hypothesis as to causes and essences, (a method already made use of for all the other categories of phenomena), three results would be obtained at a single blow: metaphysical philosophy would disappear, social science would be created, and positive philosophy would be founded.
According to the essential law of social dynamics, the metaphysical stage is never anything but a transitory one between the theological and the positive stages. The human intellect could not pass immediately from the former to the latter. The metaphysical stage which can assume an endless number of forms and of degrees, insensibly leads it from one to the other. Metaphysical philosophy partakes of the theological in so far as it claims to “explain” the totality of the Real by means of a first principle, and of the positive, in so far as it endeavours to demonstrate its “explanations,” and to bring them into accordance with the real knowledge already acquired. It originates in theology and it ends in science. But, however near it may come to positive knowledge, its original theological brand is never effaced. Were they compelled to choose between the theological and the positive doctrines, metaphysicians would certainly adopt the former. The essence of metaphysical philosophy is to tend towards the absolute, whilst positive philosophy only seeks the relative. In favouring the progress of positive science, metaphysical philosophy was working to make itself useless.
To those then who reproach him with not leaving any function proper to philosophy, Comte would answer that, in his doctrine, philosophy is on the contrary better defined and more fully constituted than in any other. Indeed metaphysical philosophy has never been anything but a compromise, destined to satisfy more or less, the needs of theological explanation and of rational science. But positive philosophy is pure and unalloyed with heterogenous elements. It gives to the whole of experience all the intelligibility which we can hope for, through the discovery of laws, and, in particular, of the encyclopædic laws. By making humanity the supreme end at once of our speculation and of our activity, it furnishes morality and politics with a definite basis, and gives religion an object. In this way, according to Comte, positive philosophy is more truly a philosophy than metaphysics, since it secures the homogeneity of knowledge and the “perfect mental coherence,” and it is also more truly religious since, as its final conclusion, it shows that the end of the intellect itself lies in devotion to humanity.