III.
Comte regards the law of the three stages as demonstrated. “Seventeen years of continuous meditation on this great subject,” he writes in 1839, “discussed under all its aspects, and subjected to all possible tests, authorise me to affirm beforehand, without the slightest scientific hesitation, that we shall always see confirmed this historical proposition, which now seems to me as fully demonstrated as any of the general facts actually admitted in the other parts of natural philosophy.”[21] It could only be doubted if we found any branch of our knowledge which had gone back from the metaphysical to the theological state, or from the positive state to either of the two preceding states. But this case has never presented itself. The theoretical demonstration of the law has established that it could not present itself.
Indeed this demonstration has shown that the successive advance through the three stages, in invariable order, was the necessary form of progress of the human mind in the knowledge of phenomena. It is founded upon the nature of the mind. In Comte’s thought, the law of the three states could therefore have been equally called psychological or historical.
But we are not here concerned with introspective Psychology, which uses self-consciousness as a means of investigation. Comte does not recognize any scientific value in this method.[22] He even denies its possibility. Moreover the observation of a subject by himself, were it possible, would be of no help in the present case. For it would only reveal to him the present state of his individual intellect, and not the law of the evolution of the human mind. For this law to become manifest, we must consider not the individual, but the species. Giving up a fruitless effort at self-contemplation in its activity, the intellect must grasp the law of its successive phases in the progress of what it has produced. The philosophical history of our beliefs, of our conceptions, and of our systems: such is the consciousness which the human intellect can have of itself. There only, the philosopher sees the faculties of which this intellect contained the germ coming into play by turns, to reach a “durable harmony.” Then, once discovered, the law of the three States helps us to understand the intellectual evolution of each individual, and the study of the individual then furnishes us with a supplementary verification of the law. But, by itself, this study of the individual could not have established it. Whatever utility I may have often derived from the consideration of the individual, says Comte, it is evidently to the direct study of the species that I owed, not only the fundamental thought in my theory, but afterwards its specific development.
The law of the three States is then the general formula of the progress of the human intellect, considered not in an individual subject, but in the universal subject, which is humanity.
It is indeed also the “universal subject” that Kant has studied in his Critic of Pure Reason. But Kant’s method is altogether abstract and metaphysical, the universal subject of which he seeks the laws is a human mind “in itself,” considered in its essence. Comte, on the contrary, represents the universal subject as a concrete unity, which realized itself in time. For him, the study of the mental functions characteristic of man only becomes positive when it is carried out from an historical and sociological point of view. That is why the discovery of the law of the three States is an event of capital importance. It inaugurates the positive science of humanity, which was an indispensable condition for positive philosophy to be established. It marks the time when, all phenomena being henceforth studied after the same method, the “perfect logical coherence” is definitely assured. This law of social dynamics is the corner-stone of the whole positive system.
[CHAPTER III]
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES
According to the law of the three States, all our conceptions in the different orders of knowledge, begin by being theological, pass through the metaphysical transition, and end by becoming positive. If this evolution were terminated at the presented time, the philosophy which Comte wishes to found would be ipso facto established. But we are far from such a state of things. On the contrary, the three modes of thought theological, metaphysical, and positive, coexist, still to-day, even in the most cultivated minds. In a different measure, all lack the “logical coherence.”
Even in those sciences where the positive method has been finally and for a long time established, in physics, and in chemistry, for instance, we observe undoubted traces of the metaphysical spirit. To a still greater degree this spirit is manifested in what are called the moral and social sciences. Nevertheless, this “incoherence” cannot last. Now that the positive spirit has assumed full consciousness of itself, it is possible to proceed with a systematic purification, which will disentangle it from the theological and metaphysical spirit.
But is not this critical review of the whole of human knowledge an enterprise above the powers of a man?—Happily positive philosophy itself furnishes a means of lightening the task. It establishes an order which allows us to determine without too much trouble to what degree of positiveness the conception of a given category of phenomena has reached up to the present time. Comte calls this order the classification, or, more precisely the “positive hierarchy” of the fundamental sciences. It is “the plan which he will follow in the exposition of positive philosophy.”[23]
This plan is not a simple artifice destined to make the entirety of the doctrine clearer, or its exposition easier. It is not external to the work. It is born from the very spirit of positive philosophy; it expresses the spirit of that philosophy in a new form. It is the natural complement of the law of the three States. Comte puts it in plain words: “The different branches of our knowledge have not been able with equal rapidity to pass through the three great phases in their development, nor consequently to reach simultaneously the positive state. There exists, in this respect, an invariable and necessary order, which our different kinds of conceptions have followed and have been obliged to follow in their progress, and of which the exact consideration is the indispensable complement to the fundamental law previously enounced.”[24]
Comte did not, like his contemporary Ampère, set himself the logical problem of the classification of the sciences in their entirety. He did not seek according to what principle we could arrange them all in an order where the fact of their respective subordination would be maintained. He even doubts how far such a principle exists, and he is so far from thinking of establishing a complete classification of the sciences, that he begins by leaving out the greater number of them. He first sets aside all forms of human knowledge which refer to art, that is to say all the applied sciences, practical and technical. Similarly he sets aside all the concrete sciences, such as zoology, mineralogy, geography, etc. He only places within his classification the theoretical and abstract sciences, that is to say those which have no other object but the knowledge of laws, and which study phenomena, exclusive of the concrete beings in which these phenomena present themselves. Comte calls them “fundamental” because the other sciences suppose their existence, whereas the abstract sciences do not suppose the existence of the others before them.
These sciences are the only ones whose consideration is of consequence to the end which Comte has in view. For why does he need a classification of the sciences? It is in order to study the ascent of the positive spirit through the successive orders of phenomena. For this, he has no occasion to consider the applied or concrete sciences, which receive their principles from the theoretical and abstract sciences. It suffices for him to be concerned with these. It is in the methods and the progress of these sciences that the characteristic efforts of the human mind have been manifested; and it is therefore here that we can grasp the laws of its evolution.
In order to classify the fundamental sciences, Comte will conform to the principles of the positive method. He will be guided by the rational classifications of which the model is to be found in the natural sciences. The classification must spring from the very study of the objects which are to be classified, and must be determined by the real affinities and the series of connected links which they present, in such a way that this classification may itself be the expression of the most general truth, made manifest by the searching comparison of the objects which it embraces.
Comte will not therefore stop to consider the classifications which have preceded his own. In the first place, when they appeared, the rational method of classification was not established. Further, how could anyone have united the whole of the sciences into an encyclopædic conception, when some had already reached the positive state, while others remained in the theological or metaphysical states? How could anyone rationally arrange heterogenous conceptions in a single system?
Those premature attempts were doomed to failure. In order that the undertaking might succeed, it was necessary that all our conceptions, relating to the various orders of phenomena should have reached the positive form. Here again, the creation of sociology has been the decisive event, for it has allowed the series of fundamental sciences to be made complete. The discovery of the law of the three States has founded sociology, and at the same time it has accomplished the homogeneity of human knowledge. In its time, this homogeneity renders possible the rational classification of the sciences.