III.
Is the general method of positive philosophy objective, or subjective, or both at once? As we know, this question has raised passionate discussion among positivists.[96] Outside the school it has been solved by some historians as if Auguste Comte, at the end of his life, had gone back to a doctrine very different from the one set forth by him in the Cours de philosophie positive. It suffices, however, to distinguish, with him, two successive points of view, to see how the two methods, antagonistic in a certain sense, can, in another one, be very well reconciled.
If we only consider the process followed by our mind in the explanation of natural phenomena, that is to say the object of positive philosophy taken in the strict sense of the word, it is true that two opposite methods are found face to face. The subjective method goes from the consideration of man to that of the world, the objective method goes from the knowledge of the world to that of man. The first gives rise to theological and metaphysical philosophy, the latter to positive philosophy. The incompatibility of the two philosophies proceeds from that of the methods, which is irreducible. It allows us to say: “This will kill that.”[97] In this sense, the final establishment of the objective method, which is completed by the foundation of sociology, implies the exclusion, also final, of the subjective method.
But “having reached its full maturity, true philosophy should inevitably tend to reconcile these two antagonistic methods,” wrote Comte in 1838, in the third volume of the Cours de philosophie positive, that is to say, long before the time of what has been wrongly called his second philosophy.[98] This reconciliation will be accomplished by means of the distinction between the special point of view of the sciences, and the universal point of view of philosophy. The scientific investigation of the laws of natural phenomena can only be made by means of the objective method: Comte never varies in his thought on this point. But these sciences are but the parts in a greater whole, for which the subjective method alone is suitable.
Two arguments especially prove this, one belonging to the logical, the other to the moral and the religious order.
The supreme requirement of our intellect is unity. Shall we ever reach this unity by using the objective method in the sciences? Evidently not. Even in each order of phenomena separately considered we do not see how to reduce the laws which we know to a single law of a more general character. And what are the laws known to us compared with those which elude our search, and which perhaps may do so for ever? Considered in its object, each one of our sciences reaches, so to speak, to infinity, far beyond our limited horizon. If then, in order to satisfy us, a single conception of the world is necessary, we shall never obtain such a conception from the objective point of view. But if we change our point of view, if we refer the whole of the sciences to man, or better, to humanity, as a centre, we shall then be able to realise the unity which we seek. This is precisely what is made possible by sociology, by subordinating the hierarchy of the positive sciences to the final science of humanity.
To consider the other fundamental sciences as “indispensable preliminaries,”[99] to represent the evolution which has brought them forth in turn as the very history of human progress; to verify the law of the three states in all our beliefs, and in all our knowledge; finally, to control all scientific research from the sociological point of view: this is what Comte understands by the conciliation of the two methods.
The whole development of positive science from mathematics to sociology, lies between the new use which is made of subjective method and that which was spontaneously made of it by theological philosophy. When theological philosophy considered the knowledge of man and that of the world as interdependent, the instinct which animated it was a just one. But it was imagining instead of observing. It represented the world as filled with “causes” analogous to the will of man and equally capricious. The new subjective method rests, on the contrary, upon the very results of the positive sciences, brought to a synthesis in sociology. It takes as established that the intellectual and moral phenomena depend upon the biological laws, and that the biological laws themselves are subordinate to the laws of the inorganic milieu. But, since the “final systematisation of all these laws”[100] must always remain impossible from the objective point of view, the new subjective method undertakes it from the point of view of humanity as a centre.
We can thus distinguish two great periods in the intellectual advance of humanity. During the first, the positive spirit successively applies the scientific, that is to say objective, method, to higher and higher orders of phenomena. The foundation of sociology marks the term of this progress. Then the second period begins. The positive spirit from special has become universal, from analytical synthetical. It reacts upon the particular sciences, and henceforth makes use of the “regenerated” subjective method, to govern the whole of them.
From the moral and religious point of view, once sociology has been constituted, and positive philosophy has been established, the functions proper to religion appear. The intellect recognises that its end does not lie within itself, and that it is incapable of determining its own rule and aim. It submits to a directing authority, which will guide its efforts and fix their object. To act from affection, and to think in order to act. But if the mind understands that it is destined to be used in the service of humanity, it sees at the same time that in the complete positive doctrine, which contains religion, the objective method gives precedence to the subjective, or rather that they mutually support each other. If we were pure intellects we should probably always go from the world to man. But in us the intellect is only a means. Love is the principle, action is the end; and it is to man, finally, that our study of the world must be referred.
Towards the end of his life, Comte replaced the logic of the mind, “especially guided by artificial signs,” by the logic of the heart “founded upon the direct connection of the feelings.”[101] We shall not here insist upon a conception which is closely allied to his religious system. We will only conclude that, from the philosophical point of view the two methods objective and subjective, in Comte’s thought, are easily reconciled, provided that both have been “systematically regenerated.” Now, the regeneration is obtained as soon as sociology is founded. On the one hand, as a matter of fact, it furnishes the sciences formed by the objective method with a principle of unity, since henceforth they are all subordinated to the single science of Humanity. And, on the other hand, the subjective method acquires the positivity which it lacked, for sociology has substituted to the arbitrary “individual subject,” the “universal subject,” that is to say again, Humanity.