III.
Comte’s social statics are far from fulfilling the programme which he indicated in a word when he called it “social anatomy.” Undoubtedly he is right in not pushing the comparison between living beings and society to dangerous or childish attempts at precision. But, in sociology as in biology, he separates the study of the organs from that of the functions, and we must admit that he insisted very little upon the analysis of the social organs. From the statical point of view he only distinguishes the individual, the family, and society taken as a whole. Moreover the consideration of the individual is only preliminary, since the families represent the real social elements. He therefore sees, or at least he studies nothing intermediary between these elements and the totality of the social body, that is to say the human species. He limits himself to indicating the separation of offices which increases with the extension of the social body. But what is the structure of this body, what diversity of organs and apparatus does it contain? Social statics tells us nothing of this. The Politique positive scarcely gives us a few brief indications on this point. The collective organism would be composed first of families, which constitute its real element, then of the classes or castes which form its tissues, and finally of towns or villages which are its real organs.
This is very vague. Only in the dynamics shall we find views a little more precise on the appearance, the structure, and the functions of the different social forms. Even then Comte does not really take the physiological point of view, any more than in statics he takes the really anatomical point of view. Before all things, his sociology remains a philosophy of history. It analyses the past of humanity, that it may find in it the interpretation of its present and the rational prevision of its future.
This science differs profoundly then from the fundamental sciences which precede it, in that it studies a single being, of which it cannot analyse the phenomena or discover the laws except by considering it in the first place in its totality. Comte hardly ever in social statics (and far less in dynamics) says society, as in biology he said, animals and vegetables. He says the collective organism: a simple, immense organism, whose life indefinitely extends into the past and into the future, in a word, Humanity. This conception representing humanity as a single Being which is an hypothesis for science, becomes an ideal for ethics, and an object of love for religion. Insensibly Comte passes from one of these points of view to the other. At the same time the character of social statics changes. From being an abstract science in the Cours, in the Politique it is transformed into a picture of future Humanity.
[CHAPTER IV]
SOCIAL DYNAMICS
For Comte, social dynamics is the chief part of sociology. He tells us that it occupied his attention “in a preponderating and even almost exclusive manner.”[259] This preference is easily explained. In the first place the idea which best distinguishes sociology from biology, the idea of the gradual development of humanity belongs to social dynamics. Then, the method which particularly belongs to sociology, the historical method, applies especially to dynamics. Finally, the very conception of a social science became fixed in Comte’s mind by the discovery of the law of the three states which is a dynamic law.
Social dynamics is defined as “the science of the necessary and continuous movement of humanity,”[260] or, more briefly, the science of the laws of progress. Here, as in social statics, and even still more exclusively, a single case is studied, namely, the case of the human species, regarded as a single individual, and considered in the whole of its past and future development. Henceforth, without misunderstanding the distinction between biology and sociology, should we not in the first place seek some of the conditions of social progress in the physical and moral nature of the individual man? This question did not escape Comte, and he says that it would be right to begin a methodical treatise on social science with it. However, he did not expressly deal with the question. He contented himself with indicating “this fundamental instinct which is the complex result of the necessary co-operation between all our natural tendencies, which urges man ceaselessly to ameliorate his condition in all respects, and always to develop the whole of his moral, intellectual, and physical life in every way as much as the system of conditions in which he finds himself placed allows of it.”[261] This indication is completed by the study of the conditions which determined the first efforts of man, when he had to overcome his natural laziness, at the dawn of civilisation. It suffices at least to show the close union which exists in Comte’s thought between social dynamics and psychology. It is true that the sociological laws cannot be deduced from the biological laws. Nothing can replace a direct observation of social phenomena. But the very fact of progress, which is the object of social dynamics, would not exist without the “individual impulses which are its own elements.”
I.
Under the name of progress Comte understands a “social advance towards a definite although never attained termination, by a series of necessarily determined stages.” This idea was never clearly defined in antiquity.[262] The men of ancient times were more inclined to represent social movements as oscillatory or circular. Upon special points, for instance in morals, they had a foreshadowing of the idea of progress.[263] They conceived an effort towards improvement. But the scientific idea of social progress in its entirety remained foreign to them. For this idea is only formed by observation and by the analysis of history. Their historical outlook was yet too narrow for such a suggestion.
The idea of progress appears with the philosophy of history taught by Christianity; for, this religion gives a rational explanation of universal history considered as a whole. It proclaims the superiority of the Christian world over the pagan world, and of the new law over the old.[264] But, scarcely has the idea of progress thus come into existence when it becomes clouded over and tends to fade away. Catholicism clearly sees progress in the series of events which caused it to succeed a former state, but it denies the progress which continues from that moment. It considers itself as final. It “limits onward progress to the advent of Christianity.” It claims to fix an invariable dogma which contains immutable and absolute truth. This is the very negation of the positive idea of progress. In order to find this idea clearly conceived and scientifically formulated, we must come to Condorcet, and even to the XIX. century, that is to say, to the foundation of social science by Comte. He was especially led to it, he says, by the historical study of the development of the sciences. For, of all the social series, this is the one whose evolution is most advanced. No other suggests so clearly the idea of a “progression” whose terms succeed each other by virtue of a necessary filiation. Pascal already gave a very fine formula of it, in his Préface du Traité du Vide. Is it not remarkable that, in his sketch of the positive idea of progress, he should have been led at once to the essential hypothesis of social dynamics, that is to say, to consider the whole succession of generations as a single man, always living, continually learning?[265]
Nevertheless, the idea of progress, so well applied to the evolution of the sciences in the XVII. century, could not then be extended to all social facts. It had met with an insurmountable obstacle in the Middle Ages. Men considered that period as one of retrogression and barbarism, although, as a matter of fact, it was “characterised by the universal perfecting of human sociability.” The idea of progress therefore remained a special one. Thus originated the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns[266] whose importance has not been sufficiently understood. The “eminent” Fontenelle and the “judicious” Perrault have very clearly shown in respect to intellectual activity generally considered, what Pascal had already established for science properly so-called.[267]
The XVIII. century was full of the idea of progress. But, failing to follow a positive method, it gave a false direction to this idea. It believed in the indefinite perfectibility of man and of society. Now, this notion does not coincide with that of progress. It is even fundamentally opposed to it. Progress signifies “development subject to fixed conditions, and operating in virtue of necessary laws, which determine its advance and its limitations.” It is precisely the ignorance of these conditions and of these laws which gives rise to the idea of indefinite perfectibility. If Helvetius and Condorcet had had a positive knowledge of human nature, they would not have entertained so many illusions and unreasonable hopes. Biology, that is to say, scientific psychology, would have taught them that human nature is invariable in its basis, that the preponderance of the selfish over the altruistic instincts is essential to this nature, and that, if progress favours the development of the altruistic feelings, it cannot, however, overturn the natural equilibrium of our inclinations. In a word, indefinite perfectibility is a metaphysical idea. Imagination plays a greater part in it than observation. The philosophers who conceived it did not realise the relations which bind the intellectual and the moral life of man to the structure of his organism.
In order that the idea of progress should reach its final form it was necessary, in the first place, that positive psychology should have put an end to the dreams of indefinite perfectibility. It was also necessary that the French Revolution should come to render the course of the history of humanity intelligible. Indeed, according to Comte, a “progression” cannot be understood, so long as we do not know at least three of its terms. Two terms do not suffice to define it. Now, up to the time of the French Revolution, several “progressions” or social series undoubtedly offered the required number of terms to scientific reflection; for instance, the evolution of such and such a science or of such and such an art. But, in sociology, the knowledge of secondary laws is subordinated to that of primary laws, and the advance of such and such a social series can only be understood if the development of society in general is known in its fundamental law. To discover this law then, we must possess at least, three terms of the general “progression.” Now, before the French Revolution two terms only were given: the régime of the societies of antiquity, and the Christian régime (that is to say, the one which attained its highest degree of perfection in the Catholic organisation of the Middle Ages.) The French Revolution came to furnish the third term. It brought the idea of a new régime. As Kant had said, in terms which were certainly unknown to Comte, it gave men the idea of a social organisation founded upon principles different from those of the existing societies. Henceforth the idea of progress could apply itself to the whole of the historical development of humanity. “It is to this salutary disturbance,” says Comte, “that we owe the strength and the audacity to conceive a notion upon which rests the whole of social science, and consequently the whole of positive philosophy, of which this final science alone could constitute the unity.”[268]
This social science remained to be constructed. It will be the special work of Auguste Comte. According to him, the French Revolution only brought an imperfect idea of social progress. It helped to bring about the conception of the idea of a different régime, but without actually founding it. The functions of the new philosophy will be to realise the positive idea of social progress. In a word, the revolutionary impulse made this philosophy possible. It has not done away with its utility.[269]