IV.
In order to consider organisms in the regular sequence which allows of comparison, we must first have established the order in which they should be arranged. But, conversely, to establish this order, a knowledge of anatomy and physiology is indispensable. So between these two sciences on the one hand and “biotaxy” on the other there is a strict solidarity. The problem of classification is thus an essential part of general biology. In the natural classification sought after by science, the position assigned to each organism would suffice to define at once the whole of its anatomical and physiological nature, in relation to the organisms which precede and to those which follow.[165] Any natural classification cannot, however, be anything but imperfect. Accustomed as we are to artificial classifications, which admit of absolute and immediate perfection, we are surprised that the same should not be the case in natural classification. But, if the latter is a real science, we must own that, here as elsewhere, we can only reach more or less distant approximations. The co-ordination of living species is a problem like the static or dynamic analysis of a determined organism. Like this analysis, it only allows of solutions which are approached rather than realised.[166]
How, in the first place, must we understand species? Between Cuvier and Lamarck, Comte sides with Cuvier, with this reservation, however, that “our ideas upon this question of capital importance are not yet properly fixed.” Two reasons especially incline him to admit the fixity of of species. Lamarck’s theory is not sufficiently proved: we nowhere see that the milieu exercises the almost boundless influence upon organisms which is attributed to it by Lamarck. Undoubtedly, within certain limits, the exercise induced by external circumstances tends to modify the primitive organisation. But this action of the milieu and this aptitude of the organism are certainly very limited. On the other hand, if we have a choice between the two hypotheses, the interest of science would prompt us to use this liberty in favour of Cuvier. The fixity of species guarantees that the series of organisms will always be composed of terms which are clearly distinct, separated by insuperable intervals. This “increases the degree of rational perfection of which the final establishment of this hierarchy is capable.”[167] It is then under the influence of a purely formal motive that Comte’s preference is here decided. For he felt the strength and the import of Lamarck’s labours. Of the two celebrated antagonists, he said, Lamarck was unquestionably the one “who manifested the clearest and deepest sense of the true organic hierarchy.”[168]
Comte has even dealt with certain objections which do not go against Lamarck. Thus, we might think at first that, in his hypothesis, there is no real zoological series, since animal organisms would be essentially identical, their differences being henceforth attributed to the diverse and unequally prolonged influence of the external conditions. But, on looking into it more closely, we see, on the contrary, that this hypothesis only presents the series in a new aspect which would even render its existence still more evident. For the whole of the zoological series would then become, in fact as well as ideally, altogether analogous to the whole of the individual development, confined at least to its ascending period. It would then be conceived as continuous. “The progressive advance of the animal organism, which for us is only a convenient abstraction, would be converted into a natural law.”[169]
For the logical perfection of science, Comte prefers to regard species as fixed in the absence of contrary proofs. None the less Lamarck has stated a problem of the highest interest. Comte points out its importance. “The rational theory of the necessary action of the various milieux on the different organisms has still almost entirely to be formulated. Such an order of research, although greatly neglected, constitutes one of the finest subjects which the present condition of biology can present.” By this means, he adds, we might obtain a theory for the perfecting of living species even including mankind.[170]
V.
Comte’s anatomical and physiological philosophy is naturally allied to the science of his time. It is especially connected with the labours of Bichat and of de Blainville. Here again he endeavours to state the problems in the most general form possible. Anatomy should begin by the study of the tissues, to ascend afterwards to the association of several tissues, that is to say, to the organs, and to the associations of several organs, that is to say, to systems. But analysis must not be concerned with the tissue itself. To attempt the passage from this notion to that of the molecule, is to allow the organic to enter into the inorganic philosophy. In biology, the tissue corresponds to what the molecule is in physics. Such, at least, is the doctrine of the Cours de philosophie positive. Later on, instructed by Schwann’s works, Comte admits in the Politique positive that the anatomical element is the cell.
Be it tissue or cell, there must be a fundamental anatomical element. The simultaneous existence of several elements independent of one another would greatly mar “the admirable unity of the organic world,” and consequently the perfection of biological science. Life is always essentially the same. To this dynamic consideration, there must correspond, in the static order, that of a common basis invariable in its primordial organisation, successively producing, by deeper and deeper modifications, the various special anatomical elements.
Similarly, physiology will not be entirely organised until it studies functions (at least the organic functions), throughout the whole chain of living beings, from the vegetable kingdom up to man. This conception of a general physiology leads Comte to dwell, as Claude Bernard will later on, upon the phenomena of life which are common to plants and to animals. Some are better studied in plants and others in animals. But, whether it be animal or vegetable every organism always presents two fundamental functions: 1. the absorption of nutritious materials borrowed from the milieu (the assimilation of these materials and finally nutrition); 2. the rejection of unassimilated materials. However, plants are the only organised beings which live directly upon the inorganic milieu.[171] Comte was ignorant of the physiology of fungi.
Comte unreservedly adopts the distinction established by Bichat between the functions of organic life and those of animal life. In the first place he concludes from this, in virtue of the correlation of the dynamic to the static point of view, that distinct tissues correspond to these distinct functions. Then, he goes more deeply into the difference between the two kinds of functions. Strictly speaking, the phenomena of organic life only constitute a special order of composition and of decomposition. They come very near to chemistry, and may serve as a transition between the inorganic world and the world of life.[172] On the contrary, the phenomena of animal life (irritability, sensibility), offer no analogy with the phenomena of the inorganic world. We might almost believe, according to Comte, that the separation is established not between the chemical and biological phenomena, but between organic and animal life, the phenomena of the former reducing themselves to physico-chemical phenomena, and those of the latter presenting entirely different characteristics. Such is not, however, Comte’s thought. Undoubtedly, considered one by one, the phenomena of organic life (absorption, circulation, exhalation, etc.) are indeed physico-chemical phenomena. But what renders their biological character irreducible is that it is impossible to consider them separately: in order to understand them we must first look at them from the point of view of the whole, and appeal to the organic consensus, in a word, to what Claude Bernard, will call l’idée directrice.
In the study of organic functions we shall begin by the lower extremity in the series of living beings, that is to say by the most rudimentary forms of the vegetable kingdom, for it is here that we shall grasp the phenomena in their simplest form. Then we shall follow their growing complexity. For the animal functions, on the contrary, it is expedient to begin by man, “the only being in which such an order of phenomena is ever immediately intelligible.” From this point of view man is pre-eminently the biological unity. As soon as it is a question of the characteristics of animality, we must begin with man and see how they descend by degrees, rather than start from the sponge, and look for their mode of development. Man’s animal life helps us to understand that of the sponge; but the reverse is not true.[173] Moreover, the phenomena of organic life, being the most general, are also the most fundamental. The functions of animal life are first useful for the needs of organic life, by perfecting it. It is in man alone that the vegetative life is subordinate to the life of relation: and even for that he must have reached a high degree of civilisation.[174]
VI.
It is not surprising that biology, even more than physics and chemistry, preserves the metaphysical spirit. Such, for instance, is the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. Positive philosophy recognizes that each living being always emanates from another similar being. This is not established a priori, but is the result of an “immense induction.”[175] Omne vivum ex vivo. Efforts to explain how the generating tissue should itself be formed by kinds of organic monads, (an allusion to certain theories arising out of Schelling’s philosophy) can only fail. We should never know how to connect the organic with the inorganic world except through the fundamental laws belonging to the general phenomena which are common to them both. Positive speculations in anatomy and in physiology form a limited system, within which we must establish the most perfect unity, but which must ever remain separated from the whole of inorganic theories.[176] We see clearly, it is true, that there is no matter which is of itself living. Life is not peculiar to certain substances which are organised in a certain manner. It never belongs to them for more than a time: every organism of which the molecules are not renewed is dissolved. But “we can no more explain this instability than this speciality.”[177]
In the same way we see that in living bodies the nutritive functions are the basis of the others; but there is no contradiction in “dreaming” of thought and sociability in beings whose substance would remain unalterable. From this point of view spiritualism is not less admissible than materialism, in so much as death does not seem to be a necessary consequence of life. This again is an idea which is common to Descartes and to Comte. They both conceive an organism in which the play of functions should not cease of itself. The theory of death, says Comte, although it is founded upon that of life, is entirely distinct from it.[178]
If biology still often hesitates in the statement of its problems and in the choice of its hypotheses, it is in a great measure due to the two opposite tendencies between which it oscillated in the last century. On the one hand, Boerhaave, and the school of physiology which is more or less directly connected with Descartes, sought a mechanical explanation of biological phenomena, and tended to reduce biology to physics and chemistry. On the other hand, Stahl in Germany, and the vitalist school of Montpellier in France, appealed to metaphysical principles and to unverifiable hypotheses. Being thus swayed from one extremity to another, biology only escaped the “oppression” of the inorganic sciences to involve itself in conceptions which were scarcely scientific.[179] It is only at the end of the XVIII. Century, with Haller, Gall and Bichat, that it finds its equilibrium, takes possession of its method, and at last enters into its positive phase.
By its lower extremity it is contiguous to inorganic science (the physico-chemical phenomena of vegetative life). By its higher extremity, (intellectual functions), it reaches to the final science, or sociology. But the adherence is far from being as close in one case as in the other. At the moment when we pass from the inorganic world to the world of living beings, according to positive philosophy, there is a sudden “enrichment of the real.” The transition is very marked. The domain of biology is not so sharply separated from that of sociology. For the higher biological functions, the intellectual functions, cannot be analysed from the point of view of the individual, at least in man, but only from the point of view of the species. We must then, while preserving the distinction between the two sciences, admit a kind of inter-relation between them. Undoubtedly sociology could not be founded so long as biology had not made decisive progress. But, conversely, sociology once founded alone completes the positive study of the highest biological functions.
Certainly, biology has not been less transformed than chemistry during the last sixty years, and the state in which we see it to-day differs singularly from that in which Comte knew it. It has been developed and differentiated far beyond what he could foresee. None the less he conceived some of its principles with remarkable power. He had a precise idea of that which could constitute a general biology that is, a single physiology and anatomy for the whole of living beings. He knew the fecundity of the comparative method, and he pointed out its analogy with the method of analysis in mathematics. Finally, although he refused to adopt the transformist hypothesis, he had understood the importance of Lamarck’s work.
[CHAPTER V]
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology has no place in the classification of the fundamental sciences. In it Sociology immediately succeeds Biology. Use has been made of this fact in order to reproach Comte with having neglected an order of most important phenomena. A grave objection has been raised against his doctrine in general. What are we to think of a philosophy which, deliberately, omits a part, and, according to many philosophers, the chief part of reality, the world of consciousness, the spiritual nature of man?
Presented in this way, the objection rests upon many confused notions about words and ideas. What do we understand by psychology? If the word means: “the science of the soul reached through the introspective method,” we must own that Comte does not admit the possibility of such a science. But the same objection will also hold good against the majority of the psychologists of our time. For they do not admit this possibility any more than Comte, and they have endeavoured to constitute the science of psychical facts by a different method than that of introspection, pure and simple. Is psychology defined as “the science which investigates the laws of feeling, of the intellect and of moral phenomena in man and in animals?” Then it is inaccurate to say that there is no psychology for Comte. On the contrary, he thinks that positive psychology has just been founded by contemporary science of whose methods he approves. If he did not use the word “psychology,” he did so in order to avoid confusion. At that moment the word was, so to speak, the property of the eclectic school. By the “psychological” method, everyone then understood that of Jouffroy. “Psychology” was the science founded by Cousin on the analysis of the ego. Comte who opposes these philosophers, did not wish his theory of psychical phenomena, which differs from theirs, to be called by the same name. It is this very precaution which has come to be no longer understood, now that “psychology” does not designate the eclectic doctrine alone, but any theory whatsoever concerning mental facts.
I.
Comte finds the field occupied by three psychological schools, and he combats all three, for reasons of method and also of doctrine. He looks to them to refute each other mutually, and he will only attack what is common to them all.[180]
The representatives of these three schools are the Ideologists, with Condillac, from whom they proceed, then the Eclectics, and finally the philosophers of the Scottish school. Comte sometimes calls the eclectics the German school, in opposition to the ideologists, who are the French school, and to the Scottish school, the first of the three in point of time. But he always speaks sympathetically of the Scottish school, remembering that, in part, he owes to it his philosophical education. He also esteems the sincerity and logical vigour of the ideologist Destutt de Tracy. But, after all, we have here metaphysicians, as are also the eclectics upon whom he passes a more severe judgment. By “metaphysicians,” he understands all those who study phenomena, (in this case psychical phenomena), by means of a method which is no longer theological, but which has not yet become positive. In this sense, Locke is a metaphysician, as well as Condillac and his other successors in the XVIII. century, Hume alone excepted.
Comte showers derision upon the method of internal observation which is practised by the “psychologists.” The sharpness of his language is at least partially explained by the indignation with which Cousin’s “charlatanisme” inspired him. This “famous sophist,” in whom he recognises some of the gifts of an orator, and in particular that of a mimic, according to him, exercises most unfavourable influence over the minds of men.[181] He turns them aside from the positive path, which they are about to enter, to bring them back to metaphysical dialectics, or to hollow and sonorous rhetoric. And, to crown all, this “psychology” claims to follow a scientific method! the very method which has succeeded so well in the natural sciences! It conceives the idea of practising internal observation, as physics makes use of external observation. But what is this internal observation? How can the function of the same organ be to think, and at the same time to observe that it thinks? We conceive that man should be able to observe himself if it is a question of the passions which animate him. No anatomical reason is opposed to this since the organs which are the seat of the passions, are distinct from those which are used for the observing functions. But as to observing the intellectual phenomena in the same way, it is manifestly impossible. In this case, the organ which is observed being one with the observing organ, how could the observation take place?
This objection does not only hold against the eclectics, but also against the Scottish school and the ideologists. We already find it set forth in a letter from Comte to Valat on the 24th, of September, 1819, when he was perhaps not yet acquainted with Cousin. “With what should we observe the mind itself, its operations, its activity? We cannot divide our mind, that is to say, our brain, into two parts, of which one acts while the other looks on, to see how it goes to work. The so-called observations made on the human mind, considered in itself and a priori, are pure illusions. All that we call logic, metaphysics, ideology, is an idle fancy and a dream, when it is not an absurdity.”[182]
This text, to which we could add many similar ones, allows us to rectify an erroneous, although a frequent interpretation of Comte’s thought. He does not deny that we are informed by consciousness of the existence of psychical phenomena. On the contrary, he expressly recognises the fact. What he regards as impossible is to study the activity of thought by means of reflection, that is to discover the “intellectual laws” by a method of internal observation. In a word, it is such works as those of Condillac, of the ideologists, of Reid, etc., which he condemns in their principle. In these works the subject matter is the theory of knowledge, and not that which is called to-day psychology proper.
If, instead of seeking specially for the intellectual laws, we wish to study psychical phenomena in general, internal observation will become possible in a certain number of cases. But it will not lead to the end which we wish to reach. It excludes the use of the comparative method, so fertile and so indispensable in the whole domain of biology. It only studies man, and even adult and healthy man. What will it tell us of the child, of the mentally deranged, of the animal?[183] Will it, like Descartes, go so far as to deny the existence of a psychical life in animals? Still this life cannot be studied by internal observation. We must then have recourse to another method.
Strictly speaking, there are only two methods which are suitable for the science of those phenomena. Either we determine with all possible precision the various organic conditions on which they depend: this is the object of what Comte calls phrenological psychology. Or else we observe directly the products of the intellectual and moral activity, and this study then belongs to sociology. But, if by this supposed psychological, method we set aside the consideration of the agent, that is to say of the organ, and that of the action, that is to say of the productions of the human faculties, what can remain “unless an unintelligible logomachy,” or verbal entities which are substituted to real phenomena? Here then is the study of the most difficult and most complex functions suspended, as it were, in the air, without any point at which it touches the simpler and more perfect sciences, “over which, on the contrary, it is claimed that it should reign majestically.”
Nothing is more opposed to the general order of nature, in which we always see the more complex and higher phenomena subordinated, so far as the conditions of their existence are concerned, to the more simple and commoner ones. As the biological depend upon the inorganic phenomena, just as, within biology, the phenomena of animal life are subordinated to those of organic life, so the intellectual and moral phenomena depend upon the other biological functions. Beyond their own particular laws, the laws of all the subjacent orders of phenomena also govern them. Can we study them as if all these laws did not exist? Let the metaphysician be free to do so. The scientific man who follows the positive method will proceed on other lines.
A defective method could lead but to false results. Notwithstanding the differences in their doctrines, ideologists and psychologists have agreed to place the intellectual functions in the front rank, and to thrust the affective functions further back. The mind has become the almost exclusive subject of their speculations. Look at the titles of their great works since Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding—Principles of Human Knowledge—On the origin of our Ideas—On Sensations—Ideology, etc.” The various affective faculties have been left comparatively in the shade. Now, it is the contrary which should have been done. Experience shows that the affections, the passions, the inclinations, play by far the most important part in the life of animals and even of man. Far from being the result of intelligence their “spontaneous and independent” impulse is indispensable for the first awakening, and afterwards for the development, of the various intellectual faculties. “Against all evidence man has been represented as essentially reasoning, as being continually performing unaware a multitude of imperceptible calculations with scarcely any spontaneity, even from tenderest childhood.”[184]
Had the study of the psychical functions been made upon animals at the same time as upon man, this error would not have lasted long. But philosophers were maintained in it, on the contrary, by metaphysical and even theological preoccupations. The science of mental functions had to establish a difference, not only of degree but of kind between man and animals. It was further required, by reason of another necessity closely allied to the former, that the soul should be considered as being immortal. And it was consequently necessary that the “ego” should present metaphysical characteristics of unity, of simplicity and of identity. Now, it is by thought that man is most distinguished from animals. It is therefore from thought that the characteristics attributed to the soul or to the “ego” have been borrowed.
But in fact the “ego” is not the absolute unity which the eclectic psychologists say that it is. It represents the feeling which the superior living being has, at every moment of the “sympathies” and the “synergies” which take place within the organism. It is the conscious expression of what the French call to-day “cénesthésie.” Far from being directly perceived as Cousin asserts, it is the indirect product of a quantity of sensations and sentiments, of which the majority are not perceived in the normal state.[185] It is especially by pathological facts, (diseases of the personality, double consciousness, lunacy, etc.), that the attention of the scientific man is drawn to this very complex phenomenon. It is, moreover, impossible to regard the sentiment of the “ego” as belonging exclusively to man. Everything leads us to believe that it also exists in the other higher animals. In any case there is no metaphysical doctrine to be founded upon this exceedingly complex and very unstable sentiment. Comte is here speaking as the successor of Hume and of Cabanis. In the clearest manner he defines his opposition to Cousin’s doctrine. The latter draws the whole of philosophy from the analysis of the “ego,” Comte draws nothing from it.
He does not, however, stop to show the superiority of the positive method over theological or metaphysical method in this matter. Of what use would it be? The progress of science, in the end, gets the better of methods which have become antiquated and barren. Metaphysicians have already passed from the state of “domination” to that of “protestation.”[186] And when the positive method gets a footing in an order of phenomena, there is no instance in which, sooner or later, it has not asserted its mastery over it.