IV.
The logical function of language is the only one which has been studied by philosophers; that is, by the “ontologists” and the “metaphysicians.” But even their study has remained incomplete. Condillac and his school have solely considered the language which lends itself to logical analysis. Consequently, they only saw a single kind of combination which may be called the logic of signs. But, in reality, the logic of signs rests upon the logic of images, and this one on the logic of feelings. The so-called logicians thus conceive a narrow and false idea of our intellectual mechanism, when they concentrate all their attention “upon the most voluntary, but the least powerful of the three essential modes of which the mental combination admits.”[224]
The logic of feelings is the art “of facilitating the combination of notions according to the connection between the corresponding emotions.” It is the most instinctive: it is the source of all the great inspirations of our intelligence. We can think nothing which contradicts it, or even which is not implied in it. But it has two grave defects. Its elements are not precise enough, and it is not at our disposal. It only operates under certain given conditions, and the appearance of these conditions does not rest with us. We see it at work, for instance, among animals, who occasionally provoke our admiration for the marvels suggested to them by this logic which is so closely bound up with the emotions. The logic of images, though less strong, is more free and precise than the logic of feelings. Nevertheless if we only had these two we should still be incapable of realising combinations conceived and prepared by us. This office belongs to the logic of signs. For to us almost entirely belongs the disposal of these signs, and it is this which has allowed of the development of abstract language and of the sciences.
But we must not separate this last logic from the two others. The laws of our nature always cause the logical use of feelings and images to prevail over that of signs. Undoubtedly, the union between signs and thoughts may become direct, and moreover in the case of abstract notions, it could not be otherwise. Thus our inner world is artificially united to the outer world. We have an abstract and symbolical representation of it, without going through the feelings, or even, strictly speaking, through the images. But this relation has far less consistency than the one which is established by the involuntary intervention of images and of feelings. As the abstract sign has its origin in the sign appreciated by the senses, which itself proceeds from the relation of the muscular system with the nervous system; so, the relations between signs have their origin in the relations between images, and these, in their turn, proceed from the relations between feelings.
The facility with which we manipulate signs hides this truth from us: it is none the less certain that these signs are united to our thoughts in a far less intimate and less spontaneous manner than the feelings and even the images.
The positive theory further allows us, not indeed to solve, but to adjourn the question of a universal language. Indeed are we concerned with a purely scientific language? Mathematical analysis in part fulfils this desideratum. It allows us to express the laws of the simplest phenomena by symbols which are at everyone’s disposal. But if it is a question of a complete language, destined to be in common use among all men, who does not see that this conception is incompatible with the present state of humanity? How could we establish a universal language, while allowing the prevalence of “divergent beliefs and of hostile customs.”[225] The unification of tongues will arise from the unification of peoples. When the latter has been realised, under the action of positive philosophy, the other will follow as a necessary consequence.
Moreover, from the present time, a universal language exists! It is Art, “the only form of language which is universally understood at once in the whole of our species.”[226] Truly this universal language has its dialects. Comte’s remark is none the less strikingly accurate. The masterpieces of Greek sculpture, Rembrandt’s paintings, Beethoven’s symphonies are accessible to millions of human beings who have never known a word of Greek, of Dutch, or of German. To teach all children music and drawing, as Comte requires in his positivist plan of education, is not to make them participate in the luxury of “accomplishments.” It is placing within their reach works which appeal to the whole of humanity; it is giving them a stronger sense of the solidarity which is the essential characteristic of human society; finally it is teaching them the universal language of which they possess the instinctive rudiments, and whence have sprung the very languages which to-day appear as frigid systems of symbols and graphic representations. Is it not fair to allow them the enjoyment of a patrimony as ancient perhaps as humanity herself? Somewhere, Comte compares language to property.[227] Like it, language has facilitated acquisitions and preserved social wealth. But it has an advantage over property, that of admitting of equal possession by all at the same time. Art presents this advantage no less than language. Works of art are the common property of the whole of humanity and no one should be deprived of that inheritance.
[CHAPTER II]
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON SOCIAL SCIENCE
Social science had at first been called social physics by Comte. Later on he invented the name of “sociology”[228] for it. It stands at the summit of the encyclopædic ladder of the sciences. Accordingly, it offers certain characteristics which the other sciences do not present.
Undoubtedly, by the definition of its object and by its method, it is perfectly homogeneous with the rest of positive knowledge. Sociology studies the laws of social phenomena as mathematics inquires into the laws of geometrical phenomena. In this sense, between these extreme sciences there are no other differences than those which arise from the diversity of the phenomena which are studied. But mathematics, and the other fundamental sciences, excepting sociology, are distinctly preliminary. Sociology is final. Each of the preliminary sciences should be cultivated only in the measure necessary in order that the following one may in turn assume the positive form. Social science, which is not preparatory to any other, establishes the principles of morals and of politics. It is, as has been seen, the key-stone of positive philosophy. It is in it, and through it, that positive philosophy acquires the universality which hitherto it had lacked.
Finally, there is a last difference which Comte likes to think he is successfully removing; the other sciences are more or less formed; everything has to be done for social science. Not that many trials have not been attempted. Comte does not ignore them, and he prides himself upon doing justice to his precursors. He goes back to Aristotle, in whom he admires an incomparable scientific and philosophical genius. In him he sees the inventor of social statics. His Politics are still read with profit.[229] But Aristotle could have no idea of a sociology, and in particular of positive social dynamics. For that he lacked (without speaking of the fundamental sciences which excepting mathematics were yet to be born), a sufficiently wide and varied knowledge of history and the idea of progress.
Montesquieu was in advance of his time, when, by the insight of his genius, he generalised the idea of natural law so as to bring under it the political, judicial, economical, and, generally speaking, all social phenomena. He really conceives the idea of social science. But the execution did not respond to the conception. How could Montesquieu have succeeded, since he was still without two indispensable elements: in the first place, the positive science of man from the biological point of view, and then the idea of progress, a vital necessity for every positive philosophy of history? Having failed to apprehend the fundamental laws of social dynamics, Montesquieu made too much use of the comparative method. Consequently, he took secondary laws for essential laws, such as the laws relating to the influence of climate. In the same way he has exaggerated the importance of various forms of political constitution.[230]
Condorcet came after Montesquieu and Turgot, and had been formed in the school of d’Alembert. He came nearer than anyone to the social science which was to be founded. He understood admirably that the evolution of the human race, considered as a single being, is subject to laws. He brought the idea of progress into full daylight. But, nevertheless, positive sociology does not owe to him its origin. He shared the prejudice of his time on the subject of the indefinite perfectibility of man; this prejudice was only to disappear before the positive science of intellectual and moral man. Moreover, in the heat of the revolutionary conflict, he misunderstood the concrete reality of the progress, whose abstract necessity he had so well realised. By painting the centuries preceding the XVIII. century, in the darkest colours, he made the progressive evolution of humanity a kind of miracle, “doubly inadmissible in a doctrine which does not imply a Providence.”[231]
But soon Cabanis and Gall bring forward the positive theory of the moral and intellectual faculties of man. The French revolution throws a vivid light upon the period which separates us from the Middle Ages. At last, the theorists of the counter-Revolution show that the philosophy of the XVIII. century, if it excelled in the power of demolishing, was incapable of reconstructing, and they also show that order must be inseparable from progress. Comte regards himself as a Condorcet who has profited by these lessons of experience. He has worked with Saint-Simon, he has read De Maistre. In short, he is possessed of all the necessary elements for the foundation of sociology.
At the moment when he undertakes it, theological and metaphysical philosophy is still dominant over the contemporary conception of social facts. In it imagination is not subordinated to observation. Men do not apply themselves to the analysis of facts in order to discover their relations and their laws; they prefer to construct philosophies of history, which appear as non-scientific hypotheses, that is to say, which are not verifiable. Absolute results are sought for, as if in this order of facts, as in all the others, the absolute was not inaccessible. From the practical point of view, nobody doubts that man can modify social facts as he pleases, and that his action can be exercised there without any definite limits being placed upon it. It is supposed, in a word, that political society has no laws which regulate its natural development.
The same prejudices and the same false ideas have already predominated in the past on the subject of the more simple phenomena, which afterwards became objects of positive science. Should not this analogy cause philosophers to conceive “the rational hope of also succeeding in the dissipation of those errors of conception and of method in the system of political ideas.”[232] Nothing is more natural than that the science of the most complex phenomena should be the last to reach the positive stage. It would even have been impossible for it to have been otherwise. Finally, beyond the difficulties which belong to the complexity of its object, sociology had to overcome others, which arise from political passions. Problems of this kind are indifferent to no one. In them the interests of each one are involved, and they influence even without our knowledge, the direction taken by our thoughts. Political parties excel in framing plausible theories adapted to their requirements. Thus a constant effort at disinterestedness is necessary on the part of any one who purposes to take up the science of abstract politics.
At any rate, if these reasons make us understand that sociology should make its appearance last among the fundamental sciences, none of them imply that it would not have arisen in its turn. On the contrary, beside “vital physics” and “inorganic physics,” “social physics” was one day to take its place. From 1824, Comte had a very clear idea of this. We do not see, he says, why the phenomena which the development of a social species presents should not have laws like the others, why these laws should not be capable of being discovered by observation, like those of the other phenomena, with this reservation only that the nature of this section of philosophy makes its study more difficult. “I will make it felt by the very fact that there are laws as determined for the development of the human species as for the falling of a stone.”[233] Comte later on attenuated the rigidity of these expressions. He recognised that the social phenomena were of all others the most “modifiable.” But he none the less maintained that they were ruled by laws.