IV.
Sociology is an abstract science: history, which is its essential method, cannot therefore be history merely considered as a narrative. There are two ways of conceiving history, the one abstract and the other concrete. The latter dominates in the historical works written up to the present time. Their end is to relate and to array in chronological order a certain sequence of events. Undoubtedly in the XVIII. century efforts were made to co-ordinate political phenomena and to determine their filiation. But for all that this kind of work has not ceased to be descriptive and literary. The other form of history, which does not exist up to the present, has for its end the research of the laws which regulate the social development of the human species.[245]
Difference of object leads to difference of method. If an historian proposes to himself to compose exact “annals,” to relate things as they took place, he will begin by the special history of the various peoples, which, in its turn, is founded upon the chronicles of the provinces and the towns. It will be necessary for him to investigate documents in detail, and to neglect no source: the work of combination will only come subsequently. But if our end is the abstract science of history, that is to say the linking together of social phenomena, quite a different course will have to be followed. Indeed all the classes of these phenomena are simultaneously developed, and under the mutual influence of one another. We cannot explain the line of advance followed by anyone among them, without having first conceived in a general way “the progression of the whole.” Before all things then we must set ourselves to conceive the development of the human species in its widest generality, that is to say, to observe and to link together among themselves the most important steps towards progress which it has successively taken in the various fundamental directions. Then we shall subdivide the periods and the classes of the phenomena to be observed.[246]
These “various fundamental directions” correspond to what Comte called later the “social series.” By this he indicates the groups of social phenomena arranged for a scientific study. Once these groups are formed, then, according to the totality of historical facts, the sociologist seeks to determine the continuous growth of each, physical, moral, intellectual or political disposition or faculty, combined with the indefinite decrease of the opposite disposition or faculty: for instance, the tendency of human society to pass from the warlike form to the industrial form, from revealed religion to demonstrated religion, etc. From this will be drawn the scientific forecast of the triumph of the one and the fall of the other, provided that this conclusion is also in conformity with the general laws of the evolution of Humanity.
Such a forecast could never be founded upon the knowledge of the present alone. For the present exposes us to the danger of confusing the principal with the secondary facts, of “placing noisy passing demonstrations above deep-seated tendencies,” and of regarding institutions or doctrines as growing which are really on the decline. Our statesmen scarcely look back beyond the XVIII. century, our philosophers beyond the XVI. This is too little. It does not even suffice to make us understand the French revolution. The study of the “historical series” alone allows the understanding of the present and the prevision of the future. The sociologist will even exercise himself in predicting the past, that is to say, in acquiring a rational knowledge of it, and in deducing each historical situation from the whole of its antecedents. He will thus become familiar with the spirit of the historical method.
However, if this abstract historical method were used by the sociologist to the exclusion of every other, he would sometimes come to a wrong conclusion, and take the continuous decrease in a natural faculty for a tendency to total extinction. For instance, as civilisation becomes more refined, man eats less than formerly. Nobody concludes from this that he tends not to eat at all. But the absurdity which is palpable here, might, in other cases pass unperceived. That is why the historical method in sociology requires to be controlled by the positive theory of human nature. All the inductions which might contradict this theory are to be rejected. Indeed, the whole social evolution is at bottom but a simple development of humanity, without the creation of new faculties. The germ, at any rate, of all the dispositions or effective faculties which sociological observation, (and in particular, history), may make known, must then be found in the primordial type which biology has constructed beforehand for sociology. Accordance between the conclusions of historical analysis and the preliminary notions of the biological theory is the indispensable guarantee of sociological demonstrations.[247]
V.
Thus conceived the historical method rests upon the postulate given by Comte, as we have seen, as a basis to his sociology. This postulate is thus enunciated: The nature of man evolves without being transformed. The various physical, moral and intellectual faculties, must be found the same at all the degrees of historical evolution, and always similarly co-ordinated among themselves. The development which they receive in the social state can never change their nature, nor consequently destroy or create any one of them, nor even intervene in the order of their importance.
In a word, the chief regulator of sociology is the science of human nature. It can even be said, without forcing the meaning of Comte’s thought, that sociology is really a psychology:[248] not indeed, it is true, a psychology founded upon the introspective analysis of the individual subject, but a psychology whose object is the analysis by history, of the universal subject, that is to say, of Humanity.
Comte endeavours to bring the complexity and the extreme variety of social phenomena into an intelligible unity. This complexity is such that we could not determine the laws by starting from the observation of the simplest phenomena to reach the more complex ones afterwards. Moreover, these facts only possess sociological significance if the observer is already provided with a general theory before he ascertains them. But, on the other hand, history cannot be deduced. Given an already positive knowledge of human nature and of the “milieu” in which it evolves, we could not say a priori how it will evolve. History must then teach us how, as a matter of fact, social life has developed Humanity. Nevertheless, once this concession has been made to observation the method becomes again deductive. Since sociology is a science it ought, like the other sciences, to be able to substitute rational prevision to the empirical establishment of facts.
To complete the characterising of this final science, it must be at once positive, like the subjacent fundamental sciences, and universal like philosophy, which alone up to the present time has looked at things from “the point of view of the whole.” Henceforth these two conditions are fulfilled. In the first place, the positivity of sociology cannot be doubted. In it social facts are conceived as subject to laws, and Comte abstains from any research as to their mode of production. Then, sociology, in spite of the extreme difficulties of its object, has assumed the deductive form, and has brought secondary laws under more general laws. Comte is even convinced that his sociology comes nearer to the perfect scientific form than physics or chemistry. By his discovery of the great dynamic law of the three states, has he not given it a unity which is to be found as complete nowhere else but in astronomy? But, at the same time, it is truly universal, since it is a philosophy of history, or, in other words, the science of humanity considered in its evolution. As this science presupposes biology, and as biology in turn presupposes the science of the “milieu” in which living beings are immersed, sociology becomes at once the summary and the crown of the sciences which precede it.
Thus in replacing man in Humanity, and Humanity in the system of its conditions of existence, Comte constructs a final science which is at the same time the supreme science, the only science, that is to say, philosophy. “If the laws of sociology could be sufficiently known to us, they alone would suffice to replace all the others, save the difficulties of deduction.”[249] The science of Humanity is the centre around which the others range themselves in order.
Already with Descartes, the anthropological character of philosophy was strongly marked. After him, philosophical speculation took man for its centre more and more. This tendency also predominates in Comte’s doctrine. But in it it assumes a social character. Here the “universal subject” is no longer the intellectual consciousness of Kant, or the absolute “ego” of Fichte; it is Humanity evolving in time, whose unity is displayed through the succession of generations connected in strict solidarity with each other. Henceforth the philosophical problems, no longer present themselves from the point of view of man conceived in the abstract or in himself apart from time. The consideration of history necessarily intervenes. Problems are formulated in social terms. There lies the deep significance of the doctrine systematised by Comte.
[CHAPTER III]
SOCIAL STATICS
As biology distinguishes the anatomical point of view, “relating to the ideas of organisation,” and the physiological point of view, “relating to the ideas of life,” so sociology separates the study of the conditions of existence of a society (social statics), and that of the laws of its movements (social dynamics).
This distinction has the advantage of corresponding exactly to that of order and progress, from the practical point of view, while it is closely allied to the encyclopædic law called “the principle of the conditions of existence.”
Comte will not admit that he is making two distinct sciences of social statics and social dynamics. Sociology, according to him, is constituted by the constant drawing together of these two corresponding studies. However, they each have their own object, and Comte has treated them separately. Indeed, social statics and dynamics are far from having the same importance in his work.
The essential part, on his own showing, is dynamics.[250] When he makes history the characteristic process of the Sociological method, when he shows that the tradition transmitted from every generation to the following one is pre-eminently the sociological phenomenon, when finally he considers the new science as having been founded from the day when the law of the three states was discovered, is he not placing himself at the dynamic point of view? After having demonstrated that dynamic laws of social phenomena exist, he concludes that these phenomena are also subject to static laws: there would be a contradiction in admitting the one set of laws without the other. In Comte’s mind then dynamics preceded statics. Even from an objective point of view, dynamics seem to be the most important. For, if we knew the dynamic laws it would not be impossible to deduce the static laws from them, while to do the reverse would be impracticable, at any rate for minds constituted like ours.
So, in the Cours de philosophie positive, social statics holds a very small place compared with that occupied by dynamics. It is true that it takes up the whole of the second volume of the Politique positive. But there Comte brings into it many considerations which arise more from ethics and religion than from sociology properly so called.
I.
The idea of the social consensus, more restricted than that of the vital consensus, dominates the whole of social statics. The science sets itself to study the continual actions and reactions which the various parts of the social system exercise upon one another. Each of the numerous elements of this system, instead of being observed by itself, must be conceived as in relation with all the others, with which it has constant solidarity. From whatever social element we start, it is always connected, in a more or less direct way, with the whole of the others, even with those which at first sight appear independent.[251]
What are the ultimate “social elements?” In biology, anatomical analysis was to stop at the tissue, or at least at the cell. In sociology, statical analysis will stop at the family. “Human society is made up of families and not of individuals: it is an elementary axiom in statical sociology.” In the eyes of social science, the individual is an abstraction. All social strength is the result of a “more or less extended co-operation,” that is to say of the combined action of a greater or smaller number of individuals. There is nothing purely individual except physical force. But what is the physical force of a man alone, without arms or tools? (for these already imply a co-operation of social activities). Intellectual power is of value only when others participate in it: so it is with moral power.
On the other hand, if all social force is the result of union, all social force is, nevertheless represented by an individual. The social organism is “collective in its nature, and individual in its functions.”[252] In this way the part played by the individual again becomes a very considerable one. If the individual, in so far as he is a social force, always represents some group, he is none the less possessed of his own personality which may precisely have taken a great part in the formation of such or such a group. We know that the social organism must not on all points be compared with the living organism. If the family is the ultimate element for social statics, this element is however itself made up of persons who are naturally independent, and who cannot be compared to cells.
The positive theory of the family is founded upon the biological theory of the physical and moral nature of man. This nature is sociable. The human species belongs to the category of those in which individuals not only live in more or less permanent bands, but form definite and durable societies. This is a fact in our experience. The social state is, for men, the state of nature. The “contract” theory cannot then be maintained. Comte does not stop to criticise it. The theorists of the counter-Revolution have sufficiently refuted Rousseau. According to Comte, sociability is spontaneous in the human species, in virtue of the instinctive leaning towards common life, “independently of any personal calculation, and often against the most immediate interest of the individual. Society is not then founded upon utility, which could moreover only appear in a state of society already established.”[253]
Thus, the family is the ultimate social element. Being preoccupied by this idea, Comte, who had such a deep, clear-sighted feeling of the evolution of societies, does not ask himself whether the family has evolved from something which existed previously. For him it is something natural, that is to say something given, beyond which we should not go back, and of which only the biological conditions can be determined. It is from this point of view that Comte defines the relations of man and woman in the family. He bases himself upon biology (that is to say both upon physiology and psychology), to represent the female sex as living in “a kind of state of continuous childhood.” Whence he concludes to the natural subordination of woman. This inferiority does not moreover extend to the whole of her moral nature, for, “in general, women are as superior to men by the natural development of sympathy, and sociability, as they are inferior to them where intellect and reasoning powers are concerned.”[254] On this last point, John Stuart Mill held the contrary opinion, and this disagreement contributed not a little to alienate him from positive philosophy. Later on, in his “second career,” Comte, who more and more came to subordinate the intellect to the heart, still more extolled the moral excellence of woman, and ended by considering her as “intermediary between humanity and man.” But even then, while proclaiming the sentimental, moral, and æsthetic superiority of woman, he persisted in maintaining that, from the intellectual point of view, by reason of immutable biological conditions, she remains inferior to man.
From analogous motives, Comte regards marriage as a “universal natural disposition, the first necessary basis of all society.” Every thing which tends to weaken marriage tends to disorganise the family, and, consequently, to destroy society in its constitutive elements. Comte will thus condemn divorce, of which he himself had the best reasons for appreciating the advantages. Generally, Comte’s theory of the family is modelled upon the Christian family. According to his constant practice, he seeks to detach the institutions of Catholicism, which he admires, from its dogmas which he believes to be almost dead. These institutions, excellent in themselves only suffer from being bound up with beliefs which are disappearing. So long, he says, as the family continues to have no other intellectual basis than religious doctrines, it will necessarily participate in their growing discredit. Positive philosophy “can alone henceforth establish the spirit of the family upon an immoveable foundation, with the modifications suitable to the modern character of the social organism.”[255] This new intellectual basis is established by positive psychology and social statics. The constitution of the family remains the same. But its foundation is henceforth positive dogma instead of religious dogma, demonstrated belief instead of revealed faith.
Perhaps we must recognise in the energetic defence made by Comte of the family and of marriage as he found them established by the side of Catholic influence, a desire not to be confused with the followers of Saint Simon, of Fourier, and the other reformers of his time. These did not hesitate to contradict current and traditional customs. In Comte’s view, this contradiction is a sign of error. Scientific truth is found in the prolongation of public reason and of common sense. Here Comte sees a new, and not one of the least, important arguments, in support of his own theory.