Auguste Comte disliked and despised Plato, altogether preferring Aristotle to him as a philosopher; but it is fundamentally as a Platonist, not as an Aristotelian, that he should himself be classed—in this sense, that he valued knowledge above all as the means towards reconstituting society on the basis of an ideal life. And this is the first reason why his philosophy is called positive—to distinguish it as reconstructive from the purely negative thought of the Revolution. The second reason is to distinguish it as dealing with real facts from the figments of theology and the abstractions of metaphysics. Positive science explains natural events neither by the intervention of supernatural beings nor by the mutual relations of hypostasised concepts, but by verifiable laws of succession and resemblance. Turgot was the first to distinguish the theological, metaphysical, and mechanical interpretations as successive stages of a historical evolution (1750); Hume was the first to single out the relations of orderly succession and resemblance as the essential elements of real knowledge (1739); Comte, with the synthetic genius of the nineteenth century, first combined these isolated suggestions with a wealth of other ideas into a vast theory of human progress set out in the fifth and sixth volumes of his Philosophie Positive—the best sketch of universal history ever written.
The positive sciences fall into two great divisions—the concrete, dealing with the actual phenomena as presented in space and time; the abstract, which alone concern philosophy, dealing with their laws. The most important of the abstract sciences is Sociology, claimed by Comte as his own special creation. The study of this demands a previous knowledge of biology, psychology
being dismissed as a metaphysical delusion and phrenology put in its place. The science of life presupposes Chemistry, before which comes Physics, presupposing Astronomy, and, as the basis of all, Mathematics, divided into the calculus and geometry. At a later period Morality was placed as a seventh fundamental science at the head of the whole hierarchy.
At a first glance some serious flaws reveal themselves in the imposing logic of this scheme. Astronomy as a concrete science ought to have been excluded from the series, its admission being apparently due to the historical circumstance that the most general laws of physics were ascertained through the study of celestial phenomena. But on the same ground geology can no longer be excluded, as its records led to the recognition of the evolution of life; or should evolution be referred to the concrete sciences of zoology and botany, by parity of reasoning human progress should be treated as a branch of universal history—which, in fact, is what Comte makes it in his fifth and sixth volumes. It would have been better had he also studied social statics on the historical method. As it is, the volume in which the conditions of social equilibrium are supposed to be established contains only one chapter on the subject, and that is very meagre, consisting of some rather superficial observations on family life and the division of labour. No doubt the matter receives a far more thorough discussion in the author's later work, Politique Positive. But this merely embodies his own plan of reorganisation for the society of the future, and therefore should count not as science, but as art.
The Positivist theory of social dynamics is that all
branches of knowledge pass through three successive stages already described as the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. And this advance is accompanied by a parallel evolution on the governmental side from the military to the industrial régime, with a revolutionary or transitional period answering to metaphysical philosophy. To this scheme it might be objected that the parallelism is merely accidental. A scientific view of nature and a profound knowledge of her laws is no doubt far more conducive to industry than a superstitious view; but it is also more favourable to the successful prosecution of war, which, indeed, always has been an industry like another. Nor, to judge by modern experience, does it look as if a government placed in the hands of a country's chief capitalists—which was what Comte proposed—would be less militant in its general disposition than the parliamentary governments which he condemns as "metaphysical." In fact, it is by theologians and metaphysicians that our modern horror of war has been inspired rather than by scientists.
The great idea of Comte's life, that the positive sciences, philosophically systematised, are destined to supply the basis of a new religion surpassing Catholicism in its social efficacy, seems a delusion really inherited from one of his pet aversions, Plato. It arose from a profound misconception of what Catholicism had done, and a misconception, equally profound, of the means by which its priesthood worked. In spite of Comte's denials, the leverage was got not by appeals to the heart, but by appeals to that future judgment with which the preaching of righteousness and temperance was associated by St. Paul, his supposed precursor in religion, as Aristotle was his precursor in philosophy.
The worship of Humanity, or, as it has been better called, the Service of Man, is a great and inspiring thought. Only it is not a religion, but a metaphysical idea, derived by Comte from the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and by them through imperial Rome from the Humanists and Stoics of ancient Athens.
J. S. Mill.