A General View of Positivism / Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life

by Auguste Comte

In this great crisis there are naturally two principal phases; of which only the first, or negative, phase has yet been accomplished. In it we gave the last blow to the old system, but without arriving at any fixed and distinct prospect of the new. In the second or positive phase, which is at last beginning, a basis for the new social state has to be constructed. The first phase led as its ultimate result to the formation of a sound philosophical system; and by this system the second phase will be directed. It is this twofold connexion which we are now to consider.

The negative or destructive phase of the Revolution stimulated the desire of Progress, and consequently the study of social phenomena

The strong reaction which was exercised upon the intellect by the first great shock of revolution was absolutely necessary to rouse and sustain our mental efforts in the search for a new system. For the greatest thinkers of the eighteenth century had been blinded to the true character of the new state by the effete remnants of the old. And the shock was especially necessary for the foundation of social science. For the basis of that science is the conception of human Progress, a conception which nothing but the Revolution could have brought forward into sufficient prominence.

Social Order was regarded by the ancients as stationary: and its theory under this provisional aspect was admirably sketched out by the great Aristotle. In this respect the case of Sociology resembles that of Biology. In Biology statical conceptions were attained without the least knowledge of dynamical laws. Similarly, the social speculations of antiquity are entirely devoid of the conception of Progress. Their historical field was too narrow to indicate any continuous movement of Humanity. It was not till the Middle Ages that this movement became sufficiently manifest to inspire the feeling that we were tending towards a state of increased perfection. It was then seen by all that Catholicism was superior to Polytheism and Judaism; and this was afterwards confirmed by the corresponding political improvement produced by the substitution of Feudalism for Roman government. Confused as this first feeling of human Progress was, it was yet very intense and very largely diffused; though it lost much of its vitality in the theological and metaphysical discussions of later centuries. It is here that we must look if we would understand that ardour in the cause of Progress which is peculiar to the Western family of nations, and which has been strong enough to check many sophistical delusions, especially in the countries where the noble aspirations of the Middle Ages have been least impaired by the metaphysical theories of Protestantism or Deism.

But whatever the importance of this nascent feeling, it was very far from sufficient to establish the conviction of Progress as a fundamental principle of human society. To demonstrate any kind of progression, at least three terms are requisite. Now the absolute character of theological philosophy, by which the comparison between Polytheism and Catholicism was instituted, prevented men from conceiving the bare possibility of any further stage. The limits of perfection were supposed to have been reached by the mediaeval system, and beyond it there was nothing but the Christian Utopia of a future life. The decline of mediaeval theology soon set the imagination free from any such obstacles; but it led at the same time to a mental reaction which for a long time was unfavourable to the development of this first conception of Progress. It brought a feeling of blind antipathy to the Middle Ages. Almost all thinkers in their dislike of the Catholic dogmas were seized with such irrational admiration for Antiquity as entirely to ignore the social superiority of the mediaeval system; and it was only among the untaught masses, especially in the countries preserved from Protestantism, that any real feeling of this superiority was retained. It was not till the middle of the seventeenth century that modern thinkers began to dwell on the conception of Progress.

It re-appeared then under a new aspect. Conclusive evidence had by that time been furnished that the more civilized portion of our race had advanced in science and industry, and even, though not so unquestionably, in the fine arts. But these aspects were only partial: and though they were undoubtedly the source of the more systematic views held by our own century upon the subject, they were not enough to demonstrate the fact of a progression. And indeed, from the social point of view, so far more important than any other, Progress seemed more doubtful than it had been in the Middle Ages.

But this condition of opinion was changed by the revolutionary shock which impelled France, the normal centre of Western Europe, to apply itself to the task of social regeneration. A third term of comparison, that is to say the type on which modern society is being moulded, now presented itself; though it lay as yet in a distant and obscure future. Compared with the mediaeval system it was seen to be an advance as great as that which justified our ancestors of chivalrous times in asserting superiority to their predecessors of antiquity. Until the destruction of Catholic Feudalism became an overt fact, its effete remnants had concealed the political future, and the fact of continuous progress in society had always remained uncertain. Social phenomena have this peculiarity, that the object observed undergoes a process of development as well as and simultaneously with the observer. Now up to the time of the Revolution, political development, on which the principal argument for the theory of Progress must always be based, corresponded in its imperfection to the incapacity of the scientific spirit to frame the theory of it. A century ago, thinkers of the greatest eminence were unable to conceive of a really continuous progression; and Humanity, as they thought, was destined to move in circles or in oscillations. But under the influence of the Revolution a real sense of human development has arisen spontaneously and with more or less result, in minds of the most ordinary cast; first in France, and subsequently throughout the whole of Western Europe. In this respect the crisis has been most salutary; it has given us that mental courage as well as force without which the conception could never have arisen. It is the basis of social science and therefore of all Positive Philosophy; since it is only from the social aspect that Positive Philosophy admits of being viewed as a connected whole. Without the theory of Progress, the theory of Order, even supposing that it could be formed, would be inadequate as a basis for Sociology. It is essential that the two should be combined. The very fact that Progress, however viewed, is nothing but the development of Order, shows that Order cannot be fully manifested without Progress. The dependence of Positivism upon the French Revolution may now be understood more clearly. Nor was it by a merely fortuitous coincidence that by this time the introductory course of scientific knowledge by which the mind is prepared for Positivism should have been sufficiently completed.

But we must here observe that, beneficial as the intellectual reaction of this great crisis undoubtedly was, its effects could not be realized until the ardour of the revolutionary spirit had been to some extent weakened. The dazzling light thrown upon the Future for some time obscured our vision of the Past. It disclosed, though obscurely, the third term of the social progression; but it prevented us from fairly appreciating the second term. It encouraged that blind aversion to the Middle Ages, which had been inspired by the emancipating process of modern times; a feeling which had once been necessary to induce us to abandon the old system. The suppression of this intermediate step would be as fatal to the conception of Progress as the absence of the last; because this last differs too widely from the first to admit of any direct comparison with it. Right views upon the subject were impossible therefore until full justice had been rendered to the Middle Ages, which form at once the point of union and of separation between ancient and modern history. Now it was quite impossible to do this as long as the excitement of the first years of the revolution lasted. In this respect the philosophical reaction, organized at the beginning of our century by the great De Maistre, was of material assistance in preparing the true theory of Progress. His school was of brief duration, and it was no doubt animated by a retrograde spirit; but it will always be ranked among the necessary antecedents of the Positive system; although its works are now entirely superseded by the rise of the new philosophy, which in a more perfect form has embodied all their chief results.

What was required therefore for the discovery of Sociological laws, and for the establishment upon these laws of a sound philosophical system, was an intellect in the vigour of youth, imbued with all the ardour of the revolutionary spirit, and yet spontaneously assimilating all that was valuable in the attempts of the retrograde school to appreciate the historical importance of the Middle Ages. In this way and in no other could the true spirit of history arise. For that spirit consists in the sense of human continuity, which had hitherto been felt by no one, not even by my illustrious and unfortunate predecessor Condorcet. Meantime the genius of Gall was completing the recent attempts to systematize biology, by commencing the study of the internal functions of the brain; as far at least as these could be understood from the phenomena of individual as distinct from social development. And now I have explained the series of social and intellectual conditions by which the discovery of sociological laws, and consequently the foundation of Positivism, was fixed for the precise date at which I began my philosophical career: that is to say, one generation after the progressive dictatorship of the Convention, and almost immediately after the fall of the retrograde tyranny of Bonaparte.

Thus it appears that the revolutionary movement, and the long period of reaction which succeeded it, were alike necessary, before the new general doctrine could be distinctly conceived of as a whole. And if this preparation was needed for the establishment of Positivism as a philosophical system, far more needful was it for the recognition of its social value. For it guaranteed free exposition and discussion of opinion: and it led the public to look to Positivism as the system which contained in germ the ultimate solution of social problems. This is a point so obvious that we need not dwell upon it further.