Boutroux combines the views of Ravaisson and Lachelier by insisting on freedom and contingency, but maintaining at the same time a teleological doctrine. Already in discussing his conception of freedom we have referred to his metaphor of the sailors in the ship. His doctrine of contingency is directly opposed to any rigid pre-ordained plan of reality or progress, but it does not prevent the spirit from a creative teleology, the formation of a plan as it advances. This is precisely, is it not, the combination of free action and of teleology which we find in our own lives? Boutroux is thus able to side with Ravaisson in his claim to see tendencies to beauty and truth and goodness, the fruits of the spirit, which it creates and to which it draws us, while at the same time he maintains freedom in a manner quite as emphatic as Lachelier. He is careful to remind us that “not all developments are towards perfection.”[[13]] In particular he dislikes the type of social theory or of sociology which undervalues the personal life.[[14]]
[13] Contingence des Lois de la Nature, p. 127.
[14] Thus he agrees with Renouvier’s objection to Comte’s view and to Communism.
Similar in many ways to the ideas of Ravaisson and of Boutroux are those expressed by Blondel. He is concerned deeply with the problem of God and progress, which arises out of his view of the Deity as immanent and as transcendent. He is quite Bergsonian in his statement that God creates Himself in us, but he qualifies this by asking the significant question, “If he does not EXIST how can He create Himself in us.” This brings us back to Ravaisson’s view. Other remarks of Blondel, however, recall the doctrine of Vacherot and of Renan, that God is the ideal to which we are ever striving. “It is a necessity that we should be moving on, for He is always beyond.” All action is an advance, a progress through the realm of materialistic determinism to the self-conscious personality in man, but it is from a transcendent teleology, a Divine Providence, that this action proceeds.
This is the line of thought pursued by Fouillée, who in many of his writings gives considerable attention to the doctrines of progress. It may be doubted, however if he ever surpassed the pages in his Liberté et Déterminisme and L’Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces, which deal with this point. These are the best expressions of his philosophy, and Fouillée repeated himself a great deal. We might add, however, his Socialism and his book on L’Avenir de la Métaphysique.
We have observed the importance attached by Comte to his new science of sociology. Fouillée endeavours to give to it a metaphysical significance with which Comte did not concern himself. He suggests in his volume on La Science sociale contemporaine that as biology and sociology are closely related, the laws common to them may have a cosmic significance. Is the universe, he asks, anything more than a vast society in process of formation, a vast system of conscious, striving atoms? Social science which Fouillée looks upon, as did Comte, as constituting the crown of human knowledge, may offer us, he thinks, the secret of universal life, and show us the world as the great society in process of development, erring here and blundering there in an effort to rise above the sphere of physical determinism and materialism to a sphere where justice shall be supreme, and brotherhood take the place of antagonism, greed and war. The power at the heart of things, which is always ready to manifest itself in the human consciousness when it can, might be expressed, says Fouillée, in one word as “sociability.”
Life in its social aspect displays a conspiration to a common end. The life of a community resembles a highly evolved organism in many respects, as Fouillée shows; but although he thus partially adopts the biological and positivist view of the sociologists, Fouillée does not overlook the idealistic conceptions of Renouvier and his plea for social justice. He rather emphasises this plea, and takes the opportunity to point out that it represents the best political thought of his country, being founded on the doctrine of the contrat social of Rousseau, of which social theory it is a clear and modern interpretation.
We may take the opportunity afforded here by Fouillée’s mention of sociology, in which he was so keenly interested, to observe that the positivist tendency to emphasise an indefinite progress remained with most of the sociologists and some of the historians. It is seen in the two famous sociological works of Tarde and Durkheim respectively, Les Lois de l’Imitation and La Division du Travail social. Two writers on history deserve mention as illustrating the same tendency: Lacombe, whose work De l’Histoire considérée comme Science (1894) was very positivist in outlook, and Xénopol. This last writer, treating history in 1899 in his Principes fondamentaux de l’Histoire,[[15]] distinguished cause in history from causality in science, and showed that white the latter leads to the formation of general laws the former does not. History has no laws, for it is succession but never repetition. Much of his book, however, reflects the naturalism and positivism which is a feature of the sociological writers.[[16]]
[15] This work, revised and considerably augmented, was re-issued in 1905 with the new title, La Théorie de l’Histoire.
[16] It was this which made Enouvier criticise sociology. He disagreed with its principles almost entirely. On this, see his notes to “La Justice,” Part VII. of La Nouvelle Monadogie, pp. 527-530.