M. Lévy-Bruhl then explains that, whilst recognising the entire coherence of Comte’s collective labours, he proposes to confine his present study to the earlier and principal work, the Philosophy, which in M. Lévy-Bruhl’s opinion is the dominant and more fruitful composition.
This he regards as the representative work of the nineteenth century, as shown by the intellectual history of the period. He points to its influence on thought in England, in Europe, and in America. It will surprise many persons to learn that in M. Lévy-Bruhl’s opinion two eminent French writers, who assuredly neither were, nor were supposed to be, Positivists, “have done more for the diffusion of the ideas and method of Comte than Littré and all the other Positivists together.” These two are Taine and Renan, much as they differed from Comte’s actual scheme and doctrines. Renan indeed spoke of Comte as destined to prove one of the typical names of the century. The present writer remembers Renan saying to him with a most genial welcome, “I too am a believer in the religion of humanity.” History, romance, poetry, says M. Lévy-Bruhl, have all reflected the positive spirit:—
“Contemporary sociology is the creation of Comte; scientific psychology, in a certain degree has sprung from him. It is not rash to conclude that the Positivist Philosophy expresses some of the most characteristic tendencies of the age.”
It is clear that, if M. Lévy-Bruhl is in no sense an adherent of Comte, he is a most sympathetic and discerning master of the positive system.
M. Lévy-Bruhl opens his analysis of Comte’s philosophy by examining his main conceptions:—(1) The law of the three states, theological, metaphysical, and positive, through which all human ideas pass; (2) the Classification of the Sciences; (3) the scheme of each science in turn. And he closes with an explanation of the general doctrines of Humanity, as the centre of human thought, feeling, and activity.
The law of the three states announced by Comte in 1822, is thoroughly explained and entirely assimilated by M. Lévy-Bruhl. Its demonstration, he thinks, is complete when we recognise that, although many orders of ideas have not finally reached their positive state, all of them exhibit the tendency to the same evolution, and there is no single instance of a conception of a positive science ever retrograding into unverified figment. Of course the terms theological and metaphysical have to be understood in the sense adopted by Comte—i.e. “anthropomorphic” and “hypothetical,” a bare hypothesis wearing a scientific form. M. Lévy-Bruhl himself regards the law as irrefutable and of capital importance, “the corner stone of the positive system.”
Our professor is equally conclusive in his estimate of Comte’s classification of the sciences. He quite demolishes the objections made to it by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his essay with that title. M. Lévy-Bruhl repeats the criticisms to which Spencer has been exposed in this country and abroad by Littré, Lewes, Mill, and others. And he has no difficulty in showing that Mr. Spencer’s objections are due to his very slight acquaintance with Comte’s text, and his own superficial study of the English abridgments. In proposing a classification of the concrete sciences, Mr. Spencer enters on a task which Comte distinctly repudiates, and which on good grounds he treats as philosophically impracticable for purposes of evolutionary sequence. Comte’s strictly relative theory excludes such a scale of concrete science; whilst Spencer’s absolute theory of the universe forces him to attempt it in vain. If it be objected that Comte’s ascending scale of the sciences is “anthropocentric,” the answer is that, when reasonably understood as a philosophic device for sorting human ideas, not as a statement of absolute truth, the “anthropocentric” arrangement of human knowledge is the only one which is at once possible and useful.
It would need a long essay even to sketch M. Lévy-Bruhl’s analysis of Comte’s conception of science, of law, and of the six dominant sciences. He has thoroughly assimilated the positive spirit, that science implies a co-ordination of laws, not an encyclopædia of facts, that it is relative to our powers of observation and reasoning and not an absolute explanation of the universe in itself. He goes through the sciences, physical, social, and moral, in turn, as treated by Comte, and justly explains that Comte never attempted or conceived a vade-mecum or handbook of contemporary scientific knowledge, but a scheme for the co-ordination of general ideas of science. A real “philosophy of the sciences” is something wholly distinct from a compendium of all the sciences—a thing which in 1840 was far less possible than it might be now. Controversialists have reproached Comte with the obvious fact that his concrete science is now sixty years old. In dealing with these shallow criticisms, M. Lévy-Bruhl has shown how little able is any narrow specialist to understand the abstract conceptions of a real philosopher.
One of the most common of these misconceptions is the ignorant charge that Comte repudiated “psychology,” in the sense of the laws of man’s intellectual and moral nature. “Psychologie,” as M. Lévy-Bruhl shows, when Comte wrote, meant Cousin’s futile introspection of the ego. Comte certainly rejected that as idle, as do all competent psychologists of our time. Psychology, meaning the laws of mind and will, was not only an indispensable basis of Comte’s system, but its rational, systematic foundation dates from Comte’s suggestions. His signal contribution to psychology lies, not in his doctrine of its physiological basis, but in his referring it to sociology as its guide and inspiration.
M. Lévy-Bruhl concludes his study with a co-ordinate table of twelve contrasted propositions of the metaphysical and of the positive systems respectively. These show how simple and rational a transition is that between Positivism and the older theological and metaphysical hypotheses of the universe and of Man. We welcome a book which all positivists will regard as fair, learned, and instructive, and which all students of philosophy must regard as a masterly study of a comprehensive subject.