The Philosophy of Auguste Comte

by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl

Comte himself, their successor and their heir, uses no other language. In his long study of the fundamental sciences he never fails to distinguish the contents of the science from its method, what he calls “the scientific point of view and the logical point of view.” But, while distinguishing them, he considers that they are correlated and closely allied among themselves. He no more conceives method as separated from the science which he studies, than science as separated from its method. Both constitute one intellectual reality seen under two aspects closely allied to one another.[87] To conclude, traditional logic is fast disappearing. In its theoretical parts it is superannuated like the metaphysical philosophy whence it proceeds. In its applied parts it is barren if separated from the practice of the sciences.

II.

There is however a positive logic, and in it we can also distinguish a theoretical and a practical part.

The theoretical part deals with logical laws. These laws which, finally, govern the intellectual world, are invariable, and common not only to all time and places, but also to all subjects whatever without any distinction even between those which Comte calls real and chimerical. They are observed, fundamentally, even in dreams.[88] But this universality of logical laws is not understood by him in the sense in which the rationalist philosophers understand it. Comte is only concerned with a permanence and continuity purely historical in character. The mind of man, like the rest of his nature remains identical with itself, through the diversity of epochs and situations. It evolves without changing fundamentally “without other differences than those of gradually developed maturity and experience.”

Ancient philosophy claimed to discover the intellectual laws by reflection, as if the mind could think and at the same time see itself thinking, reason and observe its reasoning Comte rejects this introspective method, which yields no scientific results. If we apply the method of positive investigation to the intellectual phenomena as to all the others, two ways only are open. We can look at it from the static point of view, that is to say, study the conditions upon which these phenomena depend, and refer the phenomena to them as we refer generally the function to its organ. In this sense the study of the intellectual phenomena belongs to biology. Or else, from the dynamic point of view, we can consider these phenomena in their evolution, by observing the successive phases through which they pass. And since the life of the individual is too short for this “progress” to be appreciable, it must be studied in the life of the species. So understood, the science of the intellectual laws comes within the sphere of sociology.

Now, higher biology which deals with moral and intellectual phenomena, has only just been founded by Cabanis and Gall. Comte discovered that it could not be constituted as a science without the help of sociology. It is then to this newly born study that the search after intellectual laws in every way belongs.

Positive logic abstains, as we see, from speculating upon the leading principles of knowledge, principles of identity, of contradiction of causality, etc. These kinds of principles are not objects of examination or of discussion. Comte upon this point is in full accord with the Scottish school. No positive science questions its own principles, for how can we submit the very principles of all reasoning to criticism? Nothing is less in accordance with the positive spirit than an attempt of this kind. It is simply metaphysical and has no chance of success.

The intellectual laws of which the research is positive are such as the law of the three states (which is the most general of all), or such, for instance, as these: the human mind always makes an effort to place its conceptions in accordance with its observations; in every case the human mind forms the simplest hypothesis, etc. These laws, which are derived from the nature of the human mind, and whose action has always been felt, could only be discovered and formulated quite recently. For biology and sociology, to which they are related, could not be constituted before the more simple fundamental sciences were sufficiently advanced. To reach a scientific knowledge of the intellectual laws, to found a “positive logic,” nothing less was needed than the long evolution whose term is marked by Comte’s philosophy.

Applied logic, or theory of method, also finds a new meaning in the positive doctrine. Comte does not fall into the mistake which he has criticised. He does not propose to teach an art ex professo, and he will not formulate the rules which positive research must follow in order to be productive. Here again Comte will found his doctrine upon the intellectual evolution of humanity.

In the first place, like the sciences, the positive methods are collective works, “the work of the species gradually developed in the long sequence of centuries.” Comte considers as impertinent the pretensions of some modern scientists, who pride themselves upon having invented the comparative method in biology. As if Aristotle had not already practised it! And Aristotle had not been the first to do so. The processes of the positive methods do not reveal themselves all at once, under a perfect and final form. They gradually come to light during a long period of groping. The human mind notices the processes which have succeeded in simple cases. It endeavours to generalize them, and tests them in new and slightly more complex cases. It seeks for the reason why in certain cases the end is reached, in others it is missed. Method is thus insensibly formed by a kind of practical induction. Its essential processes are, like the leading ideas in the sciences, “inspirations from universal wisdom.” The office of great men—and this is sufficient for them to earn our gratitude—is to recognise the value and the fecundity of these inspirations, to set them at work, and especially to endow them with an often indefinite extension by separating them from the concrete conditions in which they were at first manifested.