The Philosophy of Auguste Comte

by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl

Comte took up the attempt where Gall had failed. But his doctrine passed through two successive forms. He himself calls attention to the importance and to the causes of this change.

In 1837, when he was writing the third volume of the Cours de philosophie positive, he still closely followed not only Gall’s general conception, but also his anatomical and physiological hypotheses. He then thought that “the doctrine deduced by Gall from the method represents the true moral and intellectual nature of man and animals with admirable fidelity.” He approved of the division of the faculties into the affective and the intellectual, the organs of the former occupying the whole of the posterior and middle regions of the brain, and the organs of the others occupying only the anterior region of the brain, that is to say, a quarter or a sixth of the cephalic mass, “which at once re-establishes the pre-eminence of the affective faculties upon a scientific basis.” He even accepted the sub-division of these faculties into inclinations and feelings, and that of the intellectual faculties into perceptive faculties and reflective faculties.

At this moment, his objections were especially directed against the excessive multiplication of the faculties, and upon the insufficiency of the anatomy of the brain which accompanied the distinction of so many faculties. He thought the anatomists were right in protesting against this method of the phrenologists who, from the supposed existence of an irreducible faculty, assume the existence of a corresponding organ in the brain. But anatomy cannot thus be treated a priori. As the aim of every biological theory is to establish an exact harmony between anatomical analysis and physiological analysis, this evidently supposes that they are not exactly modelled upon one another, and that each one of them has been worked out in a distinct manner. We must then take up the analysis of the cerebral apparatus again, provisionally setting aside all idea of function, or at least only making use of it as an auxiliary in anatomical research.[192]

In 1851, in the first volume of the Politique positive, Comte’s attitude is quite different. In Gall’s psychology he no longer recognises anything but what is of historical interest. His own conception of psychology is completely altered. This great change has been determined by the foundation of sociology.

Undoubtedly Gall’s merit remains very great, for he rendered a service of the first order in daring to construct a positive theory of the intellectual and moral functions. Without this theory, which at first he considered to be exact in its general lines, Comte could not have undertaken to apply the positive method to social facts, nor consequently to found his philosophy. So his gratitude to Gall is almost as great as to Condorcet, “his spiritual father.” But once sociology is founded, in looking back, Comte understands that Gall’s “cerebral theory” cannot be maintained. It resembles a provisional bridge by means of which positive philosophy passed over the interval which separates biology proper from sociology. Hardly has it reached the other side when the bridge collapses. It matters little: it suffices that, thanks to the bridge, Comte should have set foot upon the sociological ground. He can now return in all security to the study of the mental functions. “When I had founded sociology,” he says, “I understood at last that Gall’s genius had been unable to construct a real physiology of the brain, owing to the lack of a knowledge of the laws of collective evolution, which alone must furnish at once its principle and its end. From that time I felt that this task, which before I expected biologists to accomplish, belonged to the second part of my own philosophical career.”[193]

The psychology, which, in the Cours de philosophie positive, was essentially biological, and ended simply in sociology, becomes, in the Politique positive essentially sociological, and is only secondarily biological. From 1846 Comte became conscious of this new orientation of his thought, and, during the five years which follow, he never ceases working at his “cerebral table.”

At first, he no longer demands an anatomical study parallel to the analysis of the mental functions, and independent of it. He intends, henceforth, to determine these functions outside all anatomical research. “The logical principle of this construction consists, for me, in its subjective institution.” He systematically subordinates anatomy to physiology, and he henceforth conceives the determination of the cerebral organs as the complement, and even as the result, of the positive study of the intellectual and moral functions. At bottom, “this subject has never allowed of any other method but the subjective, well or ill employed.” It has been equally used by the disciples of Gall and by his adversaries. What psychology has lacked up to the present is, not exact localisations but a sufficiently deep analysis of intellectual and moral phenomena. And as a matter of fact it was impossible to treat this problem well, so long as we ignored the laws of sociology, “which alone is capable of dealing with these noble functions.”[194]

Thus, in order to determine the elementary faculties, those which are irreducible, and which by their co-operation produce the complex phenomena which are apprehended by consciousness, the method must be at once subjective and sociological. For the subject which we must analyse is not the individual consciousness, of which the study is too inaccessible, and whose life is too short: it is the universal subject, humanity, “the case of the species being alone sufficiently developed to characterise the various functions.” To this analysis, as a system of control, will be joined the observation of animals. Indeed, all our innate dispositions belong also to the other superior animals. If then the study of man should seem to establish elementary, moral, or even intellectual functions, of which we see no trace in these animals, by this alone we should consider that the analysis has been imperfect, and that complex results have been considered as irreducible. “Sociological inspiration controlled by zoological appreciation: such is the general principle of the positive theory of the soul.”[195]

By this method Comte obtains 18 irreducible faculties, of which 10 are representative of the heart, 5 of the mind, and 3 of the character. To each of these he assigns a special organ. He places the organ of the heart in the posterior portion of the brain and in the cerebellum, the organs of the mind in the anterior portion of the brain, and those of character in the intermediary region. Anatomists are free to verify a posteriori the separation of the 18 elements which Comte distinguished a priori in the cerebral apparatus. The existence of these organs, in any case, appears to him to be sufficiently demonstrated, and anatomical determination is not very important. We might confine ourselves to the specification of the number and the situation of the organs, which we have deduced from the number and relations of the elementary functions. It would not be necessary for us to know their shape or their size. The utility of cerebral localisations resembles that which geometers draw from curves for the better consideration of equations.[196] The organ is simply the static equivalent of the function of the soul. It suffices for us to know its existence and its position so as to situate in it all the relations of the function itself, so to speak. It plays the part of a schematic drawing.

So, the theory of the brain and of the soul is no longer “simultaneous.” In fact, the theory of the soul is first constructed by a subjective and independent method and without any consideration of the disposition of the cerebral apparatus. This disposition is deduced, afterwards, from the theory of the soul, once it is established.