This rule of historical method, which Comte likes to recall, applies very well to his own system. In order to reach as complete an understanding as possible of his doctrine, to appreciate exactly its general orientation, to understand the importance which the author attaches in it to this or that part, the study of the text will not suffice. We must further take into account the historical circumstances in which the doctrine found its birth, the general movement of contemporary ideas, and the manifold influences which have reacted upon the mind of the philosopher.
Now one great fact, above all others, dominates the period in which the positive philosophy appeared. It is the French Revolution, as Comte expressly states: without it, neither the theory of progress, nor consequently social science, nor consequently again positive philosophy would have been possible. Was it not, moreover, inevitable that this extraordinary social upheaval should by reflex action have determined a vast and prolonged movement in philosophical and political speculation? The effects of this reflex action varied according to the value and the originality of the minds which experienced them. But in the greatest as in the most mediocre we recognise infallibly certain common features. For instance, men and women, in the rising generation at the beginning of the XIX. century, never fail to put the same question to themselves: “What social institutions should be established after the Revolution?” and by this all understand not only the political form of government, but the very principles of social order: a problem which appeared as urgent from the practical point of view, as it was supreme from the theoretical point of view. It is this problem in various forms which preoccupies Chateaubriand as well as Fourier and Saint-Simon, and Joseph de Maistre as well as Cousin and Comte.
All agree upon the first point. We must “reconstruct.” An “organic” period must succeed the “critical” period which has just come to an end. According to Saint Simon’s striking expression, humanity is not made to inhabit ruins. The revolutionary storm had been so formidable, the din so deafening, the social back-wash so violent, that no one exactly measured the effect which had been produced. Many institutions which had only been shaken seemed to be overthrown. A good part of the old régime had even gone through the crisis without being too greatly damaged, and had survived. But this fact, which was very well appreciated by the men of 1850, could not yet be discovered by the first generation of the century. It conscientiously believed that the old régime had crumbled altogether, and that the task either of restoring it, or of again laying down the very bases of society belonged to it. In this the first generation remained faithful to the spirit of the Revolution, which had considered itself as an effort to institute an entirely new social and political system, a thought in which the civilised world had shared. Now, in spite of the labours of the revolutionary assemblies, in spite of the power and of the great talent which the Convention had at its command, this ambitious hope had not been realised. The question remained open after the Directoire and after the Empire. When the old régime was supposed to have been destroyed, how was society to be “reorganised”?
Thus, at the opening of the XIX. century, philosophical speculation was at first to be directed towards the religious and social problems. Undoubtedly the influence of the uninterrupted advance of the positive sciences was also felt at the same time. A study of Auguste Comte’s system could hardly fail to recognise the fact. But, even with Comte, scientific interest, however active it may be, is subordinated to the social interest. What he asks of philosophy is the rational settlement of the bases of modern society. Thus, he means to discover the elements of a religion which can be substituted to Catholicism, whose mission he considers as at an end.
“The XIX. century,” Ranke has said, “is especially a century of restoration.” A deep saying, which exactly expresses one of the leading features in the historical physiognomy of this century. It is precisely thus that it was conceived by those who inaugurated it. Such indeed is the main tendency of the greater number of philosophical doctrines which have expressed its most intimate characteristics. Only, as is generally the case, this restoration absorbs and consolidates a large part of the results acquired during the crisis. At the same time new problems, raised especially by the development of industry in its larger aspects, made clear-sighted men feel that the revolutionary period, however desirable it might be to bring it to a close, was really only beginning.
II.
Like many of his contemporaries Auguste Comte thought himself singled out for the mission of formulating the principle of “social reorganisation.” But this is where he differs from them. Each of the reformers begins by proposing his own solution of the social problem, and all his efforts only tend to justify it. As this problem is the most urgent one in their eyes, it is also the only one which they have put directly to themselves. Now this method, according to Comte, is a bad one, and in following it they court certain failure. For a social problem is such that its solution cannot be obtained immediately; other problems, more theoretical in character, must be solved beforehand. It is therefore these which must first be dealt with, if we seek anything else than the lengthening of the history of political dreams and of social chimeras. “Institutions,” Comte says, “depend on morals, and morals, in their turn, depend on beliefs.” Every scheme of new institutions will therefore be useless so long as morals have not been “reorganised,” and so long as, to reach this end, a general system of opinions has not been founded, which are accepted by all minds as true, as was, for instance, the system of Catholic dogma in Europe in the Middle Ages. Therefore, either the social problem admits of no solution—and Comte does not stop at this pessimistic hypothesis,—or the solution sought for supposes that a new philosophy shall have been previously established. This is why Comte wishes to be at first only a philosopher. In 1824 he writes “I regard all discussions upon institutions as pure nonsense, until the spiritual reorganisation of society has been brought about, or at least is very far advanced.”[1]
Comte’s originality will therefore lie in taking from science and philosophy the principles upon which depends the social reorganisation, which is the real end of his efforts. While having the same aim as the reformers of his time, he will follow a different path. It is indeed a polity which he also claims to found, but this polity is positive: it rests upon ethics and philosophy both equally positive. Undoubtedly the polity is the raison d’être of the system, which Comte has constructed for it. But, without the system, the Polity would remain arbitrary. It would lack authority and that which would make it legitimate. Philosophy is no less indispensable to the foundation of politics, than are politics to the completion and unification of philosophy.
Whence comes it that Comte has put this great problem, which preoccupied all the minds of his time, in a form which belongs to him alone? We cannot here enter into the detailed biographical study which would throw some light upon this question. Let us only recall that Comte was born in a Catholic Royalist family. From the age of thirteen, he tells us, he had broken with the political convictions and the religious beliefs of his own people. Perhaps, however, the trace of these beliefs was less completely effaced than he himself thought. During the whole of his life he professed the liveliest admiration for Catholicism. On his own confession he was especially inspired in this by Joseph de Maistre; but, if he so much appreciated the book du Pape, did not his great sympathy partly spring from impressions of childhood indelibly stamped upon a passionate and sensitive nature?
Whatever may be the case, the first subject which seriously occupied his mind was mathematics. Being admitted to the Ecole polytechnique a year before the usual age, he began to study the natural sciences. At the same time he “meditates” upon Montesquieu and Condorcet. He approaches philosophy properly so called by reading the Scottish philosophers, Ferguson, Adam Smith, Hume, and he sees very well that the last one is far above the others. Having left the Ecole polytechnique, he remains in Paris, and while giving lessons to earn his living, he completes his scientific education with Delambre, de Blainville, and the Baron Thénard. He reads assiduously Fontenelle, d’Alembert, Diderot, and especially Condorcet who has distilled and clarified the philosophy of the XVIII. century. While studying Descartes and the great mathematicians who came after him, he also follows attentively the labours of naturalists and of biologists, of Lamarck, for instance, of Cuvier, of Gall, of Cabanis, of Bichat, Broussais and of so many others. He understands the philosophical importance of these new sciences, as already pointed out by Diderot. But for all that he does not neglect historical and social studies. He has read the ideologists, among whom he especially esteemed Destutt de Tracy. Without giving up Montesquieu or Condorcet, he studies the traditionalists: M. de Bonald, this “energetic thinker” and, more than the others, Joseph de Maistre who made the deepest and most enduring impression upon his mind.