If positive science, which has limited itself to the study of the external causes of maladies, or the causes of degeneration, and has confined itself to the inculcation of physical hygiene—that is to say, the protection of material life—has contributed so largely to morality, how much more may we hope for moral elevation from a positive science which concentrates upon the protection of the "inner life" of man?
And if the first part, scrupulously following the truth by exact research, has arrived at the social realization of Christian principles, we may presume that its continuation, conducted with the same loyalty and exactitude of research, will in like manner succeed in filling up the voids which still exist in modern civilization.
This is, I believe, the clearest and most direct reply to those who ask what can be hoped for in the morality and religion of the new generations, from our "pover-ositive" method of education.
If experimental medicine, by going back to the causes of diseases, has succeeded in solving the problems which concern health, an experimental science which concentrates upon the study of normal man's psychical activities should lead to the discovery of the superior laws of life and of the health of mankind.
This science has not yet been established, and awaits its investigators; but we may foresee that if universal hygiene, which gives humanity a guide to physical life, has come from medical research, then this new science should produce a hygiene which will give to all men practical guidance in moral life.
And if positive medicine arose in the hospitals, where sick people were collected by private and public generosity, with charitable intentions and under the guidance of empiricism, this science should, above all, concentrate and find its experiences in schools: that is to say, in the places where all children are gathered together for their social elevation, and with the empirical guidance of education.
What was the elevated note of scientific medicine which gradually superseded the empirical method? While empirical medicine believed in blood-letting and blistering, scientific medicine elevated and illustrated the ancient principle which had been forgotten, and which contained all the new wisdom in a synthesis: the medicinal force of nature, vis medicatrix naturæ. A natural power of fighting and conquering illness exists in the living organism, and it is to this that we must look in order to construct rational medicine; he who believes that the doctor and the medicine cure the sick is an empiricist; but he who knows that it is "only the organism" that can produce the cure, and that therefore we must protect and assist the force which nature gives for our salvation, is a scientist.
Now the sum of treatments necessary to protect the natural forces of defense and reorganization in positive medicine, are much more minute and are diffused in much vaster fields than the old empiricism.
The great number of specialists who replace the single type of doctor of the last century, is sufficient to emphasize the enormous difference in practise which the new tendency involves.