"Un second caractère très-essentiel de notre classification, c'est d'être nécessairement conforme à l'ordre effectif du développement de la philosophie naturelle. C'est ce que vérifie tout ce qu'on sait de l'histoire des sciences."[25]
But Mr. Spencer has so thoroughly and completely demonstrated the absence of any correspondence between the historical development of the sciences, and their position in the Comtean hierarchy, in his essay on the "Genesis of Science," that I shall not waste time in repeating his refutation.
A third proposition in support of the Comtean classification of the sciences stands as follows:—
"En troisième lieu cette classification présente la propriété très-remarquable de marquer exactement la perfection relative des différentes sciences, laquelle consiste essentiellement dans le degré de précision des connaissances et dans leur co-ordination plus ou moins intime."[26]
I am quite unable to understand the distinction which M. Comte endeavours to draw in this passage in spite of his amplifications further on. Every science must consist of precise knowledge, and that knowledge must be co-ordinated into general proportions, or it is not science. When M. Comte, in exemplification of the statement I have cited, says that "les phénomènes organiques ne comportent qu'une étude à la fois moins exacte et moins systématique que les phénomènes des corps bruts," I am at a loss to comprehend what he means. If I affirm that "when a motor nerve is irritated, the muscle connected with it becomes simultaneously shorter and thicker, without changing its volume," it appears to me that the statement is as precise or exact (and not merely as true) as that of the physicist who should say, that "when a piece of iron is heated, it becomes simultaneously longer and thicker and increases in volume;" nor can I discover any difference, in point of precision, between the statement of the morphological law that "animals which suckle their young have two occipital condyles," and the enunciation of the physical law that "water subjected to electrolysis is replaced by an equal weight of the gases, oxygen and hydrogen." As for anatomical or physiological investigation being less "systematic" than that of the physicist or chemist, the assertion is simply unaccountable. The methods of physical science are everywhere the same in principle, and the physiological investigator who was not "systematic" would, on the whole, break down rather sooner than the inquirer into simpler subjects.
Thus M. Comte's classification of the sciences, under all its aspects, appears to me to be a complete failure. It is impossible, in an article which is already too long, to inquire how it may be replaced by a better; and it is the less necessary to do so, as a second edition of Mr. Spencer's remarkable essay on this subject has just been published. After wading through pages of the long-winded confusion and second-hand information of the "Philosophic Positive," at the risk of a crise cérébrale—it is as good as a shower-bath to turn to the "Classification of the Sciences," and refresh oneself with Mr. Spencer's profound thought, precise knowledge, and clear language.
II. The second proposition to which I have committed myself, in the paper to which I have been obliged to refer so often, is, that the "Positive Philosophy" contains "a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as is anything in ultramontane Catholicism."
What I refer to in these words, is, on the one hand, the dogmatism and narrowness which so often mark M. Comte's discussion of doctrines which he does not like, and reduce his expressions of opinion to mere passionate puerilities; as, for example, when he is arguing against the assumption of an ether, or when he is talking (I cannot call it arguing) against psychology, or political economy. On the other hand, I allude to the spirit of meddling systematization and regulation which animates even the "Philosophic Positive," and breaks out, in the latter volumes of that work, into no uncertain foreshadowing of the anti-scientific monstrosities of Comte's later writings.
Those who try to draw a line of demarcation between the spirit of the "Philosophic Positive," and that of the "Politique" and its successors, (if I may express an opinion from fragmentary knowledge of these last,) must have overlooked, or forgotten, what Comte himself labours to show, and indeed succeeds in proving, in the "Appendice Général" of the "Politique Positive." "Dès mon début," he writes, "je tentai de fonder le nouveau pouvoir spirituel que j'institue aujourd'hui." "Ma politique, loin d'être aucunement opposée à ma philosophie, en constitue tellement la suite naturelle que celle-ci fut directement instituée pour servir de base à celle-là, comme le prouve cet appendice."[27]
This is quite true. In the remarkable essay entitled "Considérations sur le Pouvoir spirituel," published in March 1826, Comte advocates the establishment of a "modern spiritual power," which, he anticipates, may exercise an even greater influence over temporal affairs, than did the Catholic clergy, at the height of their vigour and independence, in the twelfth century. This spiritual power is, in fact, to govern opinion, and to have the supreme control over education, in each nation of the West; and the spiritual powers of the several European peoples are to be associated together and placed under a common direction or "souveraineté spirituelle."