His hierarchy being erected, he next enters on a review of the several received sciences, marking throughout the successful, or erroneous, application of the positive method. This occupies three volumes. It is a portion of the work which we are restricted from entering on; nor shall we deviate from the line we have prescribed to ourselves. But before opening the fourth volume, in which he treats of social physics, it will not be beside our object to take a glance at the method itself, as applied in the usual field of scientific investigation, to nature, as it is called—to inorganic matter, to vegetable and animal life.
We are not here determining the merits of M. Comte in his exposition of the scientific method; we take it as we find it; and, in unsophisticated mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline—to make room for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid waste.
Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of their succession—such is the material of science. All enquiry into causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory; the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed, perhaps, to have a meaning—such is the supreme dictate of the method, and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities, than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen, gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls through space—ask not how!—the mathematician will tell you at what rate it flies—let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous transformations—the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of proportions—names and figures both—why these transmutations take place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from the earth, and grow, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask what is life? Science will generalize the fact to you—give you its formula for the expression of growth, decomposition, and recomposition, under circumstances not as yet very accurately collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain! Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his formula of decomposition and recomposition. As attraction in the planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical expression, so life in the plant is to be known only as decomposition and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances. Think of it as such—no more. But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something I do not know. Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what life is. Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks why? Child! I respond, that the hands do move is an ultimate fact—so, represent it to yourself—and here, moreover, is the law of their movement—the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter revolves once. This is knowledge, and will be of use to you—more you cannot understand. And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.
But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth—what is this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing, seeking, this way and that, its pasture?—what have we here? Irritability and a tissue. Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself—what is this? Sensation and a nerve. Does the nerve feel? you inconsiderately ask, or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which sensation resides? A smile of derision plays on the lip of the philosopher. There is sensation—you cannot express the fact in simpler or more general terms. Turn your enquiries, or your microscope, on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected. Ask not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of ontology. And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter? Not more perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the surface of the earth. Does the organization of the man, or something else within him, think?—does the organization of that worm, or something else within it, feel?—they are virtually the same questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science. Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with which it is, or was, connected.
All this "craves wary walking." It is a trying course, this method, for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem, by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the fantastic, inexplicable interval.
We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of Physique Social. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the work—perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole—where, in order to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the purpose of exposition will allow:—
"It is impossible to deny that the political world is intellectually in a deplorable condition. All our ideas of order are hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient system of religious and military power, regarded especially in its constitution, catholic and feudal; a doctrine which, from the philosophic point of view of this treatise, represents incontestably the theologic state of the social science. All our ideas of progress continue to be exclusively deduced from a philosophy purely negative, which, issuing from Protestantism, has taken in the last age its final form and complete development; the doctrines of which constitute, in reality, the metaphysic state of politics. Different classes of society adopt the one or the other of these, just as they are disposed to feel chiefly the want of conservation or that of amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these antagonist doctrines present themselves in all their plenitude, and with their primitive homogeneity; they are found less and less in this form, except in minds purely speculative. But the monstrous medley which men attempt in our days of their incompatible principles, cannot evidently be endowed with any virtue foreign to the elements which compose it, and tends only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.
"However pernicious may be at present the theologic doctrine, no true philosophy can forget that the formation and first development of modern societies were accomplished under its benevolent tutelage; which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate in the historical portion of this work. But it is not the less incontestably true that, for about three centuries, its influence has been, amongst the nations most advanced, essentially retrograde, notwithstanding the partial services it has throughout that period rendered. It would be superfluous to enter here into a special discussion of this doctrine, in order to show its extreme insufficiency at the present day. The deplorable absence of all sound views of social organization can alone account for the absurd project of giving, in these times, for the support of social order, a political system which has already been found unable to sustain itself before the spontaneous progress of intelligence and of society. The historical analysis which we shall subsequently institute of the successive changes which have gradually brought about the entire dissolution of the catholic and feudal system, will demonstrate, better than any direct argument, its radical and irrevocable decay. The theologic school has generally no other method of explaining this decomposition of the old system than by causes merely accidental or personal, out of all reasonable proportion with the magnitude of the results; or else, when hard driven, it has recourse to its ordinary artifice, and attempts to explain all by an appeal to the will of Providence, to whom is ascribed the intention of raising a time of trial for the social order, of which the commencement, the duration, and the character, are all left equally obscure."...—P.14
"In a point of view strictly logical, the social problem might be stated thus:—construct a doctrine that shall be so rationally conceived that it shall be found, as it develops itself, to be still always consistent with its own principles. Neither of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition, even by the rudest approximation. Both display numerous and direct contradictions, and on important points. By this alone their utter insufficiency is clearly exhibited. The doctrine which shall fulfil this condition, will, from this test, be recognized as the one capable of reorganizing society; for it is an intellectual reorganization that is first wanted—a re-establishment of a real and durable harmony amongst our social ideas, disturbed and shaken to the very foundation. Should this regeneration be accomplished in one intelligence only, (and such must necessarily be its manner of commencement,) its extension would be certain; for the number of intelligences to be convinced can have no influence except as a question of time. I shall not fail to point out, when the proper opportunity arrives, the eminent superiority, in this respect, of the positive philosophy, which, once extended to social phenomena, will necessarily combine the ideas of men in a strict and complete manner, which in no other way can be attained."—P. 20.
M. Comte then mentions some of the inconsistencies of the theologic school.