"Thus," he says, "there arose a Christianity more and more simplified, and reduced at length to a vague and powerless theism, which, by a strange medley of terms, the metaphysicians distinguished by the title of natural religion, as if all religion was not inevitably supernatural. In pretending to direct the social reorganization after this vain conception, the metaphysic school, notwithstanding its destination purely revolutionary, has always implicitly adhered, and does so, especially and distinctly, at the present day, to the most fundamental principle of the ancient political doctrine—that which represents the social order as necessarily reposing on a theological basis. This is now the most evident, and the most pernicious inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine. Armed with this concession, the school of Bossuet and De Maistre will always maintain an incontestable logical superiority over the irrational detractors of Catholicism, who, while they proclaim the want of a religious organization, reject, nevertheless, the elements indispensable to its realization. By such a concession the revolutionary school concur in effect, at the present day, with the retrograde, in preventing a right organization of modern societies, whose intellectual condition more and more interdicts a system of politics founded on theology."
Our readers will doubtless agree with us, that this review of political parties (though seen through an extract which we have been compelled to abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible in quoting from an author) displays a singular originality and power of thought; although each one of them will certainly have his own class of objections and exceptions to make. We said that the impression created by the work was decidedly conservative, and this quotation has already borne us out. For without implying that we could conscientiously make use of every argument here put into our hands, we may be allowed to say, as the lawyers do in Westminster Hail, if this be so, then it follows that we of the retrograde, or as we may fairly style ourselves in England—seeing this country has not progressed so rapidly as France—we of the stationary party are fully justified in maintaining our position, unsatisfactory though it may be, till some better and more definite system has been revealed to us, than any which has yet made its advent in the political world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic, or liberal school have no proper office but that of destruction—if its nature be essentially transitional—can we be called upon to forego this position, to quit our present anchorage, until we know whereto we are to be transferred? Shall we relinquish the traditions of our monarchy, and the discipline of our church, before we hear what we are to receive in exchange? M. Comte would not advise so irrational a proceeding.
But M. Comte has himself a constructive doctrine; M. Comte will give us in exchange—what? The Scientific Method!
We have just seen something of this scientific method. M. Comte himself is well aware that it is a style of thought by no means adapted to the multitude. Therefore there will arise with the scientific method an altogether new class, an intellectual aristocracy, (not the present race of savans or their successors, whom he is particularly anxious to exclude from all such advancement,) who will expound to the people the truths to which that method shall give birth. This class will take under its control all that relates to education. It will be the seat of the moral power, not of the administrative. This, together with some arguments to establish what few are disposed to question, the fundamental character of the laws of property and of marriage, is all that we are here presented with towards the definite re-organization of society.
We shall not go back to the question, already touched upon, and which lies at the basis of all this—how far it is possible to construct a science of Sociology. There is only one way in which the question can be resolved in the affirmative—namely, by constructing the science.
Meanwhile we may observe, that the general consent of a cultivated order of minds to a certain class of truths, is not sufficient for the purposes of government. We take, says M. Comte, our chemistry from the chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer; if these were fixed principles, we should take our politics with the same ease from the graduated politician. But it is worth while to consider what it is we do when we take our chemistry from the chemist, and our astronomy from the astronomer. We assume, on the authority of our teacher, certain facts which it is not in our power to verify; but his reasonings upon these facts we must be able to comprehend. We follow him as he explains the facts by which knowledge has been obtained, and yield to his statement a rational conviction. Unless we do this, we cannot be said to have any knowledge whatever of the subject—any chemistry or astronomy at all. Now, presuming there were a science of politics, as fixed and perfect as that of astronomy, the people must, at all events, be capable of understanding its exposition, or they could not possibly be governed by it. We need hardly say that those ideas, feelings, and sentiments, which can be made general, are those only on which government can rest.
In the course of the preceding extract, our author exposes the futility of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of their reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of the very same kind, and even still more hopeless. A multitude once taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a submission of their reason to political teachers—teachers who have no sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine. But this is a difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.
We are afraid, notwithstanding all his protestations, M. Comte will be simply classed amongst the Destructives, so little applicable to the generality of minds is that mode of thought, to establish which (and it is for this we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely, for so great sacrifices.
The fifth volume—the most remarkable, we think, of the whole—contains that historical survey which has been more than once alluded to in the foregoing extracts. This volume alone would make the fortune of any expert Parisian scribe who knew how to select from its rich store of original materials, who had skill to arrange and expound, and, above all, had the dexterity to adopt somewhat more ingeniously than M. Comte has done, his abstract statements to our reminiscences of historical facts. Full of his own generalities, he is apt to forget the concrete matter of the annalist. Indeed, it is a peculiarity running through the volume, that generalizations, in themselves of a valuable character, are shown to disadvantage by an unskilful alliance with history.
We will make one quotation from this portion of the work, and then we must leave M. Comte. In reviewing the theological progress of mankind, he signalizes three epochs, that of Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of Monotheism. Our extract shall relate to the first of these, to that primitive state of religion, or idolatry, in which things themselves were worshipped; the human being transferring to them immediately a life, or power, somewhat analogous to its own.