Translated from Le Correspondant
POSITIVISM.
A. COMTE, LITTRÉ, H. TAINE.
An exposition of the various philosophical systems constructed in our times against Christianity, either as means of combatting it or as substitutes for it, and showing in the false assumption with which they all start the reason of their failure, would be an interesting and instructive work. It would be a new history of variations, and of the impotence of the human mind when it assumes to be sufficient for itself, and the natural complement to the first, were there a Bossuet to write it. Now it is a chapter of this history not yet written, but which one day will be, that I propose to prepare in rendering an account here of the positivist philosophy, of which M. Auguste Comte was the inventor, and M. Littré is the learned and fervent defender. To enable my readers to understand, as well as may be, this pretended philosophy, I will first state through what accidents and revolutions it has passed, then set forth its chief formulas, and finally conclude by passing on them such critical judgment as an impartial examination shall suggest.
The founder and chief of the positivist philosophy, Auguste Comte, died at Paris in 1858, in the 59th year of his age. He was born in 1798 at Montpellier, of Christian parents; but, placed early in the lyceum of that city, he soon lost there, under the influence of the reigning spirit of the school, the faith of his childhood. From the lyceum he went to the École Polytechnique, in which the worship of the Convention and revolutionary ideas was at that period held in high honor. We recall these circumstances, because the childhood and youth of a man serve to explain his mature age.
It does not appear that M. Comte, on leaving the Polytechnic School, received, as is ordinarily the case, any appointment in the public service, civil or military—wherefore we know not. Whatever may have been the reason, as he was without fortune he supported himself for several years by giving lessons in mathematics. [{722}] After a while, however, he was appointed repeater and examiner in the Polytechnic School, which position he held till the revolution of 1848. His profession as well as his aptitudes devoted him to the study of the exact sciences; but he cherished a far higher ambition, and already aspired to be the reformer and prophet of the human race. That this thought, was early germinating in his mind, is proved by a pamphlet which he published in 1822, when only twenty-four years of age, entitled "Système de Politique Positiviste" (System of Positivist Politics). He subsequently greatly modified and enlarged it, and his pretensions above all greatly expanded as he advanced; but the first idea of his system, not difficult, however, to discover, it must be acknowledged was deposited in that publication.
About this time he became connected with Henri Claude de Saint-Simon, and being much younger than the founder of Saint-Simonism, he naturally yielded to his influence, and became very near being absorbed in the god of the Rue de Taitbout. But Auguste Comte could not consent to that; he would be master not disciple, and therefore, after having written some articles in the Saint-Simonian journal, Le Producteur, he abandoned the sect, separated from Saint-Simon, and lamented bitterly the precious time which that depraved juggler, as he called him, had made him lose. After this rupture he was restored to himself and freed from all restraint; he could devote himself to the finishing stroke of the great work he meditated. [Footnote 108] The solemn moment approached. Hitherto he had only staked out his ground and sown the seeds, but the synthesis, the real cerebral unity, to use his language, was wanting. Without further delay he set himself resolutely at work, and a meditation continued for four score hours brought him to the conception, to the preamble as it were, of the systemization of the whole positive philosophy. [Footnote 109] But, alas! the long meditation brought with the system an access of madness. It was slight at first, he assures us, a simple passing enfeeblement of the cerebral organs, resulting from excessive labor; but the physicians took hold of it, and then the evil grew so much worse that it became necessary to shut him up in a madhouse—him who had just discovered the law of the universe! M. Littré complains that one of his collaborators in the Journal des Débats threw up this fact against the doctrine of his master, and he cites instances of very superior men who have had similar accidents befal them. This cannot be denied. No one can say that he is secure from such cruel attacks; but we may be permitted to remark that there is here an intimate correlation between the doctrine and the mental malady, since both are produced at the same time and by the same intellectual effort.
[Footnote 108: M. de Chalambert forgets to add that the cause of this rapture was precisely the attempt of Saint-Simon, after having failed to kill himself, to found a new religion, which he called Nouveau Christianisme, and of which the positive religion professed afterwards by M. Comte is only a manifest plagiarism.—TRANSLATOR]
[Footnote 109: A useless labor, for he might have learned it from that depraved juggler, Saint-Simon, who had reached it as early as 1804. Auguste Comte never made any advance on his master, but to the last remained rather behind him. With all his pretensions to originality, he was never anything more than the disciple of Saint-Simon.—TRANSLATOR.]
Two or three years passed thus, after which M. Comte, having recovered his health, resumed his labors, and in 1829 published the first volume of his "Cours de Philosophie Positive," in which for the first time he gives the principal data of his new theory. Five other volumes, of eight or nine hundred pages each, followed at long intervals, and it was only in 1842 that the work could be completed; not that ideas were wanting, but money to pay the printers, as the author himself tells us. During that time he opened a course of lectures, in which, under pretext of teaching astronomy, he essayed to indoctrinate the public in his principles. Thanks to these several methods of propagating his views, he at length succeeded in gaining a [{723}] few disciples, not numerous, indeed, but enough to encourage the hope of obtaining more.