Positivism assumes as its starting point that modern society is suffering from a deeply rooted evil, that it is like a man in a fever who tosses and turns in his bed, seeking a position in which he may rest at ease, and finding none. Do what it will it can find no stable position. In vain has it effected immense progress, for this very progress turns to its disadvantage. Beside, what does progress avail if society cannot enjoy it in order and peace? But whence comes this evil, this trouble, this feverish and sterile agitation? Evidently it comes from intellectual and moral anarchy. Nobody any longer believes in anything; there is no longer any law, any principle, that unites all minds in a common symbol; every one draws from himself; divided egotisms are in mutual conflict, and seek each other's destruction. If such is the nature of the malady, the remedy is obvious. It must be in obtaining a doctrine which accepted by all becomes the doctrine of all, a bond of union for them, and the principle of peace.
But where is this doctrine to be found? Is it a religious doctrine— Catholicity, for instance? The Catholic doctrine, indeed, gave formerly the result desired, and realized in the world an incomparable unity; but it has had its day; science has demonstrated the impossibility of its dogmas, and it, in fact, finds now only here and there a real believer—the great majority have ceased to believe it. Will Protestantism supply the doctrine needed? No; for Protestantism is only a degenerate and illogical Catholicism. Will Islamism give it? Islamism has certainly its grand sides, but its morality is too defective, and its dogma is hardly less repulsive than the Christian. It is, then, manifest that all existing religions are impotent for the future to rally and unite in a common bond the minds of men. But as religion cannot do it, perhaps philosophy, metaphysics, can? Metaphysics is only the abstract form of religion, resting on the same basis and sustained by it, and does nothing but substitute abstract beings that have no reality for the supernatural beings imagined by religion, and which science equally rejects. Metaphysics has, as religion, been indeed useful, has aided science to show the inanity of religions dogmas; but, if useful in the work of destruction, it is impotent in that of rebuilding, and can henceforth serve only to perpetuate intellectual anarchy—that is to say, only aggravate the evil instead of curing it. If, then, the remedy can be found neither in religion nor in metaphysics, where can it be found?
It is to be found in a doctrine which substitutes for the supernatural beings of religion, and the abstract entities of metaphysics, the real beings which science demonstrates, and the existence of which nobody disputes or can dispute. But how find or how construct such a doctrine? The experience of what has been done in the exact sciences gives distinctly enough the answer. There was a time when mathematics, astronomy, physics, did not exist, and when men explained all the phenomena [{726}] of nature by chimerical hypotheses. Now, how has man come forth from that ignorance? By observing instead of imagining, as he had hitherto done; and in observing phenomena he discovered their laws, and thus, with time and effort, he succeeded in creating the sciences which are called mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry. Can we doubt, after this, that by applying the same method or following the same process in regard to the science of individual man, or biology, and the science of society, or sociology, we shall obtain the same result? And let it not be said that these sciences are of another order; the distinction attempted to be established between them and the exact sciences is puerile and unfounded, as science exists only on condition of being exact, and if not exact it is not science. Biology and sociology have, it is true, not yet the character of exact sciences; but why have they not? Simply because they are as yet in their infancy, as was chemistry two centuries ago; because, on the one hand, they have been badly studied, and, on the other, because they are more complex and less easily mastered. The difficulties, it is admitted, are therefore great; but it is necessary to conquer them, since the salvation of the world can be secured on no other condition.
The terms of the problem are now distinctly stated, together with the method of its solution. The malady from which society suffers is intellectual anarchy, and intellectual anarchy will cease only when we have made of the sciences of biology and sociology (it is known what these sciences mean) sciences as exact as are mathematics, astronomy, etc.; and to do this it is only necessary to use the same method in constructing them that is used in constructing the so-called exact sciences.
However, the whole is not yet said. Observation is, indeed, the true method, but observation of what? Of moral phenomena, the operations of the soul? But what is the soul? Who has seen it? Certain metaphysicians have, indeed, pretended to derive all science from the phenomena of the soul; but this is a gross error; psychology is an impossible science. In psychology the subject, or rather the organ which observes, is precisely that which is observed—the eye striving to see itself. To what, then, is observation to be applied? To the body, to the cerebral organs, and, primarily, to the external world; to the inorganic world at first, afterward to the organic world, to minerals, plants, animals. The study of animals is especially serviceable, since man, at most, has over the animal only the advantage of some superior intellectual faculties, and even that advantage appears doubtful, observes M. Comte, if we compare the acts of the mammiferae, the most elevated, with those of savages, the least developed.
After zoology, the most useful science is phrenology, the science which best teaches us what man really is. Dr. Gall under this relation has rendered an immense service, and created the true science of man. He erred, it is true, by too minute detail, and in wishing to determine at once the organs of theft, luxury, etc., which gave fair scope to criticism; [Footnote 111] but it would be difficult to resist the accumulated proofs on which he had established his system. In short, science is now in the position to give a classification of eighteen interior functions of the brain, or a systematic tableau of the soul. Thus it is neither from metaphysics nor from religion, but from zoology, and, above all, from phrenology, that we must seek the knowledge of the laws which govern intelligence.
[Footnote 111: Nothing is new under the sun, says Solomon. Any one curious on the subject of phrenology may read, as M. Cousin has well remarked, in Plato's Timoeus, all that Gall and Spurzheim, and their followers, have really established in their pretended science.—TRANSLATOR.]
However, method alone does not suffice. There is needed also a criterion, and here M. Comte confesses that the difficulty is great.
To observe with profit, to be able, by observation, to abstract from the [{727}] phenomena their laws, we most have an anterior law, a type-law, to serve as the term of comparison, in like manner as a standard is necessary to determine the value of a coin. Now, what furnishes this type? Observation? But this is only to recommence the difficulty. The embarrassment can be relieved only by reasoning from analogy, and a historical theory. Positivism, after all, then, resorts to reasoning and theorizing! The sciences which are firmly seated on positive realities began in hypotheses, and it has been by the aid of hypotheses, ascertained afterward to be false, that observation has succeeded in discovering the real laws of these sciences! It must be the same with biology and sociology. Humanity began by religion, and religion has passed through three phases, fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism. Religion, truly, is only a fiction, but a useful fiction, and even necessary to the development of humanity. Fetichism, in offering plants to the adoration of man, taught him to cultivate them; polytheism, in creating supernatural beings, gave birth to poetry and the fine arts; monotheism, in elevating minds, has fitted them for the culture of science. After religion came metaphysics, which, by transforming the dogmas into abstractions, destroyed them; and, by destroying them, opened the way for positivism. Now, what has taken place for humanity in general must be reproduced for each man in particular; each one of us must pass through the religious state and the metaphysical state before we can arrive at the positivist state. Thus, then, in like manner as it has been by means of false hypotheses that the real laws of the science have been discovered, so by means of hypotheses equally false, religion and metaphysics, will be discovered the true laws of biology.
We confess that we do not very clearly perceive what relation there is between this theory and the problem to be solved. The problem is how to find a criterion by the aid of which the true may be distinguished from the false; but this criterion escapes us still, and we have for it only a second method superposed on the first, or history coming to the aid of physiology. True, we are not told what bond connects the two methods, or how we are to combine them, and from their combination obtain the type-law; but we must not be too difficult, and we forewarn our readers that they must not look for any real connection, any logical nexus, between the various propositions which we are about to place before them. Beyond the gross materialism which follows necessarily from the positivist premises, all is arbitrary and capricious; the master says it, and he must be believed on his word, without being asked for reasons, good or bad. Our readers will judge for themselves if this be not so, and that they may not accuse us of exaggerating anything, we shall give generally textual citations.