And again he says, the inquiry is to be conducted 'stripped of all circumstances of climate, locality, etc.'
It will be sufficiently evident from this brief statement, that The Philosophy of History (not History, as the letter says) which constitutes the Dynamic Branch of Sociology in the Positive System is, in Comte's own intention and showing, a series of bald abstractions from which the substantial or concrete elements of individual and national activity, the proximate causes of Human Progress, are dropped out; and that History in the ordinary sense of that term, or in the broader sense in which it has been used in these papers, as referring to a possible Science, finds no place in his Scientific Schedule.
The error into which our critic has fallen, in this case, undoubtedly resulted in part from the unfortunate confounding of the words Philosophy and Science, which pervades the Positive System. Philosophy and Science are not, in any proper use of the terms, synonymes. They relate—as it is designed at some future time to show—to equally true and important, though opposite aspects of the Universe, considered either as a whole or in relation to its parts. Comte, as has been heretofore exhibited, degraded Science from its Exact and Certain position, in order to include Domains of Inquiry which did not have and to which he could not furnish a truly scientific basis. In like manner, after discarding a false Philosophy, unable to institute a true, or at least a sufficiently comprehensive one, on the foundation which he had reared, he gave the name of Positive Philosophy to his incongruous coordination of Scientific and Unscientific Departments of Thought. The terms Science and Philosophy, thus wrenched from their legitimate uses, are therefore loosely understood and indiscriminately applied by the students of his System and the followers of his social theories, in ways which are productive of numerous misunderstandings, though not perhaps of unprofitable criticisms.
In a subsequent letter, the same gentleman calls attention to another supposed error—the omission of La Morale from the Positive Hierarchy of Sciences—and adds:
'Although this final Science was in a manner involved in Sociology as treated in the Philosophy, its normal separation was yet a step of Capital Importance; sufficiently so to make the enumeration of Comte's Theoretical Hierarchy without it equivalent to a misrepresentation.'
For the purposes of the article in question—the exhibition of the incongruous, and hence really unscientific character of the Hierarchy—the Positive Scale was given in the paper alluded to, as stated by Comte himself in the 'Positive Philosophy'—a work which is accepted as valid, both by the followers of his theories in regard to Science, and the adopters of his Social Scheme—there being no occasion, at that time, to indicate the subsequent elevation into a separate Science, of what there formed a subdivision of Sociology. The after enumeration of La Morale as a separate Science, in a work which is not regarded as valid by many of the disciples of the Positive Philosophy, is, however, exhibited in the present writing, where a more minute enumeration of the Branches of Inquiry included in the Positive Hierarchy rendered it desirable.
DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA;
OR, LIFE IN POLAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Sunday, December 30th, 1760.