Auguste Isidore Auguste Marie Comte

COMTE, AUGUSTE (ISIDORE AUGUSTE MARIE FRANcOIS XAVIER) 0798-1857), French Positive philos opher, was born on Jan. 1o, 1798, at Montpellier, where his father was a receiver-general of taxes for the district. He went first to the local school, and in 1814 to the Ecole Polytechnique, where he displayed, in addition to great intelligence, the strenuous applica tion that marked him all his life. His tendency to rebellion against authority, however, was also strongly developed already, and be fore he had been there five years he was involved in a mutiny which resulted in the break-up of the school. In 1816 he returned to Paris to make his living by teaching mathematics.

Saint-Simon.—About 1818 Comte became associated with Saint-Simon, who was destined to exercise a very decisive in fluence upon the turn of his speculation. In after years he so far forgot himself as to write of Saint-Simon as a depraved quack, and to deplore his connection with him as purely mis chievous. While the connection lasted he thought very differently. Saint-Simon is described as the most estimable and lovable of men, and the most delightful in his relations; he is one of the most wo_rthy of philosophers. The most cursory glance into Saint-Simon's writings is enough to reveal the thread of con nection between the ingenious visionary and the systematic thinker, though this is not to deny either Comte's originality of thought or his superiority to Saint-Simon. It was undoubtedly Saint-Simon who launched him, to take Comte's own word, by suggesting what became the two starting points of the Comtist system—first, that political phenomena are as capable of being grouped under laws as other phenomena; and second, that the true destination of philosophy must be social, and the true object of the thinker, the reorganization of the moral, religious and political systems. The occasion resulting in the breach between them (1824) was an attempt on Saint-Simon's part to print a production of Comte's as if it were in some sort connected with Saint-Simon's schemes of social reorganization. Not only was the breach not repaired, but long af terwards Comte, as we have said, with painful ungraciousness took to calling the encourager of his youth by very hard names.

In Le Producteur Comte began to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing in his mind. He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was hoped would bring money as well as fame, and which were to be the first dogmatic exposition of the Positive philosophy. These attracted hearers so eminent as Hum boldt the cosmologist, Poinsot the geometer, and Blainville the physiologist.

Unhappily, after the third lecture of the course, Comte suffered a severe attack of cerebral derangement. He did not recover his health for more than a year, and as soon as convalescence set in he was seized by so profound a melancholy at the disaster which had thus overtaken him, that he threw himself into the Seine. Fortunately he was rescued, and the shock did not stay his return to mental soundness.

The Course of Positive Philosophy

began to be published in 183o, the lectures were renewed in 1828. In 1833 he was appointed examiner of the boys who in the various provincial schools aspired to enter the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris. This and two other engagements as a teacher of mathematics secured him an income of some i400 a year. He made M. Guizot, then Louis Philippe's minister, the important proposal to establish a chair of general history of the sciences. If there are four chairs, he argued, devoted to the history of philosophy, that is to say, the minute study of all sorts of dreams and aberrations through the ages, surely there ought to be at least one to explain the formation and progress of our real knowledge. This wise sugges tion, still unfulfilled, was at first welcomed, according to Comte's own account, by Guizot's philosophic instinct, and then repulsed by his "metaphysical rancour." Every year from 183i to 1848 he delivered a course of gratui tous lectures on astronomy, and this public spirit showed itself in other ways. He was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the National guard, his position being that, as a republican, though he would not take arms against the new monarchy, he would take no oath to defend it. His only relaxation was the opera, to which he was devoted.

In 1842, as already stated, the last volume of the Positive Phil osophy was given to the public ; but instead of the contentment which he had earned by 12 years' hard work, Comte found him self in the midst of a sea of small trouble. First in 1842 he sep arated from his wife. Next, a lawsuit with his publisher, who inserted in the sixth volume a protest against a certain footnote, in which Comte had used some hard words about Arago. Comte threw himself into the suit with energy and won it. Third and worst of all, in a preface to the sixth volume, he deliberately angered the men on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of examiner for the Polytechnic school. The result was that he lost the appointment, and with it, one-half of his in come. This waS the occasion of an episode which is of more than merely personal interest.

J. S. Mill

was in correspondence with Comte before 1842. He had been greatly impressed by Comte's philosophic ideas; Mill admits that his own System of Logic owes many valuable thoughts to Comte, and that, in the portion of that work which treats of the logic of the moral sciences, a radical improvement in the conceptions of logical method was derived from the Positive Philosophy. Their correspondence turned principally upon the questions of the equality between men and women, and of the expediency and constitution of a sacerdotal or spiritual order. When Comte found himself straitened, he confided the entire circumstances to Mill. As might be supposed by those who know the affectionate anxiety with which Mill regarded the welfare of any one whom he believed to be doing good work in the world, he at once took pains to have Comte's loss of income made up to him, until Comte should have had time to repair that loss by his own endeavour. Mill persuaded Grote, Molesworth, and Raikes Currie to advance the sum of i240. At the end of the year (1845) Comte had taken no steps to enable himself to dispense with the aid of the three Englishmen. Mill applied to them again, but with the exception of Grote, who sent a small sum, they gave Comte to understand that they expected him to earn his own living. Mill had suggested to Comte that he should write articles for the English periodicals, and expressed his own willingness to translate any such articles from the French. Comte at first fell in with the plan, but he speedily surprised and disconcerted Mill by boldly taking up the position of "high moral magistrate," and accusing the three defaulting contributors of a scandalous falling away from righteousness and a high mind. Mill was chilled by these pretensions; and the correspondence came to an end. There is something to be said for both sides. Comte, regarding himself as the promoter of a great scheme for the benefit of humanity, might reasonably look for the support of his friends in the ful filment of his designs, but his subsequent attitude of censorious condemnation put him entirely in the wrong.

From 1845 to 1848 Comte lived as best he could, as well as made his wife her allowance, on an income of L200 a year. His little account books of income and outlay, with every item en tered down to a few hours before his death, are accurate and neat enough to have satisfied an ancient Roman householder. In 1848, through no fault of his own, his salary was reduced to .f80. Littre and others, with Comte's approval, published an appeal for subscriptions, and on the money thus contributed Comte sub sisted for the remaining nine years of his life. By 1852 the sub sidy produced as much as L200 a year. It is worth noticing that Mill was one of the subscribers, and that Littre continued his as sistance after he had been driven from Comte's society by his high pontifical airs. We are sorry not to be able to record any similar trait of magnanimity on Comte's part. His character, admirable as it is for firmness, for intensity, for inexorable will, for iron devotion to what he thought the service of mankind, yet offers few of those' softening qualities that make us love good men and pity bad ones.

Comte's Literary Method.—It is best to think of him only as the intellectual worker, pursuing in uncomforted obscurity the laborious and absorbing task to which he had given up his whole life. His singularly conscientious fashion of elaborating his ideas made the mental strain more intense than even so exhausting a work as the abstract exposition of the principles of positive science need have been. He did not write down a word until he had first composed the whole matter in his mind. When he had thoroughly meditated every sentence, he sat down to write, and then, such was the grip of his memory, the exact order of his thoughts came back to him, and he wrote down what he had intended to write, without the aid of a note. It is hardly possible, however, to share the admiration expressed by some of Comte's disciples for his style. When compared with such philosophic writing as Hume's, Diderot's, Berkeley's, then Comte's manner is heavy, laboured, monotonous, without relief and without light. Only the interest of the matter prevents one from thinking of Rivarol's ill-natured remark upon Condorcet, that he wrote with opium on a page of lead. The general effect is impressive, not by any vir tues of style, but by reason of the magnitude and importance of the undertaking and the visible conscientiousness and the grasp with which it is executed. It is by sheer strength of thought, by the vigorous perspicacity with which he strikes the lines of cleavage of his subject, that he makes his way into the mind of the reader ; in the presence of gifts of this power we need not quarrel with an ungainly style.

Comte pursued one practice which ought to be mentioned in connection with his personal history, the practice of what he styled hygiene cerebrale. After he had acquired what he con sidered to be a sufficient stock of material, and this happened before he had completed the Positive Philosophy, he abstained from reading newspapers, reviews, scientific transactions and everything else, except two or three poets (notably Dante) and the Imitatio Christi. It is true that his friends kept him informed of what was going on in the scientific world. Still this partial di vorce of himself from the record of the social and scientific activity of his time, though it may save a thinker from the de plorable evils of dispersion, moral and intellectual, accounts in no small measure for the exaggerated egoism, and the absence of all feeling for reality which marked Comte's later days.

In 1845 Comte made the acquaintance of Madame Clotilde de Vaux. Very little is known about her qualities. Her letters speak well for her good sense and good feeling, and it would have been better for Comte's later work if she had survived to exert a wholesome restraint on his exaltation. Their friendship had only lasted a year when she died (1846), but the period was long enough to give her memory a supreme ascendancy in Comte's mind. After her death Comte was inconsolable, he visited her tomb every week and invoked her memory three times every day.

Comte lost no time, after the completion of his Course of Posi tive Philosophy, in proceeding with the System of Positive Polity, for which the earlier work was designed to be a foundation. The first volume was published in 1851, and the fourth and last in 1854. In 1848 when the political air was charged with stimulating elements, he founded the Positive society, with the expectation that it might grow into a reunion as powerful over the new revolu tion as the Jacobin club had been in the revolution of 1789. The hope was not fulfilled, but a certain number of philosophic dis ciples gathered round Comte, and eventually formed themselves, under the guidance of the new ideas of the latter half of his life, into a kind of church, for whose use was drawn up the Positivist Calendar (1849), in which the names of those who had advanced civilization replaced the titles of the saints. Gutenberg and Shakespeare were among the patrons of the thirteen months in this calendar. In the years 1849, 185o and 1851, Comte gave three courses of lectures at the Palais Royal. They were gratui tous and popular, and in them he boldly advanced the whole of his doctrine, as well as the direct and immediate pretensions of him self and his system. The third course ended in the following un compromising terms "In the name of the past and of the future, the servants of humanity—both its philosophical and its practical servants—come forward to claim as their due the general direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at length a real Provi dence in all departments—moral, intellectual and material. Con sequently they exclude once for all from political supremacy all the different servants of God—Catholic, Protestant or Deist—as being at once behindhand and a cause of disturbance." A few weeks after this invitation, a very different person stepped for ward to constitute himself a real Providence.

The Catechism of Positivism was published in 1852. In the preface Comte took occasion to express his approval of Louis Napoleon's coup d' etat of the and of December—"a fortunate crisis which has set aside the parliamentary system and instituted a dictatorial republic." Whatever we may think of the political sagacity of such a judgment it is due to Comte to say that he did not expect to see his dictatorial republic transformed into a dynastic empire, and next, that he did expect from the Man of December freedom of the press and of public meeting. His later hero was the emperor Nicholas, "the only statesman in Christen dom"—as unlucky a judgment as that which placed Dr. Franca in the Comtist Calendar. Comte died of cancer on Sept. 5, 1857. By his will he appointed 13 executors who were to preserve his rooms at 10 rue Monsieur-le-Prince as the headquarters of the new religion of Humanity.

Early Writings.—In proceeding to give an outline of Comte's system, we shall consider the Positive Polity as the more or less legitimate sequel of the Positive Philosophy, notwithstanding the deep gulf which so eminent a critic as J. S. Mill insisted upon fixing between the earlier and the later work. His letters when he was a young man of one-and-twenty, and before he had published a word, show how strongly present the social motive was in his mind, and in what little account he should hold his scientific works, if he did not perpetually think of their utility for the species. "I feel," he wrote, "that such scientific reputation as I might acquire would give more value, more weight, more useful influence to my political sermons." In 1822 he published a Plan of the Scientific Works necessary to reorganize Society. In this he points out that modern society is passing through a great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing movements; the first, a disorganizing movement owing to the break-up of old institu tions and beliefs; the second, a movement towards a definite social state, in which all means of human prosperity will receive their most complete development and most direct application. How is this crisis to be dealt with? What are the undertakings necessary in order to pass successfully through it towards an organic state ? The answer to this is that there are two series of works. The first is theoretic or spiritual, aiming at the develop ment of a new principle of co-ordinating social relations, and the formation of the system of general ideas which are destined to guide society. The second work is practical or temporal; it settles the distribution of power, and the institutions that are most con formable to the spirit of the system which has previously been thought out in the course of the theoretic work. As the practical work depends on the conclusions of the theoretical, the latter must obviously come first in order of execution.

In 1826 this was pushed farther in a most remarkable piece called Considerations on the Spiritual Power—the main object of which is to demonstrate the necessity of instituting a spiritual power, distinct from the temporal power and independent of it. In examining the conditions of a spiritual power proper for mod ern times, he indicates in so many terms the presence in his mind of a direct analogy between his proposed spiritual power and the functions of the catholic clergy at the time of its greatest vigour and most complete independence—that is to say from about the middle of the I th century, until towards the end of the 13th. He refers to De Maistre's memorable book, Du Pape, as the most profound, accurate and methodical account of the old spiritual organization, and starts from that as the model to be adapted to the changed intellectual and social conditions of the modern time. In the Positive Philosophy, again (vol. v.p.344), he dis tinctly says that catholicism, reconstituted as a system on new intellectual foundations, would finally preside over the spiritual reorganization of modern society. Much else could be quoted to the same effect. If unity of career, then, means that Comte from the beginning designed the institution of a spiritual power, and the systematic reorganization of life, it is difficult to deny him whatever credit that unity may be worth, and the credit is per haps not particularly great. Even the readaptation of the catholic system to a scientific doctrine was plainly in his mind 3o years before the final execution of Positive Polity, though it is difficult to believe that he foresaw the religious mysticism in which the task was to land him. A great analysis was to precede a great synthesis, but it was the synthesis on which Comte's vision was centred from the first. Let us first sketch the nature of the analysis. Society is to be reorganized on the base of knowledge. What is the sum and significance of knowledge? That is the ques tion which Comte's first master-work professes to answer.

The Law of the Three States.

The Positive Philosophy opens with the statement of a certain law of which Comte was the discoverer, and which has always been treated both by dis ciples and dissidents as the key to his system. This is the Law of the Three States. It is as follows : Each of our leading con ceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different phases; there are three different ways in which the human mind explains phenomena, each way follow ing the other in order. These three stages are the theological, the metaphysical and the positive. Knowledge, or a branch of knowl edge is, in the theological state, when it supposes the phenomena under consideration to be due to immediate volition, either in the object or in some supernatural being. In the metaphysical state, for volition is substituted abstract force residing in the object, yet existing independently of the object ; the phenomena are viewed as if apart from the bodies manifesting them ; and the properties of each substance have attributed to them an existence distinct from that substance. In the positive state inherent voli tion or external volition and inherent force or abstraction per sonified have both disappeared from men's minds, and the ex planation of a phenomenon means a reference of it, by way of suc cession or resemblance, to some other phenomenon—means the establishment of a relation between the given fact and some more general fact. In the theological and metaphysical state men seek a cause or an essence; in the positive they are content with a law. To borrow an illustration from an able English dis ciple of Comte :—"Take the phenomenon of the sleep produced by opium. The Arabs are content to attribute it to the `will of God.' Moliere's medical student accounts for it by a soporific principle contained in the opium. The modern physiologist knows that he cannot account for it at all. He can simply observe, analyse and experiment upon the phenomena attending the action of the drug and classify it with other agents analogous in char acter."—(Dr. Bridges).

The first and greatest aim of the positive philosophy is to advance the study of society into the third of the three stages— to remove social phenomena from the sphere of theological and metaphysical conceptions, and to introduce among them the same scientific observation of their laws which has given us physics, chemistry, physiology. Social physics will consist of the condi tions and relations of the facts of society, and will have two de partments—one, statical, containing the laws of order; the other dynamical, containing the laws of progress. While men's minds were in the theological state, political events, for example, were explained by the will of the gods, and political authority based on divine right. In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to retain our instance, political authority was based on the sovereignty of the people, and social facts were explained by the figment of a falling away from a state of nature. When the positive method has been finally extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these social facts will be resolved, as their ulti mate analyses, into relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old sense of the word, men will only examine the conditions of social existence. When that stage has been reached, not merely the greater part, but the whole of our knowl edge, will be impressed with one character, the character, namely, of positivity or scientificalness : and all our conceptions in every part of knowledge will be thoroughly homogeneous. The gains of such a change are enormous. The new philosophical unity will now in its turn regenerate all the elements that went to its own formation. The mind will pursue knowledge without the wasteful jar and friction of conflicting methods and mutually hostile con ceptions; education will be regenerated ; and society will reor ganize itself on the only possible solid base—a homogeneous philosophy.

Classification of Sciences.—The Positive Philosophy has an other object besides the demonstration of the necessity and pro priety of a science of society. This object is to show the sciences as branches from a single trunk—is to give to science the en semble or spirit or generality hitherto confined to philosophy, and to give to philosophy the rigour and solidity of science. Comte's special object is a study of social physics, a science that before his advent was still to be formed; his second object is a review of the methods and leading generalities of all the positive sciences already formed, so that we may know both what system of in quiry to follow in our new science, and also where the new science will stand in relation to other knowledge.

The first step in this direction is to arrange scientific method and positive knowledge in order, and this brings us to another cardinal element in the Comtist system, the classification of the sciences. In the front of the inquiry lies one main division, that, namely, between speculative and practical knowledge. With the latter we have no concern. Speculative or theoretic knowledge is divided into abstract and concrete. The former is concerned with the laws that regulate phenomena in all conceivable cases : the latter is concerned with the application of these laws. Concrete science relates to objects or beings; abstract science to events. The former is particular or descriptive ; the latter is general. Thus, physiology is an abstract science ; but zoology is concrete. Chemistry is abstract ; mineralogy is concrete. It is the method and knowledge of the abstract sciences that the positive philoso phy has to reorganize in a great whole.

Comte's principle of classification is that the dependence and order of scientific study follows the dependence of the phenomena. Thus, as has been said, it represents both the objective dependence of the phenomena and the subjective dependence of our means of knowing them. The more particular and complex phenomena depend upon the simpler and more general. The latter are the more easy to study. Therefore science will begin with those at tributes of objects which are most general, and pass on gradually to other attributes that are combined in greater complexity. Thus, too, each science rests on the truths of the sciences that precede it, while it adds to them the truths by which it is itself constituted. Comte's series or hierarchy is arranged as follows :— (r) Mathe matics (that is, number, geometry, and mechanics), (2) Astron omy, (3) Physics, (4) Chemistry, (5) Biology, (6) Sociology. Each of the members of this series is one degree more special than the member before it, and depends upon the facts of all the members preceding it, and cannot be fully understood with out them. It follows that the crowning science of the hierarchy dealing with the phenomena of human society will remain longest under the influence of theological dogmas and abstract figments, and will be the last to pass into the positive stage. You cannot discover the relations of the facts of human society without reference to the conditions of animal life ; you cannot under stand the conditions of animal life without the laws of chemistry; and so with the rest.

This arrangement of the sciences, and the Law of the Three States, are together explanatory of the course of human thought and knowledge. They are thus the double key of Comte's system atization of the philosophy of all the sciences from mathematics to physiology, and his analysis of social evolution, which is the base of sociology. Each science contributes its philosophy. The co-ordination of all these partial philosophies produces the gen eral positive philosophy. Thousands had cultivated science, and with splendid success; not one had conceived the philosophy which the sciences when organized would naturally evolve. A few had seen the necessity of extending the scientific method to all enquiries, but no one had seen how this was to be effected. . . . The positive philosophy is novel as a philosophy, not as a collec tion of truths never before suspected. Its novelty is the organiza tion of existing elements. Its very principle implies the absorption of all that great thinkers had achieved; while incorporating their results it extended their methods. . . . What tradition brought was the results ; what Comte brought was the organization of these results. He always claimed to be the founder of the positive philosophy. That he had every right to such a title is demon strable to all who distinguish between the positive sciences and the philosophy which co-ordinated the truths and methods of these sciences into a doctrine—(G. H. Lewes).

Comte's classification of the sciences has been subjected to a vigorous criticism by Herbert Spencer. Spencer's two chief points are these :—(i) He denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds that any grouping of the sciences in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their genesis and their interde pendence; no true filiation exists; no science develops itself in iso lation ; no one is independent, either logically or historically. Littre, by far the most eminent of the scientific followers of Comte, concedes a certain force to Spencer's objections, and makes certain secondary modifications in the hierarchy in con sequence, while still cherishing his faith in the Comtist theory of the sciences. J. S. Mill, while admitting the objections as good, if Comte's arrangement pretended to be the only one possible, still holds the arrangement as tenable for the purpose with which it was devised. G. H. Lewes asserts against Spencer that the arrangement in a series is necessary, on grounds similar to those which require that the various truths constituting a science should be systematically co-ordinated, although in nature the phenomena are intermingled.

The first three volumes of the Positive Philosophy contain an exposition of the partial philosophies of the five sciences that pre cede sociology in the hierarchy. Their value has usually been placed very low by the special followers of the sciences concerned ; they say that the knowledge is second-hand, is not coherent, and is too confidently taken for final. The Comtist replies that the task is philosophic, and is not to be judged by the minute accuracies of science. In these three volumes Comte took the sciences roughly as he found them. His eminence as a man of science must be measured by his only original work in that de partment—the construction, namely, of the new science of society. This work is accomplished in the last three volumes of the Posi tive Philosophy, and the second and third volumes of the Positive Polity. The Comtist maintains that even if these five volumes together fail in laying down correctly and finally the lines of the new science, still they are the first solution of a great problem hitherto unattempted. "Modern biology has got beyond Aristotle's conception ; but in the construction of the biological science, not even the most unphilosophical biologist would fail to recognize the value of Aristotle's attempt. So for sociology. Subsequent sociologists may have conceivably to remodel the whole science, yet not the less will they recognize the merit of the first work which has facilitated their labours."—(Congreve).

Sociological Conceptions.

We shall now briefly describe Comte's principal conceptions in sociology, his position in respect to which is held by himself, and by others, to raise him to the level of Descartes or Leibnitz. Of course the first step was to ap proach the phenomena of human character and social existence with the expectation of finding them as reducible to general laws as the other phenomena of the universe, and with the hope of exploring these laws by the same instruments of observation and verification as had done such triumphant work in the case of the latter. Comte separates the collective facts of society and history from the individual phenomena of biology ; then he withdraws these collective facts from the region of external volition, and places them in the region of law. The facts of history must be explained, not by providential interventions, but by referring them to conditions inherent in the successive stages of social existence. This conception makes a science of society possible. What is the method? It comprises, besides observation and ex periment (which is, in fact, only the observation of abnormal social states), a certain peculiarity of verification. We begin by deducing every well-known historical situation from the series of its antecedents. Thus we acquire a body of empirical general izations as to social phenomena, and then we connect the general izations with the positive theory of human nature. A sociological demonstration lies in the establishment of an accordance between the conclusions of historical analysis and the preparatory concep tions of biological theory. As Mill puts it :—"If a sociological theory, collected from historical evidence, contradicts the estab lished general laws of human nature ; if (to use M. Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, any very decided and natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction ; if it supposes that the reason in average human beings predominates over the desires, or the disinterested desires over the personal— we may know that history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is false. On the other hand, if laws of social phenomena, empirically generalized from history, can, when once suggested, be affiliated to the known laws of human nature; if the direction actually taken by the developments and changes of human society can be seen to be such as the properties of man and of his dwell ing-place made antecedently probable, the empirical generaliza tions are raised into positive laws, and sociology becomes a science." The result of this method is an exhibition of the events of human experience in co-ordinated series that manifest their own graduated connection.

Next, as all investigation proceeds from that which is known best to that which is unknown or less well known, and as, in social states, it is the collective phenomenon that is more easy of access to the observer than its parts, therefore we must consider and pursue all the elements of a given social state together and in common. The social organization must be viewed and explored as a whole. There is a nexus between each leading group of social phenomena and other leading groups ; if there is a change in one of them, that change is accompanied by a corresponding modifica tion of all the rest. "Not only must political institutions and social manners on the one hand, and manners and ideas on the other, be always mutually connected ; but further, this consoli dated whole must be always connected by its nature with the corresponding state of the integral development of humanity con sidered in all aspects of intellectual, moral and physical ac tivity."—(Comte).

Is there any one element which communicates the decisive im pulse to all the rest—any predominating agency in the course of social evolution? The answer is that all the other parts of social existence are associated with, and drawn along by, the contem porary condition of intellectual development. The reason is the superior and preponderant element which settles the direction in which all the other faculties shall expand. "It is only through the more and more marked influence of the reason over the general conduct of man and of society, that the gradual march of our race has attained that regularity and persevering continuity which distinguish it so radically from the desultory and barren expan sion of even the highest animal orders, which share, and with enhanced strength the appetites, the passions, and even the pri mary sentiments of man." The history of intellectual develop ment, therefore, is the key to social evolution, and the key to the history of intellectual development is the law of the Three States.

Among other central thoughts in Comte's explanation of his tory are these :—The displacement of theological by positive con ceptions has been accompanied by a gradual rise of an industrial regime out of the military regime; the great permanent contri bution of catholicism was the separation which it set up between the temporal and the spiritual powers; the progress of the race consists in the increasing preponderance of the distinctively human elements over the animal elements ; the absolute tendency of ordinary social theories will be replaced by an unfailing adher ence to the relative point of view, and from this it follows that the social state, regarded as a whole, has been as perfect in each period as the co-existing condition of humanity and its environ ment would allow.

The elaboration of these ideas in relation to the history of the civilization of the most advanced portion of the human race oc cupies two of the volumes of the Positive Philosophy, and has been accepted by very different schools as a masterpiece of rich, luminous, and far-reaching suggestion. Whatever additions it may receive, and whatever corrections it may require, this analysis of social evolution will continue to be regarded as one of the great achievements of human intellect.

The third volume of the Positive Polity treats of social dynamics, and takes us again over the ground of historic evolu tion. It abounds with remarks of extraordinary fertility and com prehensiveness, but it is often arbitrary; and its views of the past are strained into coherence with the statical views of the pre ceding volume. As it was composed in rather less than six months, and as the author honestly warns us that he has given all his at tention to a more profound co-ordination, instead of working out the special explanations more fully, as he had promised, we need not be surprised if the result is disappointing to those who had mastered the corresponding portion of the Positive Philosophy. Comte explains the difference between his two works. In the first his "chief object was to discover and demonstrate the laws of progress, and to exhibit in one unbroken sequence the collec tive destinies of mankind, till then invariably regarded as a series of events wholly beyond the reach of explanation, and almost de pending on arbitrary will. The present work, on the contrary, is addressed to those who are already sufficiently convinced of the certain existence of social laws, and desire only to have them reduced to a true and conclusive system." The Positivist System.—The main principles of the Comtian system are derived from the Positive Polity and from two other works,—the Positivist Catechism; a Summary Exposition of the Universal Religion, in twelve Dialogues between a W oman and a Priest of Humanity; and second, The Subjective Synthesis (1856), which is the first and only volume of a work upon mathematics announced at the end of the Positive Philosophy. The system for which the Positive Philosophy is alleged to have been the scien tific preparation contains a polity and a religion; a complete arrangement of life in all its aspects giving a wider sphere to intellect, energy and feeling than could be found in any of the previous organic types—Greek, Roman, or Catholic-feudal. Comte's immense superiority over such pre-revolutionary utopians as the Abbe Saint Pierre, no less than over the group of post revolutionary utopians, is especially visible in this firm grasp of the cardinal truth that the improvement of the social organism can only be effected by a moral development, and never by any changes in mere political mechanism, or any violences in the way of an artificial redistribution of wealth. A moral transformation must precede any real advance. The aim, both in public and pri vate life, is to secure to the utmost possible extent the victory of the social feeling over self-love, or altruism over egoism.' This is the key to the regeneration of social existence, as it is the key to that unity of individual life which makes all our energies con verge freely and without wasteful friction towards a common end. What are the instruments for securing the preponderance of altruism? Clearly they must work from the strongest element in human nature, and this element is feeling or the heart. Under the catholic system the supremacy of feeling was abused, and the intellect was made its slave. Then followed a revolt of intellect against sentiment. The business of the new system will be to bring back the intellect into a condition, not of slavery, but of willing ministry to the feelings. The subordination never was, and never will be, effected except by means of a religion, and a religion to be final, must include a harmonious synthesis of all our conceptions of the external order of the universe. The char acteristic basis of a religion is the existence of a power without us, so superior to ourselves as to command the complete sub mission of our whole life. This basis is to be found in the positive stage in humanity, past, present and to come, conceived as the Great Being.

"A deeper study of the great universal order reveals to us at length the ruling power within it of the true Great Being, whose destiny it is to bring that order continually to perfection by con stantly conforming to its laws, and which thus best represents to us that system as a whole. This undeniable Providence, the su 'For Comte's place in the history of ethical theory see ETHICS, preme dispenser of our destinies, becomes in the natural course the common centre of our affections, our thoughts and our actions. Although this Great Being evidently exceeds the utmost strength of any, even of any collective, human force, its necessary consti tution and its peculiar function endow it with the truest sympathy towards all its servants. The least amongst us can and ought con stantly to aspire to maintain and even to improve this Being. This natural object of all our activity, both public and private, determines the true general character of the rest of our exist ence, whether in feeling or in thought ; which must be devoted to love, and to know, in order rightly to serve our Providence, by a wise use of all the means which it furnishes to us. Recip rocally this continued service, whilst strengthening our true unity, renders us at once both happier and better." The exaltation of humanity into the throne occupied by the Supreme Being under monotheistic systems made all the rest of Comte's construction easy enough. Utility remains the test of every institution, impulse, act ; his fabric becomes substantially an arch of utilitarian propositions, with an artificial Great Being inserted at the top to keep them in their place. The Comtist system is utilitarianism crowned by a fantastic decoration. Trans lated into the plainest English, the position is as follows: "So ciety can only be regenerated by the greater subordination of politics to morals, by the moralization of capital, by the renova tion of the family, by a higher conception of marriage, and so on. These ends can only be reached by a heartier development of the sympathetic instincts. The sympathetic instincts can only be developed by the religion of humanity." Looking at this prob lem in this way, even a moralist who does not expect theology to be the instrument of social revival, might still ask whether the sympathetic instincts will not necessarily be already developed to their highest point, before people will be persuaded to accept the religion, which is at the bottom hardly more than sympathy under a more imposing name. However that may be, the whole battle—into which we shall not enter—as to the legitimateness of Comtism as a religion turns upon this erection of humanity into a Being. The various hypotheses, dogmas, proposals, as to the family, to capital, etc., are merely propositions measurable by considerations of utility and a balance of expediencies. Many of these proposals are of the highest interest, and many of them are actually available; but there does not seem to be one of them of an available kind, which could not equally well be ap proached from other sides, and even incorporated in some radi cally antagonistic system. Adoption, f or example, as a practice for improving the happiness of families and the welfare of society, is capable of being weighed, and can in truth only be weighed, by utilitarian considerations, and has been commended by men to whom the Comtist religion is naught. The singularity of Comte's construction, and the test by which it must be tried, is the transfer of the worship and discipline of catholicism to a sys tem in which "the conception of God is superseded" by the ab stract idea of humanity, conceived as a kind of personality.

And when all is said, the invention does not help us. We have still to settle what is for the good of humanity, and we can only do that in the old-fashioned way. There is no guidance in the conception. No effective unity can follow from it, because you can only find out the right and wrong of a given course by sum ming up the advantages and disadvantages, and striking a bal ance, and there is nothing in the religion of humanity to force two men to find the balance on the same side. The Comtists are no better off than other utilitarians in judging policy, events, conduct.

The particularities of the worship, its minute and truly in genious re-adaptations of sacraments, prayers, reverent signs, down even to the invocation of a New Trinity, need not detain us. They are said, though it is not easy to believe, to have been elaborated by way of -Utopia. If so, no Utopia has ever yet been presented in a style so little calculated to stir the imagination, to warm the feelings, to soothe the insurgency of the reason. It is a mistake to present' a great body of hypotheses—if Comte meant them for hypotheses—in the most dogmatic and peremptory form to which language can lend itself. And there is no more extraor dinary thing in the history of opinion than the perversity with which Comte has succeeded in clothing a philosophic doctrine, so intrinsically conciliatory as his, in a shape that excites so little sympathy and gives so much provocation. An enemy defined Comtism as catholicism minus Christianity, to which an able champion retorted by calling it catholicism plus science. Comte's Utopia has pleased the followers of the catholic, just as little as those of the scientific spirit.

The elaborate and minute systematization of life, proper to the religion of humanity, is to be directed by a priesthood. The priests are to possess neither wealth nor material power ; they are not to command but to counsel; their authority is to rest on persuasion, not on force. When religion has become positive and society in dustrial, then the influence of the Church upon the State becomes really free and independent, which was not the case in the middle ages. The power of the priesthood rests upon the special knowl edge of man and nature ; but to this intellectual eminence must also be added moral power and a certain greatness of character, without which force of intellect and completeness of attainment will not receive the confidence they ought to inspire. The func tions of the priesthood are of this kind :—To exercise a sys tematic direction over education; to hold a consultative influence over all the important acts of actual life, public and private ; to arbitrate in cases of practical conflict; to preach sermons recalling those principles of generality and universal harmony which our special activities dispose us to ignore; to order the due classifica tion of society; to perform the various ceremonies appointed by the founder of the religion. The authority of the priesthood is to rest wholly on voluntary adhesion, and there is to be perfect freedom of speech and discussion. This provision hardly consists with Comte's congratulations to the tsar Nicholas on the "wise vigilance" with which he kept watch over the importation of west ern books.

The Condition of Women

had always powerfully impressed Comte; to him it seemed absolutely essential to elevate it. (See a remarkable passage in his letters to M. Valat, pp. 84-87.) His friendship with Madame de Vaux had deepened the impres sion, and in the reconstructed society women are to play a highly important part. They are to be carefully excluded from public action, but they are to do many more important things than things political. To fit them for their functions they are to be raised above material cares, and they are to be thoroughly edu cated. The family, which is so important an element of the Comtist scheme of things, exists to carry the influence of woman over man to the highest point of cultivation. Through affection she purifies the activity of man. "Superior in power of affection, more able to keep both the intellectual and the active powers in continual subordination to feeling, women are formed as the natural intermediaries between humanity and man. The Great Being confides specially to them its moral providence, maintain ing through them the direct and constant cultivation of universal affection, in the midst of all the distractions of thought or action, which are for ever withdrawing men from its influence. . . . Besides the uniform influence of every woman on every man, to attach him to humanity, such is the importance and the difficulty of this ministry that each of us should be placed under the special guidance of one of these angels, to answer for him, as it were, to the Great Being. This moral guardianship may assume three types—the mother, the wife and the daughter ; each having several modifications, as shown in the concluding volume. Together they form the three simple modes of solidarity, or unity with contem poraries, obedience, union and protection—as well as the three degrees of continuity between ages by uniting us with the past, the present and the future. In accordance with my theory of the brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic instincts —veneration, attachment and benevolence." How the positive method of observation and verification of real facts has landed us in this, and much else of the same kind, is extremely hard to guess. Seriously to examine an encyclopaedic system, that touches life, society and knowledge at every point, is evidently beyond the compass of such an article as this. There is in every chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would need a long chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss. There is at least one biological speculation of astounding audacity, that could be examined in nothing less than a treatise. Perhaps we have said enough to show that after performing a great and real service to thought Comte almost sacrificed his claims to gratitude by the invention of a system that, as such, and independently of detached suggestions, is markedly retro grade. But the world will take what is available in Comte, while forgetting that in this work which is as irrational in one way as Hegel is in another. (J. Mo. ; X.) See also the article PosiTivrsM.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Works,

Editions and Translations: Cours de philBibliography.-Works, Editions and Translations: Cours de phil- osophie positive (183o-42 ; 2nd ed., with preface by E. Lithe, 1864; 5th ed., 1893-94; Eng. trans. Harriet Martineau, 2 vols., ; 3 vols., 1896) ; Discours sur l'esprit positif (1844. Eng. trans. with explanation E. S. Beesley, 1905) ; Ordre et progres (1848) ; Discours sur l'ensemble de positivisme (1848 Eng. trans. J. H. Bridges, 1852) ; Systeme de Poli tique positive, ou Traite de sociologie (1852-54 ed. 1898; Eng. trans. with analysis and explanatory summary by Bridges, F. Harrison, E. S. Beesley and others ; Catechisme positiviste (1852; 3rd ed., 1890 ; Eng. trans. R. Congreve, 1858 ; 3rd ed., 1891) ; Appel aux Con servateurs (1855 and 1898) ; Synthese subjective (1856 and 1878) ; Essai de philos. mathematique (1878) ; P. Descours and H. Gordon Jones, Fundamental Principles of Positive Philos. (trans. 1905) with biog. preface by E. S. Beesley. The letters of Comte have been published as follows:—The letters to M. Valat and J. S. Mill, in La Critique phil osophique (1877), correspondence with Mme. de Vaux (ib. 1884) ; Correspondance inedite d'Aug. Comte. (1903 foll.) ; Lettres inedites de J. S. Mill a Aug. Comte publ. avec les responses de Comte (1899).