Chapter XI: Part XII: The Parsonage (8)

Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features, remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors--supposing we are capable of coping with them--are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics, eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more calculated to render us content with an _empirical_ condition of tolerable well-being, than the exhibition (and such, we think, is here presented to us) of a strong mind palpably at fault in its attempt to substitute, out of its own theory of man, a better foundation for the social structure than is afforded by the existing unphilosophical medley of human thought. Upon that portion of the _Cours de Philosophie Positive_ which treats of the sciences usually so called, we do not intend to enter, nor do the general remarks we make apply to it. Our limited object is to place our reader at the point of view which M. Comte takes in his new science of Sociology; and to do this with any justice to him or to ourselves, in the space we can allot to the subject, will be a task of sufficient difficulty.

And first, as to the title of the work, _Philosophie Positive_, which has, perhaps, all this while been perplexing the reader. The reasons which induced M. Comte to adopt it, shall be given in his own words; they could not have been appreciated until some general notion had been given of the object he had in view.

"There is doubtless," he says, in his _Avertissement_, "a close
resemblance between my _Philosophie Positive_, and what the
English, especially since the days of Newton, understand by
_Natural Philosophy_. But I would not adopt this last
expression, any more than that of _Philosophy of the Sciences_,
which would have perhaps been still more precise, because
neither of these has yet been extended to all orders of
phenomena, whilst _Philosophie Positive_, in which I comprehend
the study of the social phenomena, as well as all others,
designs a uniform manner of reasoning applicable to all
subjects on which the human mind can be exerted. Besides which,
the expression _Natural Philosophy_ is employed in England to
denote the aggregate of the several sciences of observation,
considered even in their most minute details; whereas, by the
title of _Philosophie Positive_, I intimate, with regard to the
several positive sciences, a study of them only in their
generalities, conceiving them as submitted to a uniform method,
and forming the different parts of a general plan of research.
The term which I have been led to construct is, therefore, at
once more extended and more restricted than other
denominations, which are so far similar that they have
reference to the same fundamental class of ideas."

This very announcement of M. Comte's intention to comprehend in his course of natural philosophy the study of the several phenomena, compels us to enquire how far these are fit subjects for the strict application of the scientific method. We waive the metaphysical question of the free agency of man, and the theological question of the occasional interference of the Divine Power; and presuming these to be decided in a manner favourable to the project of our Sociologist, we still ask if it be possible to make of the affairs of society--legislation and politics, for instance--a department of science?

The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in under his conclusions _all_ the political truths he is master of! He reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone to others of more extensive or more urgent application.

But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict application of _the method_. There is, however, one essential, distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and incessant _developement_ which humanity has displayed, and is still displaying. Who can tell us that that _experience_ on which a fixed and positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From age to age that experience is enlarging.

In all recognized branches of science nature remains the same, and continually repeats herself; she admits of no novelty; and what appears new to us, from our late discovery of it, is as old as the most palpable sequence of facts that, generation after generation, catches the eye of childhood. The new discovery may disturb our theories, it disturbs not the condition of things. All is still the same as it ever was. What we possessed of real knowledge is real knowledge still. We sit down before a maze of things bewildering enough; but the vast mechanism, notwithstanding all its labyrinthian movements, is constant to itself, and presents always the same problem to the observer. But in this department of humanity, in this sphere of social existence, the case is otherwise. The human being, with hand, with intellect, is incessantly at work--has a progressive movement--_grows_ from age to age. He discovers, he invents, he speculates; his own inventions react upon the inventor; his own thoughts, creeds, speculations, become agents in the scene. Here _new facts_ are actually from time to time starting into existence; new elements are introduced into society, which science could not have foreseen; for if they could have been foreseen, they would already have been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey society, a _creator_. In short, that stability in the order of events, that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us, but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but half grown, but half developed. How can we know whereabouts _we are_ in our course, and what is coming next? We want the history of some extinguished world in which a humanity has run its full career; we need to extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand such a race as ours.

What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of society than that of property?--a law which so justly governs all our political reasonings, and determines the character of our political measures the most prospective--a law which M. Comte has not failed himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress? That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted. Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the participated prosperity of the general body--where the good of the whole should be felt as the interest of each. _How_ such a principle is to be established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and establish such a principle--this is what no scientific mind would venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of activity, nor need it, nor _can_ it, pass beyond that sphere. We know that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we know this also, that _at no time_ can its opposite principle be established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. Our convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?

"The great Aristotle himself," says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of his age--"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of ancient times, (_la plus forte tête de toute l'antiquité_,) could not conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."--Vol. iv. p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a fundamental law.

There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte's work, (we cannot now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the comparative _happiness_ of the savage and the civilized man. He will not entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and contents himself with asserting the fuller _development_ of his nature displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind--of the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are, for the most part, practically decided by those who have to _feel_; but to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to establish a _standard measure_ for human felicity.

We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science. A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the moralist, the jurist, and the politician--though it is worthy of observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author, for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and obeyed.

With relation to the _past_, and in one point of view--namely, so far as regards the development of man in his speculative career--our Sociologist has endeavoured to supply a law which shall meet the peculiar exigencies of his case, and enable him to take a scientific survey of the history of a changeful and progressive being. At the threshold of his work we encounter the announcement of a _new law_, which has regulated the development of the human mind from its rudest state of intellectual existence. As this law lies at the basis of M. Comte's system--as it is perpetually referred to throughout his work--as it is by this law he proceeds to view history in a scientific manner--as, moreover, it is by aid of this law that he undertakes to explain the _provisional existence_ of all theology, explaining it in the past, and removing it from the future--it becomes necessary to enter into some examination of its claims, and we must request our readers' attention to the following statement of it:--

"In studying the entire development of the human intelligence
in its different spheres of activity, from its first efforts
the most simple up to our own days, I believe I have discovered
a great fundamental law, to which it is subjected by an
invariable necessity, and which seems to me capable of being
firmly established, whether on those proofs which are furnished
by a knowledge of our organization, or on those historical
verifications which result from an attentive examination of the
past. The law consists in this--that each of our principal
conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively
through three different states of theory: the _theologic_, or
fictitious; the _metaphysic_, or abstract; the scientific, or
_positive_. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature,
employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods
of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially
different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic
method, then the metaphysical, and last the positive method.
Hence three distinct philosophies, or general systems of
conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which mutually
exclude each other; the first is the necessary starting-point
of the human intelligence; the third is its fixed and definite
state; the second is destined to serve the purpose only of
transition.

"In the _theologic_ state, the human mind, directing its
researches to the intimate nature of things, the first causes
and the final causes of all those effects which arrest its
attention, in a word, towards an absolute knowledge of things,
represents to itself the phenomena as produced by the direct
and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less
numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the
apparent anomalies of the universe.

"In the _metaphysic_ state, which is, in its essence, a
modification of the former, the supernatural agents are
displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified
abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of
engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena--whose
explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its
corresponding entity.

"At last, in the _positive_ state the human mind, recognizing
the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the
search after the origin and destination of the universe, and
the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach
itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of
ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is
to say, their invariable relations of succession and of
similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real
terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established
between the various individual phenomena and certain general
facts, the number of which the progress of science tends
continually to diminish.

"The _theologic_ system has reached the highest state of
perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted
the providential action of one only being for the capricious
agency of the numerous independent divinities who had
previously been imagined. In like manner, the last term of the
_metaphysic_ system consists in conceiving, instead of the
different special entities, one great general entity, _nature_,
considered as the only source of all phenomena. The perfection
of the _positive_ system, towards which it unceasingly tends,
though it is not probable it can ever attain to it, would be
the ability to represent all observable phenomena as particular
cases of some one general fact; such, for instance, as that of
gravitation."--Vol. I. p. 5.

After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought whatever, he proceeds thus:--

"It is easily conceivable that our understanding, compelled to
proceed by degrees almost imperceptible, could not pass
abruptly, and without an intermediate stage, from the
_theologic_ to the _positive_ philosophy. Theology and physics
are so profoundly incompatible, their conceptions have a
character so radically opposed, that before renouncing the one
to employ exclusively the other, the mind must make use of
intermediate conceptions of a bastard character, fit, for that
very reason, gradually to operate the transition. Such is the
natural destination of metaphysical conceptions; they have no
other real utility. By substituting, in the study of phenomena,
for supernatural directive agency an inseparable entity
residing in things, (although this be conceived at first merely
as an emanation from the former,) man habituates himself, by
degrees, to consider only the facts themselves, the notion of
these metaphysical agents being gradually subtilized, till they
are no longer in the eyes of men of intelligence any thing but
the names of abstractions. It is impossible to conceive by what
other process our understanding could pass from considerations
purely supernatural, to considerations purely natural, from the
theologic to the positive _régime_."--P. 13.

We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition that theology is not the _last_, as well as the _first_, of our forms of thought--against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work, made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject, though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with this protest, and with adding--as a fact of experience, which, in estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted on--that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident. Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great article of religion--that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times, men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their inductive labours by assigning that _unity_ and _correlation_ which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read _thought_ in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.

Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration of the _new law_. That there is, in the statement here made of the course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a _law_--a scientific law--which from its nature admits of no exception; at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger commixtures than this, they should "mutually exclude each other"--that, in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and proportions, both _theologic_ and _positive_.

What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the _succession_ of these several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here called the positive method of thought is not equally _spontaneous_ to the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified, or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have been a portion of his experience entertained merely _as experience_. The very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?

Or does M. Comte mean this only--which we presume to be the case--that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity? If so, what necessity for this _metaphysic_ apparatus for the sole purpose of _transition_? If each of these great modes, the positive and theological, has its independent source, and is equally spontaneous--if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though in different stages of development, the function attributed to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it; there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of _a law of succession_ in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of invariable sequence, between the phenomena?

Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are _not_ equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition, it would follow--since the mind, or _organization_, of man remains from age to age the same in its fundamental powers--that, at this very time, no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic. Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a theology of the rudest description--a result certainly not contemplated by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they _are_ equally spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed to the _metaphysic_ of effectuating a transition between them? And how can we describe that as a scientific _law_ in which there is confessedly no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or laws, capable of explaining it.

Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps, concluded that this author could not have here required their assent, strictly speaking, to a _law_, but that he used the term vaguely, as many writers have done--meaning nothing more by it than a course of events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth contained in it than to cavil at the form of the statement. But indeed M. Comte uses the language of science in no such vague manner; he requires the same assent to this law that we give to any one of the recognized laws of science--to that of gravitation for instance, to which he himself likens it, pronouncing it, in a subsequent part of his work, to have been as incontrovertibly established. Upon this law, think what we may of it, M. Comte leans throughout all his progress; he could not possibly dispense with it; on its stability depends his whole social science; by it, as we have already intimated, he becomes master of the past and of the future; and an appreciation of its necessity to him, at once places us at that point of view from which M. Comte contemplates our mundane affairs.

It is his object to put the scientific method in complete possession of the whole range of human thought, especially of the department, hitherto unreduced to subjection, of social phenomena. Now there is a great rival in the field--theology--which, besides imparting its own supernatural tenets, influences our modes of thinking on almost all social questions. Theology cannot itself be converted into a branch of science; all those tenets by which it sways the hopes and fears of men are confessedly above the sphere of science: if science, therefore, is to rule absolutely, it must remove theology. But it can only remove by explaining; by showing how it came there, and how, in good time, it is destined to depart. If the scientific method is entirely to predominate, it must explain religion, as it must explain every thing that exists, or has existed; and it must also reveal the law of its departure--otherwise it cannot remain sole mistress of the speculative mind. Such is the office which the law of development we have just considered is intended to fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing its purpose we must now leave our readers to decide.

Having thus, as he presumes, cleared the ground for the absolute and exclusive dominion of the positive method, M. Comte proceeds to erect the _hierarchy_, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which presume the existence of other laws; in such manner that at every stage of our scientific progress we are supporting ourselves on the knowledge acquired in the one preceding.

"The positive philosophy," he tells us, "falls naturally into
five divisions, or five fundamental sciences, whose order of
succession is determined by the necessary or invariable
subordination (estimated according to no hypothetical opinions)
of their several phenomena; these are, astronomy, mechanics,
(_la physique_,) chemistry, physiology, and lastly, social
physics. The first regards the phenomena the most general, the
most abstract, the most remote from humanity; they influence
all others, without being influenced by them. The phenomena
considered by the last are, on the contrary, the most
complicated, the most concrete, the most directly interesting
to man; they depend more or less on all the preceding
phenomena, without exercising on them any influence. Between
these two extremes, the degrees of speciality, of complication
and personality, of phenomena, gradually increase, as well as
their successive dependence."--Vol. I. p. 96.

The principle of classification is excellent, but is there no rank dropt out of this _hierarchy_? The metaphysicians, or psychologists, who are wont to consider themselves as standing at the very summit--where are they? They are dismissed from their labours--their place is occupied by others--and what was considered as having substance and reality in their proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician, with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte considers the _mind_ as one of those abstract entities which it is the first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man, of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his _mind_. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the _metaphysic_ stage of theorizing. "There is no place," he cries, "for this illusory psychology, the last transformation of theology!"--though, by the way, so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the _metaphysic_ condition of our knowledge appears to be quite as old, quite as primitive, as any conception whatever of theology. Now, whether M. Comte be right in this preference of the phrenologist, we will not stay to discuss--it were too wide a question; but thus much we can briefly and indisputably show, that he utterly misconceives, as well as underrates, the _kind of research_ to which psychologists are addicted. As M. Comte's style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole class of Parisian _savans_, added something to the piquancy of the style?

"Such has gradually become, since the time of Bacon, the
preponderance of the positive philosophy; it has at present
assumed indirectly so great an ascendant over those minds even
which have been most estranged from it, that metaphysicians
devoted to the study of our intelligence, can no longer hope to
delay the fall of their pretended science, but by presenting
their doctrines as founded also upon the observation of facts.
For this purpose they have, in these later times, attempted to
distinguish, by a very singular subtilty, two sorts of
observations of equal importance, the one external, the other
internal; the last of which is exclusively destined for the
study of intellectual phenomena. This is not the place to enter
into the special discussion of this sophism. I will limit
myself to indicate the principal consideration, which clearly
proves that this pretended direct contemplation of the mind by
itself, is a pure illusion.

"Not a long while ago men imagined they had explained vision by
saying that the luminous action of bodies produces on the
retina pictures representative of external forms and colours.
To this the physiologists [query, the _physiologists_] have
objected, with reason, that if it was _as images_ that the
luminous impressions acted, there needed another eye within the
eye to behold them. Does not a similar objection hold good
still more strikingly in the present case?

"It is clear, in fact, from an invincible necessity, that the
human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own.
For by whom can the observation be made? It is conceivable
that, relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe himself in
regard to the passions which animate him, from this anatomical
reason, that the organs which are the seat of them are distinct
from those destined to the function of observation. Though each
man has had occasion to make on himself such observations, yet
they can never have any great scientific importance; and the
best means of knowing the passions will be always to observe
them without; [_indeed_!] for every state of passion very
energetic--that is to say, precisely those which it would be
most essential to examine, are necessarily incompatible with
the state of observation. But as to observing in the same
manner intellectual phenomena, while they are proceeding, it is
manifestly impossible. The thinking individual cannot separate
himself in two parts, of which the one shall reason, and the
other observe it reasoning. The organ observed and the organ
observing being in this case identical, how can observation be
carried on?

"This pretended psychological method is thus radically absurd.
And only consider to what procedures profoundly contradictory
it immediately conducts! On the other hand, they recommend you
to isolate yourself as much as possible from all external
sensation; and, above all, they interdict you every
intellectual exercise; for if you were merely occupied in
making the most simple calculation, what would become of your
_internal_ observation? On the other hand, after having thus,
by dint of many precautions, attained to a perfect state of
intellectual slumber, you are to occupy yourself in
contemplating the operations passing in your mind--while there
is no longer any thing passing there. Our descendants will one
day see these ludicrous pretensions transferred to the
stage."--P. 34.

They seem transferred to the stage already--so completely burlesqued is the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them, in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering, in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate, this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in search--something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences; observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology, let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the fundamental principles of Gall's system, but repudiates, as consummately absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the cranium, and establish a more reasonable one, unless by a course of craniological observations directed and confirmed by those internal observations which he is pleased here to deride?

His hierarchy being erected, he next enters on a review of the several received sciences, marking throughout the successful, or erroneous, application of the positive method. This occupies three volumes. It is a portion of the work which we are restricted from entering on; nor shall we deviate from the line we have prescribed to ourselves. But before opening the fourth volume, in which he treats of social physics, it will not be beside our object to take a glance at the _method_ itself, as applied in the usual field of scientific investigation, to nature, as it is called--to inorganic matter, to vegetable and animal life.

We are not here determining the merits of M. Comte in his exposition of the scientific method; we take it as we find it; and, in unsophisticated mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline--to make room for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid waste.

Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of their succession--such is the material of science. All enquiry into causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory; the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed, perhaps, to have a meaning--such is the supreme dictate of the method, and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities, than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen, gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls through space--ask not how!--the mathematician will tell you at what rate it flies--let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous transformations--the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of proportions--names and figures both--_why_ these transmutations take place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from the earth, and _grow_, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask what is _life?_ Science will generalize the fact to you--give you its formula for the expression of _growth, decomposition, and recomposition_, under circumstances not as yet very accurately collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain! Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his formula of decomposition and recomposition. As _attraction_ in the planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical expression, so _life_ in the plant is to be known only as decomposition and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances. Think of it as such--no more. But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something I do not know. Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what life is. Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks why? Child! I respond, that the hands _do_ move is an ultimate fact--so, represent it to yourself--and here, moreover, is the law of their movement--the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter revolves once. This is knowledge, and will be of use to you--more you cannot understand. And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.

But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth--what is this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing, seeking, this way and that, its pasture?--what have we here? _Irritability and a tissue._ Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself--what is this? _Sensation and a nerve._ Does the nerve _feel_? you inconsiderately ask, or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which sensation resides? A smile of derision plays on the lip of the philosopher. _There is sensation_--you cannot express the fact in simpler or more general terms. Turn your enquiries, or your microscope, on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected. Ask not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of ontology. And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter? Not more perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the surface of the earth. Does the organization of the man, or something else within him, _think_?--does the organization of that worm, or something else within it, _feel_?--they are virtually the same questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science. Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with which it is, or _was_, connected.

All this "craves wary walking." It is a trying course, this _method_, for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem, by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the fantastic, inexplicable interval.

We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of _Physique Social_. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the work--perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole--where, in order to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the purpose of exposition will allow:--

"It is impossible to deny that the political world is
intellectually in a deplorable condition. All our ideas of
_order_ are hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient system of
religious and military power, regarded especially in its
constitution, catholic and feudal; a doctrine which, from the
philosophic point of view of this treatise, represents
incontestably the _theologic_ state of the social science. All
our ideas of _progress_ continue to be exclusively deduced from
a philosophy purely negative, which, issuing from
Protestantism, has taken in the last age its final form and
complete development; the doctrines of which constitute, in
reality, the _metaphysic_ state of politics. Different classes
of society adopt the one or the other of these, just as they
are disposed to feel chiefly the want of conservation or that
of amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these antagonist
doctrines present themselves in all their plenitude, and with
their primitive homogeneity; they are found less and less in
this form, except in minds purely speculative. But the
monstrous medley which men attempt in our days of their
incompatible principles, cannot evidently be endowed with any
virtue foreign to the elements which compose it, and tends
only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.

"However pernicious may be at present the theologic doctrine,
no true philosophy can forget that the formation and first
development of modern societies were accomplished under its
benevolent tutelage; which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate
in the historical portion of this work. But it is not the less
incontestably true that, for about three centuries, its
influence has been, amongst the nations most advanced,
essentially retrograde, notwithstanding the partial services it
has throughout that period rendered. It would be superfluous to
enter here into a special discussion of this doctrine, in order
to show its extreme insufficiency at the present day. The
deplorable absence of all sound views of social organization
can alone account for the absurd project of giving, in these
times, for the support of social order, a political system
which has already been found unable to sustain itself before
the spontaneous progress of intelligence and of society. The
historical analysis which we shall subsequently institute of
the successive changes which have gradually brought about the
entire dissolution of the catholic and feudal system, will
demonstrate, better than any direct argument, its radical and
irrevocable decay. The theologic school has generally no other
method of explaining this decomposition of the old system than
by causes merely accidental or personal, out of all reasonable
proportion with the magnitude of the results; or else, when
hard driven, it has recourse to its ordinary artifice, and
attempts to explain all by an appeal to the will of Providence,
to whom is ascribed the intention of raising a time of trial
for the social order, of which the commencement, the duration,
and the character, are all left equally obscure."...--P.14

"In a point of view strictly logical, the social problem might
be stated thus:--construct a doctrine that shall be so
rationally conceived that it shall be found, as it develops
itself, to be still always consistent with its own principles.
Neither of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition,
even by the rudest approximation. Both display numerous and
direct contradictions, and on important points. By this alone
their utter insufficiency is clearly exhibited. The doctrine
which shall fulfil this condition, will, from this test, be
recognized as the one capable of reorganizing society; for it
is an _intellectual reorganization_ that is first wanted--a
re-establishment of a real and durable harmony amongst our
social ideas, disturbed and shaken to the very foundation.
Should this regeneration be accomplished in one intelligence
only, (and such must necessarily be its manner of
commencement,) its extension would be certain; for the number
of intelligences to be convinced can have no influence except
as a question of time. I shall not fail to point out, when the
proper opportunity arrives, the eminent superiority, in this
respect, of the positive philosophy, which, once extended to
social phenomena, will necessarily combine the ideas of men in
a strict and complete manner, which in no other way can be
attained."--P. 20.

M. Comte then mentions some of the inconsistencies of the theologic school.

"Analyze, for example, the vain attempts, so frequently renewed
during two centuries by so many distinguished minds, to
subordinate, according to the theologic formula, reason to
faith; it is easy to recognize the radical contradiction this
attempt involves, which establishes reason herself as supreme
judge of this very submission, the extent and the permanence of
which is to depend upon her variable and not very rigid
decisions. The most eminent thinker of the present catholic
school, the illustrious _De Maistre_, himself affords a proof,
as convincing as involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction
in his philosophy, when, renouncing all theologic weapons, he
labours in his principal work to re-establish the Papal
supremacy on purely historical and political reasonings,
instead of limiting himself to command it by right divine--the
only mode in true harmony with such a doctrine, and which a
mind, at another epoch, would not certainly have hesitated to
adopt."--P. 25.

After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school, he turns to the _metaphysic_, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes _doctrine critique_, for M. Comte is rich in names.

"In submitting, in their turn, the _metaphysic_ doctrine to a
like appreciation, it must never be overlooked that, though
exclusively critical, and therefore purely revolutionary, it
has not the less merited, for a long time, the title of
progressive, as having in fact presided over the principal
political improvements accomplished in the course of the three
last centuries, and which have necessarily been of a _negative_
description. If, when conceived in an absolute sense, its
dogmas manifest, in fact, a character directly anarchical, when
viewed in an historical position, and in their antagonism to
the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state,
necessary to the introduction of a new political organization.

"By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity
inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social
system to another can never be direct and continuous; it
supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of
interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and
duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation
to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though
undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a
class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we
see the legitimate source of the present _doctrine critique_--a
source which at once explains the indispensable services it has
hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now
opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies....

"Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the
metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a
normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and
transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of
political notions, the most fundamental, it represents
government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of
society, against which it sedulously places itself in a
constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed
incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity,
in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to
leave it no other than the simple functions of general police,
without any essential participation in the supreme direction of
the action of the collective body or of its social development.