Chapter XXIII (3)

Such is the succinct history of the positivist philosophy and religion. The religion, indeed, ended with its founder, for he declared a short time before his death that he had found no true believer worthy to succeed him in the pontificate; but the philosophy left disciples who, though they may not accept it in all its parts, yet continue to be inspired by its principles. Not long since they had an organ in the _Revue Philosophique_, in which they showed themselves much divided, and gravely discussed the question whether it must be a philosophy or a religion with which they should gratify the human race. They seem, however, after the advice of M. Littré, to have finally agreed that it is necessary first of all to reproduce the eighteenth century; that is to say, to renew, in the name of the emancipated flesh, the war against the Church and the religion of the spirit. Events have seemed to favor them, and instead of regretting the suspension of public liberty, by the establishment of the new empire, they even greet it as an advantage, since they remind us that it was under a similar _régime_ that the encyclopaedic work of which they claim to be the legal heirs was born, grew, and prospered. In short, M. Littré published, a short while ago, a new _brochure_ under the title of "_Partóles de Philosophie Positive_," in which he sustains all the principles of his master, and vindicates for himself the honor of having been his most faithful disciple.

We have joined the names of M. H. Taine with the names of Messrs. Comte and Littré, although he has never openly avowed himself an adherent of their school. But, beside the identity of his principles with those of positivism, the lightness of his philosophical luggage does not permit us to devote to him a separate study. We know of him on this subject only by the book entitled "_Les Philosophes Français du dix-neuvième siècle_" (French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century), a superficial work, but agreeable, in which he judges with wit, sometimes with justice, the chief representatives of the eclectic philosophy, and to which he has added a concluding chapter that gives us an exposition of his method. It is to this {725} method which we shall, farther on, devote a few words. [Footnote 110]

[Footnote 110: M. de Taine has, since this article was written,
published a work on English writers and literature, which has in
certain quarters been well spoken of, and which really has some
merit, though of a lighter sort.--TRANSLATOR. ]

II.

It will readily be perceived that we cannot even attempt to set forth within our limits the positivist religion and philosophy in all their details and developments, and that we must confine ourselves to their chief points or leading principles. We shall take our analysis from the works of M. Comte himself, and from the series of letters which M. Littré formerly inserted in _The National_, and which he has since republished in a volume entitled _Révolution, Positivism, Conservatism_, Paris, 1851. M. Littré has reproduced the ideas of the master with a fidelity and disinterestedness rare in a disciple, and he has over the master the advantage of style and method.

Positivism assumes as its starting point that modern society is suffering from a deeply rooted evil, that it is like a man in a fever who tosses and turns in his bed, seeking a position in which he may rest at ease, and finding none. Do what it will it can find no stable position. In vain has it effected immense progress, for this very progress turns to its disadvantage. Beside, what does progress avail if society cannot enjoy it in order and peace? But whence comes this evil, this trouble, this feverish and sterile agitation? Evidently it comes from intellectual and moral anarchy. Nobody any longer believes in anything; there is no longer any law, any principle, that unites all minds in a common symbol; every one draws from himself; divided egotisms are in mutual conflict, and seek each other's destruction. If such is the nature of the malady, the remedy is obvious. It must be in obtaining a doctrine which accepted by all becomes the doctrine of all, a bond of union for them, and the principle of peace.

But where is this doctrine to be found? Is it a religious doctrine-- Catholicity, for instance? The Catholic doctrine, indeed, gave formerly the result desired, and realized in the world an incomparable unity; but it has had its day; science has demonstrated the impossibility of its dogmas, and it, in fact, finds now only here and there a real believer--the great majority have ceased to believe it. Will Protestantism supply the doctrine needed? No; for Protestantism is only a degenerate and illogical Catholicism. Will Islamism give it? Islamism has certainly its grand sides, but its morality is too defective, and its dogma is hardly less repulsive than the Christian. It is, then, manifest that all existing religions are impotent for the future to rally and unite in a common bond the minds of men. But as religion cannot do it, perhaps philosophy, metaphysics, can? Metaphysics is only the abstract form of religion, resting on the same basis and sustained by it, and does nothing but substitute abstract beings that have no reality for the supernatural beings imagined by religion, and which science equally rejects. Metaphysics has, as religion, been indeed useful, has aided science to show the inanity of religions dogmas; but, if useful in the work of destruction, it is impotent in that of rebuilding, and can henceforth serve only to perpetuate intellectual anarchy--that is to say, only aggravate the evil instead of curing it. If, then, the remedy can be found neither in religion nor in metaphysics, where can it be found?

It is to be found in a doctrine which substitutes for the supernatural beings of religion, and the abstract entities of metaphysics, the real beings which science demonstrates, and the existence of which nobody disputes or can dispute. But how find or how construct such a doctrine? The experience of what has been done in the exact sciences gives distinctly enough the answer. There was a time when mathematics, astronomy, physics, did not exist, and when men explained all the phenomena {726} of nature by chimerical hypotheses. Now, how has man come forth from that ignorance? By observing instead of imagining, as he had hitherto done; and in observing phenomena he discovered their laws, and thus, with time and effort, he succeeded in creating the sciences which are called mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry. Can we doubt, after this, that by applying the same method or following the same process in regard to the science of individual man, or _biology_, and the science of society, or _sociology_, we shall obtain the same result? And let it not be said that these sciences are of another order; the distinction attempted to be established between them and the exact sciences is puerile and unfounded, as science exists only on condition of being exact, and if not exact it is not science. Biology and sociology have, it is true, not yet the character of exact sciences; but why have they not? Simply because they are as yet in their infancy, as was chemistry two centuries ago; because, on the one hand, they have been badly studied, and, on the other, because they are more complex and less easily mastered. The difficulties, it is admitted, are therefore great; but it is necessary to conquer them, since the salvation of the world can be secured on no other condition.

The terms of the problem are now distinctly stated, together with the method of its solution. The malady from which society suffers is intellectual anarchy, and intellectual anarchy will cease only when we have made of the sciences of biology and sociology (it is known what these sciences mean) sciences as exact as are mathematics, astronomy, etc.; and to do this it is only necessary to use the same method in constructing them that is used in constructing the so-called exact sciences.

However, the whole is not yet said. Observation is, indeed, the true method, but observation of what? Of moral phenomena, the operations of the soul? But what is the soul? Who has seen it? Certain metaphysicians have, indeed, pretended to derive all science from the phenomena of the soul; but this is a gross error; psychology is an impossible science. In psychology the subject, or rather the organ which observes, is precisely that which is observed--the eye striving to see itself. To what, then, is observation to be applied? To the body, to the cerebral organs, and, primarily, to the external world; to the inorganic world at first, afterward to the organic world, to minerals, plants, animals. The study of animals is especially serviceable, since man, at most, has over the animal only the advantage of some superior intellectual faculties, and even that advantage appears doubtful, observes M. Comte, if we compare the acts of the mammiferae, the most elevated, with those of savages, the least developed.

After zoology, the most useful science is phrenology, the science which best teaches us what man really is. Dr. Gall under this relation has rendered an immense service, and created the true science of man. He erred, it is true, by too minute detail, and in wishing to determine at once the organs of theft, luxury, etc., which gave fair scope to criticism; [Footnote 111] but it would be difficult to resist the accumulated proofs on which he had established his system. In short, science is now in the position to give a classification of eighteen interior functions of the brain, or a systematic _tableau_ of the soul. Thus it is neither from metaphysics nor from religion, but from zoology, and, above all, from phrenology, that we must seek the knowledge of the laws which govern intelligence.

[Footnote 111: Nothing is new under the sun, says Solomon. Any one
curious on the subject of phrenology may read, as M. Cousin has well
remarked, in Plato's _Timoeus_, all that Gall and Spurzheim, and
their followers, have really established in their pretended
science.--TRANSLATOR.]

However, _method_ alone does not suffice. There is needed also a _criterion_, and here M. Comte confesses that the difficulty is great.

To observe with profit, to be able, by observation, to abstract from the {727} phenomena their laws, we most have an anterior law, a type-law, to serve as the term of comparison, in like manner as a standard is necessary to determine the value of a coin. Now, what furnishes this type? Observation? But this is only to recommence the difficulty. The embarrassment can be relieved only by reasoning from analogy, and a historical theory. Positivism, after all, then, resorts to reasoning and theorizing! The sciences which are firmly seated on positive realities began in hypotheses, and it has been by the aid of hypotheses, ascertained afterward to be false, that observation has succeeded in discovering the real laws of these sciences! It must be the same with biology and sociology. Humanity began by religion, and religion has passed through three phases, fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism. Religion, truly, is only a fiction, but a useful fiction, and even necessary to the development of humanity. Fetichism, in offering plants to the adoration of man, taught him to cultivate them; polytheism, in creating supernatural beings, gave birth to poetry and the fine arts; monotheism, in elevating minds, has fitted them for the culture of science. After religion came metaphysics, which, by transforming the dogmas into abstractions, destroyed them; and, by destroying them, opened the way for positivism. Now, what has taken place for humanity in general must be reproduced for each man in particular; each one of us must pass through the religious state and the metaphysical state before we can arrive at the positivist state. Thus, then, in like manner as it has been by means of false hypotheses that the real laws of the science have been discovered, so by means of hypotheses equally false, religion and metaphysics, will be discovered the true laws of biology.

We confess that we do not very clearly perceive what relation there is between this theory and the problem to be solved. The problem is how to find a criterion by the aid of which the true may be distinguished from the false; but this criterion escapes us still, and we have for it only a second method superposed on the first, or history coming to the aid of physiology. True, we are not told what bond connects the two methods, or how we are to combine them, and from their combination obtain the type-law; but we must not be too difficult, and we forewarn our readers that they must not look for any real connection, any logical nexus, between the various propositions which we are about to place before them. Beyond the gross materialism which follows necessarily from the positivist premises, all is arbitrary and capricious; the master says it, and he must be believed on his word, without being asked for reasons, good or bad. Our readers will judge for themselves if this be not so, and that they may not accuse us of exaggerating anything, we shall give generally textual citations.

After having presented the formula of its method, or rather of its two methods, the positivist school proceeds to the application and exposition of the consequences which are derived from it or them.

In the very outset they assert that there are no absolute truths, that all truth is relative; the true, the good, the fair, are such only by a provisional title; what was virtue yesterday may be crime to-day, and what is crime to-day may be virtue to-morrow. Thus speaks M. Littré:

"The positivist philosophy is experimental; . . . . it is composed of relative not absolute notions. . . . When man, in the beginning of his scientific career, launched into unrestricted researches after the absolute, he had only this way open to him; now another way has been opened, that of experience and induction. This way cannot conduct the inquirer to absolute notions, and when we demand them of reason we demand of her more than she has. The mind of man is neither absolute nor infinite, and to try to obtain from it absolute {728} solutions is to go out of the _immutable_ conditions of human nature." [Footnote 112]--_Littré, Conservatism, Revolution, and Positivism_, pp. 5, 38.

[Footnote 112: M. de Chalambert might here reply, granting man has
no infinite or absolute _notions_, which no finite mind can have, it
by no means follows that he has no notions or conceptions of that
which is infinite and absolute, or intuitions of necessary, eternal,
and immutable truth, as are the first principles of all science,
religion, and morals.--TRANSLATOR. ]

If there are no absolute truths, then there is no God:

"This conclusion," says M. Littré "rests on the decisive results of all scientific exploration during the long course of the ages, namely, that nothing of what is called first cause is accessible to the human mind, and the origin of the world can be explained neither by many gods nor by one god alone, neither by nature, chance, nor atoms. This result, erected into a principle, gradually takes possession of modern intelligence, and bears in its womb the social organization of the future of the race. . . . If, for a childish and individual satisfaction, the idea of some theological being, one or manifold, is retained, it is necessary to reduce the conception forthwith to a nullity, and to purely nominal and supererogatory functions; for the result of scientific investigation is, that there is in the course of things no trace of miracle or government from above, and nothing but an unbroken chain of laws modifiable, within certain limits, by the action from age to age of mankind. As Laplace says, such a being is henceforth a useless hypothesis."--_lb. pp_. 279, 298.

The soul has no existence distinct from that of the body, and therefore dies with it:

"This belief (concerning the survivance of the soul), which might be true, is not found to be so; science (always science!) has not been able to establish a single fact whatever of a life after death; and so, like a pond no longer alimented by inflowing streams, the opinion of an individual perpetuity gradually evaporates."--_lb., pp._128.

There is room for liberty only because the biological phenomena are very complex:

"No science," says M. Littré (_ib_., p. 114), "if the phenomenon has no law, and no power (liberty) if not complex enough to offer us struggles duly proportioned to the complication."

It follows from this that the effect of the progress of science must be to diminish human liberty, since in proportion as it elucidates questions it diminishes their complexity.

However, human intelligence must have an ideal:

"The ideal is its dream and its worship. Now what will be its ideal? Humanity itself. Humanity has a real existence; it is the great Being, really a great collective body, having a regular growth of its own, and provided, like every individual body, with temporary organs, which lose their activity, wither, and disappear in default of employment and nutrition" (_ib_., p. 118). "Formerly, and conformably to the medium in which they moved, theology and metaphysics, its slave, gave their demonstration of the divine existence. In like manner science to-day gives the demonstration of the existence of humanity. It is no longer possible to mistake the growth of this ideal--the solidarity of its most remote past with its most distant future, and this powerful life of which each man has been, is, and will be an organ" (_ib_., p. 283). "Humanity is a real ideal, which it is necessary to know (education), to love (religion), to embellish (the fine arts), to enrich (industry), and which therefore holds our whole existence, individual, domestic, and social, under its supreme direction" (_ib_., p. 286).

To love and serve humanity is the whole positivist moral law. M. Littré says, pp. 291, 292: "This morality is much superior to the morality of the past, which was founded on selfishness. The 'salvation' of the theologians is as much a selfish calculation as the 'enlightened self-interest' {729} of the materialists. The materialists say, 'Do good: it is for thy interest in this life;' the theologians say, 'Do good: it is for thy interest in another life.' Never was there a more perfect system of selfishness organized in the world; and if powerful instincts, and, it is but justice to add, sacerdotal wisdom, had not in part counterbalanced the disastrous effects of such an habitual direction, individual asceticism and aspiration to salvation would have dissolved all social bonds."

It is, we see, no longer God whom we are to love and serve, but humanity, and as humanity has few or no rewards to bestow, the worship we render her must needs be disinterested. Selfishness falls in proportion as the hope of reward vanishes. [But suppose one does not love and serve humanity, will he suffer punishment or lose anything in consequence? If so, what becomes of the positivist doctrine of the disinterestedness of the worship of humanity?--TR.]

Such are the solutions offered by the positivist philosophy on the principal points of biology, or the science of the individual; we proceed now to sociology, or the science of society.

Positivism, being at once a philosophy and a religion, must admit and does admit two distinct societies--a temporal society and a spiritual society. We begin with the first.

The aim of the temporal society M. Littré, _ib_., p. 119, explains in the following manner: "The historic tradition itself, without anything forced, arbitrary, fortuitous, or transitory, conducts us to the reign of industry. Before industry the whole past successively falls and disappears. For the modern man industrial activity is the only temporal occupation, the only practical activity. . . . If the accession of the industrial regimen is inevitable, it is also inevitable that the chiefs of our industry should be our temporal chiefs. We have no need of patricians or of gentlemen to lead us to war and conquest; we have no need of kings or kaisers to concentrate in their own hands the power of the sword. Their functions, formerly preeminent, are now without employment (!). But we have need of directors who can conduct the peaceful labors of industry with firmness and intelligence, labors which certainly want neither complication nor difficulty nor grandeur. It is to this end that all temporal power must aspire."

If so, if industry is the supreme and last end of humanity, evidently nothing is to be changed in the present condition of property, and that the wealth of the rich should be augmented rather than diminished. The constitution of the family must also be maintained. The marriage bond is, therefore, declared indissoluble; the positivist law is in this respect even more severe than the Christian law, for, not contented with prohibiting divorce, it even forbids second nuptials. In the purely political order the republican form must obtain.

"I have thought ever since February, 1848," said M. Littré, in 1850, p. 205, "that the establishment of the republic is definitive in France, having for it the guarantee of manners which have ceased to be monarchical, and after this wholly theoretical point of view, I have constantly lived, and engage to live, in security."

This confidence, wholly positivist, has been but poorly justified by events; yet there are compensations, and, in reality, the imperial _régime_, which has succeeded to the republic, differs not so much as might be supposed from that which the positivists themselves wished to establish. The principal conditions demanded by the positivist republic are: 1. Free discussion; 2. The preponderance of the central power; 3. The rigid restriction of the parliamentary or _local_ power to the vote of the budget; 4. In fine, the investment of the growing power in the hands of proletaries or working-men.

M. Comte and M. Littré both agree on all these points; they both have an {730} equal horror of parliamentary government, under which, says M. Littré, power passes into the hands of lawyers, pettifoggers, and sophists. Both desire three directors; but M. Comte judges it most suitable to choose three bankers, because society is industrial, and bankers, who are the lessors of the funds of industry, are in a better position than others to know its wants. M. Littré (he was writing in _The National_ in 1850) preferred three eminent proletaries. "What is the proletary," exclaims he, "operative or peasant, who, if he has equal intelligence, that he should not be as capable as M. Thiers or M. Guizot of directing political affairs?" He concedes, however, that as a counterpoise to the central proletarian power, the _Chamber of Deputies_ should be composed of rich men, who are the best fitted by habit to vote the budget.

Master and disciple both agree, that Paris should elect the executive government; and that the rest of the French people should have the right to obey. Fear you that from such a system despotism must result? M. Littré reassures you, with his strange apothegm, "what is despotism in our days but government in the hands of the retrograde parties?" That is, despotism is simply power in the hands of those whose ideas are different from ours? Could he tell his secret with a more refreshing simplicity? He has another word which might excite some uneasiness. "The philosophical genius of the Convention was not inferior to its political genius, and, indeed, they were each the necessary condition of the other. _Positivism is their direct heir_. The whole positivist political theory, therefore, like all revolutionary theories, ends at last in this: Below, as the very condition of its existence, the sovereignty of the plebs; above, as the crown of the edifice, the dictator.

But we pass to the spiritual society. We have seen under the influence of what sentiments the positive philosophy was suddenly transformed into a religion. Madame Clotilde de Vaux had the initiative, and inspired, in 1845, the religious thought of M. Comte. From that moment it was no longer the intellect but the heart, no longer intelligence but love, that predominated in the positivist school. The disciples were transformed with the master. "I recognize and profess as the positivist philosophy requires," says M. Littré, p. 298, "that this _affective_ side of human nature should always preponderate over the intellectual side." As soon as it was decided that religion should take the place of philosophy, M. Comte proclaimed a great Being and then a high priest. The great Being, who was none other than humanity itself, was defined to be "the collection of all beings, past, present, and to come, that freely concur in the completion of universal order," or more briefly, but not more clearly, "the continuous whole of convergent beings." [Footnote 113]

[Footnote 113: Aug. Comte, "_Cours de Politique Positive_," t. 1, p. 30.]

The high priest (_le grand prétre_) was, as we have said, M. Comte himself. After this came dogma and worship. The dogma had already its principal features in philosophy, and there was little to be added; but for worship, _le culte_, all was to be created. The fertile imagination of M. Comte promptly provided for it. He engaged at first in compiling and publishing a positivist catechism, by the side of which M. Littré gravely tells us "the Catholic catechism is only an embryo." He afterward constructed a calendar; he commences the new era with the year 1793, and names it _Cycle of the Great Crisis_. The year is divided into thirteen months of four weeks each; the months take the names of thirteen men of superior genius; instead of saying January, February, we must say Moses, Aristotle, etc. The days have also the names of celebrated men, but men of an inferior order. Several circular letters from the high priest to the faithful were dated the 4th of Moses, {731} 6th of the Great Crisis, or 6 Archimedes, Great Crisis 64.

There was, or rather was to have been, a college of assessor priests--the number of whom was fixed at twenty thousand for Europe, one-fourth of whom were allotted to France; positivist savans and poets were to compose the college faculty.

Time and money failed for the construction of a temple for the new worship, and the apartment occupied by M. Comte, Rue des Fosses, Monsieur-le-Prince, held temporarily its place. The faithful congregated there on appointed days, and every positivist believer was required to say three prayers daily. It was, doubtless, in consequence of one of these pious exercises that M. Littré exclaimed:

"I have too clearly perceived the efficacy of this regenerative socialism in myself and in the little group of disciples, and the calm content with which it fills the soul, not to desire to take part in it. . . . In these times, when all things seem giving way, how salutary and sweet to feel ourselves in communion with the immense existence which protects us, with that humanity which is the spirit of our globe, and the providence of successive generations!"--_M. Littré, ib._, p. 294.

The number of festival days was considerable; there were fourscore and one a year. The festival of the great Being, those of the sun, the dead, the police, the press, etc. Nine sacraments were instituted:

1. _The Presentation_, The parents present the new-born child to the priest, who accepts it, or, in some rare cases, rejects it. We are not told what becomes of the new-born child that is rejected.

2. _Initiation_. At fourteen the boy is delivered to the priesthood, who take charge of his instruction.

3. _Admission_. At twenty-one the adult is admitted to the service of humanity.

4. _Destination_. Seven years after the young man is admitted to the special office which he is judged capable of filling.

5. _Marriage_. Marriage is not permitted after thirty-five in men and twenty-eight in women. Three months continence before the definitive celebration, eternal widowhood, save in some rare cases, of which the high priest alone is the judge, are enjoined.

6. _Maturity_. At forty-two the man is admitted to the full maturity of the service of humanity.

7. _Retirement_. This takes place at sixty-three.

8. _Transformation_. Perfection is prepared by repentance.

9. _Incorporation_. Burial in a garden in the midst of flowers.

Once entered into this way, M. Comte cannot stop, and he even arrives at the Utopia of a virgin mother, at first hazarded only as a bold hypothesis, but afterward proclaimed as the synthetic _résumé_ of the whole positivist religion, in which are combined all its aspects. He was preparing a special treatise on this grand discovery when death interrupted him. A word on this conception of a virgin mother. Through the indefinite progress of positivism, the wife may one day come to conceive without ceasing to be a virgin, and so universal continence become the supreme law of the positivist religion, without in other respects abolishing the social bonds of marriage.

But at least humanity, after so many efforts, once elevated to this glorious state, will henceforth remain in it? M. Comte thinks not; he inclines, on the contrary, to the belief that in spite of the positivist virtue, humanity will end by decreasing and entirely disappearing.

But we have detained our readers long enough with these sad lucubrations of a sickly brain. We could not well pass them over in silence, for they belong to the intellectual history of our times, and it seems to us some useful lessons may be extracted from them.

We have promised to make known {732} the philosophical theory of M. H. Taine, but as the matter is small, the exposition may be short. His theory may be reduced to the three following points:

1. The philosopher in the study of science must be disinterested, and draw his conclusions after having made his observations, without disturbing himself as to their consequences. The philosopher, in a word, must set the man aside, forget that he is a son, a father, a husband, a citizen, and regard science alone, nothing but science, with the facts observation furnishes.

2. Observation is the only method, and observation must be confined exclusively to physical phenomena, which alone are real. Metaphysical beings, notions of the soul, of first cause, are pure illusions; consequently nothing survives the body, and there is no God, at least no God that can be inferred from any observable phenomena.

3. The highest synthesis to which observation can conduce is that there is a vast assemblage of laws and phenomena which we call nature.

All this resembles positivism too closely to be separated from it. If we have distinguished it, we have done so that M. H. Taine should not accuse us of making him, in spite of himself, the disciple of a master whom, perhaps, he does not wish to own.

III.

Before proceeding to examine this strange and incoherent system either in its general principles or in its particular application, we must reduce to their first value the two propositions which we set forth as its preamble, or rather as its pretext: 1. That modern society is in want of a doctrine that unites all intelligences in a common symbol, and enables them to live in peace and harmony; and, 2. That this doctrine cannot be in the future the Catholic doctrine, though that doctrine for a long time in the past filled its office, for its dogmas are now known to be irreconcilable with the discoveries of science.

One of the most common practices of the sophistical spirit is not so much to deny facts as to distort them, exaggerate their reach, or confuse those which are distinct. This is what our positivists do in these propositions. That there is at present much intellectual anarchy, that many souls, having lost their faith, or suffered it to be greatly weakened, refuse to recognize any law except the law which they make for themselves, and that thence results a mental perturbation from which society suffers not a little, is a fact too evident and too lamentable to be questioned. It is only simple justice, however, to acknowledge that M. Comte has the merit of pointing it out much earlier than the most of his friends [and Saint-Simon much earlier than even M. Comte.--TR.] Although strongly imbued with the revolutionary spirit he comprehended [had learned from Saint-Simon?--TR.] as early as 1822 that that spirit, powerful indeed to destroy, is radically incapable of establishing anything, and he never spared the illusion of those who believed that the principles of the Constituent Assembly of 1789, engrafted on religious unbelief, could serve as the basis of the social edifice.

But if the evil denounced is only too real, it is not necessary to represent it as greater than it is, or to conclude, because faith in many souls has grown feeble, that it has entirely perished, and is no longer to be found among men. We know how difficult and how delicate it is to establish the balance-sheet of religious society. Appearances are deceptive, and to reach the real facts we must explore, to the bottom, the consciences of men, which only God can do. However, there are certain exterior circumstances which may enable us even on this point to approximate the real facts in the case. It is undeniable that there are in all the degrees of society men who really believe and faithfully practise religion; others who believe but practise not; {733} and still others who make an open profession of not believing. The first division have representatives in every social class, among the poor as well as among the rich, in the sciences, in literature, in art, in industry, in politics. Their faith in general is equally firm and enlightened, for it has been thoroughly tried, and has withstood every attack, both from within and from without.

The second class are more numerous, at least in the great centres of population, and form in those centres the bulk of society. They believe, but their faith is weak, or perhaps it were more proper to say that they have not faith, but only vague and indecisive beliefs, whose level rises or falls according to events. They recoil alike from avowed apostasy and from distinct, precise, and frank affirmation of the truth. As they have abandoned the practice of their religion, it may be supposed that they have lost all belief, but that is far from being the case, for often the slightest breath from without suffices to rekindle what seems to be extinct, but is really only asleep. It is rare, above all, that at the last moment, when the passions have been appeased, when they stand face to face with reality and see it as it is, their last and solemn word is not a word of faith.

The third class, those who make an open profession of unbelief, are relatively few; but they make up for their lack of numbers by their activity and the powerful means at their disposal. They fill high positions in the state, control the greater part of the organs of publicity, and gain the multitudes to their side all the more easily because they excel in the art of caressing popular prejudices and pandering to popular passions. Beside, their hatred of truth is greater than their attachment to any doctrine whatever, and they can, therefore, hold themselves free to attack the faith without being bound to defend anything of their own against it, or to maintain any self-consistency in their attacks. What moves and governs them is not the desire to ascertain or defend the truth, but to appear to have independence and hardihood of mind, and to pose themselves as despisers of the past and precursors of the future.

But to appreciate the real situation of things, it is not enough to regard the present. We must also consider the past. No society makes itself such as it is, and every society holds infinitely more from the generation that went before than from the existing generation. Now, as the society of the past was manifestly a Christian society, it cannot be that the present should not remain Christian in the greater part of its elements; and in fact, notwithstanding the formidable efforts that have been made to unchristianize modern society, and its numerous deviations, it is still the Christian spirit that inspires the laws, manners, and institutions, and so pervades the general intelligence that even those who would attack the Christian dogmas are constrained, in order to render their attacks more effective, to appeal to the very principles which Christianity has brought to light and made predominant.

Moreover, religious faith, far from decreasing, is actually progressing, and, if it has not yet recovered all the ground it had lost, its gains since the commencement of the present century have been far greater than its losses.

It is not difficult to detect the vice of the first proposition. It consists in assuming that Christian faith is dead, while it has only been lessened; that it has lost all authority over the intelligent, while, in fact, it continues to exercise, directly or indirectly, such an empire over them that its principles are universally regarded as the foundation and support of the social edifice itself.

But not contented with assuming that Christianity is dead, the positivists go further, and pretend that it cannot be restored to life, because its dogmas are found to be incompatible with the discoveries of science. This is not {734} a fact distorted, not a fact invented, and for which no proof is offered or attempted to be offered. We have in vain sought in the writings of Messrs. Comte and Littré even the semblance of a reason of any sort in support of the allegation. The positivists announce it, affirm it, but make no effort even to prove it, or at most only stammer out by the way the name of Galileo, as if it had not been a thousand times answered, at first, that the sacred writers must have spoken the language of their times, which after all is still the language of our times; afterward that Copernicus dedicated, in 1545, to Pope Paul III., his great work, in which he sets forth and defends the new or heliocentric system of the universe; that nearly a century elapsed before any censure of it intervened; that Galileo, although technically condemned, was neither loaded with chains nor cast into a dungeon; in fine--and it is the important point--that the holy office which condemned him, though possessing great and legitimate authority, is not the Church, and has no claim to infallibility. [Footnote 114]

[Footnote 114: This was written before the Encyclical of the Holy
Father, dated December 8, 1864, otherwise the noble author might
have modified his expression so as not even to seem to incur its
censure. Without raising any question as to the infallibility of the
pontifical congregations when they render a dogmatic Judgment
approved by the Holy Father, it is evident that the judgment
rendered in the case of Galileo was not a dogmatic judgment in the
understanding of even Rome herself, for she has since rescinded it,
and has permitted the theory to be taught in her schools as science.
The judgment was disciplinary, not dogmatic, and assuming,
therefore, that Galileo held the scientific truth, it offers no
evidence of the incompatibility of Catholic _dogma_ with science,
any more than the condemnation of an unwarrantable insurrection in a
monarchical country in favor of democracy would prove that the
Church is hostile to liberty.--TRANSLATOR. ]

Unable to produce any facts to support their thesis, the positivists resort to historical induction. They argue that the sciences have been in a state of continuous progress for three centuries; but during the same three centuries they say faith has been in a state of continual decline; there is, therefore, an intimate correlation between the two facts, so intimate that we may assert the former as generating the latter. But to a legitimate induction, all the facts on which it depends should be carefully observed and reported, which in this case is not done.

It is not true that faith has declined in a fatal and continuous manner; nor is it true that the sciences have made their greatest progress in those epochs in which faith has most declined. Ask history. In the beginning of the sixteenth century occurred Luther's revolt; It produced in the Christian world a universal shock. During several years heresy made every day new progress, and a part of Europe was detached from the centre of unity; but very soon the movement was arrested, and before the end of that same century a reaction against it had begun, followed by a religious revival or re-birth which produced one of the grandest epochs in the history of mankind. In the eighteenth century a new attack, more formidable than the first, is made on faith; it triumphs, and seems to be on the point of destroying all truth. Yet from the beginning of the next century a second religious restoration is effected, of which it may be as yet too early to determine the full bearing on the future, but which has already had too serious results to allow its great importance to be questioned. Thus out of four centuries there are two, the sixteenth and the eighteenth, in which faith has declined, and two, the seventeenth and the nineteenth, in which faith has revived and increased. There is not then a fatal and continuous march of faith in a certain direction. There are two contrary currents that meet and combat each other, without its being lawful as yet from the point of view of science to say which will ultimately triumph.

But at least they are the centuries of doubt and unbelief in which science has made her greatest progress? Not at all. Precisely the contrary is the fact. The sixteenth century did hardly anything for science, but the seventeenth century, the age of the {735} Catholic revival, was the age of the Galileos, the Pascals, the Des Cartes, the Newtons, the Leibnitzes--the age in which not only philosophy, letters, the arts, were carried to their highest degree of splendor, but the great principles of modern science were discovered and established--principles from which have resulted all subsequent discoveries, which, it is well to remark, have been only an affair of application and patience, not of invention and genius.

But the positivists insist again that, granting there is no absolute incompatibility between science and faith, since the masters of science have been decided believers, and are so still; granting also that there is no direct relation between the progress of science and the decline of faith, since the periods in which science has grown are not coincident with those in which faith has diminished--still the general result of three centuries of activity is that science has gained and faith has lost, and it is difficult, therefore, to suppose that these two facts are wholly foreign one to the other.

We reply that if this were proposed as a mere hypothesis, it might pass, and there would be no inconvenience in admitting that the progress of science may have indirectly, and so by way of reaction, had some influence in weakening religious beliefs. In all progress, in every increase of power, there is danger. Man is naturally weak, and as soon as he feels himself in possession of a new force he suffers himself to be dazzled by it, attributes to himself all its merits, and soon comes to believe that he can suffice for himself, and dispense with all aid from above. Consider what takes place in our days. Certainly, it is impossible to conceive in what respect steam, chloroform, electricity, or photography conflicts with any Christian dogma. Religion, instead of standing aghast at these discoveries in the application of science, applauds them, and sees in them new and more efficient means of doing her own work, of ameliorating the condition of a large number, of propagating the Gospel, and drawing closer the bonds of unity throughout the world. Yet such is not the impression which they produce on all minds. Certain persons, at sight of so many marvels, are so carried away with enthusiasm as to conclude that man is on the eve of becoming God. The impression will, no doubt, soon wear away, but till it does, the intoxication continues, and hearts are inflated. In this way science may come to the aid of unbelief; not by itself, nor by the results it gives; but by the presumptuous confidence with which it too often fills the mind. As it is not and cannot be the principal and efficient cause of the success of unbelief, we must seek that cause elsewhere, in the unloosing of the passions, always impatient of the restraints of faith. History in fact teaches us that the great revolts of the intellect are contemporary with those of the will and the senses; that it was in the scandals of the revival of ancient learning in the fifteenth century that Protestantism was conceived; that more lately it was the _les petits soupers_ of the Regency and under the impure inspirations of the Pompadours and the Du Barrys that was spun and woven the conspiracy against the God of Calvary. Modern unbelief may boast of the independence it has acquired, but assuredly not, if it has any self-respect, of its shameful cradle.

So we see that the very propositions which serve as a pretext to the positivist system are belied by the historical facts in the case. Far from being ready to perish, religion is every day making new progress, and none of its dogmas have as yet been contradicted or weakened by any of the real discoveries of science.

The positivist system itself, it will be recollected, is based on the assumption that no doctrine can henceforth obtain the assent of the intelligent, save on condition of being positive, {736} that is, as rigidly demonstrable as are the physical sciences. Such a theory hardly needs refuting, so contrary is it to common sense and the universal beliefs of the race. But as it has been set forth at length in a series of huge volumes, maintained and lauded in an important political journal, counts still many adepts, has been recalled not long since to the public attention by a work written by one of their number who has the honor of being a member of the Institute [and as it is gaining no little ground, under its philosophical aspect, in Great Britain and the United States--TR.], it is not permissible to neglect it, and we feel it necessary, if not to combat it directly, at least to point out the levity and inconsistency of its originators and adherents, who claim to be reformers of the human race, and with imperturbable gravity pretend that for six thousand years mankind has been the dupe of the grossest error, and that before their advent there were only illusion and falsehood in the world.

The assumption from which the system proceeds is that the real, the positive, is restricted to the world of the senses, or the material universe, and that what transcends the material order is for us at least unreal--a thesis directly opposed to that of Des Cartes, who taught that thought is the phenomenon the most real, the most positive of all. Now which is right, the author of the "Discourse on Method" or M. Comte? No great effort is needed to prove that it is Des Cartes, and that the existence of spiritual phenomena is not only more certain than that of physical phenomena, but more positive and more easily proved, because the knowledge of spiritual phenomena is direct and immediate, while that of sensible phenomena is only indirect and mediate. All knowledge, rational or sensible, is a spiritual phenomenon. Matter may be the occasion or medium of it, but can never produce it, for it is always spirit or mind that knows even in sensation or sentiment. We may be deceived as to the meaning of the phenomenon, but never as to its existence. [Footnote 115]

[Footnote 115: As a subjective fact, there can be no doubt of its
existence: but this, with all respect to M. de Chalambert, is
nothing to the purpose. All phenomena are subjective, and
therefore mental, if you will, spiritual; but is there an
objective spiritual reality revealed by these spiritual phenomena?
This is the question, and I need not say it is a question not
answerable on the Cartesian principle or method. Few persons
outside of France regard Des Cartes as worth citing as an
authority in philosophy, for, beginning with thought as a
psychological phenomenon, he never did and never could attain
scientifically to any objective existence, either spiritual or
material. The error of Des Cartes was in seeking to settle the
question of method before settling that of principles; the
principles determine the method, not the method the principles, as
M. Cousin, misled by his veneration for Des Cartes, pretends: and
the principles are necessarily _à priori_, prior to experience--as
without them experience is not possible--given, intuitive, and
therefore objective. The real existence of the spiritual or
supersensible order, superior to and distinct from the material,
is certain from the demonstrable fact that the sensible has its
root only in the supersensible, and the material in the spiritual,
both as to the order of knowledge and as to the order of being.
The author maintains the truth against the positivists, but his
reasoning is not conclusive, because he is misled by the Cartesian
method, which is the method of the positivists themselves.
Malebranche followed in one direction the Cartesian method, and
lost the material world; the Abbé Condillac followed it in another
direction, and lost the spiritual world; the positivists follow it
in both, and lose all reality, and, with Sir William Hamilton,
make truth purely relative; that is, subjective, and as pure
subjectivity is impossible, thus positivism is positive nihilism.
The author proceeds to refute, on the Cartesian method, the denial
by the positivists of the existence of spirit, of the absolute, of
God, and the immortality of the soul; but as I do not regard his
reasoning, though in defence of the truth, conclusive, I omit it,
and pass to his exhibition of the inconsistencies and absurdities
of positivism, in which he is admirable and perfectly
successful.--TRANSLATOR. ]

Nevertheless, after having denied all the truths or principles which are the basis of all moral and intellectual life, the positivists pretend to pass from negation to affirmation, and undertake in their turn to dogmatize. But to affirm any doctrine whatever it needs a method, and we have shown that on the purely negative method which they commence with, they can never legitimately affirm anything. What then can they do? They invent another method, which they call induction, because they pretend that it is from the observation of the facts of history that they induce or draw their doctrine; but the process they adopt has none of the characters of a real induction. {737} To induction three things are necessary; the principle of causality, general notions, and particular facts. [Footnote 116]

[Footnote 116: I transfer the word _notion_, although no notion is
or can be general, because French writers frequently use it when
they really mean not _notion_, but the object or thing noted. I do
not approve of this use either in French or English. We may have
notions of the general, but not general notions; a notion, if you
will, as has been previously said, of the absolute (though absolute
is itself a bad term for necessary, eternal, immutable, and infinite
being), but not absolute notions. The _notion_ is subjective, the
_noted_ is objective. To all legitimate induction there is necessary
causality, the general--the universal, as say the schoolmen--and the
particular, and unless the mind has _à priori_ knowledge or
intuition of them, no induction is possible. This is what the author
evidently means, and it is undoubtedly true.--TRANSLATOR.]

Experience gives the particular facts, and, by the aid of the principle of causality, we determine by way of induction their laws; that is, by means of particular facts we determine the general notions hitherto confused and vaguely perceived [that is, refer them to their respective genera or species.---TRANSLATOR.] The positivists, then, who recognize no principle [of causality, and deny all general notions or notions of the general prior to the particular facts.--TRANSLATOR.] can make no induction, and have no scientific basis, no logical nexus for their theories, and are left to the caprices of their own imagination. Imagination, and imagination alone, is the new method they employ.