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morals and institutions, the verification of this law is constant. For
instance, among the scientific men at Alexandria astronomy stopped
at a certain point, because the further development of this science
was not compatible with the general conditions of society at that
time. And if Montesquieu’s attempt to subject social facts to laws
failed, it is because, before sociology, positive biology had first to be
founded. Analogous examples abound, and a contrary case has
never presented itself.
Three secondary factors, race, climate, and man’s political action
especially modify progress, in the measure which has just been
indicated. In the present state of science it is impossible to arrange
them in the order of their importance. Montesquieu, made too much
of climates: others have made too much of races.277 Those
elements of social evolution have not yet been studied by the
positive method. Until the foundation of social dynamics their part
was, of necessity, wrongly conceived. It was not known that the
essential law, the law of the three states, is independent of these
secondary factors, whilst on the contrary the secondary factors can
only act in conformity with this law, without ever suspending it. In
order that the modifications which they produce should become
intelligible, it was necessary that the normal type of evolution should
first be known. To study the influence of climates and of races
before first possessing the general laws of social dynamics, was,
almost, to pretend to establish pathology without having first
constituted physiology.
As to man’s political action, it too has been wrongly understood.
In the absence of a positive conception of social phenomena, some
denied the efficacy of this action, others exaggerated it. When it was
used in the direction of progress, it almost necessarily appeared to
be the principal cause of the results which social evolution would
have brought about in any case. The illusion was all the more
inevitable from the fact that social forces are always personified in
individuals. On the other hand, how often have the most vigorous
political efforts only been successful for a day, because the general
evolution of society was proceeding in the contrary direction!
So long as the theological and metaphysical period lasts, man
does not hesitate to ascribe to himself an almost boundless action
upon natural phenomena. Having reached the positive period, he
knows that phenomena are only, modifiable within certain limits,
determined by their laws, and that he can only aspire to relative
results. Once positive sociology is established it wholly transforms
the familiar idea of political art. But because it entertains less great
and less gratifying ambitions, this art will only be all the more
effective. Compare what medicine and surgery are able to do to-day
for the good of the sick with what they could do before chemistry
and biology became positive sciences!
But, it is said, admitting that man can modify social phenomena,
what reason has he to interfere with them, since progress takes
place of itself? Why not allow the natural evolution which most
certainly realises it to work itself out?
This objection confuses progress understood as a succession of
states which unfold according to a law, with progress understood in
the sense of indefinite improvement. On this point again the
comparison of society with living organisms is instructive. Do not
these develop in conformity with invariable laws? Yet, Comte regards
them as extremely imperfect, and in what concerns the human body,
the intervention of the doctor or the surgeon is often useful and
even indispensable. When we reproach the sociological theory of
progress with having optimism as its consequence, we take the
scientific notion of spontaneous order for the systematic justification
of any existing order.278 There is, however, a very long distance
from one to the other. Spontaneous order may often be a very rough
form of order.
Here, as everywhere else, positive philosophy substitutes the
scientific principle of the conditions of existence to the metaphysical
principle of final causes. It admits that spontaneously, according to
natural laws, a certain necessary order is established; but it
acknowledges that this order offers serious and numerous
disadvantages, modifiable, in certain degrees, by man’s intervention.
The more complex these phenomena, the more are the
imperfections multiplied and intensified. The biological phenomena
are “inferior” in this respect to those of inorganic nature. By reason
of their complication, which is maxima, social phenomena must be
the most “disorderly” of all. In a word if the idea of a natural law
implies that of a certain order, the notion of this order must be
completed by the “simultaneous consideration of its inevitable
imperfection.”
The theory of progress is then incompatible neither with the
ascertainment of social evil, nor with the effort to remedy it. The
most complex of all organisms, the social organism, is also the one
most subject to diseases and to crises. Thus, Comte foresees in a
near future great internal struggles in our society, in consequence of
our mental and moral anarchy.279 To-day, only that is systematised
which is destined to disappear, and what is not yet systematised,
that is to say all that lives, will not be organised without violent
conflicts. It is enough here to think of the relations between masters
and workmen.
Revolutions occur which nothing can prevent. It is an inevitable
evil, and Comte gives a striking psychological reason for it. Our mind
is too weak and our life too short for us ever to form a positive idea
of a social system other than the one in which we were born and in
which we live. It is from this one that, willingly or unwillingly, we
draw the elements of our political and social ideas. Even men of a
utopian turn of mind do not escape this necessity. Their dreams
always reflect, at bottom, either the past, or a contemporary social
state. In order that a new political system should appear, and
especially for it to find access to men’s minds, the destruction of the
preceeding system must be already very far advanced. Until then
“even the most open minds could not perceive the characteristic
nature of the new system hidden from all eyes by the spectacle of
the old organisation.”280 Hence, the lengthy processes of
decomposition of worn-out régimes, the no less lengthy birth of new
institutions, and the cruel periods of transition, full of troubles, of
wars, and of revolutions.
With this same cause are connected what we may call the
phenomena of survival. Institutions, powers, as also doctrines, have
a tendency to subsist beyond the function which the general
advance of the human mind had assigned to them.281 Conflicts then
take place which it is beyond anybody’s power to prevent: happy is
he who can make them shorter and less acute! The solution only
comes with time when the vanquished ideas fall into “disuse.” The
combat never ceases except from the lack of combatants.
All this in no way excludes the possibility for man to exercise a
beneficent or a detrimental action. To understand is not always to
justify. It is true that a comprehensive view of history disposes us to
be indulgent, because it brings out the close solidarity of all the
social elements of the same period. The responsibilities being
shared, and so to speak diffused, appear to be less serious for each
individual. Nevertheless this philosophy allows praise and blame for
the past, and active intervention in social phenomena for the
present.
But this intervention will only produce the desired results if it rests
upon social science. The positive polity does not propose to direct
the human race towards an arbitrarily selected end. It knows that
humanity is moved by its own impulse, “according to a law no less
necessary, although more modifiable than that of gravitation.”282 It
is only a question for politics to facilitate this advance by throwing
light upon it. It is a very difficult thing to undergo the action of a law
without understanding it, or to submit to it with a full knowledge of
the case. It remains in man’s power to soften and to shorten crises,
as soon as he grasps their reasons and foresees the issue. He will
not pretend to govern the phenomena, but only to modify their
spontaneous development. “This demands that he should know their
laws.”283
Let us also know how to own that in respect to many of these
phenomena, and not the least important of them, we are absolutely
powerless. Their conditions escape our grasp. For instance, the
duration of human life is far from being as favourable to social
evolution as might be conceived.284 On the contrary, after the
extreme imperfection of our organism, the brevity of life is one of
the causes of the slowness of social development. How many
powerful minds have died before their full maturity had yielded all its
fruit! What would not have been expected of their genius if they had
been in full possession of their faculties during three or four
centuries!
The positive theory of progress therefore entails neither optimism
nor quietism. The intervention of man being excluded, the social
state, which evolves, according to laws, at each period is just as
good and as bad as it can be, “according to the whole of the
situation.”285 More than one pessimist would be satisfied with this
formula. It is legitimately drawn from the principle of the conditions
of existence. But, truly, from the point of view of this principle, that
is to say, from the point of view of positive and relative philosophy,
there can be no question either of optimism or of pessimism.
Metaphysics alone can offer an absolute judgment upon the whole of
the social reality. The positive doctrine, here as elsewhere, only
seeks the statical and dynamical laws of phenomena. It is true, that
it finds that the social evolution is, as a matter of fact, accompanied
by improvement. But this improvement is so slow, so laborious,
interrupted by so many crises, disturbed by so many conflicts, that if
humanity aspires to a better condition, it is mainly from her own
efforts that she must expect a slightly more rapid progress.
 CHAPTER V
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
If social dynamics is a science, and if the law of the three states,
discovered by Comte, is its fundamental law, this law (and those
which proceed from it), must explain the successive phases of
humanity, from the first dawn of civilisation, to the present condition
of the most advanced nations. They must “introduce unity and
continuity into this immense spectacle, where in general we see so
much confusion and incoherence.”286 Thus the counterpart of social
science is a philosophy of history. In it, social science finds its
concrete expression and its verification. In the absence of the
prevision of social facts for the future, a prevision which is rendered
almost impossible by the extreme complication of these facts, social
science at least allows of the “rational co-ordination” of the whole of
the past.
In order to establish this philosophy of history, Comte gave himself
two postulates. The first is common to him and to all those who
endeavoured to set forth the evolution of humanity from its
beginnings, especially before the recent progress made by
anthropology. Comte “constructs” primitive man and the society in
which he lived. The second postulate consists in considering, instead
of the history of the whole of humanity, “the most complete and the
most characteristic evolution,” that is to say, that of the white race;
and in this race, only the populations of western Europe.287 Comte
will almost confine himself to the periods dealt with by Bossuet in
the Discours sur l’histoire universelle, which, moreover, he greatly
esteems. His philosophy of history only embraces Egyptian
civilisation, very little known in his time, then Greece and Rome, and
finally after the fall of the Roman Empire, the development of some
Latin and Germanic peoples in Europe.
 We can understand that Bossuet should have so limited universal
history as to include in it only a small portion of humanity gathered
on the shores of the Mediterranean. He was obliged to do so by the
leading idea in his work which makes the appearance of Christianity
the culminating point in the human drama. All that precedes it must
tend to bring it about, all that comes after it must arise from it. But
is Auguste Comte, like Bossuet, justified in leaving out of universal
history the great civilisations of the far east, almost the whole of
Africa, and the whole of the new world? Since, according to him,
there is no chosen people, nor “providential direction,” must he not
consider the total evolution of humanity? He has no right to isolate a
part of it in an arbitrary manner, and to neglect the rest. He has it all
the less in that he considers the species in its entirety as an
individual, and that this hypothesis of Condorcet has become a
principle of social science with him.
But Comte believes his postulate to be as well justified by his
definition of sociology, as Bossuet’s plan could have been by his
theological doctrine. Resembling on this point the other positive
sciences, sociology is made of laws not of facts. The pure and simple
knowledge of facts is only an end from the point of view of
scholarship. Science only seeks for this knowledge in the measure in
which it is indispensable for the determination of laws. Consequently,
if the evolution of human society proceeded simultaneously at
different points on the globe, as, this evolution takes place, as we
suppose, everywhere according to invariable laws, and as climate
and race can only modify it within very narrow limits, the sociologist
is not bound to study all the societies of the past and of the present.
He will only do so in order to make use of the comparative method,
in the measure which is judged useful and within the limitations
permitted by this method. In the second place, among those
historical evolutions, up to the present time independent of one
another, to which will he give the preference to seek in it the
verification of abstract social dynamics? Evidently to the most
complete and the most characteristic: for there he will have least
difficulty in disengaging the laws from the extraordinary complexity
of facts. Have we not seen that the idea of progress, without which
sociology cannot be constituted, has only been definitely formulated
since the French Revolution? Comte then thought himself authorised
to “limit his historical study to the sole examination of a
homogeneous and continuous series, which was nevertheless justly
qualified as universal.” At every moment in history, the people whose
evolution is most advanced represent the whole of humanity since
the rest of humanity is destined, sooner or later to pass through the
same phase. Hence the idea, which is found equally in Hegel and in
Renan, of a “mission” of races and of peoples. A temporary mission
which, while it lasts, constitutes their might and their right, but
which, too often, they have the misfortune to survive.

I.

The positive philosophy of history takes as its guiding principle the

idea of unity. In virtue of a postulate which is an audacious
anticipation concerning an uncertain future, the human species, in it,
is regarded as an immense social unity. Similarly, in it, the evolution
of humanity is regarded as ending in the moral and religious unity of
all men. Humanity goes from spontaneous religion where it begins,
to demonstrated religion where it becomes finally established.
Between the two lies the domain of history. The successive states
through which humanity passes in evolving are not homogeneous.
The theological and the positive spirit are mingled in them at various
degrees. They struggle one against the other. These states then
contain within themselves the principle of their own destruction.
Each one necessarily prepares the appearance of the following one,
until the final state in which the positive spirit alone will
predominate.
The spring of these concrete views of history is the logical need of
unity. It is this which determined the initial movement. For the
primitive religions, unity was never perfect. Even at the period when
fetichism rules without question, some rudiments of the positive
spirit exist. Human nature, being invariable, the germ of its final
state was already contained in a primitive state. From that time it
was certain that, if humanity emerged from its primitive state, it
would evolve until it found unity in the final religion.
If this be so, how is it that Comte did not regard the succession of
religious forms as the supreme dynamic law, as the principle of the
philosophy of history? Why did he believe rather that he had found
this principle in the law of the evolution of philosophies? It is
because, according to him, the evolution of religious forms is a
function of intellectual evolution. It is even subordinate to
intellectual evolution, in this sense, that progress in the knowledge
of the laws of nature sooner or later brings about a religious
revolution. In the second place, if the philosophy of history had
chosen the succession of religious forms as its chief axis, it would
only have studied the process of decomposition of beliefs, which, up
to the present time, has led them from the period when all thought
is religious (fetichism), to that when no thought seems to be so any
more (philosophical deism). It would not show at the same time the
inverse and simultaneous process of the positive spirit, which not
only determines this progressive decomposition, but also prepares
the elements of a new faith. It would not show how by degrees, by
means of science, this spirit establishes a conception of nature which
by becoming social will become universal, and which will be the
basis of the final religion. This is why Comte, while making religion
the chief element in individual and social human life, was
nevertheless to take the evolution of the intellect, that is to say, the
sciences and the philosophies, as the “guiding thread” of his
philosophy of history.

II.

It does not come within the purpose of this work to give even a
summary outline of the philosophy of history developed by Comte
first in the Cours de philosophie positive, and then in the third
volume of the Politique positive. Neither shall we disengage the
ingenious or profound views of detail with which it abounds. It will
suffice for us to show how, according to Comte, the laws of social
dynamics are always verified, and how apparent exceptions end by
being interpreted in the direction of these laws.
Fetichism, properly so-called, was succeeded by astrology, then by
polytheism, which was first conservative (the régime of castes in
Egypt), then intellectual (Greece), and social (the Roman empire).
With the Christian religion monotheism comes to be substituted to
polytheism. But does not the theory of progress soon meet with an
insurmountable obstacle? How does it explain the Middle Ages, that
long succession of centuries which Voltaire and the philosophers had
described as full of darkness, of superstition, and of ignorance, as
the disgrace of history? How to reconcile this lamentable
“retrogression” with the “continuity” of progress affirmed by social
dynamics?
Auguste Comte’s answer is presented in two forms.
In the first place the “retrogression” was never complete. At the
time when the Middle Ages were at their darkest in Europe, Arab
civilisation was going through its most brilliant period. In it many of
the sciences were going beyond the extreme point reached by them
in antiquity. The continuity of evolution was then not interrupted. It
suffices to understand, in conformity with the postulate laid down by
Comte at the beginning of social dynamics, that, at this period, the
Arabs were the part of humanity whose intellectual evolution was
most advanced, and who, consequently, represented the rest.
But, above all, the current opinion concerning the Middle Ages is
erroneous. The philosophers of the XVIII. century did not know it.
They only saw this period through their prejudices, or rather they did
not deign to look at it. Nevertheless, the whole spiritual movement
of modern centuries goes back to those “memorable times, unjustly
qualified as dark by metaphysical criticism, of which Protestantism
was the first organ.”288
 In the first place—and this is a capital proposition in historical
philosophy289—the feudal régime as a temporal organisation, was
the natural result of the situation of the Roman world. In any case it
would have been formed, even if the invasions had not taken place.
In virtue of the consensus which is the fundamental principle of
social statics, the other series of phenomena which accompanied the
establishment of the feudal régime were then also produced as a
“natural development,” and it is a misunderstanding to see in them
an interruption of “progress.” The superiority of Antiquity over the
Middle Ages, especially in the fine arts, will be raised as an
objection. But Comte only recognises this superiority in the plastic
arts, and especially in sculpture.290 According to him, it is explained
by certain features in Greek customs which were sure to make the
people of antiquity incomparable in the art of expressing the beauty
of the human form. For the rest, the æsthetic education of humanity
“progressed during the Middle Ages. Architecture produced marvels
of which antiquity had no idea. Dante is a unique poet. Modern
music has its origin in the old Gregorian. Finally, the art of the
Middle Ages presented two characteristics which the art of the
aristocratic societies of antiquity did not possess, at least in the
same degree. It was spontaneous, that is to say, in full natural
harmony with the whole of the surrounding conditions.
Consequently, it was popular, it expressed marvellously for the
people, the very soul of the people.
If then it be true that “the mainspring of the fine arts is to be
found under the sway of polytheism,” none the less has the
development of our æsthetic faculties been continuous: and the law
of progress has not been reversed. It is true that since antiquity
these faculties have not found a combination of such favourable
circumstances, such a direct and energetic stimulus; but that proves
nothing “against their intrinsic activity, nor against the real merit of
their productions.” The æsthetic spirit has become more widespread,
more varied, and even more complete than it could ever have been
in antiquity.291 Hence it is that the Renaissance did more harm than
good to the fine arts. It inspired an exclusive and servile admiration
for the masterpieces of antiquity, which are related to an absolute
social system. “In this sense,” says Comte, “the appreciation of the
present romantic school only sins in the direction of historical
exaggeration; but its recriminations are far from being
groundless.”292
Similarly, the intellectual activity of the Middle Ages has been very
unjustly treated. Certainly, positive philosophy cannot be suspected
of partiality in favour of theological dogmas and metaphysical
subtleties. But, just as in physics we distinguish the material
changes, which are within reach of our senses, and the molecular
movements which escape them, so at certain periods the human
intellect produces outside itself works which testify to its activity, and
at other moments, without being less active its labour remains an
internal one. There are periods of secret and silent preparation.
Such, for instance, was the first portion of the Middle Ages. Far from
the human mind remaining stationary and inactive at that time it did,
on the contrary, a very considerable work: it was creating the
modern languages, that is to say, the indispensable instrument for
subsequent progress of thought.
We must also be fair to two immense series of labours, (alchemy
and astrology), which have contributed so greatly and for so long to
the development of human reason. In coming after the astrologers
and the alchemists, modern scientific men not only found “science
roughly outlined by the perseverance of these bold precursors,”293
they further received from them the indispensable principle of the
invariability of natural laws. Astrology tended to suggest a high view
of human wisdom. Alchemy restored the feeling of man’s power,
which had been lowered by theological beliefs. In speaking of Roger
Bacon, Comte goes so far as to say that the greater number of the
scientific men of to-day who despise the Middle Ages so much,
would be incapable not only of writing but even of reading “the
great composition of this admirable monk,” on account of the
immense variety of views on all orders of phenomena contained in
it.294
Comte further enlarges with pleasure upon the mutual obligations
of feudal tenure, “an admirable combination of the instinct of
independence and of the feeling of devotion,” upon the appearance
of chivalry, upon the raising of the condition of women, upon the
enfranchisement of the commons upon the formation of the tiers
état, etc.295 Like the romantic school, being preoccupied with the
duty of fighting the systematic detractors of the Middle Ages, he
goes to the opposite extreme. He no longer sees the famines, the
the plagues, the stakes, the interminable wars. He is not content
with showing that, in spite of all, the Middle Ages was a period of
progress. He wants it to be a model period, in which we should find
the indication, in all essential aspects, of the programme which we
are to realise to-day.296
The secret of Comte’s partiality for the Middle Ages is not hard to
discover. He never tires of praising the Catholic organisation of this
period, the separation of the temporal from the spiritual power,297
last of all “the miracle of the papal hegemony.” Nothing of the kind
was known in antiquity. That alone suffices to establish the
superiority of the Middle Ages. Positive philosophy will restore this
separation of the two powers to-day. It will complete the “admirable
sketch” drawn of old by the Catholic Church.
Positivism, says Huxley, is “Catholicism minus Christianity.” Comte
would not have protested very violently against this definition.
Indeed, in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, he distinguishes
between the doctrine and the institutions. The doctrine is on the
decline and will disappear. But the institutions were masterpieces of
political wisdom, and they have only been ruined by having seemed
to be inseparable from this doctrine. They ought to be re-established
upon intellectual bases at once broader and more permanent.298
Positive philosophy furnishes these bases. It will know how to
restore the “government of souls,” according to the model left by the
Catholic Church of the Middle Ages.
It has often been said that the social action of Catholicism was
especially due to its moral teaching. Comte reverses this proposition.
The moral efficacy of Catholicism principally depended upon the
constitution of the Church, and only in an accessory way upon its
doctrine.299 Without the constant action of an organised spiritual
power, a religion, however pure it may be, cannot have much power
over the conduct of men. Catholicism had understood this. It had
founded a system of common education which was equally received
by rich and poor. Morality thus acquired the “ascendency which
belongs to it.” The feelings were subjected to an admirable
discipline, which exerted itself to uproot even the smallest seeds of
corruption.300

To conclude, “the eternal honour”301 of Catholicism is to have

brought a decisive improvement into the theory of the social
organism, by the separation of the two powers. Many causes have
contributed to its being misunderstood; the excessive admiration of
the modern historians for the city of classical times, the partiality of
Protestants for the early Church, and finally the contempt of
philosophers for the supposed darkness of the Middle Ages. We
judge of it better to-day. Positive philosophy does not confine itself
to rehabilitating the Catholic organisation: it takes it up again on its
own account. “The more I investigate this immense subject,” writes
Comte to John Stuart Mill, “the more confirmed I become in the view
which I already held twenty years ago, at the time of my work upon
the spiritual power, of regarding ourselves, we, systematic
positivists, as the real successors of the great men of the Middle
Ages, by taking up the social work again at the point to which
Catholicism had carried it.”302 Undoubtedly the conditions are not
the same to-day, and we must take the differences into account. But
as to the extent and the intensity of action, we may say that for
each of the social relations on which the Catholic clergy had to
pronounce, an analogous attribution exists for the modern spiritual
power.303 In a word, excepting for the dogma, Comte borrows from
the Catholicism of the Middle Ages almost everything, its
organisation, its régime, its worship, and, if he could, its clergy and
its cathedrals. His religion will be a Catholicism raised upon another
basis.

III.

The separation between the temporal and spiritual power realised

by Catholicism in the Middle Ages marks a decisive progress in the
history of humanity. But it was not finally established. The régime of
which it formed a part was bound to disappear, because of the
“mutual antipathy” between the elements included within it. The
Catholic organisation of the thirteenth century was first shaken and
then destroyed by the advancing ascendancy of the positive spirit,
and the resistance of theological dogma. From this “organic” period
European society has passed to a “critical” period which has filled
centuries, and which positive philosophy alone is able to bring to a
close. The whole of modern history, political, religious, scientific,
æsthetic, economic, etc., is, at bottom, merely the succession of the
necessary stages in this double work; the decomposition of the
régime of the Middle Ages, and the preparation for the positive
period. In a first phase, which occupies the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the movement remains a spontaneous one. It ignores the
end to which it is tending. In the second, which extends to the end
of the eighteenth century, the disorganisation becomes deeper under
the influence of an entirely negative philosophy.304
The first signs of the decomposition which was beginning were of
an economic order. The phenomena of this order are indeed a factor
of the highest importance in the whole of social life. The economic
evolution, according to Comte, necessarily precedes the æsthetic
and scientific evolution. It is the former, far more than the two latter,
which characterises our civilisation in contrast with the societies of
antiquity.305 Through it the organisation of modern societies was to
begin. The freeing of the serfs, the foundation of independent urban
communes, the transformation of industry which arose from this, are
described by Comte almost in the same terms as those used by
Augustin Thierry, (who like him had worked by the side of Saint-
Simon). It is the ending of an economic organisation, and the
heralding of a new régime.
When this spontaneous decomposition had reached a certain
point, the critical doctrines could appear and push it further. But, to
see in these doctrines the original cause of this great movement, is
to credit them with an exaggerated influence, and even, strictly
speaking, an incomprehensible one. In order that doctrines may
arise and prosper they must find favourable ground. The contrary
opinion exaggerates “beyond all possibility” the political influence of
the intellect, and creates a kind of vicious circle.306
The principle of “free examination” was at first, in the XVI century,
only a natural result of the new social situation gradually brought
about by the two preceding centuries. For this principle corresponds
to a state of “non-government” of minds. And this state, in turn,
comes from the progressive dissolution of mental discipline. It lasts
so long as a spiritual power has not been reconstituted upon new
foundations. In a society where spiritual power is normally exercised,
that is to say, where it governs the universality of minds, united by a
body of common beliefs, the need of intellectual liberty is not
developed in individuals. At any rate it does not challenge
unanimously accepted principles. But, when this power is weakened,
the principles begin to be discussed. Each one soon claims to be a
judge of their value. Everything then depends on the combination of
social conditions. We can no more produce than we can stifle this
disposition of minds, “outside the conditions which are favourable or
unfavourable to it.” It is only developed during the periods which are
not “organic.” “It is through having misunderstood this law of social
statics that so many historical errors have been committed, in which
the symptom is mistaken for the cause, and the result for the
principle.”307
The first general form of the principle of freedom of examination
expressed itself in Protestantism. In it this freedom at first remained
confined within the more or less narrow limits of Christian theology.
The spirit of criticism at first especially endeavoured, in the very
name of Christianity, to ruin the admirable system of the Catholic
hierarchy, which was its social realisation. This is the characteristic
inconsequence of the metaphysical spirit, which always denies the
logical deductions while claiming to maintain the principles, and
which, in this particular case, aspired to reform Christianity at the
same time that it destroyed the necessary conditions of its existence,
that is to say, its organisation.
In the same way, as in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, Comte
chiefly admires “the masterpiece of political wisdom,” which knew
how to separate the attributes of temporal power from those of
spiritual power; so in Protestantism he especially sees the
destructive principle of this masterpiece. He unceasingly reproaches
it with having subordinated the spiritual to the temporal power in the
whole of Europe. This “chief perturbation” was the origin of all the
others. In accordance with the leaders of the traditionalist school,
with de Maistre and de Bonald in France, with Haller in Germany,
Comte insists upon the close relationship between the Protestant
spirit and the revolutionary spirit. Once it has been demanded, the
right of examination spreads by a necessity which is at once mental
and social and cannot be overcome, to all individuals and all
questions. The name of Protestantism should not be restricted to
religious reform. It is no less suitable for the whole of the
revolutionary philosophy. For this philosophy, from Lutheranism to
the Deism of the XVIII. century, “without excluding Atheism which
constitutes its extreme phase” is a protestation, at first against the
principles of the old social order, and then against any organisation,
whatever.308
 The “absolute and indefinite” dogma of free examination sets up
each individual judgment as an arbiter upon all social questions.
From this dogma gradually emerge absolute liberty in speaking and
writing, the political sovereignty of the masses at will creating or
destroying institutions, the equality of all men, the isolation of
nations: in a word, as Haller has said, “social and political atomism.”
These consequences had become inevitable from the day when
Protestantism gave the supreme decision in religious questions to
every one, without taking into account conditions either of
competence, or authority. This first step was a decisive one. If,
supposing an impossibility, modern society were replaced in the
state in which it was when Protestantism succeeded in becoming
established, the same necessary succession of social and political
consequences would again unfold themselves.
After that, it matters little that Protestantism should have fought
against the revolutionary spirit, and that it should have disavowed
“anarchical” philosophy. It matters little that it should have made
repeated efforts to constitute a spiritual authority, and that it should
have produced a multitude of sects “of which each pitied the
preceding one and abhorred the one which followed it.”309 Whatever
it may do, Protestantism remains purely critical, negative and
disorganising. Consequently the part it plays can only be transitory.
It contains no element which the positive organisation should
preserve. It naturally ends in philosophical Deism.
This Deism appears as early as the XVII. century in England, and
in Holland with Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle. The right of examination
is henceforth recognised as indefinite in principle, but in fact, it is
thought possible to maintain the metaphysical discussion within the
more general limits of monotheism.310 At bottom they continue “to
destroy religion in the name of the religious principle.” A “rational
theology” is constructed; and the natural religion, dear to the XVIII.
century, is finally reached.
 Now, in Comte’s eyes, rational theology is an “incoherent
expression,”311 and natural religion “a monstrous drawing together
of terms.” As if every religion (with the exception of the positive
one), was not necessarily supernatural! The harmony between
reason and belief, even when sought for with perfect sincerity, is
deadly for faith. For the strength of theological conceptions lies in
their spontaneity. Logical proof, even admitting that it be really
demonstrative, never fortifies and can only weaken them. The
innumerable proofs of the existence of God which have appeared
since the XII. century, not only state the bold doubts of which this
existence has been the object: it can also be asserted that they have
largely contributed to the propagation of those doubts, “either
through the contempt which the weakness of many of these
arguments was bound to reflect upon ancient beliefs, or even by
consideration of the strongest of these arguments.”312 Popular
instinct was not mistaken in calling the metaphysicians who were
working at these proofs atheists. Their work was essentially anti-
theological. Our century sees it in another light. As the decay of
theology still continues, that which formerly was judged by public
opinion as impious, may to-day appear to be a pious occupation.
The criticism of religious beliefs has been developed and spread
without giving too much offence to temporal power, thanks to the
care taken by philosophers in general to reassure it upon the
immediate consequences of their labours. Hobbes in the XVII.
century, Voltaire in the XVIII. are as conservative from the political
point of view as they are revolutionary from the religious point of
view. The precaution was a very wise one on their part. But it did
not arrest the consequences which arose from their principles.
Critical philosophy, urging the dogma of the freedom of examination
to the assault of all the principles of the established régime, shook
and ruined them one after the other, until the “final explosion” of the
French Revolution. This was the conclusion in fact of the long work
of decomposition which had been going on during five centuries.
The old régime was rotten; the Revolution overturned it, meaning to
clear the ground.
But did it lay down the basis of the régime which was to succeed
this one? It did not, replies Comte with Saint-Simon and de Maistre.
He admires the energy of the political gifts of the Convention.
Nevertheless it was wrong in believing that “critical” principles could
take the place and carry out the functions of “organic” principles. So
long as the struggle lasted, the critical principles had been all the
more effective in that they were credited with an absolute value.
Thus the dogma of boundless liberty of conscience had served to
destroy the spiritual power of the catholic clergy, the dogma of the
sovereignty of the people to upset the temporal government, finally
the dogma of natural equality to decompose the system of social
classes. But, once the old régime was abolished the error of taking
these dogmas as the basis of “reorganisation” was committed.
It was not seen that they were incompatible not only with the
régime which they had just destroyed, but with any social system
whatever. In this way it is moral and political disorder which was
upheld as the end of social perfection. For, each of the dogmas of
the critical doctrine, when it is taken in an organic sense, “comes
exactly to lay down as a principle that in this particular respect
society must not be organised.”313
What becomes of government, for instance in this system? “By a
direct and total supervision of the most fundamental political
notions,” government is represented, the necessary enemy of
society.314 The latter must always hold it in a state of suspicion and
of supervision, it must more and more restrict its modes of activity,
and finally only leave it functions of general police, without its
contributing in any way to the direction of the collective life and
social development. In a word, with no action upon ideas, upon
beliefs or feelings, the government would only have charge of the
protection of interests. But is not this formally denying the very idea
of government, which by definition, should on the contrary represent
“the spirit of the whole,” and the “directing function” of society? Is it
not giving up at the same time the great progress realised by the
Middle Ages, that is to say a spiritual power independent of the
temporal power? Even considering interests alone, this system only
maintains order with great difficulty. It is obliged to have recourse to
corruption, and it leads to continual increase in public expenditure.
The principles of critical philosophy cannot then be used as a
foundation for a new social organisation. The attempt has been
made and has been condemned by history. This failure could have
been foretold. For, being essentially metaphysical, this philosophy
implies a contradiction which necessarily renders it powerless. It
tends to preserve the general bases of the old political system,
whose chief conditions of existence it has however destroyed.315
There is a very close relationship between the natural religion of
philosophers and the political conceptions of the revolutionists. The
latter are still connected by their deepest roots with the old order of
beliefs which they have fought against with all their strength.
Liberty, equality, the sovereignty of the people, the whole of the
“absolute” rights which constitute the basis of the revolutionary
doctrine is shielded, in the last place, by a kind of “religious although
vague consecration.” The French Revolution was the work of the
Deists. Comte has set apart the thinkers of the XVIII century whom
he considers as his precursors, that is to say, as the anticipatory
representatives of the positive spirit: Fontenelle, Hume,
Montesquieu, Diderot, and d’Alembert, Turgot, Condorcet and a few
others. He judges the rest of the philosophy of the century more
severely. He does not spare the Encyclopédie, and in the majority of
the philosophical writings of this period he finds little but “a frivolous
and feeble sophistic argumentation.” Circumstances almost alone
have made its success. This philosophy is incomparably inferior to
that which the counter-revolution opposed to it. In the logical
respect which finally predominates, says Comte, the revolutionary
criticism cannot to-day resist the system of the “retrograde school.”
In a regular discussion, the latter would soon have compelled it to
admit that it allows the essential principles of the old régime while
refusing to accept their most indispensable consequences.316
The inmost contradiction from which the revolutionary philosophy
suffers will become more and more apparent. A not far distant
moment will arrive when the effort to restore the past will include a
large number of those who have contributed to its destruction. The
partisans of natural religion, and even those of the most advanced
Deism will rally to Catholicism as to the real foundation of the social
organisation which they defend. The alternative will then be set up
between the only two solutions which are logical and organic: either
the old régime, with the Catholic organisation, or the new, with the
positive organisation. Between these two there is no room for the
critical, liberal, metaphysical, revolutionary system, which, by
whatever name it may be called, signifies “no organisation at all.”

IV.

The old régime was bound to perish because in it, the social
organisation was connected with a system of beliefs and of dogmas
which could not withstand the spirit of investigation. In order that
the new régime may escape this cause of death, must it be able
without suffering to bear the indefinite exercise of an absolute
freedom of examination?——No, replies Comte, there is no system
capable of enduring under these conditions. But it suffices that in
constituting itself, the new faith, which is the basis of social order,
should have undergone the test of free examination as we see it
practised in the positive sciences. It suffices that, instead of a
revealed faith, we should have a demonstrated faith which will then
be immovable, and which will no more have to be called in question.
Comte then admits the preliminary test, but he is opposed to free
examination indefinitely renewed. This distinction allows us to
reconcile some of his declarations which otherwise would appear
contradictory. His language differs according as he speaks of the
positive dogma in the process of formation, or of that dogma once it
has been formed. When it is in process of formation the dogma is
subject to criticism, and if it is not victorious in resisting it it does not
become an object of belief. No matter how much we may deplore
the ever-dissolving energy of the spirit of analysis and of
examination, it remains beneficial none the less, by compelling, for
the intellectual and moral reorganisation, the production of a
philosophy capable of sustaining the decisive test of a deep
discussion, “freely prolonged until the entire conviction of public
reason” has taken place. This is a condition from which nothing
henceforth can exempt us.317 The spiritual reorganisation, says
Comte, will be the result of purely intellectual action. It supposes a
voluntary and unanimous assent at the end of complete discussion
without the intervention of the spiritual powers to hasten the
conclusion.
But does it follow that freedom of examination should remain
indefinitely without limits? Undoubtedly it has been a good thing that
men should see in this liberty an indefeasible right which they were
all to enjoy. The dissolution of old beliefs in this way was easier and
more rapid. The better this “singular phase” in our social
development is analysed, the more will the conviction gain ground
that without the conquest and use of this unlimited freedom social
reorganisation could not have been prepared. But this singular phase
was a transitory one. When it has been gone through, when
common principles have again become universally accepted, “after
sufficient verification,” the right of examination will again return
within its normal and permanent limits, which consist in discussing
the connection of consequences with fundamental and uniformly
respected rules, but without again questioning these rules
themselves.318
The question then reduces itself to knowing when the test may be
legitimately considered as at an end. Will the individual approbation
of all the members of society be required, and a kind of consecration
by universal suffrage? As a matter of fact, such unanimity will
perhaps never be realised. In justice it is not necessary. When we
demand it we forget that Politic science is a positive science, the
highest and most complicated of all. No one possesses any authority
in the sciences if he is not competent. The people has no thought of
making its opinion prevail in them; and, in matters of science, all
who are not in a condition to understand demonstrations are the
people. The convergence of intellects presupposes the voluntary and
intentional renunciation on the part of the greater number of their
“sovereign right of examination.”319
In this way the right is taken from no one. The use of it is simply
intrusted by those who are incompetent to the competent ones. This
intrusting, freely accepted by all, lasts as long as the conditions
which made it necessary. No moral order could be compatible with
the “wandering liberty of minds at the present time,” if it were to
persist indefinitely. It is not possible that any man, whether he be
competent or not, should every day call into discussion the very
bases of society. “Systematic tolerance cannot exist, and has never
really existed, except on the subject of opinions which are regarded
as indifferent or as doubtful.”320
Such is the meaning of the celebrated passages on liberty of
conscience with which Comte has so often been reproached. He had
written it in 1822, and quoted it himself in the fourth volume of the
Cours de philosophie positive,321 never suspecting that anything
could be said against it. “There is no liberty of conscience in
astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, in physiology, in the sense that
everyone would deem it absurd not to take on trust the principles
established in these sciences by competent men. If it is otherwise in
politics, it is because the old principles have fallen, and, as the new
ones are not yet formed, there are, properly speaking, in this
interval no established principles.” It is then in no way a question of
imposing beliefs upon men of which they are not to judge, by a kind
of spiritual despotism. Comte merely wishes to extend to politics,
considered as a positive science, what is admitted in the other
sciences by common consent.
 V.

Without much trouble, it is easy to see whence originate the

essential features of this philosophy of history. In so far as it
represents the development of humanity as subject to a law of
evolution, which causes it to go through a succession of phases
whose order is rationally determined, in a word as progress, the
leading-idea is due to Comte’s “spiritual father,” to Condorcet.
For the interpretation of more recent events, and for the judgment
passed upon the Middle Ages, Comte draws his inspiration from
Joseph de Maistre, from the traditionalist school, and from Saint-
Simon. To the latter, among other ideas, Comte owes the distinction
between the critical and the organic periods. But, on Comte’s own
confession, Joseph de Maistre’s influence over his mind was
especially decisive. Like de Maistre, he thinks that the entirely
negative philosophy of the XVIII. century knew very well how to
destroy, but showed itself powerless to construct. Like de Maistre
again, he is persuaded of the fact that social order requires a
spiritual power beside the temporal power, and that the régime of
the Middle Ages was a “masterpiece of political wisdom” precisely
because at that period the Catholic Church had brought about the
independence of the spiritual power. Finally, like de Maistre, he
makes the salvation of humanity in the future depend upon their
return to a unity of beliefs.
Comte then equally proceeds from the learned ideologist with
whom the philosophical effort of the XVIII. century ends, and from
the ardent traditionalist for whom this very century is the abhorred
period of error and of moral perversion. He undertakes, not indeed
to reconcile them (who can reconcile things which exclude each
other?), but to found a more comprehensive doctrine in which he
will combine what he has received from the one and the other. As
such his own task appears to him, and he does not believe it to be
above his power; he feels himself in a position to avoid the mistakes
which his predecessors were bound to make. Condorcet had a clear
idea of social science; but that did not prevent him from
misunderstanding the real onward movement of the human mind,
and only to estimate his own century justly at the expense of
preceding periods. De Maistre in his turn, no less prejudiced, though
in another way, does not understand history any better. To restore
society, to re-establish it in the state in which it was in the XIII.
century, he goes to absurd lengths. He claims to take no notice of
the advance of civilisation, and of the development of the sciences.
Condorcet, who brought to light the idea of progress, understood
nothing in the Middle Ages. De Maistre, who so clearly saw the
excellence of the Middle Ages, denies the glaring fact of progress.
Both are excusable, because they were still too close to the French
Revolution to grasp its full meaning. In the heart of the fray they
were still partially blinded. Comte, who sees things from a greater
distance, also sees them from a higher standpoint. He especially has
at his disposal an instrument which neither Condorcet nor de Maistre
possessed: he has completed the positive method, and he applies it
to the science of historical phenomena. In a word, he has founded
Sociology.
If he did not push social science as far forward as he believed, at
any rate he was right in thinking that his originality lay in this
attempt. The problem was clearly set: to blend into a new and
positive science the social ideas proceeding from the speculation of
the XVIII. century with the historical truths brought to light by the
adversaries of this philosophy. The solution given by Comte is the
very soul of his system. By a twofold and vigorous effort, he created
“social physics.” On the one hand, he carries to the past the idea of
progress which Condorcet could only apply to the future, and this
allowed him to institute a positive philosophy of history. At the same
time, he projects into the future that spiritual order which de Maistre
had only seen in the past, and this furnishes him with the frame for
his “social reorganisation”.
This philosophy of history, which no longer contains anything
metaphysical, is social dynamics; this “reorganisation” of society, by
means of a spiritual power, will be the positive polity.
 BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS
In Comte’s system Ethics occupies an intermediate place between
theoretical philosophy and politics. Ethics rests upon the philosophy
as Politics rests on the principles of Ethics.
Ethics is not an abstract speculative science; it does not therefore
belong to the hierarchy of the fundamental sciences. It is true that,
at the end of his life, Comte added a seventh to the six sciences of
the early list,322 which precisely was ethics, that is to say the
science of the laws which govern the emotions, passions, desires,
etc., of man considered as an individual. But here it is more a
question of ethical psychology than of ethics understood in the
sense usual with philosophers. The latter, in Comte’s eyes, never
constituted the object of a special science. As a matter of fact, either
the laws of moral phenomena are studied, and this research,
founded upon the positive knowledge of individual and collective
human nature, forms a part of sociology. Or, starting from the
knowledge of these laws, we ask ourselves what would be the best
use for the power possessed by man of modifying phenomena; in
this case it is an art whose rules must be determined. But for these
rules to be rationally established, social science itself must be
rationally founded. Thus, from the practical as from the speculative
point of view, positive ethics depends upon sociology.

I.
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