The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte.

Freely translated and condensed by HARRIET MARTINEAU. In Two Volumes. Chapman.

REVIEW.

(From the Guardian,)
Many of those to whom Comte and Mill are by no means unfamiliar names have asked themselves, with some feeling of disappointment, after a considerable expenditure of study and thought on their writings, what is, after all, the meaning of Positive Philosophy. In what consists the peculiar appropriateness of the name ? In common parlance. Positive is nearly equivalent to Dogmatic ; but this sense of the word, whether applicable or not, is one which the school in question are at particular pains to disown. Rash and unproved assertions, arbitrarily assumed systems, are reckoned by them, and justly, among the most fatal errors of unsuccessful philosophers. The antithesis between positive and moral, so familiar when commands are in question, does not extend to philosophical systems; nor, if it did, would, the Positive Philosophers of our day admit that their commands were imperative and their demands on our belief necessarily to be complied with, without consent of the reason. How, then, does Positive Philosophy, as such, lay claim to the title ? If simply meant to imply the truth of its system, it would be an empty assertion of that which every philosopher believes of his own system, and implies in the fact of its publication. M. Comte doubtless meant much more than this by his favourite epithet. Let us have recourse to the version of his ideas with which Miss Martineau has favoured us, and see if we can gain from it the information which mere speculation on the natural meaning of words denies us. Near the beginning we find the following statement :—

" Each branch of our knowledge passes successively through three different theoretical conditions ; the Theological, or fictitious ; the Metaphysical, or abstract ; the Scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophising, the character of which is essentially different, and even radically opposed, viz., the theological method, the metaphysical, and the positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding ; and the third is its fixed and definite state. The second is merely a state of transition.

"In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects—in short, absolute knowledge—supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings.

"In the metaphysical state; which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena. What is called the explanation of all phenomena, is, in this stage, a mere reference of each to its proper entity.

" In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws—that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts, is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science."

This explanation, in spite of some obscurity concerning the metaphysical state, seems, at first sight, intelligible, if not satisfactory. Positive Philosophy would appear to be a new name for Inductive Science. Positive Philosophers are those who discover, or attempt in a proper manner to discover, laws, the invariable relations of succession and resemblance in phenomena. If this be so, M. Comte is certainly not the first of the race, either in time or importance. His greatness and originality will have disappeared at the fell swoop of a single definition. He has neither done great things himself, nor taught the world how they are to be done. Bacon has anticipated his position as a teacher; Newton, Cuvier, Davy,Fourier, de Blainville, Adam Smith, and a host of other names, figure in his own pages as having advanced the work which he advocates. Every careful observer and recorder of facts since the beginning of time, who has also been careful not to assert too much and to generalise too fast, has (as has been recorded of one of M.Comte's countrymen with respect to talking prose) been a Positive Philosopher without knowing it.

These results are so startling that we are led to look for some mistake in the premises ; and, on inspection, we find it. Bacon and Newton are at once taken out of the list. The author of the Novum Organum, though a very imperfect character, was yet a believer, and has left records of his belief among his writings. The author of the Principia actually went so far as to write a work on the interpretation of some parts of prophecy. But how it will be asked, does this interfere with their philosophy ? M. Comte pronounces that it does. Each of the three philosophies excludes the others. Theology is fatal to positivism, and positivism to theology. We are not at all sure that, in like manner, Adam Smith does not forfeit whatever claims to consideration he derives from the Wealth of Nations, by appearing as the author of a Theory of Moral Sentiments. Be this as it may, the case is clear as regards our two most illustrious countrymen. That they were eminent in science and philosophy, all must readily admit; we do not greatly grieve that M. Comte's severe dictum excludes them from the Walhalla of Positive Philosophers. We thus arrive at a real conclusion with regard to the nature of Positive Philosophy ; but we are still left, and must remain, uninformed of any peculiar appropriateness of its name. Were it called negative philosophy, our difficulty would be quite removed; for its distinguishing feature must evidently be sought not in what it asserts, but in what it denies. No induction, however methodical and extensive ; no prosecution of strict inquiry in the regions of politics or morals ; no increased control over the external world ; no closer approach to mind of nature in the study of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, can give a claim to the title of Positive Philosopher. It will not even suffice if some undevout astronomer, while studying the stars, contrives to forget their Maker. This would be only a privation, not a negation, of things divine. The Positivist must, like the Greek in Lucretius, raise his face to Heaven, and deny its majesty. The followers of Kant, lost in metaphysical subtleties, have been for some time perplexing themselves and others with puzzling questions, which they endeavoured in vain to answer—how are these intuitions, or those conceptions, possible ? M. Comte deserts the interrogative form, and issues, in the most decided form, his universal categorical negative. All theology and all metaphysics are impossible. By the bold sublimity of his negation, in two out of the three divisions of philosophy which he mentions, he makes a solitude, and calls it peace. And he has followers to the full extent of his audacity. Even weak woman can tread in the steps of such a champion. It is his very wantonness of denial which has attracted the homage of Miss Martineau. She follows the conqueror, displaying the inscription which another has written on her banner, " There is no God, and Harriet is his prophet."

But, to leave all question of the name, there are consequences of importance which follow from the fact, that the distinguishing idea of M. Comte's philosophy is thus essentially negative. We see at once that there may be many degrees of discipleship in his school. The prosecution of the inductive method, if adopted because M. Comte recommends it, will be the lowest. Its extension, subject to the same condition, into provinces which have generally been considered as beyond its legitimate scope, is again a further step. We shall thus indeed, reach no point beyond that to which Bacon would have conducted us ; but if M. Comte has been our guide, let him have the credit by all means. A marked neglect of metaphysical philosophy, one set purpose and principle will be another stage; a disclaimer of the possibility of metaphysical science will carry the disciple to the extreme verge of the transition period, and place the ultimate issue fully before him. From the metaphysical sphere we approach the theological. It does not, indeed, mark any approximation to the Positive school, to exclude the mention of Divine agency where it would be out of place, and not to introduce the Great First Cause when second causes are under discussion. But if we doubt our power of knowing anything whatever about the Divine Originator of all things, ignore the supernatural, and distrust revelation, we are fairly advanced disciples. One step more remains —to change our doubt into a certainty, and declare that religion cannot possibly have, like positive science, its basis in truth—and the lesson is fully learned.

This gradation deserves notice, as affecting others besides M. Comte. We are not at liberty summarily to group with him all those who are counted among his admirers. There are many reasons why the names of Mr. Mill, Mr. Lewes, Mr. Grote, Mr. Cornewall Lewis, should not be placed at once and without qualification in the same category with the author of The Positive Philosophy. A partial adoption of his method, an agreement with many of his scientific and sociological views, an acquiescence in many of his dogmas, are compatible with the acknowledgment of positive truths which he emphatically denies. He may be recognised as a leader up to a certain point, and no further. We are bound, therefore, in justice to ourselves, as well as to others, to use with regard to contemporaries, a caution which we readily admit to be necessary when we are examining the opinions of the past. We then at once acknowledge that the tone and method of a philosophy may often be embraced by those who are not committed to many of its most important positions. We know that Platonism has been at different periods, and even at the same period of its history, the ally and the foe of Christianity. We have soon the Aristotelian philosophy Pantheistic under the Arabians, Christianised by the later schoolmen, and assuming strange and portentous forms in the hands of some of those erratic literati who attended on the revival of classical literature. The reader of Pearson, and others of the old divines, is apt at first to be startled when their language takes a tinge of Cartesianism, and the father of subjective philosophy makes his presence felt in the enunciation of objective and dogmatic truths. We should always be ready to recognise, in philosophy, as well as art, the broad distinction between the matter and manner of treatment, the trick of the school, and the working of the individual mind. What the positive philosophy is intended to effect by its originator is clear enough. The precise intentions with which its form is adopted by, other masters, may be doubtful. There is probably the same gradation here which we find in similar cases. Miss Martineau yields not at all to her master in the severe dogmatism of her negatives. But after the small coterie of determined and desperate Positivists, there follow, with different degrees of trust and sympathy expressed in their countenances, a train of admirers, imitators, plagiarists, disciples, doubters. Let us not be in haste to classify them. They are perhaps forming a style, only to quit it. They are imitating, that they may hereafter become original. A few short years, and they may have passed through the transition state, and learned their natural bearings. And, if this intellectual movement be not unlike most that have preceded it, we shall trace the influence of the positive philosophy in the writings of those who are most earnestly bent on confuting it. Truth is accustomed to make war with weapons which have been wrested from the enemy.

But it is not with the master as with his disciples. M. Comte is the archetype of his class, a good specimen of a bad style. He admits of, and in some sense deserves, analysis. Let us look at him more closely, and see how the phenomenon is to be accounted for. What were the antecedent conditions which have developed M. Comte. No reader of The Positive Philosophy can fail to observe the eminent consecutive tendency of M. Comte's mind. He excels as a mathematician. He exhibits the mathematical faculty on subjects very far from its range. Everything under his hand assumes the appearance of consequence. Facts do not stand apart from each other, with unoccupied intervals between them, but marshal themselves before him, and ran into series. History, becomes a philosophy, and we see the causes at work, as well as the effect produced. The changes and successions of opinion are no longer capricious and arbitrary; we are taught not only that they have occurred in a certain manner, but that they could have occurred in no other. In the history of mind, mathematics, physics, poetry, art, philosophy, appear like so many characters in a novel. Each plays its part in leading to the derived result. We soon begin to see how we must arrive at the culminating point of positive philosophy. As in the ordinary work of fiction, the hero and the villain, the lady and the page, the conflagration and the tempest, terminate of course in a happy marriage, so in this grand philosophical romance, the discoveries and the defects of previous philosophers, the errors of alchemists and the sins of divines, the prevalence of Fetish worship and the discovery of gravitation, the power of the Popes and the influence of Voltaire, have combined to produce a Comte.

This is, of course, no legitimate consequence of the mathematical habit of mind. But it is a natural consequence of its abuse. It is the result of an ingenious and subtle mind which, having determined on the result to be obtained, works toward that result by the partial use of data which are too abundant to be all employed, and too inexact to be accurately valued. It finds its parallel in an ingenious defence of a bad cause by a clever counsel. Falsification is excluded ; but suppression and exaggeration are allowed. That is taken which is to the purpose ; inconvenient facts are either slurred over, or not mentioned at all. The bias of the will determines the direction of mental action. We may, perhaps, be able to see what, in the case of M. Comte, that bias is.

Auguste Comte is a Frenchman. He exhibits, in an extreme form, many of the excellencies and of the defects of his countrymen. He has his full share of unscrupulous love of system, and of intense national vanity. A few words on each of those features will not be thrown away.

We all know that the love of system is the characteristic of the genuine Frenchman. In the Gallic Utopia, everything is regularly planned, formed, registered, centralised, codified. No enterprise is declined because it is too vast in its proportions ; no proposition is rejected because it is too sweeping in its conclusions; if only it be symmetrical. The parts are always regarded in their relation to the whole. We differ in this from our neighbours and allies. An Englishman is content to be the great man of his little village. The smallest French functionary appertains, not to his own locality, but to France. We find, among ourselves, thousands who have their particular tastes which they prosecute as individuals for their own enjoyment. They are fond of birds, or minerals, or look through a good telescope at the stars, or read history methodically, and are content. They do not think of themselves as men of science, or feel uneasy if they are unrepresented at the meetings of the British Association. It is not so across the channel. Every man with a special pursuit is also a philosopher and a savant. He exerts, or wishes to exert, an influence on the whole range of mind. He can no more confine himself to his special province, than France could restrict itself to self-government, and sacrifice all interference with the general interests of Europe and the world.

There are, of course, dangers in this love of all-embracing system. In practice, it leads to dreams of undivided sway and universal empire. It begins colossal schemes, which there is nowhere strength to finish. It leaves its mark in subverted dynasties, untenable conquests, unfinished buildings, paper constitutions, ineffectual centralisations. In theory, it is the parent of destructive philosophies, bold and far reaching but unsupported theories, a disregard for exact truth, a morbid seeking after effect, where fact alone should be in question. An encyclopedist was but another form of a dreamer of universal empire. M. Comte is the reverse of an admirer of Napoleon ; yet, allowing for the great difference of scale and subject, he is like him. He must have France first in the world, and himself first in France. He must carry out his great idea, irrespectively of all consequences.

But this is not all. M. Comte sympathises fully with the history of his nation. He sees the course which it has taken, and, with a mistaken patriotism, determines that, on the whole, that course shall be the correct one. France cannot have gone wrong, It was once a most Catholic country; it is now, comparatively, if not positively, infidel. This order of things must be right; and it follows that in the natural course of things the procedure of the human mind must be from religion to infidelity.

We apprehend, however, that this is not the whole of the evidence on which M. Comte attains to this important conclusion. Unless rumour be untrue, he was not always a Positive Philosopher. There was a time when religious ideas, though in a strange and distorted form, had a hold on his mind. He was no stranger to the dangerous and fanatical school of St, Simon. But this is passed and gone, and, by an unhappy act of mental vigour, he rejects, in all forms, the ideas which, in one form, gave him so much trouble. He has cut off his right hand, and cast out his right eye, not because they led to sin, but because they gave him pain. Like Gibbon, he rejects religious truth altogether, because he has found it an unsettling, disturbing principle, which would not allow him to rest satisfied with things as they were, or show him clearly the form which his active exertions in pursuit of truth should assume. He has sacrificed a general truth to his individual peculiarities; and, having ignored the highest realities, and amputated the noblest part of his nature stands forth only half a man, but a perfect philosopher.

" Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,"

The end and aim of life, the moral purpose of our being, the reasons why things are, he rejects as impossible and unprofitable inquiries. Ideas disappear before phenomena, and efficient causes devour final. A good deductive philosopher, excluding, however, two-thirds of the realm of thought from contributing data to its deductions ; skilful in induction, but confining himself in its exercise wholly to one aspect of phenomena; advocating the law of progress for the race, but ignoring the all-important question of the ultimate tendency of the individual ; clear because he is partial, yet appearing impartial because he is cold ; prejudiced in his apparent abnegation of prejudice ; extending the appearance of sympathy to many because he really sympathises with none—M. Comte stands forth, in the false unity of partial truth and the deceptive symmetry of system, mighty in the intensity of his negatives, the perfect Positive Philosopher.

We are aware that it is usual for those whose minds are at all open for the discussion of new systems, and the reception of new ideas, to form a much higher estimate of M. Comte than this. He appears to many, in spite of the obvious objections to much of his teaching, as the great luminary of the age. They venerate his encyclopedic mind, the boldness of his generalisations, and the calm, impartial air of his historical descriptions. We can account for such a view, while we do not share it. And, little as we sympathise with either author or translator, we are disposed to give a kind of welcome to Miss Martineau's volumes. They will probably assist in dissipating a delusion.

M. Comte has been far too highly estimated in England. Those who are familiar with his name divide mainly into two classes. Of these, the one is acquainted with his teaching merely by fragments and at second hand. They know him by extracts and quotations, and brilliant aphorisms. Mr. Mill and others have told them of his intellectual greatness, and have given specimens in proof. They have admired, and are half-prepared to accept, this bold and striking philosophy, forgetting that if we would judge rightly of comprehensive systems, we must embrace them in a comprehensive view ; and that beautiful parts may form a monstrous whole. Not unlike has been the error of that other and less numerous class of admirers of the Positive Philosophy, who, in prosecuting their special branch of study, have consulted, here and there, the original work of M. Comte. In looking to the details of the portion in which they feel an interest, they approach too close to be good judges of the general symmetry. Miss Martineau comes to our assistance here. She has translated, condensed, simplified, and brought the whole into compass. Those who wish to see the Positive Philosophy as a consistent scheme may find it here.

We have already called attention to the two poles of M. Comte's philosophy. The one is the abnegation, not only of all religion, but of all moral purpose in the universe ; the other is the superiority, political and philosophical, of France. With the former we must connect his devotion to phenomena, his abhorrence of final causes, his hard and surgical, though careful and exact, anatomising of our moral and social nature. In the latter we can trace the germ of his principal theories on art, politics, and the historical progress of mankind. To his remarkable power of mind we must ascribe the plausible appearance of real connection and coherence which characterises his writings. Only let it be borne in mind at what price their apparent excellences are purchased. Those who are prepared really to follow him should count the cost of their intended expedition. The pilgrimage to the inmost shrine of Positive Philosophy can be made only by those who by a perverse act of faith bind themselves helplessly to the wheels of the chariot of physical and material causes. In the whole course, not only of the external world, but of their own lives, they must pledge themselves to perceive no traces of the operation of moral laws, of a personal will, and of personal guidance. They must falsify the experience of every loyal heart, by acknowledging the supreme and despotic rule of strict mechanical necessity.

Miss Martineau is, unhappily, prepared to do even this. There is something sad and depressing in witnessing the calm resignation with which she acquiesces in the fatal stop, and prepares to glory in the result. She extends the horizon of her intellectual glance, till it seems to find an infinity in which the gazer is swallowed up and lost. In her praises of the great work of M. Comte, ordinary language will not suffice her. She is obliged almost to plagiarise from the sublimities of religion to find a fit encomium for its antagonist. The reader who met with the following passage divorced from its context, might think that it was an extract from some devotional work, till the last two words strangely undeceived him.

" Certainly, I can conceive of no instruction so favourable to aspiration as that which shows how great are our faculties, how small our knowledge, how sublime the heights we may hope to attain, and how boundless an infinity may be assumed to spread out beyond. We find the indications in passing of the evils we suffer from our low aims, our selfish passions, and our proud ignorance ; and, in contrast with them, animating displays of the beauty and glory of the everlasting laws, and of the sweet serenity, lofty courage, and noble resignation that are the natural consequence of pursuits so great, and views so true, as those of Positive Philosophy."

On her melancholy hypothesis, she has done her work conscientiously, industriously, and well. It is a painful form for a kind wish to assume ; but we can desire nothing better for her, than that she may discover that her praise and admiration have been ill bestowed, and (at least as far she herself is concerned) her labour more than wasted.

 Empire 10 April 1855,