A BOOK FOR THE TIMES : 
 
 To exterminate Political Vermin and Moral Quacks. 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 OF 
 
 
 AUGUSTE COMTE; 
 
 " Comte fully sees the cause of our intellectual anarchy, and 
 also sees the cure. LEWES S Biog. Hist, of Philosophy. 
 
 " By including social science in the scientific hierarchy, 
 the positive spirit admits to success in this study only well- 
 prepared and disciplined minds, so trained in the preceding 
 departments of knowledge as to be fit for the complex prob 
 lems of the last. The long and difficult preliminary elabora 
 tion must disgust and deter vulgar and ill-prepared minds, 
 and subdue the most rebellious. This consideration, if there 
 were no other, would prove the eminently organic tendency 
 of the new political philosophy. Positive Philosophy p. 434. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 PUBLISHED BY CALVIN BLANCHARD, 
 
 76 NASSAU STREET. 
 
 1856. 
 
 Price 25 Cents. 
 

Library 
 
 MS* 
 
 SOCIAL PHISII1S. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NECESSITY AND OPPORTUNENESS OP THIS NEW SCIENCE. 
 
 IN the five first books of the Positive Philosophy, our investigation pro 
 ceeded on an ascertained and undisputed scientific basis ; and our 
 business was to exhibit the progress made in each science ; to free 
 it from entanglement with the ancient philosophy ; and to show 
 what further improvements might be anticipated. Our task is a 
 different, and a much harder one, in the case of the sixth and last 
 science that I am about to treat of. The theories of Social science 
 are still, even in the minds of the best thinkers, completely impli 
 cated with the theologico-metaphysical philosophy ; and are even 
 -supposed to be, by a fatal separation from all other science, con 
 demned to remain so involved for erer. The philosophical proce 
 dure which I have undertaken to carry through becomes more 
 difficult and bold, from this point onward, without at all changing 
 Its nature or object ; and it must eo far present a new character as 
 it must henceforth be employed in creating a wholly new order of 
 scientific conceptions, instead of judging, arranging, and improving 
 each as already existed. 
 
 It is not to be expected that this new science can be at once 
 raised to a level with even the most imperfect of those which we 
 have been reviewing. All that can be rationally proposed in our 
 day is to recognise the character of positivity in social as in all 
 other science, and to ascertain the chief bases on which it is 
 founded ; but this is enough, as I hope to show, to satisfy our most 
 urgent intellectual necessities, and even the most imperative needs 
 of immediate social practice. In its scientific connection with the 
 rest of this work, all that I can hope to do is to exhibit the general 
 considerations of the case, so as to resolve the intellectual anarchy 
 which is the main source of our moral anarchy first, Proposnl of the 
 and then of the political, which I shall treat of only subject 
 through its originating causes. The extreme novelty of such a doc 
 trine and method renders it necessary, before entering upon the 
 
400 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 immediate subject to set forth the importance of such a procedure, 
 and the futility of the chief attempts which have been indirectly 
 made to investigate social science. However unquestionable may 
 be the need of such science ; and the obligation to discover it, the 
 best minds have not yet attained a point of view from which they 
 can estimate its depth and breadth and true position. In its nas 
 cent state every science is implicated with its corresponding art ; 
 and remains implicated with it, as we have seen, the longer in 
 proportion to the complexity of the phenomena concerned. If bio 
 logical science which is more advanced than social, is still too 
 closely connected with the medical art, as we have seen that it is, 
 we can not be surprised that men are insensible to the value of all 
 social speculations which are not immediately connected with prac 
 tical affairs. We can not be surprised at any obstinacy in repelling 
 them, as long as it is supposed that by rejecting them, society is 
 preserved from chimerical and mischievous schemes : though expe 
 rience has abundantly shown that the precaution has never availed, 
 and that it does not now prevent our being daily invaded by the 
 most illusory proposals on social matters. It is in deference, as 
 much as is reasonable, to this apprehension that I propose to state, 
 first, how the institution of a science of Social Physics bears upon 
 the principal needs and grievances of society, in its present deplora 
 ble state of anarchy. Such a representation may perhaps convince 
 men worthy of the name of statesmen that there is a real and emi 
 nent utility in labors of this kind, worthy of the anxious attention 
 of men who profess to devote themselves to the task of resolving 
 the alarming revolutionary constitution of modern societies. 
 
 From the point of view to which we have been raised by our 
 study of the preceding sciences, we are able to survey the social 
 situation of our own time in its fullest extent and broadest light ; 
 and what we see is that there is a deep and widely-spread anarchy 
 of the whole intellectual system, which has been in this state of 
 disturbance during the long interregnum, resulting from the de 
 cline of the theologico-metaphysical philosophy. At the present 
 time, the old philosophy is iu a state of imbecility ; while the 
 development of the positive philosophy, though always proceeding, 
 has not yet been bold, broad, and general enough to comprehend 
 the mental government of the human race. /We must go back 
 through that interregnum to understand truly the present floating 
 and contradictory state of all great social ideas, and to perceive how 
 society is to be delivered from the peril of dissolution, and brought 
 under a new organization, more consistent and more progressive 
 than that which once rested on the theological philoso^^/ When 
 we have duly observed the powerlessness of conflicting political 
 schools, we shall see the necessity of introducing an entirely new 
 spirit into the organization of society, by which these useless and 
 passionate struggles may be put an end to, and society led out of 
 the revolutionary state in which it has been tossed about for three 
 centuries past. 
 
CONDITIONS OF ORDER AND PROGRESS. 401 
 
 / The ancients used to suppose Order and Progress to 
 
 1 -ill i .LI ,i T IT T,. ro!](Ktion<ofO- 
 
 oe irreconcilable : but both are indispensable conditions <ier and in.g- 
 in a state of modern civilization ; and their combination 
 is at once the, grand difficulty and the main resource of every genu 
 ine political system. No real order can be established, and still 
 less can it last, if it is not fully compatible with progress : and no 
 great progress can be accomplished if it does not tend to the con 
 solidation of order. Any conception which is so devoted to one of 
 these needs as to prejudice the other, is sure of rejection, sooner or 
 later, as mistaking the nature of the political problem. Therefore, 
 
 I in positive social science, the chief feature must be the union of 
 these two conditions, which will be two aspects, constant and in 
 separable, of the same principle. Throughout the whole range of 
 science, thus far, we have seen that the conditions of comblhation 
 and of progress are originally identical : and I trust we shall see, 
 after looking into social science in the same way, that ideas of Or 
 der and Progress are in Social Physics, as rigorously inseparable 
 as the ideas of Organization and Life in Biology ; from whence in- 
 
 I deed they are, in a scientific view, evidently derived. 
 
 ^ The misfortune of our actual state is that the two ideas are set 
 up in radical opposition to each other the retrograde spirit having 
 directed all efforts in favor of Order, and anarchical doctrine hav 
 ing arrogated to itself the charge of Social Progress ; and, in this 
 state of things, the reproaches exchanged between the respective 
 parties are only too well merited by both. In this vicious circle is 
 society now confined ; and the only issue from it is by the undispu 
 ted preponderance of a doctrine equally progressive and hierarchi 
 cal. The observations which I have to make on this subject are 
 applicable to all European societies, which have, in fact, all under 
 gone a common disorganization, though in different degrees, and 
 with various modifications, and which can not be separately reorgan 
 ized, however they may be for a time restrained ; but I shall keep 
 the French nation chiefly in view, not only because the revolution 
 ary state has been most conspicuous in them, but because they are, 
 in all important respects, better prepared, in spite of appearances, 
 than any other, for a true reorganization. 
 
 Among the infinite variety of political ideas which appear to be 
 striving in society, there are in fact only two orders, the mingling 
 of which in various proportions occasions the apparent multiplicity : 
 and of these two, the one is really only the negation of the other. 
 If we wish to understand our own condition, we must look at it as 
 the result and last term of the general conflict undertaken, for 
 three centuries past, for the gradual demolition of the old political 
 system. So regarding it, we see that whereas, for above half a 
 century, the irremediable decay of the old system has proved the 
 necessity of founding a new one, we have not been sufficiently aware 
 of the need to have formed an original and direct conception, ade 
 quate to the purpose ; so that our theoretical ideas have remained 
 inferior to our practical necessities, which, in a healthv state of the 
 
 28 
 
102 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 social organism, they habitually anticipate, to prepare for their reg 
 ular and peaceable satisfaction. Though the political movement 
 could not but have changed its nature, from that time forward, be 
 coming organic instead of critical, yet, for want of a basis in sci 
 ence, it has proceeded on the same old ideas that had actuated the 
 past struggle ; and we have witnessed the spectacle of defenders 
 and assailants alike endeavoring to convert their old weapons of 
 war into instruments of reorganization, without suspecting the in 
 evitable failure which must ensue to both parties. Such is the state "~^ 
 that we find ourselves in now. All ideas of order in the political y 
 world are derived from the old doctrine of the theological and mili 
 tary system, regarded especially in its catholic and feudal constitu 
 tion : a doctrine which from our point of view in this work, repre 
 sents the theological state of social science : and, in the same way, 
 all ideas of progress are still derived from the purely negative phi 
 losophy which, issuing from protestantism, assumed its final form 
 and development in the last century, and which, applied to social 
 affairs, constitutes the metaphysical state of politics. The different 
 classes of society range themselves on the one side or the other, ac^ 
 cording to their inclination for conservatism or amelioration. With 
 every new uprising of a social difficulty, we see the retrograde 
 school proposing, as the only certain and universal remedy, the res 
 toration of the corresponding part of the old political system ; and 
 the critical school referring the evil exclusively to the destruction 
 of the old system not being complete. We do not often see the 
 two doctrines presented without modification. They so exist only 
 in purely speculative minds. But when we see them in monstrous 
 alliance, as we do in all degrees of political opinion, we can not but 
 know that such an alliance can not yield any virtue which its ele 
 ments do not contain, and that it can only exhibit their mutual 
 neutralization. We must here, it is clear, regard the theological 
 and the metaphysical politics separately, in the first place, that we 
 may afterward understand their present antagonism, and form an 
 estimate of the futile combinations into which men have endeavored 
 to force them. 
 
 Th(1 theological Pernicious as the theological polity may be in our 
 Polity. (3 av? no true philosopher will ever forget that it afforded 
 
 the beneficent guardianship under which the formation and earliest 
 development of modern societies took place. But it is equally in 
 contestable that, for three centuries past, its influence among the 
 most advanced nations, has been essentially retrograde, notwith 
 standing some partial services. We need not go into any discussion 
 of its doctrine, in order to ascertain its poweiiessness for future 
 service : for it is plain that a polity that could not hold its ground 
 before the natural progress of intelligence and of society can never 
 again serve as a basis of social order. The historical analysis 
 which I shall have to offer of the causes that have dissolved the 
 Catholic and feudal system will show, better than any argument, how 
 radical and irretrievable is the decay. The theological school ex 
 
THE THEOLOGICAL POLITY. 403 
 
 plains the fact, as far as it can, by fortuitous and, we might almost 
 ^ay, personal causes : and when they will no longer suffice, resorts 
 to its common supposition, of a mysterious caprice of Providence 
 which has allotted to social order a season of probation, of which 
 no account can be given, either as to its date or its duration, or even 
 its character. A contemplation of historical facts however shows that 
 all the great successive modifications of the theological and military 
 system have, from the beginning and increasingly, tended to the 
 complete elimination of a regime which, by the fundamental law of 
 social evolution, could never be more than provisional, however in 
 dispensable. And if any efforts to restore the system could achieve 
 a temporary success, they would not bring back society to a nor 
 mal state, but would merely restore the very situation which com 
 pelled the revolutionary crisis, by obliging it to set about the work 
 of destruction again, with more violence, because, the regime has 
 altogether ceased to be compatible with progress in the most essen 
 tial respects. While avoiding all controversy on so plain a case, I 
 must briefly present a new view which appears to me to point out 
 the simplest and surest criterion of the value of any social doctrine, 
 and which emphatically condemns the theological polity. 
 
 Regarded from the logical point of view, the prob- Criterion of so- 
 leni of our social reorganization seems to me reduci- ci!l1 doc *rine. 
 ble to this one condition : to construct rationally a political doctrine 
 which, in the whole of its active development, shall be always fully 
 ^consequent on its own principles. No existing doctrines approach 
 to a fulfilment of this condition : all contain, as indispensable ele 
 ments, numerous and direct contradictions on the greater number 
 of important points. It may be laid down as a principle that the 
 doctrine which furnishes accordant solutions on the various leading 
 questions of polity, without failing in this one respect in the course 
 of application, must, by this indirect test alone, be recognised as 
 sufficiently adapted to reorganize society ; since this intellectual re 
 organization must mainly consist in re-establishing harmony in the 
 troubled system of our social ideas. When such a regeneration 
 shall have been accomplished in an individual mind (and in that 
 way it must begin), its generalization, sooner or later, is secure ; 
 for the number of minds can not increase the difficulty of the intel 
 lectual convergence, but only defer the success. We shall hereafter 
 find how great is the superiority of the positive philosophy in this 
 view ; because, once extended to social phenomena, it must connect 
 the different orders of human ideas more completely than could be 
 done in any other way. 
 
 The accomplishment of this great logical condition FHilurfi of tho the . 
 might be expected from the theological polity above all ol s icsi1 p ()lir > T 
 others, because its doctrine is limited to co-ordinating a system so 
 clearly defined by its long application, and so fully developed in 
 all its essential parts, that it may well be supposed secure from all 
 serious inconsistency. The retrograde school accordingly extols 
 habitually, as its characteristic attribute, the perfect coherence of 
 
404 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 its ideas, in contrast with the contradictions of the revolutionary 
 school. Yet, though the theological polity Js less inconsistent than 
 the metaphysical, it shows a daily increasing tendency to concessions 
 of the most radical importance, directly contrary to all its essential 
 principles. This is evidence enough of the futility of a doctrine 
 which does not even possess the one quality most spontaneously cor 
 respondent to its nature. The old political system is seen to be 
 destroyed as soon as its most devoted adherents have lost the true 
 general sentiment of it : and this may now be observed, not only 
 in active practice, but among purely speculative minds of a high 
 order, which are unconsciously modified by the irresistible influences 
 of their age. If examples are desired, we need only bring the 
 retrograde doctrine into comparison with the elements of modern 
 civilization. There can be no doubt that the development of the 
 sciences, of industry, and even of the tine arts, was historically the 
 pr^ftcipal, though latent cause, in the first instance, of the irretriev 
 able decline of the theological and military system. At present, it 
 is the ascendency of the scientific spirit which preserves us from 
 any real restoration of the theological spirit ; as, again, the indus 
 trial spirit, in its perpetual extension, constitutes our best safeguard 
 
 U a gainst any serious recurrence of the military or feudal spirit. 
 
 v \\tliatever may be the names given to our political struggles, this is 
 the real character of our social antagonism. Now, amidst this state 
 of things, do we hear of such a thing as any government, or even 
 any school, seriously proposing a systematic repression of science, 
 industry, and art ? Do not all powers (with an eccentric exception 
 here and there) claim the honor of encouraging their progress ? 
 Here we have the first inconsistency of the retrograde polity, an 
 nulling its own project of a restoration of the past : and though 
 the inconsistency is less apparent than some others, it must be re 
 garded as the most decisive of all, because it is more universal and 
 more instinctive than any other. Napoleon Bonaparte himself, the 
 hero of retrogression in our time, set himself up, in all sincerity, 
 as the protector of industry, art, and science. Purely speculative 
 minds, though more easily separating themselves from any prevalent 
 tendency, have escaped no better from the influence of their times, 
 How many have been the attempts, for instance, for two centuries 
 past, on the part of some of the most eminent minds, to subordinate 
 reason to faith, according to the theological formula ; reason itself 
 being made the supreme judge of such a submission, and thus evi 
 dencing the contradictory character of the proposition ! The most 
 eminent thinker of the Catholic school, the illustrious De Maistre, 
 bore involuntary testimony to the necessity of his time when he en 
 deavored, in his principal work, to re-establish the papal supremacy 
 on historical and political reasonings, instead of ordaining it by 
 divine right, which is the only ground appropriate to such a doc 
 trine, and the only ground he would have proposed in any age but 
 one in which the general state of intelligence precluded such a 
 plea. Instances like these may spare us further illustration. 
 
FATAL DIVISIONS. 405 
 
 As for more direct inconsistencies, more striking, though less 
 profound, and comprehended within the present times, wo see in 
 every sect of the retrograde school a direct opposition to some fun 
 damental part of their common doctrine. Perhaps the only point on 
 which there is now any unanimity in that school is in the consent 
 to break up the very basis of the catholic and feudal system, by I 
 surrendering the division between the spiritual and temporal power ; 
 or, what comes to the same thing, acquiescing in the subordination 
 of the spiritual to the temporal authority. In this respect, the kings 
 are showing themselves as revolutionary as their peoples ; and the 
 priests have ratified their own degradation, in catholic countries 
 no less than protestant. If their desire is to restore the old 
 system, their first step must be to unite the innumerable sects which 
 have sprung out of the decline of Christianity ; but every attempt 
 of the sort has failed through the blind and obstinate determina 
 tion of the governments to retain the supreme direction of the 
 theological power, the centralization of which they thus render im 
 possible. Napoleon, only showed an exaggerated copy, in his violent 
 inconsistencies, of what many princes had done before him : and 
 after his fall, when the sovereigns of Europe united to set up a 
 power in opposition to revolutionary tendencies, they usurped the 
 attributes of the old spiritual authority, and exhibited the spectacle 
 of a high council composed of heretic chiefs, and governed by a 
 schismatic prince. After this it was manifestly impossible to intro 
 duce the papal power into the alliance, in any way whatever. Such 
 instances of the postponement of religious principles to temporal 
 convenience are not new ; but they show how the main idea of the 
 old political system has ceased to preponderate in the minds of 
 the very persons who undertook to restore it. The divisions in the 
 retrograde school have been of late apparent under all circumstances, 
 whether of success or defeat. Any temporary success ought to 
 rally all dissentients, in a school which boasts of the unity of its 
 doctrine : yet, through a long course of years we have witnessed 
 successive, and more and more serious schisms among the subdivis 
 ions of the triumphant party. The advocates of Catholicism and 
 those of feudality have quarrelled : and the latter have split into 
 partisans of aristocracy and defenders of royalty. Under the com- 
 pletest restored supremacy, the schisms would only break out again, 
 with more violence, through the incompatibility of the existing social 
 state with the old political system. The vague assent to. its gen 
 eral principles which is yielded in a speculative sense, must give 
 way in their application ; and every practical development must 
 engender further divisions : and this is the scientific description of 
 any theory which is incompatible with the facts. 
 
 When the retrograde party is reduced to the rank of an opposi 
 tion, it has recourse to the principles of the revolutionary doctrine. 
 This has been the case repeatedly during the last three centuries, 
 when that party has been put upon the defensive. Thus we see 
 the Catholics in England, and yet more in Ireland, asserting the 
 
406 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 3laim of liberty of conscience, while still clamoring for the repres 
 sion of Protestantism in France, Austria, and else\vhere. Again, 
 when the sovereigns of Europe invoked the aid of the peoples to 
 put down Napoleon, they surrendered their retrograde doctrine, 
 and testified to the power of the critical, as that which was really 
 influencing civilized society, even though they were proposing, all 
 the while, to effect the restoration of the ancient polity. We have 
 seen something even more wonderful since that struggle. We have 
 seen the retrograde party taking possession of the whole body of 
 critical doctrine, endeavoring to systematize it for its own uses, 
 and sanctioning all its anarchical consequences ; trying to set up 
 the catholic and feudal regime by the very means which have de 
 stroyed it ; and believing that a mere change in the person of the 
 sovereign would intercept the consequences of a political move 
 ment which they had done nothing to modify.* This is simply a 
 new way of signing a political abdication, however the ability of 
 those who do it may be extolled. We need not look further for 
 illustrations of the pregnant fact that a polity which is the type of 
 unity and permanence has been full of schisms, and now contains 
 elements directly incompatible with its fundamental principles ; and 
 that, as when we find De Maistre reproaching Bossuet with mista 
 king the nature of Catholicism, and then himself falling into incon 
 sistencies, the party of Order is proposing to re-establish that which 
 is not comprehended by its most illustrious defenders. 
 The Metaphy.i- Turning now to the Metaphysical polity, we must 
 cai polity. fast observe and carefully .remember that its doctrine, 
 though exclusively critical, and therefore revolutionary, has still 
 always had the virtue of being progressive, having, in fact, super 
 intended the chief political progress accomplished during the last 
 three centuries, which must be, in the first instance, essentially 
 negative. What this doctrine had to do was to break up a system 
 : which, having directed the early growth of the human mind and 
 society, tended to protract that infantile period : and thus, the 
 political triumph of the metaphysical school was a necessary prep 
 aration for the advent of the positive school, for which the task is 
 exclusively reserved of terminating the revolutionary period by the 
 formation of a system uniting Order with progress. Though the 
 metaphysical system, considered by itself, presents a character of 
 direct anarchy, an historical view of it, such as we shall take here 
 after, shows that, considered in its origin, and in its antagonism to 
 the old system, it constitutes a necessary provisional state, and 
 must be dangerously active till the new political organization which 
 is to succeed it is ready to put an end to its agitations. 
 
 The passage from one social system to another can never be con 
 tinuous and direct. There is always a transitional state of anarchy 
 which lasts for some generations at least ; and lasts the longer the 
 more complete is the renovation to be wrought. The best political 
 
 * Tins was written during the reign of Louis Philippe, and the administration, of M 
 
 Gruizot 
 
THE METAPHYSICAL POLITY. 407 
 
 progress that can be made during such a period is in gradually 
 demolishing the former system, the foundations of which had been 
 sapped before. While this inevitable process is going on, the 
 elements of the new system are taking form as political institu 
 tions, and the reorganization is stimulated by the experience of the 
 evils of anarchy. There is another reason why the constitution of 
 the new system can not take place before the destruction of the 
 old ; that without that destruction no adequate conception could be 
 formed of what must be done. Short as is our life, and feeble as 
 is our reason, we can not emancipate ourselves from the influence 
 of our environment. Even the wildest dreamers reflect in their 
 dreams the contemporary social state : and much more impossible 
 is it to form a conception of a true political system, radically dif 
 ferent from that amidst which we live. The highest order of minds 
 can not discern the characteristics of the coming period till they 
 are close upon it ; and before that, the incrustations of the old 
 system will have been pretty much broken away, and the popular 
 mind will have been used to the spectacle of its demolition. The 
 strongest head of all antiquity is an example of this. Aristotle 
 could not conceive of a state of society that was not founded on 
 slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which took place some cen 
 turies after him. Those considerations are illustrative of our own 
 times, for which all former transition periods were merely a prep 
 aration. Never before was the destined renovation so extensive 
 and so thorough ; and never before, therefore, was the critical 
 preparatory period so protracted and so perilous. For the first 
 time in the history of the world, the revolutionary action is at 
 tached to a complete doctrine of methodical negation of all regular 
 government. Such being the origin of the existing critical doc 
 trine, we can explain the services which that doctrine has hitherto 
 rendered, and the obstacles which it now opposes to the reorganiza 
 tion of modern society. We shall see hereafter how each of its 
 principal dogmas has sprung out of some corresponding decay in 
 the old social order ; a decay which then proceeded all the faster 
 for the opposition having become a dogma. The misfortune of the 
 case lies in the doctrine which was thus necessarily relative to the 
 old system coming by degrees to be supposed absolute ; but we may 
 leave it to those who desire it to blame the political conduct of our 
 fathers, without whose energetic perseverance we should not have 
 found ourselves at our present stage of progress, or have been able 
 to conceive of the better polity that is approaching. The absolute 
 or metaphysical spirit was necessary to direct the formation of the 
 critical and anti-theological doctrine, which needed all possible 
 energy to overthrow the great ancient system ; and this energy 
 could no otherwise be imparted to the dogmas of the critical phi 
 losophy. The necessity and the fact of the case are obvious 
 enough : but not the less must we deplore the consequence, that 
 the energy imparted to the anarchical principle has gone on to im 
 pede the institution of the very political order for which it came to 
 
408 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 prepare the way. When, in the natural course of events, any doc 
 trine has become hostile to the purposes it was destined to serve, 
 it is evidently done with ; and its end, or the close of its activity, 
 is near. We have seen that the retrograde or theological polity 
 has become as disturbing as the metaphysical or revolutionary : if 
 we find also that the latter, whose office was to aid progress, has 
 become obstructive, it is clear that both doctrines are worn out, 
 and must soon be replaced by a new philosophy. This condition 
 of the metaphysical polity is a nfatter so serious that we must dwell 
 upon it a little, to see how so provisional an influence can have 
 produced the appearance of a new and stable system. 
 
 The spirit of revolutionary polity is to erect into a permanency 
 the temporary action which it prompts. For instance, being in 
 antagonism with ancient order, its tendency is to represent all gov- 
 Brrom^ob- eminent as being the enemy of society, and the duty of 
 society to be to keep up a perpetual suspicion and vigi 
 lance, restricting the activity of government more and more, in 
 order to guard against its encroachments, so as to reduce it at 
 length to mere functions of police, in no way participating in the 
 supreme direction of collective action and social development. 
 This was the inevitable action by which the social evolution was 
 brought about : and it is our misfortune that it now remains as an 
 obstacle to the reorganization that we need. As the process could 
 not but occupy several centuries, the power that wrought it must 
 needs be invested with something definitive and absolute in the 
 popular view, which can not look far beyond the present : and it 
 was well that it was so ; for the old system could not have been 
 deprived of its directing powers, if they had not been stripped off 
 from the governments, and assumed by the polity which had arisen 
 to supersede them. 
 
 j>oemac>fib.Tty Regarding the doctrine in a more special view, it is 
 of conscience. clear that its most important principle is the right of 
 free inquiry, or the dogma of unbounded liberty of conscience ; 
 involving the immediate consequences of the liberty of the press, or 
 of any other mode of expression, and of communication of opinions. 
 This is the rallying-point of the revolutionary doctrine, to which 
 all orders of minds have come up, the proud and the humble, the 
 wise and the weak, those whose other opinions were compatible 
 with this dogma, and those who unconsciously held views of an 
 opposite order. The impulse of this emancipation Avas irresistible ; 
 and the revolutionary contagion was, in this one respect, universal. 
 It is a chief characteristic of the mind of society in this century. 
 The most zealous partisans of the theological polity are as apt as 
 their adversaries to judge by their personal knoAvledge ; and those 
 who, in their writings, set up as defenders of spiritual government, 
 recognise, like the revolutionists whom they attack, no other su 
 preme authority than that of their own reason. Now if we look at 
 what is the real meaning of this dogma of the universal and abso 
 lute right of inquiry, we shall find that it is the mere abstract ex- 
 
DOGMA OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. 409 
 
 pression (such as is common in metaphysics) of the temporary 
 state of unbounded liberty in which the human mind was left by 
 the decay of the theological philosophy, and which must last till the 
 social advent of the positive philosophy. Such an embodiment of 
 the fact of the absence of intellectual regulation powerfully con 
 curred in expediting the dissolution of the old system. The for 
 mula could not but appear absolute at the time, because no one 
 could foresee the scope of the transitional state which it marked ; 
 a state which is even now mistaken by many enlightened minds for 
 a definitive one. Negative as we now see this dogma to be", signi 
 fying release from old authority while waiting for the necessity of 
 positive science (a necessity which already pats liberty of con 
 science out of the question in astronomy and physics, etc.) the 
 absolute character supposed to reside in it gave it energy to fulfil 
 its revolutionary destination ; enabled philosophers to explore the 
 principles of a new organization ; and, by admitting the right of all 
 to a similar research, encouraged the discussion which must pre 
 cede and effect the triumph of those principles. Whenever those 
 principles shall have become established, the right of free inquiry 
 will abide within its natural and permanent limits : that is, men 
 will discuss, under appropriate intellectual conditions, the real con 
 nection of various consequences with fundamental rules uniformly 
 respected. Till then, the opinions which will hereafter bring un 
 derstandings into submission to an exact continuous discipline by 
 embodying the principles of the new social order can appear only 
 as simple individual thoughts, produced in virtue of the right o*f 
 free inquiry ; since their final supremacy can result in no other 
 way than from the voluntary assent of numbers, after the freest dis 
 cussion. I shall enter further into this subject hereafter : and what 
 I have said will, I hope, prevent any one being shocked by my 
 general appreciation of the revolutionary dogma of free inquiry, as 
 it is plain that without it this book would never have been written. 
 Indispensable and salutary as it has been, this dogma can never 
 be an organic principle : and, moreover, it constitutes an obstacle 
 to reorganization, now that its activity is no longer absorbed by the 
 demolition of the old political order. In any case, private or pub 
 lic, the state of inquiry can evidently be only provisional, indicating 
 the condition of mind which precedes and prepares for a final 
 decision, toward which our reason is always tending, even when it 
 is renouncing old principles, in order to form new ones. It is 
 taking the exception for the rule when we set up, as a natural and 
 Dermanent state, the precarious situation which belongs to the pe 
 riod of transition ; and we ignore the deepest necessities of human 
 reason when we would protract that skepticism which is produced 
 by the passage from one mode of belief to another, and which is, 
 in our need of fixed points of conviction, a kind of morbid pertur 
 bation which can not be prolonged beyond the corresponding crisis 
 without serious danger. To be always examining and never de 
 ciding would be regarded as something like madness in private 
 
410 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 conduct : and no dogmatic consecration of such conduct in all indi 
 viduals could constitute any perfection of social order, with regard 
 to ideas which it is much more essential, and much more difficult to 
 establish beyond the reach of dispute. There are very few persons 
 who consider themselves fit to sit in judgment on the astronomical, 
 physical, and chemical ideas which are destined to enter into social 
 circulation ; and everybody is willing that those ideas should direct 
 corresponding operations ; and here we see the beginnings of intel 
 lectual government. Can it be supposed that the most important 
 and the most delicate conceptions, and those which by their com 
 plexity are accessible to only a small number of highly-prepared 
 understandings, arc to be abandoned to the arbitrary and variable 
 decisions of the least competent minds ? If such an anomaly could 
 be imagined permanent, a dissolution of the social state must ensue, 
 through the ever-growing divergence of individual understandings, 
 delivered over to their disorderly natural impulses in the most 
 vague and easily-perverted of all orders of ideas. The speculative 
 inertia common to most minds, and perhaps, to a certain extent, the 
 wise reserve of popular good sense, tend, no doubt, to restrict such 
 political aberrations : but these are influences too feeble to root out 
 the pretension of every man to set himself up as a sovereign arbi 
 ter of social theories ; a pretension which every intelligent man 
 blames in others, with a reservation, more or less explicit, of his 
 own personal competency. Now the intellectual reorganization can 
 not proceed amidst such a state of things, because the convergeac.e 
 of minds requires the renunciation by the greater number of their 
 right of individual inquiry on subjects above their qualifications, 
 and requiring, more than any others, a real and permanent agree 
 ment. Then again, the unbridled ambition of ill-prepared intel 
 lects rushes in among the most complex and obscure questions : 
 and these disturbances, though they must finally neutralize each 
 other, make terrible devastation in the interval ; and each one that 
 is destroyed makes way for another ; so that the issue of these 
 controversies is a perpetual aggravation of the intellectual anarchy. 
 No association whatever, even of the smallest number of individu 
 als, and for the most temporary objects, can subsist without a cer 
 tain degree of reciprocal confidence, intellectual and moral, among 
 its members, each one of whom has incessantly to act upon views 
 which he must admit on the faith of some one else. If it is so in 
 this limited case, there is something monstrous in proposing the 
 opposite procedure in the case of the whole human race, each one 
 of whom is at an extreme distance from the collective point of 
 view, and is the last person of the whole number fit to judge of the 
 rules by which his personal action should be directed. Be the in 
 tellectual development of each arid all what it may, social order 
 must ever be incompatible with a perpetual discussion of the 
 foundations of society. Systematic toleration can exist only with 
 regard to opinions which are considered indifferent or doubtful, as 
 we see in that aspect of the rev >lutionary spirit which takes it? 
 
DOGMA OF EQUALITY. 411 
 
 stand on Protestantism, where the innumerable Christian sects arc 
 too weak to pretend to spiritual dominion, but where there is as 
 fierce an intolerance about any common point of doctrine or dis 
 cipline as in the Romish Church itself. And when the critical doc 
 trine was, at the beginning of the French Revolution, supposed to 
 be organic, we know how the directors of the movement strove to 
 obtain a general assent, voluntary or forced, to the dogmas of the 
 revolutionary philosophy, which they regarded as the bases of social 
 order, and therefore above controversy, We shall see hereafter 
 what are the due limits of the right of free inquiry, in a general 
 way, and in regard to our own social period. It is enough to ob 
 serve here that political good sense has adopted, to express the 
 first requisite of all organization, that fine axiom of the Catholic 
 Church : in necessary things, unity: in doubtful things, liberty: in 
 all things, charity : a maxim which admirably proposes the prob 
 lem, without, however, suggesting the principles by which it must 
 be solved, and that unity attained which would be a mere illusion 
 if it did not result, in the first instance, from free discussion. 
 
 The dogma which ranks next in importance to that Dogma of EquaT] 
 of free inquiry is that of Equality ; and in the same ^ 
 way, it is taken to be absolute when it is only relative, and perma 
 nent, while it expresses merely the position of minds employed in 
 breaking up the old system. It is an immediate consequence of 
 liberty of conscience, which brings after it the most fundamental 
 equality of all, that of intelligence. The supposition of its being 
 absolute was not less necessary in this case than the former : for, 
 if all social classification had not been systematically disallowed., 
 the old corporations would have preserved their sway, from the 
 impossibility of their conceiving of any other classification. To 
 this day we have no sufficiently distinct notion ourselves of such 
 an arrangement as would be truly appropriate to a new state of 
 civilization. 
 
 When the dogma of equality had achieved the overthrow of the old 
 polities, it could not but become an obstacle to any reorganization, 
 because its activity must then be directed against the bases of any 
 new classification whatever ; for, of course, any classification must 
 be incompatible with the equality that was claimed for all. Since 
 the abolition of slavery, there has been no denial, from any quarter, 
 of the right of every man (innocent of strong anti-social conduct) to 
 expect from all others the fulfilment of the conditions necessary to 
 the natural development of his personal activity, suitably directed : 
 but, beyond that undisputed right, men can not be made, because 
 they are not, equal, nor even equivalent ; and they can not there 
 fore possess, in a state of association, any identical rights beyond 
 the great original one. The simple physical inequalities which fix 
 the attention of superficial observers are much less marked than 
 intellectual and moral differences ; and the progress of civilization 
 tends to increase these more important differences, as much as to 
 lessen the inferior kind : and, applied to any assemblage of per- 
 
412 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sons thus developed, the dogma of equality becomes anarchical, 
 and directly hostile to its original destination. 
 
 The second result of the dogma of liberty of con- 
 
 Do<*ma of the . -in n i 
 
 sovereignty of science is the {sovereignty oi the people i and, like the 
 former, it wrought at first the double service of destroy 
 ing the old regime and preparing for a new one. Till the final 
 system could be constituted, the only safeguard against the renewed 
 supremacy of the old one was in the setting up of provisional insti 
 tutions, which the peoples claimed the absolute right to change at 
 will. It was only by means of the doctrine of popular sovereignty 
 that that succession of political endeavors could take place which 
 must precede the installation of a true system of government, when 
 ever the intellectual renovation of society shall be sufficiently 
 advanced to settle the conditions and natural extent of the different 
 sovereignties. Meanwhile, in discharging its function, this dogma 
 proves its revolutionary character before our eyes, by opposing all 
 reorganization, condemning, as it does, all the superior to an arbi 
 trary dependence on the multitude of the inferior, by a kind of 
 transference to the peoples of the divine right which had become the 
 opprobium of kings. 
 
 Do-ma of Na ^ Q reY l u tionary spirit of the critical doctrine man- 
 
 domai jnd. pend. ifests itself no less clearly when we look at international 
 
 relations. The necessity of ordei* being in this case 
 
 more equivocal and obscure, the absence of all regulating power 
 
 /lias been more ingenuously declared than in other cases. When the 
 ancient spiritual power was politically annulled, the dissolution of 
 European order followed spontaneously from the principle of liberty 
 of conscience ; and the most natural papal function was at an end. 
 Till the new social organization shall show us the law by which the 
 nations shall become once more connected, the metaphysical no 
 tions- of national isolation, and therefore of mutual non-intervention, 
 must prevail ; and they will be regarded as absolute till it appears 
 
 \how they defeat their own end. As all attempts at European co 
 ordination must otherwise be directed by the ancient system, we 
 owe to the doctrine of national independence our rescue from the 
 monstrous arrangement of the most civilized nations being politi 
 cally subordinated to the least advanced, because the latter were 
 least changed from their ancient state, and would be sure therefore 
 to be placed at the head of such an association. But, if such a doc 
 trine were more than provisional, the nations would sink below their 
 state in the Middle Ages ; and at the very time when they are 
 marked out, by an ever-growing resemblance, for an association 
 more extensive, and, at the same time more regular, than that which 
 was proposed by the old catholic and feudal system. It is clear that 
 when the dogma of national isolation has fulfilled its function of 
 separating the nations, in order to a preparation for a new union, its 
 further action must be as purely anarchical as that of its predecessors. 
 A brief notice of the logical inconsistency of the revolutionary 
 doctrine will conclude our preliminary review of it. 
 
INCONSISTENCY OF THE METAPHYSICAL DOCTRINE. 413 
 
 This inconsistency is more radical and more manifest 
 
 than in the case of the retrograde or theological doctrine ; *&* j 
 but it does not imply so utter a condemnation ; not only doctrintj - 
 on account of its recent formation, but because such a vice does not 
 
 v_prevent its fulfilling its critical office. Notwithstanding profound 
 differences, the adversaries of the old polity found no difficulty in 
 uniting for successive partial demolitions about which they were 
 agreed, postponing till their period of success their contests about 
 the ulterior developments of their doctrine ; a course which would 
 be impossible in the case of any organic operation, in which each 
 part must be considered in its relation to the whole. Thus far 
 only, however, can the inconsistency be tolerated. When once the 
 whole of any doctrine becomes hostile to its original purposes, it is 
 condemned : and this is true of the metaphysical doctrine, which at 
 once opposes the progress it professed to aid, and sustains the 
 foundations of the political system it proposed to destroy. 
 
 Its culminating point was at the most marked period of the 
 first French Revolution, when it was, by an unavoidable illusion, 
 taken to be the principle of social reorganization. It was then seen 
 in its best aspect of consistency and power ; and then it was that, 
 the ancient system being disposed of, its vices became apparent. It 
 showed itself hostile to all social reorganization, and became actu 
 ally retrograde in its character by setting itself up in violent oppo 
 sition to the movement of modern civilization. For one illustration, 
 look at the strange metaphysical notion of a supposed No Hon fHtat<> 
 state of nature, which was to be the primitive and in- ol Nam. 
 variable type of every social state. This doctrine is not to be 
 attributed to Rousseau alone. It is that of all philosophers, in all 
 times and countries, who have unconsciously concurred in develop 
 ing the revolutionary metaphysical doctrine which Rousseau, by his 
 urgent dialectics, only pushed to its real conclusions. His doctrine, 
 which represents a state of civilization as an ever-growing degen 
 eracy from the primitive ideal type, is common to all modern meta 
 physicians ; and we shall see hereafter that it is only the metaphys 
 ical form of the theological dogma of the degradation of the human 
 race by original sin. According to such a principle, all political ref 
 ormation must be regarded as destined to re-establish that primitive 
 state : and what is that but organizing a universal retrogradation, 
 though with progressive intentions ? The applications of this doc 
 trine have been in conformity to its philosophical constitution. 
 When it was necessary to replace the feudal and catholic regime, 
 men did not fix their contemplation on the social future, but sum 
 moned up their imperfect remembrances of a very distant past, try 
 ing to substitute for a decrepit system a more ancient and decrepit 
 system still, but, for that very reason, nearer to the primitive type. 
 
 , Instead of a wornout Catholicism, they proposed a sort of meta 
 physical polytheism, at the same time that, in polity, they desired 
 to replace the Middle Age system by the radically inferior regime 
 of the Greeks and Romans. The very elements of modern civil iza- 
 
414 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion, the only possible germs of a new social state, were endangered 
 by barbaric condemnation of the industrial and artistic advancement 
 of modern society, in the name of primitive virtue and simplicity. 
 Even the scientific spirit, which is the only principle of intellectual 
 organization, was stigmatized as tending to institute an aristocracy 
 of knowledge which was as incompatible as any other aristocracy 
 with the original equality that was to be set up again. Lavoisier 
 was the martyr of this state of opinion ; and it is his case that will 
 illustrate the period to our remotest posterity. It is useless for the 
 metaphysical school to represent such results as portentous or 
 eccentric incidents. Their legitimate descent from the revolution 
 ary polity is evident and certain ; and we should witness a repeti 
 tion of them if it were possible (which it is not) for this polity to 
 become prevalent again. The tendency to social retrogradation, 
 under the idea of returning to the primitive state, so thoroughly 
 belongs to the metaphysical polity, that the new sects who, in their 
 brief day, have most haughtily censured the revolutionary imitation 
 of Greek and Roman types, have unconsciously reproduced the 
 same error in a far more marked way by striving to re-establish the 
 confusion between the temporal and spiritual power, and extolling, 
 as the highest social perfection, a return to the Egyptian or He 
 brew theocracy, founded on fetichism, disguised under the name of 
 pantheism. 
 
 Adhes : on to the As the metaphysical doctrine was the issue of the 
 wom-out. theological, and destined to modify it, it was a matter 
 of course that it should vindicate the general foundations of the old 
 system, even after having destroyed its chief conditions of existence. 
 Every reformer, for three centuries past, while urging the develop 
 ment of the critical spirit further than his predecessors, assumed to 
 set immutable bounds to it ; deriving his limitations from the old 
 system. All the absolute rights proclaimed as the basis of the new 
 doctrine were guarantied by a sort of religious consecration, in the 
 last resort ; and this was indispensable, if their efficacy was not to 
 be impaired by continual discussion. It was always with an invo 
 cation of the principles of the old polity on their lips that the re 
 formers proceeded to demolish the spiritual a.nd temporal institutions 
 in which they were embodied ;{ and the whole regime fell through 
 the conflict of its chief elements) Hence there arose, in the intel 
 lectual region, a Christianity mdre and more attenuated or simpli 
 fied, and reduced at last to that vague and impotent theism which, 
 ^-fey: a monstrous conjunction of terms, metaphysicians have entitled 
 Natural Religion, as if all religion were not necessarily super 
 natural. The pretension to direct a social reorganization by this 
 strange conception is merely a recurrence to the old principle that 
 social order must rest on a theological basis. This is now the most 
 fatal inconsistency of the revolutionary school ; and while armed 
 with such a concession, the advocates of Catholicism will always 
 have an incontestable logical superiority over the irrational de- 
 of the old faith , who proclaim the need of a religious organ 
 
POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION. 415 
 
 ization, and yet disallow all the necessary conditions. It is clear 
 that society would be condemned to a perpetuity of the intellectual 
 anarchy which characterizes it at present if it were to be for ever * 
 made up of minds which admit the want of a theological regime on 
 the one hand, while, on the other, they reject its principal condi 
 tions of existence ; and those who thus acknowledge themselves 
 incapable have no right to discredit the only rational way to re 
 organization which remains open, and by which every other order of 
 human conceptions has been happily retrieved and established. The 
 social application of the positive philosophy remains as the re 
 source, arid the only resource, after the failure of both the prece 
 ding systems. 
 
 In its temporal application the inconsistency of the Rncilrrenc . to 
 I metaphysical doctrine is as conspicuous as in the spir- war - 
 ) itual. It strives to preserve, if not the feudal, at least the military 
 spirit, in which the feudal had its origin. The French nation did, 
 it is true, in their revolutionary enthusiasm, proscribe war from 
 that time forward : but when the armed coalition of the retrograde 
 forces of Europe brought out an immense amount of energy for 
 self-defence, for the sake of the progressive movement, the senti 
 ment, which was grounded on no principle, soon disappeared, and 
 France was distinguished by the most conspicuous military activity, 
 invested with Us most oppressive characteristics. The military spirit 
 is in fact so congenial with the critical doctrine that any pretext 
 will serve for its indulgence : as for instance, when it is proposed to 
 regulate by war the action of the more advanced nations upon the 
 less advanced. The true logical consequence of this would be a 
 universal uproar; but, happily, the nature of modern civilization 
 eaves us from the danger. The tendency of the critical regime in 
 this respect is shown by the perpetual endeavors of the various 
 sections of the revolutionary school to reinstate the memory of the 
 man who, of all others, strove for political retrogradation, by wast- 
 ing enormous amount of power in the restoration of the military 
 and theological system. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of the inconsistencies of . 
 
 ,,. i i T L . A j. Principle of Fo- 
 
 this school, I must, in justice, point out one more con- Titicai centraiiza- 
 tradiction which, as being of a progressive character, twn - 
 is honorable to those most advanced minds which entertain it, and 
 which alone understand its necessity, opposed as it is to the dogmas 
 of independence and isolation which constitute the spirit of the 
 critical school. I refer to the principle of political centralization. 
 The two parties seem here to have changed sides. The retro- \ 
 grade doctrine, notwithstanding its proud pretensions to order and 
 unity, preaches the distribution of political centres, in the secret 
 hope of preserving the old system yet a while longer among the 
 most backward of the populations, by keeping them aloof from the 
 general centres of civilization ; while the revolutionary policy, on 
 the other hand, proud of having withstood, in France, the coalition , 
 of the old powers, discards its own maxims to recommend the sub/ 
 
116 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ordination of the secondary to the principal centres by which such 
 a noble stand has already been made, and which must become a 
 most valuable auxiliary of reorganization. Thus alone can the re 
 organization be, in the first place, restricted to a choice population. 
 In brief, the revolutionary school alone has understood that the 
 increasing anarchy of the time, intellectual and moral, requires, to 
 prevent a complete dislocation of society, a growing concentration 
 of political action, properly so called. 
 
 Thus, after three centuries, employed in the necessary demolition 
 ; of the ancient regime, the critical doctrine shows itself as incapa 
 ble of other application, and as inconsistent as we have now seen 
 it to be. (it is no more fit to secure Progress, than the old doctrine 
 to maintain Order. But, feeble as they are apart, they actually 
 sustain each other by their very antagonism, It is universally 
 understood that neither can ever again achieve a permanent triumph : 
 but, so strong is the apprehension of even the temporary prepon 
 derance of either, that the general mind, for want of a more ra 
 tional point of support, employs each doctrine in turn to restrain 
 the encroachments of the other. This miserable oscillation of our 
 social life must proceed till a real doctrine as truly organic as pro 
 gressive, sjjall reconcile for us the two aspects of the great political 
 problem. (Then, at last, the two opposite doctrines will disappear 
 for ever in the new conception that will be seen to be completely 
 adapted to fulfil the destination of both.| Often has each party, 
 blinded by some temporary success, believed that it had annihilated 
 the other ; and never has the event failed to mock the ignorant 
 exultation. The critical doctrine seemed to have humbled for ever 
 the catholic-feudal school ; but that school arose again. Napoleon 
 thought he had accomplished a retrograde reaction ; but the very 
 energy of his efforts caused a reaction in favor of revolutionary 
 principles. And thus society continues to vibrate between con 
 flicting influences ; and those influences continue to exist only by 
 their mutual neutralization. For that purpose only, indeed, are 
 they now ever applied. Neither could be spared before the advent 
 of the state which is to succeed them. Without the one, we should 
 lose the sentiment of Order, and without the other, that of Prog- 
 ^ess ; and the keeping alive this sentiment, on either hand, is the 
 / only practical efficacy which now remains to them. Feeble as the 
 conception must be, in the absence of any principle which unites 
 the two requisites, it is preserved by the presence of the two decay 
 ing systems ; and they keep before the minds of both philosophers 
 and the public the true conditions of social reorganization, which 
 otherwise our feeble nature might misconceive or lose sight of. 
 Having the two types before us, we see the solution of the great 
 problem to be, to form a doctrine which shall be more organic than 
 the theological, and more progressive than the metaphysical. 
 
 The old political system can be no pattern for a regime suitable 
 to a widely different civilization ; but we are not under the less 
 obligation to study it, in order to learn what are the essential at- 
 
SOCIAL OSCILLATIONS. 417 
 
 tributes of all social organization, which must reappear in an im 
 proved state in the future. The general conception of the theologi 
 cal and military system even seems to me to have passed too much 
 out of sight. And, as to the Critical system, there can be no ques 
 tion of its affording, by its progressive character, and its exposure 
 of the preceding ri-gime, a most valuable stimulus to society to 
 seek for something better than mere modifications of systems that 
 have failed. The common complaint that it renders all government 
 impossible, is a mere avowal of impotence on the part of those 
 who utter it. Whatever are its imperfections, it fulfilled for a time 
 one of the two requisities : its abolition would in no way assist the 
 re-establishment of Order ; and no declamations against the revolu 
 tionary philosophy will affect the instinctive attachment of society 
 to principles which have directed its political progress for three 
 centuries past, and which are believed to represent the indispensable 
 conditions of its future development. Each of its dogmas affords 
 an indication of how the improvement is to be effected. Each ex 
 presses the political aspect of certain high moral obligations which 
 the retrograde school, with all its pretensions, wUs compelled to 
 ignore, because its system had lost all power to fulfil them. In 
 this way, the dogma of Free Inquiry decides that the spiritual re 
 organization must result from purely intellectual action, providing 
 for a final voluntary and unanimous disent, without the disturbing 
 intervention of any heterogeneous power. Again, the dogmas of 
 Equality and the Sovereignty of the people devolve on the new 
 powers and classes of society the duty of a public-spirited social 
 conduct, instead of working the many for the interests of the few. 
 The old system practised these moralities in its best days ; but they 
 are now maintained only by the revolutionary doctrine, which it 
 would be fatal to part with till we have some substitute in these 
 particular respects ; for the effect would be that we should be 
 delivered over to the dark despotism of the old system ; to the 
 restorers of religions, for instance, who, if proselytism failed, would 
 have recourse to tyranny to compel unity, if once the principle of 
 free inquiry were lost from among us. 
 
 It is useless to declaim against the critical philosophy, and to 
 deplore, in the name of social order, the dissolving energy of the 
 spirit of analysis and inquiry. It is only by their use that we can 
 obtain materials for reorganization ; materials which shall have 
 been thoroughly tested by free discussion, carried on till general 
 conviction is secured. The philosophy which will arise out of this 
 satisfaction of the public reason will then assign the rational limits 
 which must obviate the abuse of the analytical spirit, by establish 
 iiag that distinction in social matters, between the field of reasoning 
 and that of pure observation, which we have found already marked 
 out in regard to every other kind of science. 
 
 Though consigned, by the course of events, to a negative doctrine 
 for awhile, society has never renounced the laws of human reason : 
 and when the proper time arrives, society will use the rights of this 
 
 27 
 
418 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 reason to organize itself anew, on principles which will then have 
 been ascertained and estimated. The existing state of no-govern 
 ment seems necessary at present, in order to that ascertainment of 
 principles ; but it does not at all follow, as some eccentric individ 
 uals seem to think, that the right of inquiry imposes the duty of 
 never deciding. The prolonged indecision proves merely that the 
 principles which are to close the deliberation are not yet sufficiently 
 established. In the same way, because society claims the right of 
 choosing and varying its institutions and governing powers, it by 
 no means follows that the right is for ever to be used in choosing 
 and varying, when its indefinite use shall have become injurious. 
 When the right conditions shall have been ascertained, society will 
 submit its choice to the rules which will secure its efficacy ; and in 
 the interval, nothing can be more favorable to future order than that 
 the political course should be kept open, to admit of the free rise 
 of the new social system. As it happens, the peoples have, thus 
 far, erred on the side of too hasty a desire for reorganization, and 
 a too generous confidence in every promise of social order, instead 
 of having shown the systematic distrust attributed to the revolu 
 tionary doctrine by those whose wornout claims will not bear dis 
 cussion. There is more promise of political reorganization in the- 
 revolutionary doctrine than in the retrograde, though it is the 
 supreme claim of the latter to be the safeguard of social Order. 
 The stationary Such is the vicious circle in which we are at present 
 doctrine. confined. We have seen what is the antagonism of 
 
 two doctrines that are powerless apart, and have no operation but 
 in neutralizing each other. They have lost their activity as pre 
 ponderating influences, and are seen now in the form of political 
 debate, which they daily direct by the one furnishing all the essen 
 tial ideas of government, and the other the principles of opposition. 
 At shorter and shorter intervals, a partial and transient superiority 
 is allowed to the one or the other, when its antagonist, threatens 
 danger. Out of these oscillations a third opinion has arisen, which 
 is constructed out of their ruins, and takes its station between them. 
 I suppose we must give the name of Doctrine to this intermediate 
 opinion, bastard and inconsistent asis its character ; for it is presented 
 by very earnest doctors, who urge it upon us as a type of the final 
 political philosophy. We must call it the Stationary Doctrine ; 
 and we see it, in virtue of that quality, occupying the scene of poli 
 tics, among the most advanced people, for above a quarter of a 
 century. Essentially provisional as it is, the Stationary school 
 naturally serves as a guide to society in preserving the material 
 order, without which a true doctrine could not have its free growth. 
 It may be necessary for our weakness that the leaders of this school 
 should suppose that they have a doctrine which is destined to 
 triumph ; but whatever benefits arise from their action are much 
 impaired by the mistake of supposing our miserable transition state 
 a permanent type of the social condition. The stationary polity not 
 only contains inconsistencies, but it is itself inconsistency erected 
 
THE STATIONARY DOCTRINE. 410 
 
 into a principle. It acknowledges the essential principles of the 
 other systems, but prevents their action. Disdainful of Utopias, it 
 proposes the wildest of them all ; that of fixing society for ever in 
 a contradictory position between retrogradation and regeneration. 
 The theory serves to keep in check the other two philosophies ; and 
 this may be a good : but, on the other hand, it helps to keep them 
 alive ; and it is, in so far, an obstacle to reorganization. When I 
 present my historical review of society, I shall explain the special 
 assemblage of social conditions which gave England her parliamen 
 tary monarchy, so laudect by the school of mixed doctrine, but, in 
 fact, an exceptional institution, whose inevitable end can not be 
 very far off. When we enter upon that analysis, we shall see how 
 great is the error of philosophers and statesmen when they have 
 taken up a singular and transient case as the solution of the revolu 
 tionary crisis of modern societies, and have endeavored to trans 
 plant on the European continent a purely local system, which would 
 be deprived in the process of its very roots : for it is an organized 
 Protestantism which is its main spiritual basis in England. The 
 expectation attached to this single specious aspect of the stationary 
 doctrine will make a future examination of it important ; and we 
 shall then see how hopeless is the constitutional metaphysics of the 
 balance of powers, judged by that instance which serves as the com 
 mon ground of such social fictions. After all the vast efforts made 
 to nationalize elsewhere the stationary compromise, it has never suc 
 ceeded anywhere but in its native land ; and this proves its power- 
 lessness in regard to the great social problem. The only possible 
 result is that the mischief should pass from the acute to the chronic 
 state, becoming incurable by the recognition as a principle of the 
 transient antagonism which is its chief symptom. Its principal 
 merit is that it admits the double aspect of the social problem, and 
 the necessity of reconciling Order and Progress : but it introduces 
 no new idea ; and its recognition amounts therefore to nothing more 
 than an equal sacrifice, when necessary of the one and the other. 
 The order that it protects is a merely material order ; and it there 
 fore fails in that function precisely in crises when it is most wanted. 
 On the other hand, this function continues to be attributed to roy 
 alty, which is the only power of the old polity that is still active : 
 now, the balance which is instituted by the stationary doctrine sur 
 rounds the royal power with bonds that are always tightening, while 
 declaring that royal power to be the chief basis of the government. 
 It is only a question of time when the function of sovereignty, thus 
 embarrassed, shall cease, and the pretended balance be destroyed. 
 This parliamentary polity serves the cause of progress no better 
 than that of order : for, as it proposes no new principle, the re 
 straints which it puts upon the revolutionary spirit are all derived 
 from the ancient system, and therefore tend to become more and 
 more retrograde and oppressive. An example of this is, the restric 
 tions on the right of election ; restrictions always derived from irra 
 tional material conditions, which, being arbitrary in their character, 
 
420 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 oppress and irritate, without answering their proposed purpose, arid 
 leave the multitude of the excluded much more offended than the 
 small number of the privileged are gratified. 
 
 There is no need to say more in this place of the mixed or Sta 
 tionary doctrine, which is, in fact, only a last phase of the meta 
 physical polity. The reader can not but see that a theory so 
 precarious and subaltern, so far from being able to reorganize mod 
 ern society, can only regulate, by protracting, the political conflict, 
 and discharge the negative office of preventing kings from retrogra 
 ding and peoples from destroying. Whatever the value of this ser- 
 rice may be, AVC can not expect regeneration to be accomplished by 
 means of impediments. 
 
 Dm^rs ot th - We nave now soei1 ^ 1C worth of these three systems. 
 critic-i|?r:oi To complete our conviction of the need of a better, we 
 must briefly notice the chief social dangers which result from the 
 deplorable protraction of such an intellectual condition, and which 
 must, from their nature, be aggravated from day to day. The dan 
 gers are imputable to all the three systems ; though the revolution 
 ary and stationary systems assume that the blame of our disorders 
 rests with the retrograde school : but they are certainly no less 
 guilty ; for, powerless to discover the remedy, they protract the mis 
 chief and embarrass the treatment. And again, the discordance 
 between the movement of governments and of their peoples is to be 
 attributed quite as much to the hostile spirit of the directing power 
 as to the anarchical tendency of popular opinions. The social per 
 turbations, the aspects of which we are about to examine, proceed 
 no less from the kings than from their peoples, with this aggravated 
 disgrace that it seems as if the solution ought to emanate from the 
 kings. 
 
 intellectual an- The first, the most fatal, and the most universal con- 
 "rci.y. sequence of this situation is the alarming and ever- 
 
 widening extent of the intellectual anarchy which all acknowledge, 
 However they may differ about its cause and termination. This 
 evil is charged almost exclusively on the revolutionary philosophy ; 
 and that school too readily admits the charge. But, as we have 
 seen, that doctrine does not prohibit decision, when the requisite 
 grounds are ascertained : and it is the stationary theory that ought 
 to bear the blame of the absence of those grounds : and yet more 
 the retrograde, which is chargeable with urging the restoration of 
 ;he same wornout principles which, by their decrepitude, have 
 caused all this anarchy. The stationary school does not want to 
 hear of any such principles, and interdicts them ; and the retro 
 grade school insists that the old ones will do over again. So that, 
 if the revolutionary school first encouraged the anarchy, the other 
 two protract it. 
 
 Of all questions, there are none which have so much claim as 
 social problems to be consigned to a small number of choice minds 
 which shall have been prepared by a high order of discipline and 
 instruction for the investigation of questions so complex and so 
 
EXISTING ANARCHY. 421 
 
 mixed up with human passions. Such is, at least, the natural state 
 of the human mind, in contrast with which its condition in revolu 
 tionary periods may be regarded as, in a manner, pathological, how- 
 Qver inevitable. The social malady must be very serious when we 
 see all manner of persons, however inferior their intelligence, and 
 however unprepared, stimulated, in the highest manner, and from 
 day to day, to cut the knot of the most intricate political questions, 
 without any guidance or restraint. The wonder is, not that the 
 divergence; of opinion is what it is, but that any points of agreement 
 at all are left amid all this dissolution of social maxims. The evil 
 has reached such a point that all political opinions, though of course 
 derived from one of the three schools, differ through so many de 
 grees as to become individual ; through all degrees, in fact, that the 
 combination of three orders of vicious principles admits of. Except 
 on occasion of emergency, when there is a temporary coalition 
 (amid which each one usually hopes to have his own way) it be 
 comes more and more difficult to make even a very small number 
 of minds adhere to a plain and explicit profession of political faith. 
 This inability to co-operate prevails in all the three camps as we 
 ought carefully to observe : and each party has often, in its ingenu 
 ous moments, bitterly deplored the intense disagreement with which 
 it supposed itself to be especially afflicted ; whereas, the others 
 were no better organized ; and the chief difference in the three 
 cases was that each was most acutely sensible of its own misery. 
 
 In countries where this intellectual anarchy has been sanctioned 
 by the political preponderance of Protestantism, the divergences 
 have been more multiplied than elsewhere, without being less 
 serious. It could not but be so from the tendency of the general 
 mind, in its then infantile state, to use its new emancipation to plunge 
 into the indefinite discussion of religious opinions (the most vague 
 and discordant of all) in the absence of a restraining spiritual 
 authority. In the United States, for instance, there are hundreds 
 of Christian sects, radically discordant, and incessantly parting off 
 into opinions which are really little more than individual, which it 
 is impossible to classify, and which are already becoming implicated 
 with innumerable political differences. The nations which, like the 
 French, have escaped the treacherous stage of Protestantism, and 
 have passed at once from the Catholic to the fully revolutionary 
 state, were not, on that account, entirely exempt from the intellec 
 tual anarchy inherent in any prolonged exercise of the absolute 
 right of free individual inquiry. All that can be said is that their 
 aberrations, without being less anti-social, have a less vague char 
 acter, and are less in the way of the final reorganization. They 
 arise, take possession for awhile of even healthy and well-trained 
 intellects, and then give place to others that have their day, and in 
 their turn are superseded. In our time, we hear of proposals, enter 
 tained here and there even by men who know what positive science 
 is in some one department of study, which it is a shock to one s 
 hopes to see so advocated ; proposals, for instance, to abolish money 
 
i22 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and recur to a state of barter ; to destroy the great capitals in 
 order to restore rural innocence ; to have a fixed rate of wages, 
 and the same rate for every kind of labor, and so forth. Such 
 opinions are daily given out, side by side with those which are the 
 most philosophical and the most carefully elaborated ; and none 
 have any chance of being established under the rule of any intel 
 lectual discipline whatever, though the wise are compromised with 
 the foolish in the eyes of public reason. The inevitable result of 
 D --truction of such a chronic epidemic is the gradual destruction of 
 public mc.-raiity. the public morale, which is not sustained, among the 
 generality of men, so much by the direct sentiment as by habit, 
 guided by the uniform assent of individual wills to invariable and 
 general rules, adapted to fix, on every serious occasion, the true 
 idea of the public good. So complex is the nature of social ques 
 tions that there is much that is to be said on all sides ; and there 
 is no institution, however indispensable, which does not involve 
 serious and numerous inconveniences, more or less partial and tran 
 sient ; and, on the other hand, there is no Utopia so wild as not to 
 offer some incontestable advantages ; and few are the minds which 
 are not so preoccupied by ideas, or stimulated by passion, as to be 
 able to contemplate at once all the aspects of any social subject. 
 Thts it is that almost all the great maxims of public morality are 
 condemned on account of their salient faults, while their deter 
 mining grounds are hidden till exhibited by an exact analysis, 
 which must in many cases be extremely delicate. Thus again, it is 
 that all true moral order is incompatible with the existing vagabond 
 liberty of individual minds, if such license were to last ; for the 
 great social rules which should become customary can not be aban 
 doned to the blind and arbitrary decision of an incompetent public 
 without losing all their efficacy. The requisite convergence of the 
 best minds can not be obtained without the voluntary renunciation, 
 on the part of most of them, of their sovereign right of free inquiry, 
 which they will doubtless be willing to abdicate, as soon as they 
 have found organs worthy to exercise appropriately their vain pro 
 visional supremacy. If it is so in problems of science, there is 
 every reason to expect it in the more difficult questions of social 
 principle. Meanwhile, all vague notions of public good, degen 
 erating into an indistinct philanthropy, must succumb to the ener 
 getic forces of a highly-stimulated selfishness. In the daily course 
 of our political conflicts we see accordingly the most conscientious 
 men taxing each other with wickedness and folly ; and, on every 
 serious occasion, the most opposite doctrines maintained by persons 
 equally worthy of confidence : and, while all deep and steady con 
 viction is thus rendered impossible, no true political morality can 
 he hoped for by those who desire it most. 
 
 This public demoralization has, it must be admitted, been sensi 
 uly retarded, in our time, by the preponderance of that revolution 
 ary doctrine which has borne the imputation of causing it ; for the 
 revolutionary party, progressive in character, could not but be 
 
PRIVATE MORALITY. 423 
 
 animated, more than the others, by sincere convictions, which, in 
 their depth and activity, must tend to restrain, and even annihilate, 
 individual selfishness. This was especially remarkable during the 
 season when the revolutionary doctrine was, by a general illusion, 
 supposed to be destined to reorganize society. Under the impulse 
 of this persuasion, the strongest social devotedness that can shed 
 honor upon contemporary history was manifested. But this could 
 be only for a time. As the illusion disappeared, the convictions 
 which arose from it became first weakened, and then mingled with 
 the influences of the stationary, and even the retrograde polity : 
 and though they are still of a higher order than those which are 
 inspired by the other doctrines, and especially among the young, 
 they have not energy to resist the dissolving action of the revolu 
 tionary philosophy, even among its own advocates ; so that this 
 philosophy now contributes, almost as much as its two antagonists, 
 to the spread of political demoralization. 
 
 Private morality is, happily, much less dependent on 
 established opinions. Other conditions enter into this Private 
 case; and in the commonest questions, natural sentiment is far 
 more operative than in public relations. Disorganizing influences 
 are strongly counteracted by the continuous amelioration of our 
 manners, through a more equitable intellectual development, by a 
 juster sense and more familiar taste for the various fine arts, aad 
 by the gradual improvement of social condition in consequence of 
 steady industrial progress. The common rules of domestic and 
 personal morality have guarded private life longer than political 
 from the invasion of disorganizing influences, and the intrusion of 
 individual analysis. But the time has arrived for these inevitable 
 disturbances, long concealed, to manifest their dangerous activity. 
 So long ago as the first rise of the revolutionary state, this delete 
 rious influence on morality, properly so called, began with a serious 
 innovation on the institution of Marriage, which would have been 
 radically changed, by the permission of divorce in Protestant coun 
 tries, if public decency and private good sense had not, up to this 
 time, weakened the pernicious effects of theologico-meta physical 
 extravagances. Still, private morality could be reached only 
 through the destruction of political morals ; and now, that barrier 
 being broken through, the dissolving action threatens domestic, and 
 even personal morality, which is the necessary foundation of every 
 other. Whichever way we look at it, whether as to the relations 
 of the sexes, to those of ages, or of conditions, it is clear that the 
 elements of all social life are directly compromised by a corrosive 
 discussion which is not directed by true principles, and which 
 brings into question, without the possibility of solution, even the 
 least important ideas of duty. Even the Family, which, amidst the 
 fiercest revolutionary tumults, had been on the whole respected, has 
 been assailed in our day in its very foundations, by attacks on the 
 hereditary principle and on marriage. We have even seen the 
 commonest- principle of personal morality, the subjection of the 
 
i24 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 passions to reason, denied by pretended reformers who, in defiance 
 of all experience and such positive science as we have, have pro 
 posed as a fundamental dogma of their regenerated morality, the 
 systematic dominion of the passions, which they have striven, not 
 to restrain, but to excite by the strongest stimulants. These spec 
 ulations have so far penetrated social life, that any one is now at 
 liberty to make an easy merit of the most turbulent passions ; so 
 that, if such license could last, insatiable stomachs might at length 
 get to pride themselves on their own voracity. It is in vain for the 
 retrograde school to throw the blame of all this on the revolution 
 ary school. The censure rests upon themselves, inasmuch as they 
 have persisted in extolling, as the only intellectual bases of social 
 duty, principles which have betrayed their impotence in this very 
 case ; for, if theological conceptions are, in truth, the immutable 
 bases of future as well as past morality, how is it that they now fail 
 to obviate such license ? What are we to think of the attempt to 
 shore up by laborious artifices, the religious principles which are 
 proposed, after they have lost their strength, as the only supports 
 of moral order ? No supreme function can be assigned to convic 
 tions that have themselves given way before the development of 
 human reason, which is not likely to use its mature power to recon 
 struct the bonds which it broke through in the efforts of its youth. 
 It is remarkable that the license I have spoken of has been proposed 
 by the ardent restorers of religious theories, in their exasperation 
 against all positive philosophy ; and this has, for some time past, 
 been the case with Protestant, no less than Catholic advocates. 
 So far from furnishing bases for morality, domestic or personal, 
 religious convictions have long tended to its injury, both by hinder 
 ing its erection on more solid foundations among those who are free 
 from their control, and by being insufficient for their own subjects, 
 without the active intervention of a sacerdotal authority ; that 
 authority meanwhile perpetually losing its hold over the more 
 advanced populations, and being more and more absorbed by the 
 care of its own preservation, instead of venturing upon any unpop 
 ular scheme of discipline. Daily experience shows that the ordi 
 nary morality of religious men is not, at present, in spite of our 
 intellectual anarchy, superior to that of the average of those who 
 have quitted the churches. The chief practical tendency of reli 
 gious conviction is, in our present social life, to inspire an instinctive 
 and insurmountable hatred against all who have emancipated them 
 selves, without any useful emulation having arisen from the conflict. 
 Thus the chief assaults, direct and indirect, on private as well as 
 public morality, are as strictly imputable to the stationary, and yet 
 more to the retrograde, than to the revolutionary philosophy, which 
 is commonly made to bear all the blame. It is, indeed, but too 
 evident that the three doctrines are almost equally powerless to 
 restrain the development of individual selfishness, which grows 
 bolder, from day to day, in clamoring for the license of the least 
 social passions, in the name of universal intellectual anarchy. 
 
TO PUBLIC MORALITY. 425 
 
 The second characteristic of our condition follows Po]itica] corro 
 from the first. It is the systematic corruption which tionM 
 is set up as an indispensable instrument of government. The three 
 doctrines bear their share, though it may be an unequal one, in 
 this disgraceful result, because all exclude, as we have seen, true 
 political convictions. Amidst the absence, or the discredit, of gen- 
 sral ideas, which have now no power to command genuine acts, 
 there is no other daily resource for the maintenance of even a 
 rough and precarious order than an appeal, more or less immediate, 
 to personal interests. Such an influence is scarcely ever needed 
 with men of deep convictions. Even in the lower order of charac 
 ters, human nature is rarely so debased as to allow a course of 
 political conduct in opposition to any strong convictions ; and such 
 contrariety, if persevered in, Avould soon paralyze the faculties. In 
 the scientific class, in which philosophical convictions are at present 
 most common and best marked, active corruption is scarcely prac 
 ticable, though minds are there much of the same quality as they 
 are elsewhere. Thus, exceptional cases apart, the rapid spread of- 
 a corruption which avails itself of the half-convictions that are prev 
 alent in the political world must be attributed mainly to the unde 
 cided and fluctuating state in which social ideas are kept by the 
 intellectual anarchy of our time. Not only does this disorder of 
 minds permit the political corruption : it even requires it, as the 
 only means of obtaining any sort of practical convergence, such as 
 is necessary for the mere preservation of the social state in its 
 grossest interests : and we must prepare ourselves for the continu 
 ous extension of the evil, as long as intellectual anarchy goes on 
 destroying all strong political conviction. Rulers and the ruled 
 are alike guilty in regard to this vice : the rulers by their disdain 
 of all social theory ; by their repression of mind, and by their appli 
 cation of the instrument which they can not dispense with to their 
 own, instead of the general interest ; and the ruled by their accept 
 ance of the proffered corruption, and by their intellectual condition 
 rendering the use of it inevitable v If individuals can not co-ope 
 rate on any other ground than that of private interest, they have 
 no right to complain that governments take the same ground to 
 procure the assistance that they can not dispense with, during a 
 period in which it is scarcely possible 1o see clearly what the public 
 good really consists in. All that can be said for such a state of 
 things is that matters would be worse if individual eccentricities 
 were not somewhat restrained by personal interest, in the absence 
 of better influences ; and that it is the natural result of the situation 
 to which it applies, and therefore certainly destined to disappear 
 whenever society shall begin to admit of a better discipline. Till 
 then we must expect to see this miserable expedient more and more 
 resorted to ; as is proved by the constant experience of all peoples 
 living under a prolonged constitutional or representative regime, 
 as we now call it, always compelled to organize in this manner a 
 certain material discipline in the midst of a complete intellectual, 
 
426 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and therefore moral anarchy. All that we have a right to require 
 is that governments, instead of welcoming this disastrous necessity, 
 and making an eager use of the facilities it offers, should set them 
 selves to favor, systematically, by all the means at their command, 
 the great philosophical elaboration through which modern society 
 may enter upon a better course. 
 
 By corruption, I do not mean only direct venality, nor yet the 
 holding of honorary distinctions which are merely flattering to the 
 vanity. The scope offered to various kinds of ambition is a more 
 corrupting influence. In some countries this had been carried so 
 far, in the form of creation of offices, that nations are farmed by 
 the functionaries of their governments. The danger of such a 
 course is obvious enough ; for the number of aspirants, where offices 
 are very numerous, must always largely exceed that of the chosen ; 
 and their disappointment must awaken passions anything but favor 
 able to the established regime. Moreover, the practice must spread 
 the more it is resorted to ; and it will go on extending till the time 
 for social reorganization has arrived. Here, again, all the three 
 schools must share the blame. The Revolutionary school supplied, 
 as we have seen, the dissolving influence which rendered the system 
 of corruption necessary. The Stationary school even sets it up as 
 a type, declaring the equal admission of all the public functions to 
 be the final destination of the general social movement ; and ag 
 gravating the case by connecting the conditions of order with the 
 mere possession of fortune, however obtained. As for the Retrograde 
 school, with all its pretensions to moral purity, it employs corrup 
 tion as fatally as the other two, under the special form which it 
 appropriates, that of systematic hypocrisy. From the opening 
 of the revolutionary period, in the sixteenth century, this system 
 of hypocrisy has been more and more elaborated in practice, per 
 mitting the emancipation of all minds of a certain bearing, on the 
 tacit condition that they should aid in protracting the submission 
 of the masses. This was, eminently, the policy of the Jesuits. 
 Thus has the retrograde school suffered under this vice as early as 
 the others ; and it can not but resort to corruption more and more, 
 in proportion to its own opposition to the general movement of the 
 society which it pretends to rule. 
 
 This, then, is our state. For want of a moral authority, material 
 order requires the use of either terror or corruption ; and the latter 
 is both more durable, less inconvenient, and more accordant with 
 the nature of modern society than the former. But, while admit 
 ting the inevitable character of the evil, it is impossible not to 
 lament, bitterly and mournfully, the blindness which prevents the 
 social powers of our time from facilitating to the utmost the 
 philosophical evolution by which alone we can issue into a better 
 state. It seems as if statesmen of all parties were agreed to close 
 this sole avenue of safety by visiting with stupid reprobation all 
 elaboration of social theories. This again, however, is only another 
 consequence of the present state of the most civilized nations ; and, 
 
UNWORTHINESS OF POLITICAL QUESTIONS. 427 
 
 as a consequence, not less necessary or characteristic than those 
 that have gone before. 
 
 The third symptom of our social situation is the 
 growing preponderance of material and immediate con- $!Sajf a * v . 
 siderations in regard to political questions. There is tions - 
 something more concerned here than the ordinary antagonism be 
 tween theory and practice, aggravated by the weakness of attempts 
 at theory in an infantile period of social science. The repugnance 
 to theory is further attributable to the historical circumstances that 
 when, three centuries ago, the spiritual power was finally annulled 
 or absorbed by the temporal, all lofty social speculations were more 
 and more devolved upon minds which were always pre-occupied by 
 practical affairs. Thus kings and their peoples concurred in 
 exalting the lower order of considerations; and the tendency 
 belonged to all the three schools of polity. If the crowning evil 
 of our time be its intellectual anarchy, it is clear that we can not 
 too strongly lament this irrational unanimity of the political world 
 in closing the path of progress by proscribing speculative researches. 
 We see the consequences in our experience of the past Fntnl to Prog . 
 century. In seeking social reorgonization, men have ress - 
 not first looked to the doctrines of a new social order, and then to 
 the corresponding manners ; but have gone straight to the con 
 struction of institutions, at a time when we .have all possible 
 evidence that institutions can be nothing more than provisional, 
 restricted to the most indispensable objects, and having no other 
 relation to the future than such facility as they may afford to the 
 process of political regeneration. The making of institutions in 
 our day consists in parcelling out the old political powers, minutely 
 organizing factitious and complex antagonisms among them, render 
 ing them more and more precarious by submitting them to election 
 for terms ; but in no way changing either the general nature of the 
 ancient regime or the spirit which worked it. For want of all 
 social doctrine, nothing more has been attempted than restraining 
 the powers thus preserved, till there is every danger of their being 
 altogether annulled, while the principles which were to direct their 
 application were left doubtful and obscure. The pompous name of 
 a Constitution is then given to this piece of work, and it is con 
 secrated to the eternal admiration of posterity. Though the aver 
 age duration of these constitutions has been at most ten years, each 
 new system, set up on the very ground of the failure of the last, 
 has claimed, under pains and penalties, a general faith in its abso 
 lute and indefinite triumph. The only action of such institutions 
 is in preventing all social reorganization by fixing minds on puerile 
 questions of political forms, and by interdicting speculations and 
 philosophical discussion which would disclose the principles of re 
 organization. By this action, the character of the disease has 
 been concealed as much as possible, and any gradual and specific 
 cure has been almost impracticable. It is strange that minds should 
 :>e so self-deceived as to disclaim all speculative prejudices while 
 
428 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 they propose the most absurd of all political Utopias, the con 
 struction of a system of government which rests upon no true social 
 doctrine. Such an absurdity is referrible to the cloudy prevalence 
 of the metaphysical philosophy, which perverts and confuses men s 
 notions in politics, as it did formerly, during its short triumph, in 
 all other orders of human conceptions. 
 
 F tni to orier ^ * s not on ^ as an i m pediment to progress that the 
 preponderance of material conceptions is to be deplor 
 ed. It is dangerous to order. When all political evils are imputed 
 to institutions instead of to ideas and social manners, which are 
 now the real seat of the mischief, the remedy is vainly sought in 
 changes, each more serious then the last, in institutions and existing 
 powers. The failure of the last change is forgotten ; and hopes 
 are concentrated on the next, showing how ineffectual are the 
 lessons of experience when the results are not elucidated by a 
 rational analysis. Such changes must occur, in our progress to a 
 better state. What it is fair to require in regard to them is that 
 they should be recognised as provisional, and be guided by some 
 philosophical consideration of the social question at large. Another 
 consequence of the prevalent preference of institutions to doctrines 
 is, besides its prematurity, its engendering errors of the most 
 serious kind, and of a permanent character, by including in the 
 domain of temporal government what belongs to the spiritual. For 
 their neglect of this grand distinction, the various governments of 
 Europe have been punished by becoming responsible for all the 
 evils of society, whencesoever they might have arisen. The illusion 
 is yet more injurious to society itself through the disturbances asd 
 mortifications which it induces. An illustration of the case is 
 presented by the discussions and attacks which have so often 
 menaced the institution of Property. It is impossible to deny that, 
 when all exaggerations are stripped away, an unquestionable amount 
 of evil remains in connection with property, which ought to be 
 taken in hand, and remedied, as far as our modern social state 
 permits. But it is equally evident that the remedy must arise from 
 opinions, customs, and manners, and that political regulations can 
 have no radical efficacy ; for the question refers us to public prepos 
 sessions and usages which must habitually direct, for the interest 
 of society, the exercise of property, in whose hands soever it may 
 DC lodged. We may see here how futile and how blind, and also 
 how disturbing, is this tendency to refer everything to political insti 
 tutions, instead of fixing expectation on an intellectual and moral 
 reorganization. 
 
 Thus we proceed, securing neither order nor progress, while we 
 consider our sufferings to be of a physical, whereas they are really 
 of a moral nature. Modifications of ancient systems have been 
 tried, and have given no relief; and our ideas of political progress 
 are narrowing down to that of a substitution of persons, the most 
 disgraceful political degradation of all, because, directed by no 
 plan, it tends to subject society to an interminable series of catas- 
 
INCOMPETENCE OP POLITICAL LEADERS. 429 
 
 troplies. The material order, which is all that is contemplated, is 
 confided to a power which is regarded as hostile, and perpetually 
 enfeebled by a systematic antagonism. The restricted view of each 
 of the agents of such a mechanism prevents their co-operation, 
 except under the immediate alarm of material anarchy, when they 
 suspend their useless controversies till the storm has blown over, 
 when they go on as before, till some catastrophe ensues, taking 
 everybody by surprise, though any one might have foreseen it. In 
 this discarding of social speculation for the sake of material and 
 immediate considerations, we see a fresh indication that intellectual 
 anarchy is the main cause of our social maladies. 
 
 A fourth characteristic of our social condition is a In( . ompetenc ,, of 
 natural consequence and complement of the preceding ; political leader*. 
 the incompetence of the minds which occupy the chief political sta 
 tions, during such a condition of affairs, and even their antipathy to 
 a true reorganization : so that a final, and not less disastrous illu 
 sion of modern society is that the solution of the problem may be 
 looked for from those who can do nothing but hinder it. From 
 what we have already seen, we must be aware that the gradual 
 demolition of all social maxims, and, at the same time, the attenu 
 ation of political action, must tend to remove elevated minds and 
 superior understandings from such a career, and to deliver over 
 the political world to the rule of charlatanism and mediocrity. 
 The absence of any distinct and large conception of a social future is 
 favorable to the more vulgar forms of ambition ; and presumptuous 
 and enterprising mediocrity has never before had so fortunate a 
 chance. While social principles are not even sought, charlatanism 
 will always attract by the magnificence of its promises ; and its tran 
 sient successes will dazzle society, while in a suffering condition, and 
 deprived of all rational hope. Every impulse of noble ambition 
 must turn the best men away from a field of action where there is 
 no chance of scope and permanence, such as are requisite to the 
 carrying out of generous schemes. It is, as M. Guizot has well 
 said, a social period when men ivill feebly, but desire immensely. 
 It is a state of half-conviction and half-will, resulting from intellec 
 tual and moral anarchy, offering many obstacles to the solution of 
 our difficulties. It is important, however, not to exaggerate those 
 obstacles. This very state of half-conviction and half-will tends 
 to facilitate by anticipation the prevalence of a true conception of 
 society which, once produced, w r ill have no active resistance to 
 withstand, because it will repose on serious convictions : and at 
 present, the dispersion of social interests tends to preserve the 
 material order which is an indispensable condition of philosophical 
 growth. It would be a mere satirical exaggeration to describe 
 existing society as preferring political quackery and illusion to that 
 wise settlement which it has not had opportunity to obtain. When 
 the choice is offered, it w r ill be seen whether the attraction of decep 
 tive promises, and the power of former habit, will prevent our ago 
 from entering, with ardor and steadiness, upon a better course. 
 
430 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 There are evident symptoms that the choice will be a wise one, 
 though the circumstances of the time operate to place the direction 
 of the movement in hands which are anything but fittest for the 
 purpose. This inconvenience dates from the beginning of the rev 
 olutionary period, and is not a new, but an aggravated evil. For 
 three centuries past, the most eminent minds have been chiefly 
 engaged with science, and have neglected politics ; thus differing 
 widely from the wisest men in ancient times, and even in the Mid 
 dle Ages. The consequence of this is that the most difficult and 
 urgent questions have been committed to the class which is essen 
 tially one under two names, the civilians and the metaphysicians, | 
 or, under their common title, the lawyers and men of letters, whose 
 position in regard to statesmanship is naturally a subordinate one. 
 We shall see hereafter that, from its origin to the time of the first 
 French Revolution, the system of metaphysical polity was expressed ^ 
 and directed by the universities on the one hand, and the great/ 
 judiciary corporations on the other : the fii st constituting a sori 
 of spiritual, and the other the temporal power. This state of 
 things is still traceable in most countries of the continent ; while 
 in France, for above half a century, the arrangement has degen 
 erated into such an abuse that the judges are .superseded by the 
 bar, and the doctors (as they used to be called) by mere men of 
 letters ; so that now, any man who can hold a pen may aspire to 
 the spiritual regulation of society, through the press or from the 
 professional chair, unconditionally, and whatever may be his quali 
 fications. When the time comes for the constitution of an organic 
 condition, the reign of sophists and declaimers will have come to an 
 end : but there will be the impediment to surmount of their having 
 been provisionally in possession of public confidence. 
 
 The survey that we have made must convince us only too well 
 of the anarchical state of existing society, under its destitution of 
 guiding and governing ideas, and amid its conflict of opinions and 
 passions, which there is no power in any of the three schools to 
 cure or moderate. As preliminary considerations, these facts are 
 deeply disheartening ; and we can not wonder that some generous 
 and able but ill-prepared minds should have sunk into a kind of 
 philosophical despair about the future of society, which appears 
 to them doomed to fall under a gloomy despotism or into mere anar 
 chy, or to oscillate between the two. I trust that the study we are 
 about to enter upon will give rise to a consoling conviction that the 
 movement of regeneration is going on, though quietly in comparison 
 with the apparent decomposition, and that the most advanced of 
 the human race are at the threshold of a social order worthy of 
 their nature and their needs. I shall conclude this introduction by 
 showing what must necessarily be the intellectual character of the 
 salutary philosophy which is to lead us into this better future : and 
 its dogmatic exposition will follow in the next chapters. 
 Advent of tho The preliminary survey which I have just concluded 
 posmve Phiios- led ug necessarilj into tlie domain of politics. We 
 
ADVENT OP THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 431 
 
 must now return from this excursion, and take our stand again 
 at the point of view of this whole Work, and contemplate the 
 condition and prospects of society from the ground of positive 
 philosophy. Every other ground has been found untenable. The 
 theological and metaphysical philosophies have failed to secure 
 permanent social welfare, while the positive philosophy tes uni 
 formly succeeded, and conspicuously for three centuries past, in 
 reorganizing, to the unanimous satisfaction of the intellectual world, 
 all the anterior orders of human conceptions, which had been till then 
 in the same chaotic state that we now deplore, in regard to social 
 science. Contemporary opinion regarded the state of each of those 
 sciences as hopeless till the positive philosophy brought them out 
 of it. There is no reason why it should fail in the latest applica 
 tion, after having succeeded in all the earlier. Advancing from the 
 less complex categories of ideas to the more complex and final one, 
 and comparing with this experience the picture just given of our 
 present social condition, we can not but see that the political 
 analysis and the scientific concur in demonstrating that the posi 
 tive philosophy, carried on to its completion, is the only possible 
 agent in the reorganization of modern society. I wish to establish 
 this principle first, and in this place, apart from all considerations 
 about my way of proving my point ; so that, if my attempt should 
 be hereafter condemned, no unfavorable inference may be drawn in 
 regard to a method which alone can save society, and that public 
 reason should have nothing to do but to require from happier suc 
 cessors more effectual endeavors in the same direction. In all 
 cases, and especially in this, the method is of even more importance 
 than the doctrine : and it is for this reason that I think it right, 
 before closing my long introduction, to otfer, in a brief form, some 
 last prefatory considerations. 
 
 This is not the place in which to enter upon any comparison 
 between the positive political philosophy and the other social theo 
 ries which have been tried ; but, while still deferring the scientific 
 appreciation of the positive method, and before quitting the politi 
 cal ground on which I have, for the occasion, taken my stand, I 
 must point out in a direct and general way, the relation of the 
 positive philosophy to the two great necessities of our age. 
 
 The ascendency of a positive social doctrine is L()ffical cohe ^ 
 secured by its perfect logical coherence in its entire ren e ce of the 
 application a characteristic property which enables us 
 at once to connect the political with the scientific point of view. 
 The positive polity will embrace at once all the essential aspects 
 of the present state of civilization, and will dissolve the deplorable 
 opposition that now exists between the two orders of social needs, 
 the common satisfaction of which will henceforth depend on the 
 same principle. It will impart a homogeneous and rational char 
 acter to the desultory politics of our day, and it will by the bame 
 act connect this co-ordinated present with the whole past, so as to 
 ostablish a general harmony in the entire system of social ideas, by 
 
132 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 exhibiting the fundamental uniformity of the collective life of 
 humanity ; for this conception can not, by its nature, be applied to 
 the actual social state till it has undergone the test of explaining, 
 from the same point of view, the continuous series of the chief for 
 mer transformations of society. It is important to note this differ 
 ence between the positive principle and that of the two other 
 schools. The critical school treats all times prior to the revolu 
 tionary period with a blind reprobation. The retrograde school 
 equally fails in uniting the present with the past, and uniformly 
 disparages the position of modern society during the last three cen 
 turies. It is the exclusive property of the positive principle to 
 recognise the fundamental law of continuous human development, 
 representing the existing evolution as the necessary result of the 
 1 gradual series of former transformations, by simply extending to 
 social phenomena the spirit which governs the treatment of all other 
 natural phenomena. This coherence and homogeneousness of the 
 positive principle is further shown by its operation in not only com 
 prehending all the various social ideas in one whole, but in connect 
 ing the system with the whole of natural philosophy, and consti 
 tuting thus the aggregate of human knowledge as a complete 
 scientific hierarchy. We shall see hereafter how this is accom 
 plished, and I mention it now to show how the positive philosophy, 
 finding thus a general fulcrum in all minds, can not but spread to a 
 universal extension. In the present chaotic state of our political 
 ideas, we can scarcely imagine what must be the irresistible energy 
 of a philosophical movement, in which the entire renovation of 
 social science will be directed by the same spirit which is unani 
 mously recognised as effectual in all other departments of human 
 knowledge. Meantime, it finds some points of contact in the most 
 wilful minds, whence it may proceed to work a regeneration of 
 views. It speaks to every class of society, and to every political 
 party, the language best adapted to produce conviction, while main 
 taining the invincible originality of its fundamental character. It 
 alone, embracing in its survey the whole of the social question, can 
 render exact justice to the conflicting schools, by estimating their 
 past and present services. It alone can exhibit to each party its 
 highest destination, prescribing order in the name of progress, and 
 progress in the name of order, so that each, instead of annulling, 
 may strengthen the other. Bringing no stains from the past, this 
 new polity is subject to no imputation of retrograde tyranny, or 
 of revolutionary anarchy. The only charge that can be brought 
 against it is that of novelty ; and the answer is furnished by the 
 evident insufficiency of all existing theories, and by the fact that 
 for two centuries past its success has been uniform and complete, 
 wherever it has been applied. 
 
 its eff-ct on Or- As to its operation upon Order, it is plain that true 
 ier. " science has no other aim than the establishment of in 
 
 tellectual order, which is the basis of every other. Disorder 
 dreads the scientific spirit even more than the theological, and, in 
 
ITS EFFECT ON ORDER. 433 
 
 the field of politics, minds which rebelled against metaphysical 
 hypotheses and theological fictions submit without difficulty to the 
 discipline of the positive method. We even see that while the 
 mind of our day is accused of tending toward absolute skepticism, 
 it eagerly welcomes the least appearance of positive demonstration, 
 however premature and imperfect. The eagerness would be full as 
 great if the idea were once formed that social science might also 
 be conducted by the positive spirit. The conception of invariable 
 natural laws, the foundation of every idea of order, in all the de 
 partments, would have the same philosophical efficacy here as else 
 where, as soon as it was sufficiently generalized to be applied to 
 social phenomena, thenceforth referred, like all other phenomena, 
 to such laws. It is only by the positive polity that the revolution 
 ary spirit can be restrained, because by it alone can the influence 
 of the critical doctrine be justly estimated and circumscribed. No 
 longer roused to resistance, as by the retrograde school, and see 
 ing its work done better than by itself, it will merge in a doctrine 
 which leaves it nothing to do or to desire. Under the rule of the 
 positive spirit, again, all the difficult and delicate questions which 
 now keep up a perpetual irritation in the bosom of society, and 
 which can never be settled while mere political solutions are pro 
 posed, will be scientifically estimated, to the great furtherance of 
 social peace. By admitting at once that the institutions of modern 
 societies must necessarily be merely provisional, the positive spirit 
 will abate unreasonable expectations from them, and concentrate 
 effort upon a fundamental renovation of social ideas, and conse 
 quently of public morals. Instead of indifference being caused by 
 this carrying forward of political aims, there will be a new source 
 of interest in so modifying modern institutions as to make them con 
 tributory to the inevitable intellectual and moral evolution. At the 
 same time, it will be teaching society that, in the present state of 
 their ideas, no political change can be of supreme importance, while 
 the perturbation attending change is supremely mischievous, in the 
 way both of immediate hinderance and of diverting attention from 
 the true need and procedure. And again, order will profit by the 
 recognition of the relative spirit of the positive philosophy, which 
 discredits the absolute spirit of the theological and metaphysi 
 cal schools. It can not but dissipate the illusion by which those 
 schools are for ever striving to set up, in all stages of civili 
 zation, their respective types of immutable government ; as when . 
 for instance, they propose to civilize Tahiti by a wholesale importa 
 tion of Protestantism and a Parliamentary system. Again, the 
 positive spirit tends to consolidate order, by the rational devel 
 opment of a wise resignation to incurable political evils. Negative 
 as is the character of this virtue, it affords an aid under the pains 
 of the human lot which can not be dispensed with, and which has 
 no place under the metaphysical polity, which regards political ac 
 tion as indefinite. Religious, and especially Christian resignation 
 is, in plain truth, only a prudent temporizing, which enjoins the en- 
 
 28 
 
434 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 durance of present suffering in view of an ultimate ineffable felicity. 
 A true resignation that is, a permanent disposition to endure, 
 steadily, and without hope of compensation, all inevitable evils, can 
 proceed only from a deep sense of the connection of all kinds of 
 natural phenomena with invariable laws. If there are (as I doubt 
 not there are) political evils which, like some personal sufferings, 
 can not be remedied by science, science at least proves to ug that 
 they are incurable, so as to calm our restlessness under pain by the 
 conviction that it is by natural laws that they are rendered insur 
 mountable. Human nature suffers in its relations with the astro 
 nomical world, and the physical, chemical, and biological, as well 
 as the political. How is it that we turbulently resist in the last 
 case, while, in the others, we are calm and resigned, under pain as 
 signal and as repugnant to our nature ? Surely it is because the 
 positive philosophy has as yet developed our sense of the natural 
 laws only in regard to the simpler phenomena ; and when the same 
 sense shall have been awakened with regard to the more complex 
 phenomena of social life, it will fortify us with a similar resigna 
 tion, general or special, provisional or indefinite, in the case of 
 political suffering. An habitual conviction of this kind can not but 
 conduce to public tranquillity, by obviating vain efforts for redress, 
 while it equally excludes the apathy which belongs to the passive 
 character of religious resignation, by requiring submission to noth 
 ing but necessity, and encouraging the noblest exercise of human 
 activity, wherever the analysis of the occasion opens any prospect 
 whatever of genuine remedy. Finally, the positive philosophy be 
 friends public order by bringing back men s understandings to a 
 normal state through the influence of its method alone, before it has 
 had time to establish any social*theory. It dissipates disorder at 
 once by imposing a series of indisputable scientific conditions on 
 the study of political questions. By including social science in the 
 scientific hierarchy, the positive spirit admits to success in this 
 study only well-prepared and disciplined minds, so trained in the 
 preceding departments of knowledge as to be fit for the complex 
 problems of the last. The long and difficult preliminary elaboration 
 must disgust and deter vulgar and ill-prepared minds, and subdue 
 the most rebellious. This consideration, if there were no other, 
 would prove the eminently organic tendency of the new political 
 philosophy. 
 
 its effect on ^ navc dwelt on this influence of the Positive philos- 
 
 progr.^ ophy, in favor of Order, because it is that which is, as 
 
 yet, least recognised, while the retrograde and stationary schools 
 continue to found their claims upon that very point. There is less 
 mistake about its favorable influence on Progress. In all its appli 
 cations, the positive spirit is directly progressive ; its express office 
 being to increase our knowledge, and perfect the connection of its i 
 parts. Even the illustrations of progression are, at the present 
 day, derived from the positive sciences. Whatever rational idea 
 of social progress (that is, of continuous development, with a steady 
 
ITS EFFECT ON PROGRESS. 435 
 
 tendency toward a determinate end) anywhere exists, should, a? wo 
 shall hereafter see, be attributed to the unperceived influence of the 
 positive philosophy, in disengaging this great notion from its pres 
 ent vague and fluctuating state by clearly assigning the aim and the 
 general course of progress. Though Christianity certainly bore a 
 part in originating the sentiment of social progress by proclaiming 
 the superiority of the new law to the old, it is evident that the 
 theological polity, proceeding upon an immutable type, which was 
 realized only in the past, must have become radically incompatible 
 with ideas of continuous progression, and manifests, on the con 
 trary, a thoroughly retrograde character. The metaphysical polity, 
 in its dogmatic aspect, has the same incompatibility, though the 
 feeble connection of its doctrines renders it more accessible to the 
 spirit of our time. Indeed, it was only after the decline of that 
 school had begun, that ideas of progress took any general posses 
 sion of the public mind. Thus the progressive, as well as the 
 organic instinct, is to be developed by the positive philosophy alone. 
 The only idea of progress which is really proper to the revolu 
 tionary philosophy, is that of the continuous extension of liberty : 
 that is, in positive terms, the gradual expansion of human powers. 
 Now, even in the restricted and negative sense in which this is 
 true that of the perpetual diminution of obstacles the positive 
 philosophy is incontestably superior ; for true liberty is nothing else 
 than a rational submission to the preponderance of the laws of 
 nature, in release from all arbitrary. personal dictation. Decisions 
 of sovereign assemblies have been called laws by the metaphysical 
 polity, and have been fictitiously regarded as a manifestation of 
 popular will. But no such homage paid to constitutional entities 
 can disguise the arbitrary tendency which marks all the philoso 
 phies but the positive. The arbitrary can never be excluded while 
 political phenomena are referred to Will, divine or human, instead 
 of being connected with invariable natural laws ; and lilTerty will 
 remain illusory and precarious, notwithstanding all constitutional 
 artifices, and whatever be the will to which we pay our daily obe 
 dience. By substituting the empire of genuine convictions for that 
 of arbitrary will, the positive philosophy will put an end to the 
 absolute liberty of the revolutionary school the license of running 
 from one extravagance to another and, by establishing social prin 
 ciples, will meet the need at once of order and of progress. The 
 special office of the revolutionary philosophy, that of extinguishing 
 all but the historical existence of the ancient political system, is 
 virtually committed to the positive principle ; and, in fact, the 
 power exercised by the critical doctrine in this direction has been 
 owing to its serving the purpose of a provisional organ to the posi 
 tive philosophy. In other sciences, the critical action, however 
 energetic, is only a collateral consequence of its organic develop 
 ment ; and the organic development which is fatal to the old theo 
 logical system, involves in the same condemnation the metaphysical 
 spirit, which is even the less logical of the two. The most serious 
 
436 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Difficulty of contemporary politics is the condition of tlie lower 
 classes ; and in this case the positive philosophy affords practical 
 amelioration most favorable to progress. The revolutionary polity 
 opened only an insurrectionary issue to this difficulty, and merely 
 shifted without solving the question. The question is not settled 
 by opening a way to popular ambition, the gratification of which 
 must be confined to a few (probably deserters from their class), 
 and can do nothing to soothe the murmurs of the multitude. The 
 general lot is even aggravated by the excitement of unreasonable 
 hopes, and by the elevation of a few by the chances of the political 
 game. As it is the inevitable lot of the majority of men to live on 
 the more or less precarious fruits of daily labor, the great social 
 problem is to ameliorate the condition of this majority, without 
 destroying its classification, and disturbing the general economy : 
 and this is the function of the positive polity, regarded as regu 
 lating the final classification of modern society. We shall have 
 occasion to see hereafter that the mental reorganization, by habitu 
 ally interposing a common moral authority between the working 
 classes and the leaders of society, will offer the only regular basis 
 f a pacific and equitable reconciliation of their chief conflicts, 
 nearly abandoned in the present day to the savage discipline of a 
 purely material antagonism. 
 
 In this brief sketch of the prominent characteristics of the posi 
 tive polity, we have seen that, notwithstanding its severe estimate of 
 the different existing parties, it commands access to the spirit of 
 each by proving itself adapted to fulfil the aims which each has 
 pursued too exclusively. It can also turn to the profit of its grad 
 ual ascendency all the important incidents of existing society which 
 it could not intercept. Whether in its hour of exultation, the one 
 school manifests its insufficiency ; or whether, in the despair of 
 failure, the other shows a disposition to welcome new means of 
 political action ; or whether, again, a kind of universal torpor 
 exhibits in its nakedness the aggregate of social needs, the new 
 philosophy can always lay hold of a certain general issue to intro 
 duce, by a daily application, its fundamental instruction. In doing 
 this, however, we must, it seems to me, lay aside all hope of a real 
 conversion of the retrograde school. Setting aside some happy 
 individual anomalies, such as always exist, and may become more 
 frequent, it remains indisputable that there is such an antipathy in 
 regard to social questions, between the theological and the positive 
 philosophies, that the one can never estimate the other, and must 
 disappear before it, without being able to undergo any radical 
 modification of its present form. It is, in fact, not Order that the 
 ancient regime aims at, but only its own preconception of a unique 
 order, connected with its habits of mind and special interests, out 
 side of which everything appears disorderly, and therefore indif 
 ferent. In the midst of its pretended devotion to general order, 
 the retrograde school has often betrayed its tendency to care for 
 the means more than the end. It is through the stationary school, 
 
ANARCHICAL TENDENCIES OF THE SCIENTIFIC CLASS. 437 
 
 whose love of order is at least more impartial, if not more disinte- 
 ^ested, that the positive polity must obtain the access which it 
 could nt)t hope for from the retrograde school. The metaphysical 
 fictions of the parliamentary or constitutional philosophy may have 
 diverted the mind of the stationary school from the true issue ; but 
 they have not attained such an ascendency among the nations of 
 the European continent as to render them deaf to the rational voice 
 of the new philosophy, when it appeals to a school so openly dis 
 posed as is the stationary party to establish permanent order, on 
 whatever principles, in modern society. Some useful action may 
 therefore be hoped for through this medium. Nevertheless, I avow 
 that it is on the revolutionary school alone that, in my opinion, we 
 can expect that the positive polity can exercise a predominant 
 influence, because this school is the only one that is always open to 
 new action on behalf of progress. All its indispensable provisional 
 doctrines will be absorbed by the new philosophy, while all its 
 anarchical tendencies will be extinguished. There will be more 
 explosions of revolutionary doctrine, as long as there are any re 
 mains of the retrograde system ; for the natural course of events 
 does not wait for our S!OAV philosophical preparation. "Whether in 
 virtue of our intellectual condition, or of faults committed by exist 
 ing governments, such outbreaks will occur ; and perhaps they may 
 be necessary to the uprooting of all hope of reconstructing social 
 order on the old basis ; but the positive philosophy will have fore 
 seen such conflicts, and will take no part in them, further than 
 to make use of the instruction that they afford. It will not inter 
 fere with the last operations of the revolutionary preponderance 
 knowing that they are the last. Nor will it paralyse so important 
 a general disposition as that which constitutes the critical spirit, 
 properly so called. Ity subordinating it for ever to the organic 
 spirit, it will open to it broad political aims ; it will afford it em 
 ployment in destroying all metaphysical and theological interfe 
 rence, using for this end the satirical faculties which produced 
 nothing in the last century, but which may be of a secondary value 
 in influencing the development of the political character that will 
 be finally assigned to each school. On the whole, we may hope 
 that the positive philosophy will find grounds of support among the 
 most advanced sections of the revolutionary school ; and, whatever 
 may be the hopes of that school from different political parties, it 
 will be unable to dispense witli the scientific superiority of the posi 
 tive doctrine, which is the certain cause and guarantee of its gradual 
 ascendency. 
 
 It might have been hoped that the renovation we are 
 
 . . . ITT 1 i i iji.il * AnnrchiCHi tend- 
 
 anticipating would have been largely aided by tne sci- em-i^s of these* 
 entific class of society, as that which must be most fa- e 
 miliar with positive science.- But it is not so. At present, the 
 anarchical tendencies of that class appear to be as strong as any. 
 The indifference of scientific men to the most interesting and most 
 urgent of all classes of problems may be partly accounted for by 
 
138 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 their deep intellectual disgust at the irrational character of the 
 social doctrines of their day ; but there are other reasons, even less 
 honorable than this. They are themselves defective in scientific 
 discipline. They abhor generalities, and have a systematic predi 
 lection for specialities. Under the idea of an organization of labor, 
 they restrict their several pursuits within the narrowest bounds, 
 without providing for the investigation of general relations ; and 
 thus, science becomes a pastime, grounded on no adequate prepara 
 tion. It is not wonderful then that they have no interest in the 
 entire generality which is the indispensable attribute of any phi 
 losophy that aspires to the moral government of mankind. Daily 
 experience shows that, when learned bodies are brought into junc 
 tion, for any political purpose, with sensible men who know nothing 
 of science, but are accustomed to general views, the superiority 
 rests with the latter, even in regard to matters which particularly 
 concern the scientific class. As long as this is the case, the sci 
 entific class decrees its own political subordination. Their social 
 sentiment is on a par with their ideas ; and their egotism is aggra 
 vated by their devotion to specialities, when it ought to be subdued 
 by a mastery of positive science ; and would be so, if they could 
 admit its general ideas. This is no fault of individuals among 
 them. It is imputable to the defective scientific education of our 
 time ; and all that men of science are censurable for is their 
 dogmatic denial of the need of a better. We must, however, 
 abandon all hope of their co-operation in extending the positive 
 method to the study of social phenomena. If we may anticipate 
 anything in thai direction, it must be from a rising generation for 
 whom a more adequate training must be provided, and who will be 
 led by a really scientific education beyond the special and isolated 
 studies to which they now conceive themselves to be destined, and 
 which constitute at present their only idea of scientific pursuit. 
 
 I have now presented a view of the chief points of 
 support which the present state of the social world 
 affords to the renovating influence of the new political philosophy. 
 This introduction may appear long ; but it will abridge my future 
 labor by furnishing my readers with a kind of rational programme 
 of the conditions of the subject. Yet more, it indicates clearly 
 what is apt to escape the notice of minds habituated to the superfi:- 
 , cial and irrational treatment of social questions, the complete 
 political efficacy of the positive philosophy. The high practical 
 utility of the theory I am about to offer can not be questioned by the 
 haughtiest politician when it has once been demonstrated that the 
 deepest want of modern society is, in its nature, eminently theoreti 
 cal, and that, consequently, an intellectual, and then a moral re 
 organization must precede and direct the political. This mutual 
 relation being established, with a care proportionate to its impor 
 tance, we must now return, not again to quit it, to the strictly 
 scientific point of view of this work, and pursue the study of the 
 phenomena of social physics in a disposition of mind as purely 
 
HISTORY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 439 
 
 speculative as that in which we surveyed the other fundamental 
 sciences, with no other intellectual ambition than to discover the 
 natural laws of a final order of phenomena, remarkable in the ex 
 treme, and never before examined in this way. 
 
 Before proceeding, however, to this direct examination, I pro 
 pose to consider, briefly, the principal philosophical attempts to 
 constitute social sciencf ; as a general estimate of this kind will 
 tend to illustrate the nature and spirit of this last great department 
 of positive philosophy. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PRINCIPAL PHILOSOPHICAL ATTEMPTS TO CONSTITUTE A SOCIAL 
 
 SYSTEM. 
 
 WE have seen that the complex and special nature H i*tor y of so- 
 of social phenomena is the chief reason why the study cial sci-uce. 
 has remain imperfect to the last ; it being impossible to analyze 
 them till the simpler departments of science were understood, and 
 till the great discovery of cerebral physiology had opened a rational 
 access to their examination. To this main consideration we must 
 now add another, which explains more specially why it has never 
 till now been possible to establish social science on a positive basis. 
 This consideration is, that we have not till now been in possession 
 of a range of facts wide enough to disclose the natural laws of so 
 cial phenomena. 
 
 The first rise of speculative doctrine has always, in all sciences, 
 taken place from the theological method, as I have shown. In the 
 case of the anterior sciences, this did not preclude the formation 
 of a positive theory, when once there had been a sufficient perpetuity 
 of phenomena. The materials were ready before there were ob 
 servers qualified to make a scientific use of them. But, even if 
 observers had been ready, the phenomena of social life were not 
 ample and various enough in early days to admit of their philo 
 sophical analysis. Many and profound modifications of the primitive 
 civilization were necessary to afford a sufficient basis for experi 
 ment. We shall see hereafter how indispensable was the operation 
 of the theological philosophy in directing the earliest progress of 
 the human mind and of society. Our present business is to notice 
 the obstacles which it presented to the formation of a true social 
 science. It was not, in fact, till modern political revolutions, and 
 especially the French, had proved the insufficiency of the old politi 
 cal system for the social needs of the age that the great idea of 
 Progress could acquire sufficient firmness, distinctness and general 
 ity, to serve a scientific purpose. The direction of the social 
 
440 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 movement was not determined ; and social speculation was embar 
 r> assed by fanciful notions of oscillating or circular movements, such 
 as even now cause hesitation in able but ill-prepared minds as to 
 the real nature of human progression. Till it is known in what this 
 progression consists, the fact itself may be disputed : since, from 
 such a point of view, humanity may appear to be doomed to an. 
 arbitrary succession of identical phases, without ever experiencing 
 a new transformation, gradually directed toward an end determined 
 by the whole constitution of human nature. 
 
 Thus all idea of social progress was interdicted to the philos 
 ophers of antiquity, for want of materials of political observation. 
 The most eminent and sagacious of them were subject to the com 
 mon tendency to suppose the contemporary state of things inferior 
 to that of former times. This supposition was the more natural 
 and legitimate because the philosophical works which contained 
 this view coincided, as to date, with the decline of the Greek and 
 Roman regime. This decline, which, in relation to the whole of 
 human history, was in fact progress, could not appeal 1 so to the 
 ancients, who did not anticipate what was to come. I have before 
 intimated that the first dawning sense of human progression was in 
 spired by Christianity, which, by proclaiming the superiority of the 
 law of Jesus to that of Moses, gave form to the idea of a more 
 perfect state replacing a less perfect, which had been necessary as 
 a preparation. Though Catholicism* was, in this, simply the organ, 
 of expression of human reason, the service it thus rendered entitles 
 it not the less, as all true philosophers will agree, to our eternal 
 gratitude. But, apart from the mischief of the mysticism and 
 vague obscurity which belong to all applications of the theological 
 method, such a beginning could not possibly suggest any scientific 
 view of social progression : for any such progression was barred 
 at once by the claim of Christianity to be the ultimate stag<5 at 
 which the human mind must stop. The social efficacy of the theo 
 logical philosophy is now exhausted, and it has become therefore 
 retrograde, as we have seen ; but the condition of continuity is an 
 indispensable element in the conception of progress ; an idea which 
 would have no power to guide social speculation if it represented 
 progress as limited by its nature to a determinate condition, attained 
 long ago. 
 
 It is thus evident that the conception of progress belongs exclu 
 sively to the positive philosophy. This philosophy alone can 
 indicate the final term which human nature will be for ever ap 
 proaching and never attaining ; and it alone can prescribe the 
 general course of this gradual development. Accordingly, the 
 only rational ideas of continuous advance are of modern origin, 
 
 * This great idea belongs essentially to Catholicism, from which Protestantism derived 
 it in an imperfect and corrupt manner, not only by recurring irrationally to the period 
 of the primitive Church, but also by offering- for popular guidance the most barbarous 
 and dangerous part of the Scriptures that which relates to Hebrew antiquity. Moham 
 medanism pursued the same practice, arid thus instituted a mere imitation of Judaic 
 barbarism, without introducing any real amelioration. 
 
ARISTOTLE. 441 
 
 and relate especially to the expansion of the positive sciences which 
 gave birth to them. It may even be worth observing that the first 
 satisfactory view of general progression was proposed by a philos 
 opher whose genius was essentially mathematical ; and therefore 
 conversant with the simplest form of the scientific spirit. What 
 ever may be the value of this observation, it is certain that Pascal 
 was animated by a sense of the progress of the sciences when he 
 uttered the immortal aphorism : " The entire succession of men, 
 through the whole course of ages, must be regarded as one man, 
 always living and incessantly learning." Whatever may have been 
 the actual effect of this first ray of light, it must be admitted that 
 the idea of continuous progress had no scientific consistency, or 
 public regard, till after the memorable controversy, at the begin 
 ning of the last century, about a general comparison of the an 
 cients and moderns. In my view, that solemn discussion consti 
 tutes a ripe event in the history of the human mind, which thus, 
 for the first time, declared that it had made an irreversible advance. 
 It is needless to point out that the leaders of this great philosophi 
 cal movement derived all the force of their arguments from the 
 scientific spirit: but it is remarkable that their most illustrious 
 adversaries committed the inconsistency of declaring that they 
 preferred the philosophy of Descartes to that which preceded it. 
 From this scientific origin the conception spread more and more in 
 a political direction, till, at length, the French revolution manifested 
 the tendency of humanity toward a political system, indeterminate 
 enough, but radically different from the old system. This was the 
 negative view of social progress ; ineffectual in itself, but necessary 
 as a preparation for the advent of the positive philosophy, when it 
 should have made its induction from social phenomena, and ascer 
 tained their laws. 
 
 Having thus seen how impossible was the formation of social 
 science in ancient times, we are in a condition to appreciate the 
 attempts which were here and there prematurely made. The fore 
 going analysis shows that the political conditions of the subject are, 
 generally, precisely coincident with the scientific, so as to retard 
 by their competition the possibility of establishing social science on 
 a positive basis. This obstacle has existed even up to our own 
 generation, who can only make a mere beginning in seeking in the 
 past a basis for social science, in virtue of their experience of a 
 revolutionary period, and of their opening perception of the posi 
 tive principle, as they see it established in the other departments 
 of human knowledge, including that of intellectual and moral phe 
 nomena. It would be waste of time, and a departure from my 
 object, to analyze fully the attempts of ancient philosophers to form 
 a political science which was thus clearly impracticable in their 
 day ; and I shall therefore merely point out the essential vice of 
 each speculation, thereby justifying the judgment that we have just 
 passed by anticipation, and disclosing the true nature of an enter 
 prise which remains to be begun. 
 
442 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A retort . 9 The name of Aristotle first presents itself, his raem- 
 
 ioi tic,." orable " Politics" being one of the finest productions 
 of antiquity, and furnishing the general type of most of the works 
 on that subject that have followed. This treatise could not possi 
 bly disclose any sense of the progressive tendencies of humanity, 
 nor the slightest glimpse of the natural laws of civilization ; and it 
 was necessarily occupied by metaphysical discussions of the prin 
 ciple and form of government : but it is truly marvellous that any 
 mind should have produced a work so advanced, and even nearer 
 to a positive view than his other works, at a time when political 
 observation was restricted to a uniform and preliminary social state, 
 and when the nascent positive spirit lived feebly in geometry alone. 
 The analysis by which he refuted the dangerous fancies of Plato and 
 his imitators about community of property evidences a rectitude, 
 a sagacity, and a strength, which, in their application to such sub 
 jects, have been rarely equalled, and never surpassed. Thus much 
 I have said, in the way of homage to the first manifestation of 
 human genius on the great subject of government, notwithstanding 
 the evident influence that it has exercised upon philosophical medi 
 tation, from its own day to this. 
 
 The works which succeeded need not detain us. They were 
 merely an accumulation of fresh materials, classified by the type 
 that Aristotle had furnished. The next period worth notice is that 
 in which the preponderance of the positive spirit in the study of 
 phenomena caused the first clear comprehension of the meaning of 
 general laws, and in which the idea of human progress began to 
 assume some consistency ; and, to find these two conditions in con 
 currence, we can hardly go further back than the middle of the last 
 centuiy. The first and most important series of works 
 which then presents itself is that of Montesquieu, first, 
 in his treatise on the " Greatness and Decline of the Romans," and 
 afterward in his " Spirit of Laws." The great strength of this 
 memorable work appears to me to lie in its tendency to regard 
 political phenomena as subject to invariable laws, like all othei 
 phenomena. This is manifested at the very outset, in the prelimi 
 nary chapter, in which, for the first time in the history of the humai 
 mind, the general idea of law is directly defined, in relation to all , 
 even to political subjects, in the same sense in which it is applied 
 in the simplest positive investigations. The progress of science 
 which had been effected by the labors of Descartes, Galileo, and 
 Kepler, a century before, had rendered the most advanced minds 
 familiar with an incomplete notion of progress. Montesquieu s 
 conception was a generalization of this incomplete notion: and, 
 instead of denying originality to so eminent a service, we may well 
 be amazed that such a conception should be offered, before the 
 positive method had extended beyond the simplest natural phe 
 nomena, being scarcely admitted into the department of chemistry, 
 and not yet heard of in the study of living bodies. And, in the 
 other view, a man must have been in advance of his time, who could 
 
MONTESQUIEU. 443 
 
 conceive of natural laws as the basis of social speculation and 
 action, while all other able men were talking about the absolute 
 and indefinite power of legislators, when armed with due authority, 
 to modify at will the social state. The very qualities, howeve"r 
 which give its pre-eminence to Montesquieu s work prove to us the 
 impossibility of success in an enterprise so premature in regard to 
 its proposed object, the very conditions of which were still imprac 
 ticable. The project of the work is not fulfilled in its course ; and, 
 admirable as are some of its details, it falls back, like all others, 
 upon the primitive type offered by Aristotle s treatise. We find no 
 reference of social phenomena to the laws whose existence was 
 announced at the outset ; nor any scientific selection and connec 
 tion of facts. The general nature of his practical conclusions 
 seems to show how far the execution of his work was from corre 
 sponding with his original intention ; for his desultory review of 
 the whole mass of social subjects ends in his setting up, as a uni 
 versal political type, the English parliamentary system, the insuf 
 ficiency of which, for the satisfaction of modern social requirements, 
 was not, it is true, so conspicuous in his day as it is now, but still 
 discernible enough, as we shall have occasion to see. It was hon 
 orable to Montesquieu s philosophical character, that he steered 
 wide of the metaphysical Utopias which lay in his way, and resorted 
 rather to the narrow anchorage at which he rested ; but such a 
 resort, so narrow and so barren, proves that he had wandered away 
 from the course announced by himself. The only part of the book 
 which bears any true marks of sustained positivity is that in which 
 the social influence of permanent local causes of that which, in 
 political language, we may call climate is considered. This view, 
 evidently derived from Hippocrates, manifests a tendency to attach 
 observed phenomena to forces able to produce them, as in natural 
 philosophy ; but the aim has failed. The true political influence 
 of climate is misconceived, and usually much exaggerated, through 
 the common error of analyzing a mere modification before the main 
 action is fully understood ; which is much like trying to determine 
 planetary perturbations before ascertaining the chief gravitations. 
 This error was inevitable under Montesquieu s necessary ignorance 
 of the great social laws, while he was bent upon introducing the 
 positive spirit into the domain of politics. He naturally betook 
 himself to the only class of social speculations which seemed fit for 
 his purpose. Pardonable or unavoidable as was his failure, it is a 
 new evidence of the vast gap which lies open at the outset of the 
 science. Montesquieu did not even perceive, any more than others, 
 the fact which should regulate the whole political theory of climate ; 
 that local physical causes, very powerful in the early days of 
 civilization, lose their force in proportion as human development 
 admits of their being neutralized : a view which would certainly 
 have occurred to Montesquieu if he had possessed himself of the 
 fundamental notion of human progression before he treated of the 
 political theory of climate. Thus, this great philosopher proposed 
 
444 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a grand enterprise which was premature in two senses, and in 
 which he could not but fail, first, by bringing social phenomena 
 under the operation of the positive spirit before it had been intro 
 duced into the system of biological science ; and again, in proposing 
 social reorganization during a period marked out for revolutionary 
 action. This explains why a mind so eminent should have exer 
 cised, through its very advancement, an immediate influence very 
 inferior to that of a mere sophist, like Rousseau, whose intellectual 
 state, much better adapted to the disposition of his contemporaries, 
 allowed him to constitute himself, with so remarkable a success, 
 .the natural organ of the revolutionary movement of the time. It 
 is by our posterity that Montesquieu will be duly estimated, when 
 the extension of the positive philosophy to social speculations will 
 disclose the high value of the precocious attempts which, though 
 doomed to failure, yield the light by which the general question 
 must be laid down. 
 
 After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociol- 
 
 Condorcot. , -, . , . Xl , T , -.-. -, , 
 
 ogy (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to 
 designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on 
 the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot. Turgot s sug 
 gestions with regard to the theory of the perfectability of human 
 nature were doubtless the basis of Condorcet s speculation exhibited 
 in his Historical Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind, in 
 which the scientific conception of the social progression of the race 
 was, for the first time, clearly and directly proposed, with a distinct 
 assertion of its primary importance. The strength of the work lies 
 in its introduction, in which Condorcet exhibits his general idea, 
 and proposes his philosophical project of studying the radical con 
 nection of the various social states of mankind. These few immor 
 tal pages leave really nothing to be desired in regard to the posi 
 tion of the sociological question at large, which will, in my opinion, 
 rest, through all future time, on this admirable statement. The 
 execution is far from corresponding with the greatness of the 
 project ; but no failure in the carrying out can impair the value of 
 the design. The success and the failure may both be easily 
 accounted for by a consideration of the scientific and political 
 knowledge of the time. The expansion of the natural sciences, and 
 especially of chemistry, during the second half of the last century, 
 had thoroughly established in the best minds of the period the idea 
 of positive laws ; and the study of living bodies, in the departments 
 of anatomy and taxonomy, if not of physiology, began to assume a 
 truly scientific character. Condorcet s mind was rationally pre 
 pared by mathematical study, under the direction of D Alembert : 
 by his philosophical position in society, he had all the advantage 
 of the expansion of physico-chemical science then taking place ; 
 and of the labors of Haller, Jussieu, Linnaeus, Bufifon, and Vicq- 
 d Azir in the principal departments of biological knowledge ; and 
 it was natural that he should conceive the enterprise of carrying 
 into the speculative study of social phenomena the same positive 
 
CONDORCET. 445 
 
 method which, from the time of Descartes, had been regenerating 
 the entire system of human knowledge. With equal advantages, 
 and his higher order of genius, Montesquieu would, no doubt, have 
 achieved higher results than he has left us. Still, even Condorcet s 
 project was premature, though less so than that of Montesquieu ; 
 for a great deficiency remained in the imperfect state of biological 
 knowledge, and especially in the exclusion of intellectual and moral 
 phenomena from treatment by the positive method : and the unfor 
 tunate Condorcet did not live to see them assume their proper 
 place. In their absence, he lost himself in wanderings after an in 
 definite perfectibility, and chimerical and absurd anticipations. 
 Such aberrations, affecting such men, are a lesson to us as to the 
 impossibility of unaided reason overleaping the intervals which 
 have not been steadily explored in the gradual advance of the hu 
 man mind. As to the political circumstances of the time the idea 
 of social progression was certainly more distinct and more firm in 
 Condorcet s than in Montesquieu s time : for the tendency of Soci 
 ety to relinquish the ancient social system was becoming evident, 
 though the new system which was to succeed it was but vaguely 
 suspected, even where it was not wholly misconceived. The evil 
 influence of the revolutionary doctrine is singularly exhibited in 
 Condorcet s work, in the form of an inconsistency which must strike 
 every reader. The human race is there represented as having 
 attained a vast degree of perfection at the close of the eighteenth 
 century, while the author attributes an entirely retrogressive influ 
 ence to almost every doctrine, institution, and preponderant power 
 throughout the whole past. Whereas, the total progress accom 
 plished can be nothing else than the result of the various kinds of 
 partial progress realized since the beginning of civilization, in vir 
 tue of the gradual onward course of human nature. Such a state 
 of things as Condorcet describes would be nothing else than a per 
 petual miracle ; and it is not to him, therefore, that we can look for 
 any disclosure of the laws of human development, any appreciation 
 of the transitory nature of the revolutionary philosophy, or any 
 general conception of the future of society. Here again we recog 
 nise the philosophical superiority of Montesquieu, who, not having 
 Condorcet s opportunities of estimating the revolutionary spirit, had 
 been able to free his mind from those critical prejudices in regard 
 to the past which formed the views of all around him, and had in 
 jured his own earlier speculations. This brief survey of the labors 
 of these great men shows us that the basis of true social science can 
 be fixed only after the revolutionary spirit has begun to decline ; 
 and thus the political, as well as the scientific indications of the 
 subject point to our own time as that in which such a science is to 
 be founded. Condorcet gave us a clear exposition of the nature of 
 the enterprise ; but the whole accomplishment yet remains to be 
 achieved. 
 
 These two attempts are really all that have been made in the 
 right road to social science; for they are the only speculations 
 
446 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which have been based on the aggregate of historical facts. I shall 
 have occasion, further on, to notice some attempts which are not 
 worthy to rank with these, and which merely testify to the existing 
 need of social science by showing how various are the directions in 
 which it is sought. On one subject, however, I shall here make a 
 few observations, in order to illustrate further the aim and spirit of 
 my own efforts to constitute a basis for social science. That subject 
 is the nature and object of what is called Political Economy. 
 Politic a econo- We can not impute to political economists any design 
 y- to establish social science ; for it is the express asser 
 
 tion of the most classical among them that their subject is wholly 
 distinct from, and independent of general political science. Yet, 
 sincere as they doubtless are in their dogma of isolation, they are 
 no less sincerely persuaded that they have applied the positive 
 spirit to economical science ; and they perpetually set forth their 
 method as the type by which all social theories will be finally regen 
 erated. As this pretension has obtained credit enough to procure 
 the establishment of several professorships for this species of in 
 struction, I find myself obliged to explain why it is that I can not, 
 as would be very desirable, propose to carry on my enterprise from 
 the point reached by these philosophers, but must begin from the 
 beginning. My criticism on political economy in this place is 
 merely for the purpose of showing that it is not the philosophical 
 creation that we want ; and I must refer to my exposition as a 
 whole any objectors to my summary estimate of political economy. 
 It is unfavorable to the philosophical pretensions of the econo 
 mists that, being almost invariably lawyers or literary men, they 
 have had no opportunity of discipline in that spirit of positive 
 rationality which they suppose they have introduced into their 
 researches. Precluded by their education from any idea of scien 
 tific observation of even the smallest phenomena, from any notion 
 of natural laws, from all perception of what demonstration is, they 
 must obviously be incapable of applying, impromptu, a method in 
 which they have had no practice to the most difficult of all analyses. 
 The only philosophical preparation that they can show is a set of 
 vague precepts of general logic, susceptible of no real use ; and 
 thus, their conceptions present a purely metaphysical character. 
 There is one great exceptional case which I must at once exempt 
 from this criticism that of the illustrious philosopher, Adam 
 Smith, who made no pretension to found a new special science, but 
 merely proposed (what he admirably achieved) to illustrate some 
 leading points of social philosophy by luminous analyses relating to 
 the division of employments, the function of money, the general 
 action of banks, etc., and other chief portions of the industrial de 
 velopments of the human race. Though involved, like all his con 
 temporaries, in the metaphysical philosophy, a mind of such quality 
 as his could not, however distinguished in the metaphysical school, 
 be blinded by its illusions, because his preparatory studies had 
 impressed him with a sense of what constitutes a true scientific 
 
THE POLITICAL ECONOMISTS. 447 
 
 method, as is clearly proved by the valuable sketches of the philo 
 sophical history of the sciences, and of astronomy in particular, 
 which are published among his posthumous works. The economists 
 have no right to claim Adam Smith as their authority while the 
 whole dogmatic part of their science presents a merely metaphysical 
 character, dressed up with special forms and a list of scientific 
 terms, taken bodily from former philosophical expositions, as, for 
 instance, from the theologico-metaphysical writings of Spinoza. 
 The contemporary history of this so-called science confirms this 
 judgment of its nature. The most certain signs of conceptions 
 being scientific are continuousness and fertility : and when existing 
 works, instead of being the result and development of those that 
 have gone before, have a character as personal as that of their 
 authors, and bring the most fundamental ideas into question ; and 
 when, again, the dogmatic constitution provides for HO real and 
 sustained progress, but only for a barren reproduction of olft con 
 troversies, it is clear that we are dealing with no positive doctrine 
 whatever, but merely with theological or metaphysical dissertations. 
 And this is the spectacle which political economy has presented for 
 half a century past. If our economists were really the scientific 
 successors of Adam Smith, they would show us where they had 
 carried on and completed their master s doctrine, and what new 
 discoveries they had added to his primitive surveys ; but looking 
 with an impartial eye upon their disputes on the most elementary 
 ideas of value, utility, production, etc., we might imagine ourselves 
 present at the strangest conferences of the scholiasts of the Middle 
 Ages about the attributes of their metaphysical entities ; whicli 
 indeed economical conceptions resemble more and more, in propor 
 tion as they are dogmatized and refined upon. The result in both 
 cases is, but too often, the perversion of the valuable indications 
 of popular good sense, which become confused, inapplicable, and 
 productive only of idle disputes about words. All intelligent men, 
 for instance, understand what is meant by the terms product and 
 producer; but, from the time that economical metaphysics under 
 took to define them, the idea of production has become through 
 vicious generalizations, so indeterminate, that conscientious and 
 clear writers are obliged to use circuitous explanations to avoid the 
 use of terms which have become obscure and equivocal. Such 
 abuse is analogous to that which metaphysics has introduced into 
 the study of the human understanding, with regard, for instance, to 
 the general ideas of analysis and synthesis and the like. The 
 avowal of the economists that their science is isolated from that of 
 social philosophy in general, is itself a sufficient confirmation of rny 
 judgment ; for it is a universal fact in social, as in biological sci 
 ence, that all the various general aspects of the subject are scien 
 tifically one, and rationally inseparable, so that they can not be 
 illustrated but by each other. Thus, the economical or industrial 
 analysis of society can not be effected in the positive method, apart 
 from its intellectual, moral, and political analysis, past and present. 
 
448 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 And thus does the boasted isolation of political economy testify to 
 its being grounded on a metaphysical basis. 
 
 This is the dogmatic aspect of the science. But it would be 
 unjust to forget that, looking at this doctrine historically, and more 
 with a political than a scientific view, it constitutes a final essential 
 part of the system of critical philosophy, which has exercised an 
 indispensable, though transitory influence during the revolutionary 
 period. Political Economy has borne an honorable share in this 
 vast intellectual conflict, by thoroughly discrediting the industrial 
 polity of the Middle Ages, which became more and more injurious, 
 in its descent to our time, to the industry which it had once pro 
 tected. Such is the credit due to Political Economy. Its worst 
 practical fault is that, like the other portions of the metaphysical 
 philosophy, it systemizes anarchy ; and the danger is only aggra 
 vated by its use of modern scientific forms. It has not been satis 
 fied with criticising, in much too absolute a way, the industrial 
 polity of the old European sovereignties, without which the indus 
 trial development of modern times could never have taken place : 
 it goes far beyond this ; it sets up as a universal dogma the absence 
 Vof all regulating intervention whatever as the best means of pro 
 moting the spontaneous rise of society ; so that, on every serious 
 occasion, this doctrine can respond to urgent practical needs only 
 by the uniform reproduction of this systematic negation. Because 
 it perceives a natural tendency in society to arrange itself in a 
 certain order, not seeing in this a suggestion of an order to be pro 
 moted by social arrangements, it preaches an absence of regulation 
 which, if carried out to the limit of the principle, would lead to the 
 methodical abolition of all government. But here we meet the 
 compensating virtue that political economy insists on all human 
 I interests being bound up together, and therefore susceptible of a 
 permanent reconciliation. Though this may be simply the expres 
 sion of the convictions of popular good sense, philosophy owes a 
 tribute of eternal gratitude to the economists for their excellent 
 service in extinguishing the disastrous and immoral prejudice which 
 concluded the amelioration of the condition of some to be obtained 
 by the deterioration of the condition of somebody else ; and that 
 the total amount of wealth was always the same ; which is as much 
 as denying industrial development altogether. Notwithstanding 
 this great service, political economy has dangerous tendencies 
 through its opposition to the institution of all industrial discipline. 
 As each serious difficulty arises, in the course of industrial devel 
 opment, political economy ignores it. In the great question of 
 Machinery this is remarkably illustrated. This is one of the cases 
 of inconvenience inherent in every industrial improvement, from its 
 tendency to disturb, more or less, and for a longer or shorter time, 
 the mode of life of the laboring classes. Instead of recognising in 
 the urgent remonstrances called forth by this chasm in our social 
 order one of the most eminent and pressing occasions for the appli 
 cation of social science, our economists can do nothing better than 
 
GROWTH OF HISTORICAL STUDY. 449 
 
 repeat, with pitiless pedantry, their barren aphorism of absolute 
 industrial liberty. Without considering that all human questions, 
 practically regarded, are reducible to mere questions of time, they 
 venture to reply to all complaints that, in the long-run, all classes, 
 and especially the one most injured on the existing occasion, will 
 enjoy a real and permanent amelioration ; a reply which will be 
 regarded as derisive, as long as man s life is incapable of being 
 indefinitely lengthened. Such a doctrine publishes its own weak 
 ness by showing its want of relation to the aggregate of our practi 
 cal needs. Would the copyists who were thrown out of employ 
 ment by the invention of printing have been completely consoled 
 by being convinced that, in the next generation, there would be an 
 equal number of persons living by printing, and many more in suc 
 ceeding centuries ? Yet such is the consolation habitually offered 
 by political economy ; and if there were no other evidence, this 
 inefficiency would prove its unfitness to direct, as it proposes to do, 
 the industrial expansion of modern society. And thus it stands 
 condemned, as to its scientific pretensions, and in spite of some 
 important services, from the political as much as from the scientific 
 point of view. 
 
 The temporary predilection of men s minds for political economy 
 is, in truth, a new and strong illustration of the instinctive need 
 which prevails to subject social researches to positive methods ; 
 and if that were once done, the interest in political economy would 
 disappear. Various other signs of the times testify to the same 
 disposition, which indeed pervades the whole action of our intelli 
 gences. I will refer to only one among the multitude of those 
 signs ; but it is one which aids in bringing about the satisfaction of 
 the need. I mean the growing inclination for historical study, and 
 the great improvement in that kind of research within two centuries. 
 
 Bossuet was, unquestionably, the first who proposed Growtho f hi8 . 
 to survey, from a lofty point of view, the whole of the torical 8 ud y 
 past of society. We can not adopt his explanations, easily derived 
 from theological resources ; but the spirit of universality, so thor 
 oughly appreciated, and, under the circumstances, so wonderfully 
 sustained, will always preserve this admirable composition* as a 
 model, suggesting the true result of historical analysis ; the ra 
 tional co-ordination of the great series of human events, according 
 to a single design ; which must, however, be more genuine and 
 complete than that of Bossuet. There is no doubt that this fine 
 piece of instruction has contributed, during both the past and the 
 present century, to the improvement in the character of the chief 
 historical compositions, especially in France and England, and 
 afterward in Germany. Still, history has more of a literary and" 1 
 descriptive than of a scientific character. It does not yet establish 
 a rational filiation in the series of social events, so as to admit (as 
 in other sciences, and allowing for its greater complexity) of any 
 degree of systematic prevision of their future succession. Perhaps 
 
 * " Discourse on Natural History." 
 
 29 
 
450 POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the imputation of rashness cast upon the mere proposal of such a 
 treatment of history is the strongest confirmation we could have of 
 its present unscientific character : for such prevision is everywhere 
 else admitted to be the ultimate scientific test. Another evidence 
 exists in the easy credit daily obtained by misty historical theories 
 which explain nothing, and which testify to the literary and meta 
 physical bias under which history is studied, by minds unacquainted 
 with the great scientific movement of modern times. Again, 
 another evidence is the dogmatic separation which it is attempted 
 to keep up between history and politics. Still, we must admit the 
 growing taste of our age for historical labors to be a happy symp 
 tom of philosophical regeneration, however the inclination may be 
 wasted upon superficial and misleading works, sometimes written 
 with a view to immediate popularity by ministering to the popular 
 taste. One of the most promising incidents of the time is the 
 ntroduction into the highly metaphysical class of jurists of an his 
 torical school which has undertaken to connect, during every period 
 of history, the whole of its legislation with the corresponding state 
 of society. 
 
 If the preceding chapter disclosed the destination of the great 
 philosophical creation of which I am treating, the present exhibits 
 its necessity, and the opportuneness of the time. Attempts to con 
 stitute a science of society would not have been so obstinate, nor 
 pursued in ways so various, if an instinctive need of it had not been 
 deeply felt. At the same time, the general analysis of the chief 
 efforts hitherto made explains their failure, and convinces us that 
 the whole enterprise remains to be even conceived of in a manner 
 which will secure its accomplishment. Nothing now prevents our 
 going on to the fulfilment of this proposed task, by entering, in the 
 next chapter, on the study of the method in Social Physics. We have 
 so ascertained and cleared our ground, by first taking a survey of 
 our condition from a political point of view, and then reviewing the 
 preparation made, that we are at full liberty to follow the specula 
 tive development that will prevail throughout the rest of this book, 
 which will close with the co-ordination between the theory and 
 practice of Social Physics. 
 
 NOTE The foregoing extract, it is believed, will give a tolerable idea of the bear 
 ing of the Positive Philosophy on Social Science, and show that Sociology is a Science, 
 connected with, and depending on, every previous one ; thus mathematically demonstra 
 ting the utter futility of attempting, henceforth to construct the Social fabric on any 
 other basis than POSITIVISM. Publisher. 
 
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