Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/262

234 COM T E series of works. The first is theoretic or spiritual, aiming at the development of a new principle of co-ordinating social relations, and the formation of the system of general ideas which are destined to guide society. The second work is practical or temporal ; it settles the distribution of power, and the institutions that are most conformable to the spirit of the system which has previously been thought out in the course of the theoretic work. As the practical work depends on the conclusions of the theoretical, the latter must obviously come first in order of execution. In 1826 this was pushed further in a most remarkable piece called Considerations on the Spiritual Power the main object of which is to demonstrate the necessity of instituting a spiritual power, distinct from the temporal power and independent of it. In examining the conditions of a spiritual power proper for modern times, he indicates in so many terms the presence in his mind of a direct analogy between his proposed spiritual power and the func tions of the Catholic clergy at the time of its greatest vigour and most complete independence, that is to say, from about the middle of the llth century until towards the end of the 13th. He refers to De Maistre s memorable book, Du Pape, as the most profound, accurate, and methodical account of the old spiritual organization, and starts from that as the model to be adapted to the changed intellectual and social conditions of the modern time. In the Positive Philosophy, again, (vol. v. p. 344), he distinctly says that Catholicism, reconstituted as a system on new intellectual foundations, would finally preside over the spiritual reorganization of modern society. Much else could easily be quoted to the same effect. If unity of career, then, means that Comte from the beginning designed the institution of a spiritual power, and the systematic reorganization of life, it is difficult to deny him whatever credit that unity may be worth, and the credit is perhaps not particularly great. Even the re-adaptation of the Catholic system to a scientific doctrine was plainly in his mind thirty years before the final execution of the Positive Polity, though it is difficult to believe that he foresaw tha religious mysticism in which the task was to land him. A great analysis was to precede a great synthesis, but it was the synthesis on which Comte s vision was centred from the first. Let us first sketch the nature of the analysis. Society is to be reorganized on the base of knowledge. What is the sum and significance of know ledge ] That is the question which Comte s first master- work professes to answer. Law of the The Positive Philosophy opens with the statement of a Three certain law of which Comte was the discoverer, and which has always been treated both by disciples and dissidents as the key to his system. This is the Law of the Thre e States. It is as follows. Each of our leading conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different phases ; there are three different ways in which the human mind explains phenomena, each way following the other in order. These three stages are the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive. Know ledge, or a branch of knowledge, is in the Theological state, when it supposes the phenomena under consideration to be due to immediate volition, either in the object or in some supernatural being. In the Metaphysical state, for volition is substituted abstract force residing in the object, yet existing independently of the object ; the phenomena are viewed as if apart from the bodies manifesting them ; and the properties of each substance have attributed to them an existence distinct from that substance. In the Positive state, inherent volition or external volition and inherent force or abstraction personified have both disap peared from men s minds, and the explanation of a pheno menon means a reference of it, by way of succession or resemblance, to some other phenomenon, means the establishment of a relation between the given fact and some more general fact. In the Theological and Meta physical state men seek a cause or an essence ; in the Positive they are content with a law. To borrow an illustration from an able English disciple of Comte : "Take the phenomenon of the sleep produced by opium. The Arabs are content to attribute it to the will of God. Mbliere s medical student accounts for it by a soporific principle contained in the opium. The modern physiologist knows that he cannot account for it at all. He can simply observe, analyze, and experiment upon the phenomena attending the action of the drug, and classify it with other agents analogous in character." (Dr Bridges.) The first and greatest aim of the Positive Philosophy is to advance the study of society into the third of the three stages, to remove social phenomena from the sphere of theological and metaphysical conceptions, and to introduce among them the same scientific observation of their laws which has given us physics, chemistry, physiology. Social physics will consist of the conditions and relations of the facts of society, and will have two departments, one, statical, containing the laws of order ; the other dynamical, containing the laws of progress. While men s minds were in the theological state, political events, for example, were explained by the will of the gods, and political authority based on divine right. In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to retain our instance, political authority was based on the sovereignty of the people, and social facts were explained by the figment of a falling away from a state of nature. When the positive method has been finally extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these social facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old sense of the word, men will only examine the conditions of social existence. When that stage has been reached, not merely the greater part, but the whole, of our knowledge will be impressed with one character, the character, namely, of positivity or scientifical- ness ; and all our conceptions in every part of knowledge will be thoroughly homogeneous. Iho gains of such a change are enormous. The new philosophical unity will now in its turn regenerate all the elements that went to its own formation. The mind will pursue knowledge without the wasteful jar and friction of conflicting methods and mutually hostile conceptions ; education will be regenerated ; and society will reorganize itself on the only possible solid base a homogeneous philosophy. The Positive Philosophy has another object besides Cla; the demonstration of the necessity and propriety of a tiw: science of society. This object is to show the sciences as sc branches from a single trunk, is to give to science the ensemble or spirit of generality hitherto confined to philo sophy, and to give to philosophy the rigour and solidity of science. Comte s special object is a study of social physics, a science that before his advent Tras still to be formed ; his second object is a review of the methods and leading generalities of all the positive sciences already formed, so that we may know both what system of inquiry to follow in-our new science, and also where the new science will stand in relation to other knowledge. The first step in this direction is to arrange scientific method and positive knowledge in order, and this brings us to another cardinal element in the Comtist system, the classification of the sciences. In the front of the inquiry lies one main division, that, namely, between speculative and practical knowledge. With the latter we have no concern. Speculative or theoretic knowledge Js divided into abstract and concrete. The former is concerned with

the laws that regulate phenomena in all conceivable cases :