CHAPTER V SCIENCE (CONTINUED) PHENOMENA AND LAWS

 The perfection of the positive system, towards which it unceasingly tends, although very probably it may never reach it, would be to represent all observable phenomena as particular cases of a single general fact, such as, for example, that of gravitation. The fundamental identity of phenomena, the reduction of particular laws to a supreme law; this is an ideal which we are free to entertain. Comte, after d’Alembert and Saint-Simon, has formulated it himself at the beginning of the Cours de philosophie positive.46   Unfortunately this ideal is not realisable. We apply a very weak intellect to a very complicated world.47 The unity which, scorning experience, we might establish, would naturally be valueless. For the several categories of phenomena proposed to us seem irreducible. If this48 be the case, the pursuit after scientific unity is “irrational.” Comte ended by treating it as an “absurd utopia.”49   However, this utopia is forever reappearing; for the human mind is secretly attached to it. It is because, on the one hand, unity pleases it above all things, and on the other hand because there is here an illusion produced and maintained by a philosophy born of mathematical inspiration. Descartes80’ discovery which allowed questions of geometry to be dealt with by algebra has been the occasion of a grave error. It gave rise to the thought that differences of quality could be reduced to differences of quantity. Hence the idea of “reducing” the various categories of phenomena to one another. But this was a wrong interpretation of the principle of analytical geometry. Even there, we have a translation, not reduction, “The geometrical ideas of form and of situation,” says Comte—and Mr. Renouvier will repeat it after him—“are not naturally more like numerical notions than the other real conceptions. Every phenomenon, even social, would certainly have its equation, as a figure or a motion if its law were known to us with sufficient precision.   Analysis is therefore but an instrument of incomparable power for the study of phenomena. But, from the fact that we can make use of it, it does not in the least follow that the phenomena may be all brought back to an identical type. Quality is in no way by this means reduced to quantity, which is something entirely abstract, and this no more takes place in the case of geometrical quality than in the case of any other. Neither can the geometrical quality be reduced to pure analysis, nor the physical to the geometrical, nor the living to the inorganic, nor the social to the biological. At every stage something qualitatively new appears. Whether or no we can formulate the relations of phenomena in the form of an equation, their heterogeneity subsists always irreducible.   What is true of phenomena is also true of their laws. Each order of phenomena has its special laws over and above those which result from its relations with the less complicated and more general orders. The idea of a supreme law from which all the others would be deduced must therefore be forsaken. Even within the range of each fundamental science, it is doubtful how far the unity dreamt of could ever be attained. The number of irreducible laws is far more considerable than81 is imagined by a false appreciation of our mental powers and of scientific difficulties. For instance, in physics, how can optics and acoustics be reduced to one another? Physiological considerations, in default of other reasons, would be opposed to such a confusion of ideas.50 Likewise in biology, how can the laws of animal life be reduced to those of lower organic life? and in sociology, the laws of human society, implying a course of history, to those of animal societies which do not do so?   Instead, therefore, of conceiving a priori, the phenomena and the laws as capable of a “reduction” which is, in fact, impossible, the positive method requires the determination of the general characters of these phenomena and of these laws by observations. It first establishes the following:   1. The more complex phenomena become, the more also our means of studying them increase in number.   It is a natural but an insufficient compensation. For the difficulty of establishing the science of phenomena grows much more quickly than the number and the power of our methodical processes. However, without this compensation, scarcely any fundamental science would ever reach the positive state. Thus, to the method of pure mathematics observation in astronomy comes to be added. Experimentation appears in physics, the art of nomenclatures in chemistry, the comparative method in biology, the historical method in social science. With this final science, the positive method is henceforth complete.   2. The more complex phenomena become, the more modifiable they are.   We have no power over astronomical phenomena. Even the perfect knowledge of their laws would only allow us to foresee them. But we can, in a great number of cases, bring about or arrest physical and chemical phenomena. Our interven82tion is still more efficacious if we are concerned with biological phenomena, as is sufficiently proved by the good and the evil wrought by medicine and surgery. And it finally reaches the height of its power in social and political life. So much so that even cultivated men find it difficult to persuade themselves that social phenomena are governed by invariable laws, and that politics can become the object of a science. Experience seems to tell them, on the contrary, that the activity of man, and especially that of the man of genius, is all-powerful in this domain. Nevertheless it is not so, as sociology, by the mere fact of its existence sufficiently proves. But it remains true that, of all the phenomena of nature, the social and moral phenomena are those in which man’s intervention is at once the easiest and the most efficacious.   3. The more complex the phenomena the more imperfect they are.   We shall perhaps be surprised to see Comte appealing to the idea of perfection. It seems that he ought to have excluded it as being something metaphysical. Further on we shall consider his theory of finality. At present let us only say that if he considers natural phenomena as imperfect, it is in the sense in which Helmholtz calls the eye a poor optical instrument. He simply states that certain ends, in fact, being realized by a natural arrangement of a group of phenomena, the same end might be better or more economically reached, by other arrangements that we can easily conceive. In this sense our solar system is imperfect, but less so than many living forms whose organism might present a much higher degree of advantageous adaptation. And yet these living forms are themselves less imperfect than societies subject as they are to all sorts of pathological alterations, as history clearly shows. It is remarkable that the most imperfect phenomena should precisely be the most modifiable, and also those whose study only became positive in the last stage.   83 II.   More or less complex, modifiable and imperfect, all phenomena are subject to laws. It is the supreme principle, the “fundamental dogma” of science and of positive philosophy. Comte thus enunciates it: “All phenomena whatever, inorganic or organic, physical or moral, individual or social, are all subjected in a continuous manner to rigorously invariable laws.”51   Undoubtedly this principle is not yet extended, by the majority of minds, to all phenomena. This is shown clearly enough by their mode of reasoning in ethics and in politics. But it is, however, implied in their general conception of nature. It thus assumes a universal character, which has caused it to be regarded by many philosophers as an innate, or at least a primitive notion, in the human mind. According to Comte, this is erroneous. Like John Stuart Mill, whom he expressly quotes on this point,52 he sees in this principle the result of a long, gradual induction, at the same time individual and collective. Except in the case of the most familiar phenomena, whose regularity is most striking, the human mind does not begin by believing in an invariable order. Even the mind’s conceptions, (theological and metaphysical), conceal the existence of laws, long after observation would have made it see them, were it freed from bias. It is true that the “first germs” of this principle exist as soon as human reason begins to be exercised, since the dominion of theological philosophy never could be absolute. But these germs are only developed very slowly, like the positive method and conceptions themselves.   The induction upon which this principle is founded only began to acquire solidity when it was definitely verified for a whole order of important phenomena, that is to say when84 mathematical astronomy had been founded. Phenomena of the highest importance, from the theoretical as well as from the practical point of view, could then be predicted with perfect certainty. The invariability of their laws had been placed beyond doubt. From that moment, the principle must have been extended by analogy, to the more complex orders of phenomena, even before their own laws could be known. But according to Comte this “vague logical anticipation” remained valueless and fruitless. It is of no use to conceive, in the abstract that a certain order of phenomena must be subject to laws. This empty conception cannot outweigh the theological and metaphysical beliefs, which have the force of habit in their favour. In order that the principle of laws should be really established in an order of phenomena, some laws must in fact have been discovered and demonstrated in it.   Consequently, while in the a priori doctrines the possibility of all science rests upon the principle of laws, in Comte’s doctrine, on the contrary, it is the progress of positive science which by degrees founds the principle, and which finally brings it to the universal form in which we find it to-day. Until the creation of sociology, this principle did not yet possess an effective universality, since the moral and social phenomena were not conceived as subject to invariable laws. But when the last conquest of the positive spirit is once accomplished, “this great principle at once acquires a decisive fulness, and may be formulated as applying universally to all phenomena.” Undoubtedly, in each order, we have only established for a few what henceforth we affirm for all phenomena without previous verification. But we think that laws, unknown to us, nevertheless exist. In this we yield to an “irresistible analogy,” which has never been proved to be false.   Thus, “the most fundamental dogma of the whole of85 positive philosophy, that is to say, the subjection of all real phenomena to invariable laws, only results with certainty from an immense induction, without really being deducible from any notion whatever.”53 This immense induction is a progressive sum of inductions which have taken place successively in each category of phenomena. It would not be absurd, strictly speaking, that a certain category should not be submitted, like the others to invariable laws. But, since sociology has been founded, we know that all are in fact so subjected.   The laws are known to us, sometimes by experience, sometimes by reasoning. This diversity of origin in no way influences either the certainty or the philosophical dignity of the laws. Each of the six fundamental sciences gives examples of these two distinct modes of advance which mutually complete each other. “There is not less genius in the discovery of Kepler than in that of Newton. The initial laws of mechanics and even of geometry rest solely upon observation. The logical perfection consists in confirming by one of these ways what must have been found by the other. But one of the two suffices when all the conditions required by the method are fulfilled.”54 How should the laws obtained by induction be regarded as less certain than the laws obtained by deduction, since the principle of laws itself rests upon an induction? III.   In proportion as the several orders of phenomena are conceived as governed by invariable laws, the belief in final causes becomes weaker and tends to disappear. The final causes are imagined by the mind to explain certain combinations of natural phenomena. When the laws of these86 phenomena are known, this explanation becomes useless, it ceases to have currency. It shares the fate of the whole of theological and metaphysical philosophy, of which it is a part.   The doctrine of final causes is generally regarded as a constituent principle of religious systems. A special argument in favour of the existence of God has even been drawn from it. Comte remarks that it is more probably a consequence of these systems. So long as man believes in the continual action of the gods, or of God, in nature, he does not need the consideration of final causes upon which to found his belief. He does not even dream of it. Later on only, when the religious conception of the world has become weaker, when God has so far withdrawn from the world as to be no longer anything but a sovereign who reigns, but does not govern, then the need is felt to demonstrate His existence, and the order of nature becomes an argument. The consideration of final causes from this point of view is a symptom of the weakening of the theological spirit; it is thus pre-eminently a metaphysical doctrine.   Whatever may be the case, experience witnesses against it. Positive science does not lay down that the world must be conceived as the work of an all-powerful intelligence. For instance, the scientific knowledge of our solar system has shown in the most obvious manner, and in various ways, that the elements of this system were certainly not disposed in the most advantageous manner, and that science allowed us to conceive of a better arrangement.55 Astronomers may admire a natural finality in the organisation of animals; but the anatomists who know all its imperfections, fall back upon the arrangements of the stars. In what concerns animals, a blind admiration wonders even at evidently detrimental complications: it is the case with the eye, with the bladder, etc.56 But “it is an almost universal87 disposition of physiologists to draw, even from their ignorance, as many motives for the admiration of the profound wisdom of a mechanism which they declare they cannot understand.”   In truth, the natural order, so much extolled, is extremely imperfect, and we can without difficulty conceive a better one. The human works, says Comte, from the most simple mechanical appliances to the most sublime political constructions, are generally far superior either in expediency, or in simplicity, to everything that the most perfect natural economy can offer us.57 Our geometers and our physicians “sufficiently prepared” would do far better than nature, if they dared “to take the direct conception of a new animal mechanism as the object of an intellectual exercise.” This idea of artificial organisms pleases Comte and he often returns to it. He considers that fictions of this kind may be useful in biology to intercalate intermediaries between the several known organisms, in such a manner as to facilitate comparison in making the biological series more homogeneous and continuous.58 In fact this is what Broca attempted to do, when he endeavoured to connect man with the other primates by hypothetical anthropoids. Quite recently M. Delage has made use of a similar fiction in his Traité de Zoologie.   Comte seldom misses an opportunity of smiling at the stupid admiration of those who believe that nature has done everything “for the best,” or that everything in it has been ordered by a providential wisdom. But we can surprise him also in the very act of admiration; not doubtless on the subject of astronomical or biological phenomena, but in the chapter which lies nearest to his heart, that of social facts. He writes, “we cannot experience too much respect and admiration when we see this universal natural disposition which is the primary basis of all society....”59 and elsewhere: “Can one really conceive, in the whole of natural88 phenomena, a more marvellous spectacle than this regular and continuous convergence of an immensity of individuals....”60   However, there is not here a contradiction. In reality, although Comte says that the consideration of final causes must be accepted altogether, or rejected altogether, he does not himself reject it as entirely as he seems at first to do.   What he formally rejects, is the finality understood in the theological or metaphysical manner: C?li enarrant gloriam Dei. He does not admit that we can “explain” the natural order by a supernatural wisdom. But he in no way contests the finality which Kant called internal. This finality, or better, this reciprocal causality appears in living beings, where the whole and the parts are reciprocally end and means. The tree could not subsist without the leaves any more than the leaves without the tree. Comte expresses this idea in terms which are almost identical with those of Kant, although he did not know them. “We shall,” he says, “cease defining a living being by the collection of its organs, as if these could exist isolated.... In biology the general notion of the being, always precedes that of any of its parts whatever. In sociology, where partial interdependence is less intimate although wider, it would be a serious heresy to define humanity by man ... a fortiori in biology we ought not to conceive the whole from its parts.”61 As soon as we rise above the inorganic world, the first condition for the study of phenomena is the idea of their consensus, first in biology, and then in sociology. This consensus corresponds to Kant’s internal finality.   But the distinction between internal finality and external finality cannot be strictly maintained. We will never affirm that some beings were made in view of others. This would be in the highest degree a theological “explanation” of the89 first order. But from the positive point of view, we observe that, in order to subsist, organisms need not only special intimate structure, but further require a certain equilibrium of external conditions. At each moment their existence depends at once on their constitution and on the “milieu.” This word, which was destined to attain such popularity and the theory of the “milieu” which Taine has rendered no less popular, belong to Comte. Undoubtedly, the idea was suggested to him, on the one hand by Montesquieu and by his successors, and on the other by the labours of Lamarck and of the contemporary biologists. He also drew inspiration from Bichat’s celebrated Recherches sur la vie et la mort. But Bichat especially insisted upon the antagonism between the living being and the forces of the inorganic world which press upon him from all sides. Comte thinks, on the contrary, that the very existence of living beings is the proof of a sufficient harmony between their organism and the milieu. And what we cannot dispute is his merit in having generalised the idea specially applied by Montesquieu to social facts, and also specially applied by Lamarck and Bichat to the phenomena of life.   “I designate by this word “milieu,” says Comte, in excusing himself for the new meaning which he gives it, “not only the fluid in which the organism is immersed, but, in general, the totality of external circumstances of any kind whatever necessary to the existence of each determined organism.”62   Properly speaking then, Comte does not reject the doctrine of final causes; he only transforms it. He had declared this himself in his opuscule in 1822. “The doctrine of final causes has been converted by the physiologists into the principle of the conditions of existence.” Positive philosophy appropriates, “with the understanding of a suitable change,” the general ideas primitively invented by the theological and90 metaphysical philosophies. As the positive notion of the mathematical laws of phenomena arose out of the metaphysical conceptions of the Pythagoricians concerning the properties of numbers, so the scientific principle of the conditions of existence springs from the hypothesis of final causes.63   An example will allow us to realise this transformation in the act.   The stability of the solar system renders the existence of living species on the earth possible. A good example of finality it would seem. Nevertheless this stability is simply a necessary consequence, according to the mechanical laws of the world, of some circumstances characteristic of our system: extreme smallness of the planetary masses in comparison to the central mass, small eccentricity of their orbits, slight mutual inclination of their planes, etc. Since, in fact, we exist it must be that the system of which we form a part is arranged so as to allow of this existence.” The so-called final cause would then reduce itself here, as on all analogous occasions, to this childish remark: the only stars inhabited are those which are habitable. In a word, we return to the principle of the conditions of existence, which is the true positive transformation of the doctrine of final causes, and whose bearings and fertility are far superior.”64   In order to give the formula of this principle, we must have recourse to the general distinction established by de Blainville between the static point of view and the dynamic point of view.   Every active being, and in particular every living being, can be analysed from these two points of view. The static analysis considers its elements in their relations of simultaneous connexions. The dynamic analysis discovers the laws of their joint evolution. The first is the share of the91 anatomist, the second that of the physiologist. Now it is clear that these two analyses are complementary to one another, and are even separately unintelligible. For instance, the anatomist is constantly guided by physiological considerations. Conversely, without anatomical knowledge there is no positive physiology.   Thus, the statical analysis establishes the laws of coexistence, the dynamic analysis the laws of succession or of movement. The principle of the conditions of existence is nothing else than the direct and general conception of the necessary harmony of these two analyses, that is to say, of the agreement of these two orders of laws.65 If this harmony, in fact, was not realised, no living being, no natural system of phenomena could subsist. From the point of view of the object this principle accounts for the permanence of beings: from the point of view of the subject it expresses the possibility of science.   Why does Comte say that the importance and fertility of this principle are far superior to those of the doctrine of final causes? It is because this latter doctrine claims to “explain.” In referring the natural order to the wisdom of a Providence, it dispenses in some measure with scientific research, or at least it does not require it. The principle of the conditions of existence, on the contrary, is closely allied to the positive conception of natural phenomena. It only implies the existence of laws. It only establishes the continuity of the relations between these laws, a continuity verified by experience, since beings subsist and reproduce themselves. In a word, it allows us to connect the laws of succession with the laws of coexistence everywhere. Now, to connect is the essential function of science. By means of this principle not only the successive moments of any natural evolution whatever are understood as having solidarity with each other92 but the whole of this evolution becomes intelligible by its relation to the statical conditions to which it corresponds. And, in virtue of the relativity of science, or, if we prefer it, of the universal reciprocal action of all phenomena, the principle of the conditions of existence leads the human mind to a scientific investigation ever more exact and never completed.   This positive transformation of the doctrine of final causes had already been clearly sketched by the philosophers of the XVIII. century whom Comte knew very well, by Diderot, by Hume, by d’Holbach. Hume says, for instance,66 “It is useless to insist upon the uses of parts in animals or in plants, and on their curious adaptation one to another. I should much like to know how an animal could subsist without this adaptation. Do we not see that if it ceases he perishes at once, and that the matter of which he was composed takes some other shape?” And d’Holbach, “These wholes would not exist in the form which they bear, if their parts ceased to act as they do; that is to say, ceased to be arranged in such a way as to lend themselves to being mutually helpful to each other. To be surprised that the heart, the brain, the eyes, the arteries, etc., of an animal act as they do; or that a tree produces fruit, is to be surprised that a tree or an animal exists. These beings would not exist or would no longer be what they are, if they ceased to act as they do: this is what happens when they die.”67   Comte makes this criticism of the doctrine of final causes his own. But, faithful to his maxim, “We only destroy what we replace,” he claims to substitute a positive principle to this metaphysical doctrine, which preserves the elements in it which are compatible with the scientific method. It is the principle of the conditions of existence. In virtue of this93 principle, by the very fact that such an organ is part of such a living being, it necessarily co-operates in a determined although perhaps unknown manner, with the totality of the acts which make up its existence: an organ no more exists without a function than a function without an organ. But it in no way follows from this that all the organic functions are performed as perfectly as we could imagine them to be. For instance pathological analysis demonstrates that the disturbing action of each organ upon the whole of the economy is very far from being always compensated for by its utility in the normal state. “If, within certain limits, everything is necessarily arranged in such a way as to be able to exist, we should seek in vain, in the majority of effective arrangements, for proofs of a wisdom superior or even equal to human wisdom.”68   Extending these considerations to the whole of the phenomena known to us, Comte concludes in almost the same way as Cournot will later on. An order establishes itself in nature, since it subsists, since it is intelligible, since there are laws.69 Does not the very idea of a law induce at once the corresponding idea of a certain spontaneous order? But “this consequence is not more absolute than the principle from which it is derived.”70 The experience which reveals this order to us also shows us that it is imperfect, of an imperfection which grows with the complexity of phenomena. Every time that the necessary and sufficient conditions are realised for a natural system to be able to exist, this system exists in fact, however full of imperfections it may be in other respects. “Undoubtedly, an inevitable necessity which links together a series of events, and a premeditated plan which directs them, resemble each other very much so far as the consequences are concerned.”71 But, if the necessity is established, there is no need to suppose the plan. Now the principle of the con94ditions of existence, in showing that all that is “indispensable,” is at the same time “inevitable,” renders this supposition superfluous.   A double tendency makes itself felt in this theory. On the one hand Comte, faithful to the spirit of his philosophy, rejects all that claims to go beyond experience, that is to say the transcendental hypothesis of final causes and of optimism. On the other hand, he wishes to account for the order of nature, which is a fact. Now this order, all imperfect as it is, implies not only the existence of laws, but moreover a permanent harmony between these laws. “The present is full of the past, and big with the future.” The principle of the conditions of existence explains this permanence of order, at least as much as it needs to be explained from the positive point of view. For it states that everywhere, in fact, the dynamical laws are in harmony with the statical laws, and that “progress is a development of order.” The principle of the conditions of existence is no more a priori than the principle of laws. Like it it is founded upon an “immense induction.” Like it again, it only acquires its full power when social science is created, and positive philosophy established.   Should we not be tempted to see in this doctrine a kind of projection of an idealism such as that of Leibnitz on the lines of positive thought? Just as Leibnitz makes mechanism rest upon a deeper dynamism, so Comte completes the principle of laws by the principle of the conditions of existence. True, between these two doctrines there lies all the distance which separates the positive from the metaphysical spirit. But none the less both give symmetrical solutions of the same problem which correspond to one another, the one a priori the other a posteriori.   95 IV.   All natural laws, must be conceived as rigorously invariable, whether it be a question of mathematical or of sociological laws. If we could conceive, in any case, that under the influence of conditions exactly similar the phenomena should not remain perfectly identical, not only in kind, but also in degree, all scientific theory would at once become impossible.72 This principle is the very condition of the possibility of prevision, and consequently of positive science. Claude Bernard will call it “the absolute determinism of phenomena.” Comte admits no absolute: but he considers nevertheless that the invariability of natural laws does not permit of exception.   In the case of certain laws their invariability can be directly verified, since they come before us in a mathematical form. Such are, for instance, the mechanical, astronomical and physical laws. Others, on the contrary, such as the biological laws, refuse to be dealt with by numbers and cannot be reduced to equations. But this evidently comes from their complexity: “If it were possible rigorously to isolate each one of the simple causes which concur in producing the same physiological phenomenon, everything tends to show that under well determined circumstances, it would appear to be possessed of a kind of influence and of a quantity of action, as exactly fixed as we see it to be in universal gravitation.”73 Every elementary phenomenon has its curve.   If then in all cases we could go back to the elementary phenomena, we could undoubtedly also formulate their mathematical law. In this sense, mathematical analysis would apply to all the phenomena of the world without exception. But, nearly always, the decomposition of given phenomena into elementary phenomena is impossible96 to us. At any rate the work of synthesis or of re-composition taken in the reverse order is far beyond our mathematical powers. The only phenomena to which we apply the analysis without too much trouble are the most simple of all, the geometrical and mechanical phenomena. The difficulty grows very rapidly with the complication of astronomical, physical, and especially chemical phenomena. When we reach the realm of living nature, the elementary phenomena escape us altogether. They are given to us in a state of almost infinite complexity, and, in virtue of the biological consensus, closely bound up with others of no less complex a character. These phenomena are in themselves syntheses depending upon other syntheses all in a state of mutual influence and of constant instability. Then, although, in principle, it remains true that identical antecedents can only have identical consequents, in fact, because of the very great number of elementary actions which concur in the production of each phenomenon, there have perhaps never been, there perhaps never will be, two cases rigorously similar.   It follows that we must not confuse “the subordination of any events whatever to invariable laws with their irresistible necessary accomplishment.”74 Relatively single phenomena appear indeed to us to be produced with an irresistible necessity: for instance, the facts of gravitation. But complex phenomena, in virtue of the more and more varied combinations which their several necessary conditions admit of no longer present this character. They are more “modifiable” and less “irresistible.” In other words, as one considers more elevated, more complex, more “noble” categories of facts, the laws become removed from the type of mathematical necessity, and admit more of an ever increasing element of “contingency”?   The order of the world can then be conceived as a “modifi97able fatality.”75 In the eyes of the greater number of present thinkers, says Comte, this formula will seem contradictory. This comes from old habits of mind which are not easily broken with. In the same way, as we have had a great deal of trouble in representing truth to ourselves otherwise than as immutable, so we are unwilling to conceive order otherwise than as necessary. During a long time the science of mathematics has been the only positive science. The idea of law formed itself in this science, that is to say according to the necessary relations which are demonstrated in it. It came to be afterwards transferred, just as it was, into the other orders of phenomena, as the positive spirit progressed. But orders of phenomena differ qualitatively from one another. All laws ought not to be conceived according to the single type of geometrical and algebraical laws. In order to obtain a complete idea of a natural law, we must not confine ourselves to the mathematical order, which is an “exception” in this respect. All the orders of phenomena must be considered. We then see that law must be defined “constancy in variety.”   In fact, “the normal type is never suited to any but a medium state, more ideal than real, around which effective existence ceaselessly oscillates, so long as the deviation does not go beyond the limits which are compatible with the duration of the system. Order, even isolated, is no more eternal than it is absolute.”76 In this passage, Comte is speaking of astronomical order, but the same consideration applies to all the systems or groups of phenomena. Every law is necessarily something abstract. Being indispensable to the intelligibility of the real, every law allows prevision and science to exist. But it is not an adequate expression of this reality, which never remains identical with itself.   Comte goes so far as to say that our requirement of precision in the study of natural laws must not be pushed too far. For98 the laws which it has been possible to establish within certain degrees of approximation vanish if this approximation is pushed further. Not that the phenomena cease to be subject to laws; but these laws becoming too complex, escape us. For instance, it has been possible to establish with our thermometers the laws of the variation of temperature of a body under certain conditions. With very much more sensitive thermometers the variations becomes incessant and very complicated. The known laws disappear without our being in a condition to establish others.77   The order which positive science shows us in nature is then very far from being absolute. It is, to speak truly, the outcome of the combined activity of our mind and of things. We cannot separate what belongs to each of these two factors, but it appears from what has just been said that the mind plays a great part, that the external relations are far more contingent than suits our blind instinct of universal connection.”78 Nevertheless the phenomena are not irreducible to order, since science and prevision remain possible. But this order, entirely relative in respect to our understanding is only established within certain limits. More powerful minds than ours would probably construct richer and more complex orders for themselves. For us, beyond a certain point of complexity our vision becomes confused and our logical requirements are no longer satisfied. Limits would thus seem to be placed upon scientific investigation, and these in the interest of science itself.   Finally we reach the last consequence of this theory founded upon experience, the principle of laws and the principle of the conditions of existence only insure a provisional order. Comte readily admits that it might not exist. “This order might become so irregular that it might even escape brains superior to ours. There is nothing to prevent us from imagining words outside our solar system,99 always given over to an inorganic and entirely disordered agitation, which would not even allow of a general law of gravitation.”79 This is the very hypothesis formulated by John Stuart Mill, in almost similar terms, and in which a kind of reductio ad absurdum of his own theory was thought to be found. It is, however, compatible with the existence of a science which does not claim to possess an absolute value. Moreover Comte at once adds, “Still, even if order should be found to be particular to our world, in fact, it would be in no way accidental in it, since it is the first condition for human existence.” In virtue of the principle of the conditions of existence, the presence of a being such as man implies the whole of the laws which govern our world. V.   The laws which for us constitute the order of the world are of two kinds. Some are established by the positive method in each order of phenomena separately considered; the astronomical laws, physical laws, chemical laws, etc. They belong to the domain of science properly so-called. The others are apprehended when the mind leaves the special point of view of science, and places itself at the universal point of view of philosophy. They are found again in the different orders of phenomena, whose relations they express without compromising their respective independence. They represent them severally connected, or, according to Comte’s expression, as convergent. Comte calls these last encyclop?dic laws. They tend to realise the unity which the mind claims, not in pursuing the chimerical reduction of all laws to a supreme law, but in showing that the systems of irreducible laws are nevertheless harmonious among themselves.   Generally speaking, these laws have been known for a long100 time, but only as special laws of such and such an order of phenomena. It belongs to positive philosophy to give them their encyclop?dic character, that is to say, to make them universal. For instance, d’Alembert’s principle is known in mechanics as a law which connects questions of movement with questions of equilibrium. Philosophy finds a similar law in biology: (physiological questions are correlated to anatomical questions); and also in sociology (“progress is the development of order”). It then formulates the encyclop?dic law which generalises these three laws, that is, the principle of the conditions of existence.   Similarly the three great laws of mechanics, known under the name of the laws of Kepler, of Galileo and of Newton, must be universalised and become encyclop?dic for they are applicable to all the orders of phenomena.80 The law of Kepler, in the first place, expresses the spontaneous tendency of all natural phenomena to persevere indefinitely in their state, if no disturbing influence supervenes; a tendency whence are derived inertia in mechanics, habit in living bodies, and the conservative instinct in societies. The law of Galileo which reconciles every common movement with the various particular movements, applies to all the organic and inorganic phenomena. For, in any system, we can always ascertain the independence of the several active or passive mutual relations with regard to any action which is exactly common to the various parts, whatever may be their kind and degree. Finally the universal character of Newton’s law (reaction is equal to action), is evident at first sight. It is accidentally, not essentially, that these laws have at first been mechanical laws. They could have been equally attained by the study of biological or social phenomena. If the science of mechanics was the first to formulate them it is because it has for its object the less complicated phenomena.   101   A complete and rational system of encyclop?dic laws would realise the “philosophia prima” which Bacon dimly foresaw. In the actual condition of the sciences this would probably be a rash undertaking. Comte attempted it in the fourth volume of the Politique positive.81 One can hardly say that the trial was a decisive one. It is true that at that moment Comte was already entirely taken up with religious preoccupations.   However, the encyclop?dic laws are destined to play a part in the positive philosophy of nature, which may be compared, in some respects, with that of the categories in Aristotle’s philosophy. They are the most general forms under which the phenomena given in experience become objects of scientific thought for us. As in each class of phenomena we determine laws, principles of order and of harmony, so the encyclop?dic laws make the order and the harmony of the different classes among themselves. They are, so to speak, the laws of laws. Through them the human mind which has already reached unity of method, may some day reach a certain unity of knowledge. But this unity will always differ by two essential characteristics from that which metaphysicians have pursued up to the present time: it will respect the irreducibleness of the various fundamental sciences, and it will remain relative, both by the conditions of the object and by those of the subject, upon which it equally depends.   Our conception of universal order “results from a necessary concurrence between that which is without us, and that which is within. The laws, that is to say the general facts, are never anything but hypotheses confirmed by observation. If harmony in no way existed outside us our mind would be entirely incapable of conceiving it, but in no case is it verified so much as we suppose it to be.”82 We neither make order nor perceive102 it entirely. By long and arduous labour the human intellect gradually disengages the concept of order out of the facts that come crowding within its reach. It is an imperfect, contingent, perishable order, in a word, an order, relative like the mind itself. It is order nevertheless, and a necessary condition for ethics as well as for science.