BOOK III 213 CHAPTER I THE TRANSITION FROM ANIMALITY TO HUMANITY. ART AND LANGUAGE

 Of the philosophers who flourished before the rise of the positive doctrine, the greater number assumed as a postulate in the comparative study of man and animals, that there was between them a difference of nature, and not merely one of degree. Whatever fundamental difference be attributed to reason, language, moral sense, religion, etc., the “human kingdom” is conceived for the most part as superior to the animal kingdom and as clearly separated from it. Taking their stand upon an analysis of the present state of the human conscience, those philosophers recognise an order of “moral realities,” to which animals have no access. Thus they give to the science of Man a privileged object which separates it from the group of the natural sciences.   The positive method admits neither this postulate, nor the consequences which are drawn from it. In general this method is characterised by the substitution of the objective to the anthropocentric point of view, and also by the substitution of observation to imagination. It does not suddenly change its orientation when it comes to the study of man. The positive method is not therefore concerned with knowing what idea man forms of himself to-day and of his relations with other living beings. Into this idea enter elements of religious and metaphysical origin, whose presence is explained by historical reasons. The question is to observe the nature of man in his214 real relations with other beings. Man, so considered, at once takes his place again at the top of the zoological scale.   The problem will then be set in the following terms: Given that man is included in the animal series, of which he is the highest term, but still a term, to account for the differences which to-day place him so high above the term immediately below him. This is taking the very reverse attitude of nearly all the philosophers, whose main difficulty is to give an account of the likenesses which exist between man and animals. It is the position which Darwin will take in his Descent of Man.   Comte takes his stand upon two postulates. The first affirms the fundamental identity of the essential functions in man and animals. Since the whole of the moral and intellectual functions constitutes the necessary complement of animal life properly so-called, it would be difficult to conceive that all those functions which are fundamental should not, by this very fact be “common, at various degrees, to all the higher animals, and perhaps even to the entire group of the vertebrata.”204 The animal functions are as a blossoming out of organic life, destined in the first place to make this life more perfect and more complex: in the same way, the intellectual and moral functions are, originally, as it were, another blossoming out of animal life, and must consequently be found, at least as a possibility, wherever animal life has reached a certain degree of development.   This postulate, according to Comte, is sufficiently established by biology, by means of the comparative method. All the principal characteristics which pride and ignorance set up as absolute privileges of our species, also appear, more or less rudimentary, in the majority of the higher animals.205 The mistake was made because metaphysical ideology and psychology place intelligence foremost in the study of psychical functions. Intelligence indeed puts to-day an215 immense distance between man and animals. But a more accurate psychology recognises that the most energetic, the most “fundamental” of mental functions are the affective functions, since, in default of the impulse given by them, intelligence itself would not be developed. The analogy between man and the animals at once appears: for the affective functions are common to them both. It is the same with the intellectual functions, when allowance is made for the development they have assumed in man. In a word, if the dynamical superiority of the human species over the other species is strong, its statical superiority is weak. The problem consists in finding how, to such an apparently unimportant difference in the organs, such a considerable difference in the functions corresponds.206   Here comes in the second postulate: “The fundamental constitution of man is invariable.” Evolution but not transformation: this great principle, transmitted by biology to sociology, dominates the latter science entirely. In the course of the long history which leads humanity from savage animality to positive civilisation,207 nothing absolutely new appears. Everything which manifests itself little by little, pre-existed in the nature of man—in a potential state it is true; and this state would perhaps never have ceased if a number of favourable conditions had not occurred together.   The mental functions, which are indispensable to organic and to animal life properly so called, quickly attained the degree of development without which the species would have disappeared. On the contrary, the highest “fundamental dispositions” of our nature remained latent for a long time, and only manifested themselves by degrees. But if their development has been slow, it is, in return, continuous and indefinite. And these dispositions tend to preponderate, although the “inversion” of the primitive economy can never216 become complete. Humanity emerges progressively from animality. The highest civilization is then, at bottom, entirely in conformity with nature: for it is only the manifestation more and more marked of the most characteristic properties of our species. In this sense, our social solution must be understood “as the extreme term of a progression continued uninterruptedly throughout the whole living kingdom from the most simple forms of vegetable life, the predominance of the organic functions becoming less and less exclusive, in order in the first place to make room for the predominance of the animal functions properly so called, and finally for that of the intellectual and moral functions, whose development is the very definition of humanity.”208   Thus, the chain of being is uninterrupted. But Comte, as we know, did not accept Lamarck’s hypothesis. He believed in the fixity of species. Undoubtedly he admits in a measure which science will some day fix, acquisitions slowly incorporated into organisms by heredity. But he does not think that they will go so far as to transform species. The whole evolution of man must then be explained by its original constitution. Indeed, Comte here maintains, as everywhere in nature, the perfect correspondence between the statical and the dynamical point of view. The case of man cannot be an exception to this encyclop?dic law, which is verified in all the orders of phenomena from the most simple to the most complex. As the whole line of the curve corresponds to the equation, so the whole development of humanity must correspond to the “fundamental nature” of man. On this condition alone is sociology possible as a science. Now positive sociology exists: therefore the postulate is justified.   217 II.   The theory of the relation between man and animals thus finds itself deduced from the general principles of positive philosophy. But it can also be verified a posteriori, through the criticism of the arguments of the adverse theory by means of observation and experience.   The first of these arguments and the one which in general makes the greatest impression, contrasts the instinct of animals with the intelligence of man. It represents instinct as blind and fatal, and intelligence as free and progressive. But this antithesis cannot withstand the examination of facts. Instinct is called too hastily a “fatal tendency of animals to the mechanical execution of actions which are uniformly determined by corresponding circumstances, and not requiring nor even admitting of any education properly so-called.” This fatal tendency does not exist. It is a gratuitous supposition, perhaps a remnant of the Cartesian theory concerning the automatism of animals. Georges Leroy, in his charming Lettres sur les animaux, has shown that in the mammals and in the birds of our districts, the fixity in the construction of habitations, in the habits of hunting, in the mode of migration, etc., only existed for naturalists who never left their study, or for inattentive observers.209   Undoubtedly, habits may become hereditary. But here we only have a phenomenon common to men and animals, and those habits are modified if the circumstances which have produced them come to change. It is in this sense alone that we can admit M. de Blainville’s formula: “L’instinct est la raison fixée, la raison est l’instinct mobile.” We must especially understand that instinct is not opposed to intelligence. What ought we really to indicate by instinct? A spontaneous impulse in a direction determined, independently of any218 foreign influence.” But in this sense, the word applies to the activity of any faculty whatever, to the intellectual faculties as well as to the others. There is no contrast between instinct and intelligence. We say of a child that he has the “instinct” of music, of drawing, of calculation, etc. In this sense man has certainly as many and more instincts than animals. If, on the other hand, we call intelligence the faculty of modifying our conduct according to the circumstances of each case, animals are, like man, more or less intelligent and reasonable. Otherwise they would be doomed to disappear very quickly.   But animals have no language! Another error in observation. The higher animals have a certain degree of language corresponding to the nature and to the extent of their relations. This language is no more fixed than the so-called instincts. The language of each social species is characterised by an arrest of development precisely like the society which this species tended to found. The limits of its progress, beyond which indeed it does not go, result from the whole of the obstacles which it encounters, in consequence of the competition with the other species, and particularly with the human species, without naming those limits which the imperfection of organs may create.210   Many animals are capable of experiencing needs without regard to a useful purpose. For instance, they like to exercise their animal functions for the pleasure of doing so, that is to say, to play. Some among them experience ?sthetic impressions. They are also, without the slightest doubt, capable of altruistic feelings. Sometimes these feelings show themselves in the shape of domestic affection, and tend to make a solitary life unbearable to the individual. Family life then becomes permanent. Sometimes an animal devotes itself to the service of a superior race. Do we know to what lengths the219 progress of altruism would go in certain animal species, if their intelligence could have been more developed, and if their surroundings had allowed of their more extensive social progress?211   Finally, animals even possess a rudiment of religion, if by this we understand an endeavour to interpret the phenomena which strike them. When sufficiently developed to manifest, where there is sufficient leisure, a certain speculative activity, they reach spontaneously, in the same way as we do ourselves, a kind of low fetichism, which consists in supposing that external bodies are animated by will and by passions.212 “A child, a savage, a dog, a monkey, seeing a watch for the first time, will see in it a kind of animal.” But Comte at once adds that the chief difference between man and animals lies in the impossibility for the latter to emerge from the lowest degree of fetichism, and to rise to a real religion. No animal society “combines sociability with intelligence sufficiently ever to constitute a religious association.”213 Comte would probably have approved of M. de. Quatrefages’ definition in which he calls man a religious animal. The decisive step was taken on the day when man’s intellect passed from fetichism to astrolatry.214 That “great creation of the gods” was the first trial in purely speculative activity made by his mind. The whole subsequent development of humanity arose from this.   Thus, the arguments which claim to establish an insuperable distance between man and animals, generally rest upon imperfectly observed facts. On the contrary, in animals, we find the more or less visible rudiments of everything which has evolved so magnificently in humanity. We cannot describe in detail how and why this species has become, so to speak, incomparable and incommensurable with the others. It must have got220 the upperhand, not in virtue of this and that particular advantage, (although an important one), such as the upright position or the possession of a hand, but on account of the co-operation of many favourable conditions, of which the totality allowed, so to speak, of an almost indefinite development. From a certain moment, there was a definite stoppage in the social evolution of the other species, and the progress of the human species was decisive. We cannot estimate the initial influence of the various conditions according to the present development of the several human faculties, for this development is especially due to the social life of which those conditions allowed. Each superiority of man may have been very little defined originally. Time, the action of the other higher functions, exercise, heredity have played their part here. The “human attributes” must then have grown constantly, ever consolidating the “ascendency” which they had determined. At the same time the corresponding attributes must have diminished in the rival species, as they were brought to a standstill in their development. Undoubtedly, by degrees, the interval has widened until it has become a gap so broad and so deep as to make it impossible to imagine how it could ever have been crossed. But biology and sociology help us to judge better. We must see this, in some detail, in connection with the important question of language. III.   The theory of language, during the eighteenth century, had been one of the favourite subjects of philosophical speculation; in general, it had proceeded in this matter, by way of abstract and logical analysis. It chiefly saw in language a product of the intellectual faculties of man. But, already, from the second half of the century, this conception had been attacked in Germany by the school which began the reaction against221 the “philosophers,” and in which the most illustrious name is that of Herder. In France the traditionalist school felt that here one of the weak points of the philosophy of the eighteenth century was being touched. It insisted upon the characters of language which this philosophy did not explain. Comte knew the works of this school, and, in particular, those of M. de Bonald, whom he calls an “energetic thinker.”215 But his method differs from theirs, and he only agrees with them in the critical part of their doctrine.   If the theory of language, says Comte, is encumbered with insoluble questions, the fault lies in the method made use of by the metaphysicians. They have only considered man’s language, in its state of highest complication. They have attributed excessive importance to the signs of articulate human language, they have exaggerated the part played by reflection, and misunderstood that of spontaneity. Condillac especially and his school attributed far too much importance to the “disponibilité” of signs.216 The scientific method will not isolate humanity from the other species which it dominates. It will connect the positive study of language with biology and with sociology: with biology more particularly for the question of origin; with sociology in so far as the development of language depends upon the reaction of social life upon domestic life.   The starting-point of the theory is a fact of experience. Every strong emotion is accompanied by the impulse to manifest it, and this expression reacts upon the emotion itself. Many species exhibit this.217 Singing and mimicking, or rather cries and gestures, are often used by them, as by man, not only to relieve the passions, but to excite them more. For instance, anger in carnivorous animals grows to exasperation, through the external signs which the animal gives of it. Comte is in accordance with the observations of Bell and of Gratiolet.222 The movements which co-operate in expression, he says, coincide in general with those which are made use of in action. Moreover, in the human species, for the most part, the individual expresses his affections in order to satisfy them better, by inducing his fellow-creatures to second him. It is an appeal to sympathy. If then the expression results from the feeling, it tends, conversely to develop and to consolidate it. The origin of language is thus affective, that is to say ?sthetic, since “we only express ourselves after having felt strongly.” Language therefore translates feelings before thoughts, and this is what the followers of the ideologist theory did not see. Even to-day, in our most developed language, we can still trace this origin. It reveals itself by the musical accent of the slightest speech. Expression is always inspired and maintained by some affection, even in cases where it is apparently limited to a simple scientific or technical exposition. The affective source of language, dissimulated as it is by the intellectual operations of which it is the instrument, reveals itself in the inflexions of the voice.   Language is made up of signs. According to what has just been said, natural signs are spontaneously produced by the play of the emotions. As a voluntary manifestation language is always artificial. The involuntary signs have been gradually divided into their component parts and simplified, while remaining intelligible. All artificial signs, says Comte, even in our species, spring from a voluntary “imitation” of the natural signs which are spontaneously produced. In this way both the formation and the interpretation of these signs are explained.218   Hobbes used to define a sign as a constant relation between two phenomena, seen by the subject. The two phenomena are here a state of consciousness and a motion. Sometimes the state of consciousness determines the motion, sometimes223 the motion causes the reappearance of the state of consciousness. The institution of a system of signs is a means of “connecting the within with the without.” Language is thus for man a means of making the series of his intellectual states participate in the regularity which characterises external order. The logical function of language therefore springs from its very essence in which the phenomena of the objective world and the phenomena which belong to the feeling and thinking subject are joined. It is equivalent to a system for rendering the mental life objective.219 Being thus made objective, these phenomena can henceforth be preserved and communicated, without man or the animals having had each an end in view, since the institution of the first signs is involuntary, and arises from “the combination between the muscular and nervous systems.” External order here acts as a regulator, even before thought has grasped it.   The signs which are spontaneously produced are not all transformed into voluntary signs. Those which appeal to sight or to hearing present special advantages for this use, and as a matter of fact, the two classes of signs are concurrently used by the higher animals. Gestures and cries are the origin of what later becomes the system of artificial signs. By degrees, the communication of emotions gives way to the expression of thoughts. Among very civilised populations it even came to be believed that song had come from speech. But, on the contrary, speech came from song. To be convinced of this a glance at the animal world is sufficient.   Up to this point the theory of language has been biological, and the acquired facts can thus be summed up: 1, Man does not express his thought in order to communicate it, but he communicates because he expresses it. 2, What is first expressed is emotion, not thought. By degrees language becomes intellectualized, as the mental life itself. 3, Expression is224 spontaneous and primary. It arises from the relation between the nervous and muscular systems. In the progressive transformation where, from being involuntary, the signs gradually become voluntary, they are at once causes and effects.   The essential condition for this transformation to take place is social life. Undoubtedly, language appears very quickly, as soon as individuals of the same species find themselves in constant relations with one another. Each one learns to attribute the character of signs to the movements which accompany his emotions. Similar beings in whom the same phenomena take place, become equally capable of interpreting those signs. From this moment a language is born; and this is true for the animal species as for man. But human evolution follows an evolution which is peculiar to itself, and which determines that of language. Our language would not have far exceeded the period in which it especially expresses emotions, if human societies had remained purely domestic groupings, without any other organisation than that of the family. “The institution of human language,” says Comte, “appears, in sociology, as the chief continuous instrument of the necessary reaction of political upon domestic life.”220   Henceforth we can picture to ourselves, in its broad outlines, the prehistoric evolution of language. Originally it comprised gestures and cries. Gestures predominated in the first place as being more immediately expressive. By degrees they took a second place. As the natural signs became divided up so as to become artificial, the superiority of vocal signs appeared. Among other reasons it was due to the “spontaneous correspondence” between the voice and hearing which allows everyone to develop his own education. We hear young children practising for long hours, playing with the articulate sounds which they begin to emit. From this225 more or less organised singing, still a melody of vocal signs, poetry was born. Finally from poetry, much later, springs, what is commonly called prose, that is, the use of non-rhythmic phrases. Three great evolutions in the history of humanity: how many centuries have not been required for their accomplishment!   Writing is to drawing what speaking is to singing. Originally it was not an artifice invented to help vocal language. Here again the ideological theory aggravates the part played by reflection. Man was obeying an instinct when by drawing he reproduced the familiar objects which met his gaze, occupied his imagination, and caused his strongest and most frequent emotions. Gradually, these spontaneous endeavours at imitation assumed the character of signs, became divided up and simplified, and finally were co-ordinated with vocal sounds which themselves had gone through a separate evolution.   Thus language and art have a common origin, which is the ?sthetic, that is to say, the affective expression. Comte does not separate these two terms. He takes the word “?sthetic” at once in its etymological and in its modern sense. Our movements, at first involuntary, then voluntary, translate our impressions and react upon them, because they spring from them; that is the humble source from which everything else is derived. With animals it only gives rise to inarticulate vocal sounds, and to a more or less expressive mimicry. In man, it is the principle of language and of art. The latter begins by being a simple imitation. Then the reproduction of objects is perfected. It becomes more faithful “by bringing out better the chief features which were at first obscured by an empirical mixture.” “Idealisation” consists in this. Finally “expression” properly so called is developed, and “style.”221   226   Thus, if we call language the whole of the means suitable for the transmission beyond ourselves of our various impressions, this whole forms a system in which the most customary and least expressive portion, language, was at first mingled with the portion which bears the name of art, taking art in its most primitive elements: song and drawing. These two parts became differentiated in evolution. Our social requirements have continually increased the use and extension of the vocal and visual signs which are made use of in active life and in speculative thought. These signs have become simpler and simpler and even abstract: to such an extent that their origin ended by being considered the result of a convention.222   The primitive parentage of language and of art accounts for many facts which current theories do not explain. For instance, language is not only created but preserved by the people. Grammarians, “even more absurd than logicians,”223 in general have understood nothing about it. Their claim to authority is amusing. But it is to popular spontaneity, at once conservative and progressive, that our languages owe their admirable rectitude. The basis of each language collects what is essential and universal in the ?sthetic evolution of humanity. Hence the magic charm of poetry, the most ancient of all the arts. Words possess a power of evoking images from which the artist draws inexhaustible effects. Often during the long childhood of human reason even the power of words must have seemed to be supernatural: Nomina Numina. By dint of considering language as ideologists and logicians, we have forgotten that its nature is emotional and ?sthetic. However, even to-day the mysterious power of words has not disappeared. How great is the action of forms of prayer on tender souls, even when faith has deserted them! Next to action itself, language is the most powerful of the227 exciting causes of feeling, and religions are well aware of this fact. They know how to make use of it to conquer or to retain souls. IV.   The logical function of language is the only one which has been studied by philosophers; that is, by the “ontologists” and the “metaphysicians.” But even their study has remained incomplete. Condillac and his school have solely considered the language which lends itself to logical analysis. Consequently, they only saw a single kind of combination which may be called the logic of signs. But, in reality, the logic of signs rests upon the logic of images, and this one on the logic of feelings. The so-called logicians thus conceive a narrow and false idea of our intellectual mechanism, when they concentrate all their attention “upon the most voluntary, but the least powerful of the three essential modes of which the mental combination admits.”224   The logic of feelings is the art “of facilitating the combination of notions according to the connection between the corresponding emotions.” It is the most instinctive: it is the source of all the great inspirations of our intelligence. We can think nothing which contradicts it, or even which is not implied in it. But it has two grave defects. Its elements are not precise enough, and it is not at our disposal. It only operates under certain given conditions, and the appearance of these conditions does not rest with us. We see it at work, for instance, among animals, who occasionally provoke our admiration for the marvels suggested to them by this logic which is so closely bound up with the emotions. The logic of images, though less strong, is more free and precise than the logic of feelings. Nevertheless if we only had these228 two we should still be incapable of realising combinations conceived and prepared by us. This office belongs to the logic of signs. For to us almost entirely belongs the disposal of these signs, and it is this which has allowed of the development of abstract language and of the sciences.   But we must not separate this last logic from the two others. The laws of our nature always cause the logical use of feelings and images to prevail over that of signs. Undoubtedly, the union between signs and thoughts may become direct, and moreover in the case of abstract notions, it could not be otherwise. Thus our inner world is artificially united to the outer world. We have an abstract and symbolical representation of it, without going through the feelings, or even, strictly speaking, through the images. But this relation has far less consistency than the one which is established by the involuntary intervention of images and of feelings. As the abstract sign has its origin in the sign appreciated by the senses, which itself proceeds from the relation of the muscular system with the nervous system; so, the relations between signs have their origin in the relations between images, and these, in their turn, proceed from the relations between feelings.   The facility with which we manipulate signs hides this truth from us: it is none the less certain that these signs are united to our thoughts in a far less intimate and less spontaneous manner than the feelings and even the images.   The positive theory further allows us, not indeed to solve, but to adjourn the question of a universal language. Indeed are we concerned with a purely scientific language? Mathematical analysis in part fulfils this desideratum. It allows us to express the laws of the simplest phenomena by symbols which are at everyone’s disposal. But if it is a question of a complete language, destined to be in common use among all men, who does not see that this conception is incompatible229 with the present state of humanity? How could we establish a universal language, while allowing the prevalence of “divergent beliefs and of hostile customs.”225 The unification of tongues will arise from the unification of peoples. When the latter has been realised, under the action of positive philosophy, the other will follow as a necessary consequence.   Moreover, from the present time, a universal language exists! It is Art, “the only form of language which is universally understood at once in the whole of our species.”226 Truly this universal language has its dialects. Comte’s remark is none the less strikingly accurate. The masterpieces of Greek sculpture, Rembrandt’s paintings, Beethoven’s symphonies are accessible to millions of human beings who have never known a word of Greek, of Dutch, or of German. To teach all children music and drawing, as Comte requires in his positivist plan of education, is not to make them participate in the luxury of “accomplishments.” It is placing within their reach works which appeal to the whole of humanity; it is giving them a stronger sense of the solidarity which is the essential characteristic of human society; finally it is teaching them the universal language of which they possess the instinctive rudiments, and whence have sprung the very languages which to-day appear as frigid systems of symbols and graphic representations. Is it not fair to allow them the enjoyment of a patrimony as ancient perhaps as humanity herself? Somewhere, Comte compares language to property.227 Like it, language has facilitated acquisitions and preserved social wealth. But it has an advantage over property, that of admitting of equal possession by all at the same time. Art presents this advantage no less than language. Works of art are the common property of the whole of humanity and no one should be deprived of that inheritance.