CHAPTER III SOCIAL STATICS

 As biology distinguishes the anatomical point of view, “relating to the ideas of organisation,” and the physiological point of view, “relating to the ideas of life,” so sociology separates the study of the conditions of existence of a society (social statics), and that of the laws of its movements (social dynamics).   This distinction has the advantage of corresponding exactly to that of order and progress, from the practical point of view, while it is closely allied to the encyclop?dic law called “the principle of the conditions of existence.”   Comte will not admit that he is making two distinct sciences of social statics and social dynamics. Sociology, according to him, is constituted by the constant drawing together of these two corresponding studies. However, they each have their own object, and Comte has treated them separately. Indeed, social statics and dynamics are far from having the same importance in his work.   The essential part, on his own showing, is dynamics.250 When he makes history the characteristic process of the Sociological method, when he shows that the tradition transmitted from every generation to the following one is pre-eminently the sociological phenomenon, when finally he considers the new science as having been founded from the day when the law of the three states was discovered, is he not250 placing himself at the dynamic point of view? After having demonstrated that dynamic laws of social phenomena exist, he concludes that these phenomena are also subject to static laws: there would be a contradiction in admitting the one set of laws without the other. In Comte’s mind then dynamics preceded statics. Even from an objective point of view, dynamics seem to be the most important. For, if we knew the dynamic laws it would not be impossible to deduce the static laws from them, while to do the reverse would be impracticable, at any rate for minds constituted like ours.   So, in the Cours de philosophie positive, social statics holds a very small place compared with that occupied by dynamics. It is true that it takes up the whole of the second volume of the Politique positive. But there Comte brings into it many considerations which arise more from ethics and religion than from sociology properly so called. I.   The idea of the social consensus, more restricted than that of the vital consensus, dominates the whole of social statics. The science sets itself to study the continual actions and reactions which the various parts of the social system exercise upon one another. Each of the numerous elements of this system, instead of being observed by itself, must be conceived as in relation with all the others, with which it has constant solidarity. From whatever social element we start, it is always connected, in a more or less direct way, with the whole of the others, even with those which at first sight appear independent.251   What are the ultimate “social elements?” In biology, anatomical analysis was to stop at the tissue, or at least at the cell. In sociology, statical analysis will stop at the family. “Human society is made up of families and not251 of individuals: it is an elementary axiom in statical sociology.” In the eyes of social science, the individual is an abstraction. All social strength is the result of a “more or less extended co-operation,” that is to say of the combined action of a greater or smaller number of individuals. There is nothing purely individual except physical force. But what is the physical force of a man alone, without arms or tools? (for these already imply a co-operation of social activities). Intellectual power is of value only when others participate in it: so it is with moral power.   On the other hand, if all social force is the result of union, all social force is, nevertheless represented by an individual. The social organism is “collective in its nature, and individual in its functions.”252 In this way the part played by the individual again becomes a very considerable one. If the individual, in so far as he is a social force, always represents some group, he is none the less possessed of his own personality which may precisely have taken a great part in the formation of such or such a group. We know that the social organism must not on all points be compared with the living organism. If the family is the ultimate element for social statics, this element is however itself made up of persons who are naturally independent, and who cannot be compared to cells.   The positive theory of the family is founded upon the biological theory of the physical and moral nature of man. This nature is sociable. The human species belongs to the category of those in which individuals not only live in more or less permanent bands, but form definite and durable societies. This is a fact in our experience. The social state is, for men, the state of nature. The “contract” theory cannot then be maintained. Comte does not stop to criticise it. The theorists of the counter-Revolution have sufficiently refuted Rousseau.252 According to Comte, sociability is spontaneous in the human species, in virtue of the instinctive leaning towards common life, “independently of any personal calculation, and often against the most immediate interest of the individual. Society is not then founded upon utility, which could moreover only appear in a state of society already established.”253   Thus, the family is the ultimate social element. Being preoccupied by this idea, Comte, who had such a deep, clear-sighted feeling of the evolution of societies, does not ask himself whether the family has evolved from something which existed previously. For him it is something natural, that is to say something given, beyond which we should not go back, and of which only the biological conditions can be determined. It is from this point of view that Comte defines the relations of man and woman in the family. He bases himself upon biology (that is to say both upon physiology and psychology), to represent the female sex as living in “a kind of state of continuous childhood.” Whence he concludes to the natural subordination of woman. This inferiority does not moreover extend to the whole of her moral nature, for, “in general, women are as superior to men by the natural development of sympathy, and sociability, as they are inferior to them where intellect and reasoning powers are concerned.”254 On this last point, John Stuart Mill held the contrary opinion, and this disagreement contributed not a little to alienate him from positive philosophy. Later on, in his “second career,” Comte, who more and more came to subordinate the intellect to the heart, still more extolled the moral excellence of woman, and ended by considering her as “intermediary between humanity and man.” But even then, while proclaiming the sentimental, moral, and ?sthetic superiority of woman, he persisted in maintaining that, from the intellectual point of view, by reason253 of immutable biological conditions, she remains inferior to man.   From analogous motives, Comte regards marriage as a “universal natural disposition, the first necessary basis of all society.” Every thing which tends to weaken marriage tends to disorganise the family, and, consequently, to destroy society in its constitutive elements. Comte will thus condemn divorce, of which he himself had the best reasons for appreciating the advantages. Generally, Comte’s theory of the family is modelled upon the Christian family. According to his constant practice, he seeks to detach the institutions of Catholicism, which he admires, from its dogmas which he believes to be almost dead. These institutions, excellent in themselves only suffer from being bound up with beliefs which are disappearing. So long, he says, as the family continues to have no other intellectual basis than religious doctrines, it will necessarily participate in their growing discredit. Positive philosophy “can alone henceforth establish the spirit of the family upon an immoveable foundation, with the modifications suitable to the modern character of the social organism.”255 This new intellectual basis is established by positive psychology and social statics. The constitution of the family remains the same. But its foundation is henceforth positive dogma instead of religious dogma, demonstrated belief instead of revealed faith.   Perhaps we must recognise in the energetic defence made by Comte of the family and of marriage as he found them established by the side of Catholic influence, a desire not to be confused with the followers of Saint Simon, of Fourier, and the other reformers of his time. These did not hesitate to contradict current and traditional customs. In Comte’s view, this contradiction is a sign of error. Scientific truth is found in the prolongation of public reason and of common254 sense. Here Comte sees a new, and not one of the least, important arguments, in support of his own theory. II.   A society is composed of families: it is not itself a greater family. Neither is it an assemblage of contiguous families living together. The family and society are distinguished from each other by very clear differential characteristics.   The family is a “union” of an essentially moral nature, and secondarily intellectual.256 The chief constituent of the family is found in the affective functions, (the mutual tenderness of husband and wife, of the parents for the children, etc.). Society is, on the contrary, not a union, but a co-operation” of an essentially intellectual nature, and secondarily moral. Undoubtedly, an association of men cannot be conceived as subsisting without their sympathetic feelings being interested in it. Nevertheless, when we pass from the consideration of the single family to the co-ordination of several families, the principle of co-operation necessarily ends by prevailing. So Rousseau’s theory is not false on all points. Metaphysical philosophy, especially in France, says Comte, has undoubtedly committed an error of capital importance by attributing the very creation of the social state to this principle, for it is evident that co-operation, far from having been able to produce society, presupposes it. But if we confine this assertion to society properly so-called (the family being set aside) it is not so startling. For, if co-operation could not “create” human societies, it alone at least, has been able to “communicate to these spontaneous associations a definite character and a lasting consistency.”   This co-operation is called to-day “the division of labour.” Comte knew this expression: Adam Smith had already made255 it famous. If Comte did not make use of it, it is because economists had limited the idea and the term to “merely material usages.” He wishes, on the contrary, to consider co-operation in the whole of its rational extension. It then becomes an extremely general principle, dominating the whole of social statics, and finding its application in the greatest as in the most limited social groups. This principle leads us to regard not only individuals and classes, but also, in many respects the different peoples, “as participating together in a suitable way and a determined degree, in an immense common work whose development unites those actually co-operating with the series of their successors and their predecessors.” Thus we see the relation between the dynamical and the statical laws of social continuity which binds successive generations, with social solidarity which unites men living in the same period. This solidarity arises especially from the division of labour. The latter is the “primitive cause” of the extension and of the growing complexity of the social organism, which may be conceived as comprising the whole of our species.   The founder of social statics, Aristotle, had formulated its most general principle: “separation of offices and combination of efforts.”257 Without the “separation of offices” there would only be an agglomeration of families and not a society. But the indispensable counterpart of the separation of offices is the combination of efforts, that is to say a general thought which directs them, in a word, a government.   Thus, the ideas of society and of government are implied in one another. Indeed, there is no society properly so-called without the division of social labour, a division immediately generating consequences which make government a necessity. Society in developing grows more and more complex. Instead of a small group of a few families, it ends by numbering256 hundreds, thousands, and even millions of them. At the same time the division of labour often gives rise to individual differences, at once intellectual and moral. Minds are developed, but each one according to its special line, at least according to that of his profession or of his class. The communion of feeling and of thought tends to become weaker. This last is not the least serious inconvenience. Smith had already pointed it out from the economical point of view, and the utopian reformers, Fourier especially, have shown strongly its extent and its dangers.   This is, according to Comte, what it is the mission of a government to remedy. Its social function consists in repressing and in opposing as far as possible the tendency to the scattering of ideas, of feelings, and of interests. This tendency is the result of the very development of society, and left to itself, it would end by stopping this development. Government may thus be defined in its abstract and elementary function as “the necessary reaction of the whole upon the parts.”258   Government, at first, appears “spontaneously.” As Hobbes clearly saw, it is then in the hands of those to whom force belongs. But it soon becomes regularised and organised into a definite social function. As, in the development of the sciences, the growing differentiation of their object rendered research more and more special, and at last caused the appearance of a particular class of learned men, (the philosophers), whose own function is to attempt the synthesis of human knowledge; so, in the division constantly more ramified of social functions, a new one had to be constituted, “capable of intervening in the accomplishment of all the others, unceasingly to recall in them the thought of the whole, and the feeling of common solidarity.”   We are then entirely mistaken, when we want to reduce257 the function of government to “vulgar attributions of material order.” Government is not a simple institution of police, a guarantee of public order, nor, as was said in the XVIII. century, a necessary evil which will reduce itself to a minimum with progress, or even will tend to disappear. On the contrary, the more a society is developed, the more indispensable the function of government becomes in it, the more importance it assumes. Progress in the future will make a more and more considerable place for it in social life. Although it does not itself realise any determined social progress, government necessarily contributes to whatever progress society can make.   If the idea of the division of labour is not to be understood in a purely material and economical sense, the principle of social cohesion, which Comte calls government, cannot any more be founded upon a single conformity of interests. This would not suffice to maintain a human society. For such a society to subsist, there must be a certain “communion” of beliefs, and feelings of sympathy, which themselves depend in a certain measure upon these beliefs. Undoubtedly, society could not resist a deep and durable divergence of interests. But it would still less resist incompatibility of feelings, and especially of beliefs among its members. In a word, the basis of human society is intellectual before all things. And, as the first object of the mind of man is the interpretation of the world which surrounds him, the constitutive basis of human society is religion. The groups which are united in the same general conception of the universe are part of the same society. Hence, in the past, we see endless conflicts between the societies whose religions were different; hence, in the future, the unity of the human species will finally become entirely rallied around positive religion.   If this is the case, government, which is by definition the highest and most general social function which represents the258 “spirit of the whole,” cannot be confined to temporal action. Its object is not only to assure the security of property and of persons. It must at the same time strengthen and preserve that “communion” of beliefs which is the basis of human society. It must guarantee the union of intellects, by establishing and teaching universally accepted principles. It must, in a word, be a “spiritual power.” In this capacity, in positive society, it will exercise an action at least equal to that enjoyed by the catholic clergy in the Christendom of the Middle Ages, as long as the Popes preserved its supreme direction.   These consequences are legitimately drawn from Comte’s principles. His philosophy made social reorganisation dependent upon the reorganisation of morals, and the reorganisation of morals upon that of ideas. He was, therefore, in social statics, to seek for the foundation of society in the harmony of intellects and to define government by its spiritual as much as by its temporal function. III.   Comte’s social statics are far from fulfilling the programme which he indicated in a word when he called it “social anatomy.” Undoubtedly he is right in not pushing the comparison between living beings and society to dangerous or childish attempts at precision. But, in sociology as in biology, he separates the study of the organs from that of the functions, and we must admit that he insisted very little upon the analysis of the social organs. From the statical point of view he only distinguishes the individual, the family, and society taken as a whole. Moreover the consideration of the individual is only preliminary, since the families represent the real social elements. He therefore sees, or at least he studies nothing intermediary between these elements and the totality of the social body, that is to say the human species. He limits him259self to indicating the separation of offices which increases with the extension of the social body. But what is the structure of this body, what diversity of organs and apparatus does it contain? Social statics tells us nothing of this. The Politique positive scarcely gives us a few brief indications on this point. The collective organism would be composed first of families, which constitute its real element, then of the classes or castes which form its tissues, and finally of towns or villages which are its real organs.   This is very vague. Only in the dynamics shall we find views a little more precise on the appearance, the structure, and the functions of the different social forms. Even then Comte does not really take the physiological point of view, any more than in statics he takes the really anatomical point of view. Before all things, his sociology remains a philosophy of history. It analyses the past of humanity, that it may find in it the interpretation of its present and the rational prevision of its future.   This science differs profoundly then from the fundamental sciences which precede it, in that it studies a single being, of which it cannot analyse the phenomena or discover the laws except by considering it in the first place in its totality. Comte hardly ever in social statics (and far less in dynamics) says society, as in biology he said, animals and vegetables. He says the collective organism: a simple, immense organism, whose life indefinitely extends into the past and into the future, in a word, Humanity. This conception representing humanity as a single Being which is an hypothesis for science, becomes an ideal for ethics, and an object of love for religion. Insensibly Comte passes from one of these points of view to the other. At the same time the character of social statics changes. From being an abstract science in the Cours, in the Politique it is transformed into a picture of future Humanity.