CHAPTER IV SOCIAL DYNAMICS

 For Comte, social dynamics is the chief part of sociology. He tells us that it occupied his attention “in a preponderating and even almost exclusive manner.”259 This preference is easily explained. In the first place the idea which best distinguishes sociology from biology, the idea of the gradual development of humanity belongs to social dynamics. Then, the method which particularly belongs to sociology, the historical method, applies especially to dynamics. Finally, the very conception of a social science became fixed in Comte’s mind by the discovery of the law of the three states which is a dynamic law.   Social dynamics is defined as “the science of the necessary and continuous movement of humanity,”260 or, more briefly, the science of the laws of progress. Here, as in social statics, and even still more exclusively, a single case is studied, namely, the case of the human species, regarded as a single individual, and considered in the whole of its past and future development. Henceforth, without misunderstanding the distinction between biology and sociology, should we not in the first place seek some of the conditions of social progress in the physical and moral nature of the individual man? This question did not escape Comte, and he says that it would be right to begin a methodical treatise on social science with it. However, he did not expressly deal with the question. He261 contented himself with indicating “this fundamental instinct which is the complex result of the necessary co-operation between all our natural tendencies, which urges man ceaselessly to ameliorate his condition in all respects, and always to develop the whole of his moral, intellectual, and physical life in every way as much as the system of conditions in which he finds himself placed allows of it.”261 This indication is completed by the study of the conditions which determined the first efforts of man, when he had to overcome his natural laziness, at the dawn of civilisation. It suffices at least to show the close union which exists in Comte’s thought between social dynamics and psychology. It is true that the sociological laws cannot be deduced from the biological laws. Nothing can replace a direct observation of social phenomena. But the very fact of progress, which is the object of social dynamics, would not exist without the “individual impulses which are its own elements.” I.   Under the name of progress Comte understands a “social advance towards a definite although never attained termination, by a series of necessarily determined stages.” This idea was never clearly defined in antiquity.262 The men of ancient times were more inclined to represent social movements as oscillatory or circular. Upon special points, for instance in morals, they had a foreshadowing of the idea of progress.263 They conceived an effort towards improvement. But the scientific idea of social progress in its entirety remained foreign to them. For this idea is only formed by observation and by the analysis of history. Their historical outlook was yet too narrow for such a suggestion.   The idea of progress appears with the philosophy of history262 taught by Christianity; for, this religion gives a rational explanation of universal history considered as a whole. It proclaims the superiority of the Christian world over the pagan world, and of the new law over the old.264 But, scarcely has the idea of progress thus come into existence when it becomes clouded over and tends to fade away. Catholicism clearly sees progress in the series of events which caused it to succeed a former state, but it denies the progress which continues from that moment. It considers itself as final. It “limits onward progress to the advent of Christianity.” It claims to fix an invariable dogma which contains immutable and absolute truth. This is the very negation of the positive idea of progress. In order to find this idea clearly conceived and scientifically formulated, we must come to Condorcet, and even to the XIX. century, that is to say, to the foundation of social science by Comte. He was especially led to it, he says, by the historical study of the development of the sciences. For, of all the social series, this is the one whose evolution is most advanced. No other suggests so clearly the idea of a “progression” whose terms succeed each other by virtue of a necessary filiation. Pascal already gave a very fine formula of it, in his Préface du Traité du Vide. Is it not remarkable that, in his sketch of the positive idea of progress, he should have been led at once to the essential hypothesis of social dynamics, that is to say, to consider the whole succession of generations as a single man, always living, continually learning?265   Nevertheless, the idea of progress, so well applied to the evolution of the sciences in the XVII. century, could not then be extended to all social facts. It had met with an insurmountable obstacle in the Middle Ages. Men considered that period as one of retrogression and barbarism, although, as a matter of fact, it was “characterised by the263 universal perfecting of human sociability.” The idea of progress therefore remained a special one. Thus originated the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns266 whose importance has not been sufficiently understood. The “eminent” Fontenelle and the “judicious” Perrault have very clearly shown in respect to intellectual activity generally considered, what Pascal had already established for science properly so-called.267   The XVIII. century was full of the idea of progress. But, failing to follow a positive method, it gave a false direction to this idea. It believed in the indefinite perfectibility of man and of society. Now, this notion does not coincide with that of progress. It is even fundamentally opposed to it. Progress signifies “development subject to fixed conditions, and operating in virtue of necessary laws, which determine its advance and its limitations.” It is precisely the ignorance of these conditions and of these laws which gives rise to the idea of indefinite perfectibility. If Helvetius and Condorcet had had a positive knowledge of human nature, they would not have entertained so many illusions and unreasonable hopes. Biology, that is to say, scientific psychology, would have taught them that human nature is invariable in its basis, that the preponderance of the selfish over the altruistic instincts is essential to this nature, and that, if progress favours the development of the altruistic feelings, it cannot, however, overturn the natural equilibrium of our inclinations. In a word, indefinite perfectibility is a metaphysical idea. Imagination plays a greater part in it than observation. The philosophers who conceived it did not realise the relations which bind the intellectual and the moral life of man to the structure of his organism.   264   In order that the idea of progress should reach its final form it was necessary, in the first place, that positive psychology should have put an end to the dreams of indefinite perfectibility. It was also necessary that the French Revolution should come to render the course of the history of humanity intelligible. Indeed, according to Comte, a “progression” cannot be understood, so long as we do not know at least three of its terms. Two terms do not suffice to define it. Now, up to the time of the French Revolution, several “progressions” or social series undoubtedly offered the required number of terms to scientific reflection; for instance, the evolution of such and such a science or of such and such an art. But, in sociology, the knowledge of secondary laws is subordinated to that of primary laws, and the advance of such and such a social series can only be understood if the development of society in general is known in its fundamental law. To discover this law then, we must possess at least, three terms of the general “progression.” Now, before the French Revolution two terms only were given: the régime of the societies of antiquity, and the Christian régime (that is to say, the one which attained its highest degree of perfection in the Catholic organisation of the Middle Ages.) The French Revolution came to furnish the third term. It brought the idea of a new régime. As Kant had said, in terms which were certainly unknown to Comte, it gave men the idea of a social organisation founded upon principles different from those of the existing societies. Henceforth the idea of progress could apply itself to the whole of the historical development of humanity. “It is to this salutary disturbance,” says Comte, “that we owe the strength and the audacity to conceive a notion upon which rests the whole of social science, and consequently the whole of positive philosophy, of which this final science alone could constitute the unity.”268   265   This social science remained to be constructed. It will be the special work of Auguste Comte. According to him, the French Revolution only brought an imperfect idea of social progress. It helped to bring about the conception of the idea of a different régime, but without actually founding it. The functions of the new philosophy will be to realise the positive idea of social progress. In a word, the revolutionary impulse made this philosophy possible. It has not done away with its utility.269 II.   Sociology being an abstract and speculative science in the same way as the other fundamental sciences, progress in it is not understood in a utilitarian or moral sense. From 1826 Comte exerted himself to prevent any equivocation on this point. The insufficiency of language, he says, obliges him to make use of the words “improvement” and “development,” of which the former and even the latter, although clearer, recalls ideas of absolute good and of indefinite amelioration, which Comte has no intention of expressing. These words for him have the simple scientific object of indicating, in social physics, a certain succession of states of the human species, “being effected according to determined laws: a usage exactly analogous to the one which physiologists make of them in the study of the individual organism, to indicate a succession of transformations with which no idea of continuous amelioration or deterioration is connected.”270 It would be easy to treat of the whole of social physics without once using the word improvement, and always replacing it by the scientific term development. For the question is not to appreciate the respective value of successive states referred to an ideal state, but simply to establish the laws of their succession.266 “The present is full of the past and big with the future.” Liebnitz’s formula thus expresses the general idea of progress. Comte only makes it positive by discovering the general laws of this progress, and by showing that they are correlated to the laws of social statics.   As a matter of fact, does the development of humanity lead to improvement or progress, in the moral and practical sense of the word? Social science has not to answer this question. However, Comte thinks that this improvement takes place, and that progress, so understood, can be shown at once in our condition and in our nature.271 As proofs of this, in the first place, he gives the increase in the population, at least in that portion of humanity which he nearly always considers alone, the white race; then he mentions the law—according to which exercise perfects the organs. This progress is fixed by heredity. Comte thus admits this principle laid down by Lamarck, with this reservation, that evolution never transforms “natural dispositions.”   As to our condition, it is improved according to the measure in which we can act upon natural phenomena, and this power in turn depends upon the knowledge we have acquired of the laws of phenomena. “Vision brings prevision and thus facilitates provision.” Progress is here manifested by the extension of our scientific knowledge and by the improvement of the arts founded upon this knowledge. If scientific knowledge, which is necessarily abstract, has to be separated from practice in order to seek for the general laws which regulate phenomena, science, once constituted, makes possible a system of reasoned applications which reaches immeasurably farther than empirical art. Like Descartes, Comte founds the most ambitious hopes upon the positive science of nature.   Now, the most “modifiable” phenomena, those in which our intervention is most efficacious, are the human phenomena,267 be they individual or collective. On the other hand, our action upon the external world especially depends upon the dispositions of the agent. In every way then we must improve these dispositions. The most important improvement will be that of our internal nature. It will consist in bringing about the greater and greater prevalence of the attributes which distinguish man from the animals, that is to say, intelligence and sociability, correlated faculties, which are at once as a means and as an end to one another. We know, moreover, that there are limits to this progress. The perfect preponderance within ourselves of humanity over animality is a limit, nearer to which our efforts must ever bring us, without ever actually reaching it.272   Whether it be a question of our condition or of our nature the improvement, in both cases, can only be very slow. It is never easy to substitute to natural order an artificial order resting upon the scientific knowledge of the former. Of those different forms of progress, the first, which Comte calls the material progress, because it is the easiest, is the most advanced. The great attraction which it has for the men of to-day is thus explained, but the importance given to it is quite exaggerated. If our nature could be brought to a higher degree of perfection it would assuredly be preferable. But it is perhaps necessary that our material conditions of existence should first have been ameliorated?   The improvement in our nature may be physical, intellectual, or moral. The first would consist in an addition to the average duration of human life; it depends upon the progress of biology, and, consequently, of medicine and hygiene. Intellectual (scientific and ?sthetic) improvement, would be still more desirable. It “means a greater soaring upwards” than is represented by all physical improvements or a fortiori by any material improvements: for the intellect is a “universal tool268” whose uses have a universal application. But human happiness depends far more upon moral progress “over which we have, also more command, although it is more difficult.” No intellectual improvement could be equal in value to an increase in goodness or in courage. If we were wise our whole endeavour therefore would be in this direction. At any rate we ought always to remember that other forms of progress are desirable simply as means, and moral progress alone as an end.273 III.   The theory of progress is the “principle” of social dynamics, itself the essential part of sociology, while sociology lies at the heart of positive philosophy. It was therefore to be expected that the adversaries of this philosophy would especially seek to ruin the theory of progress, which supports everything else. Indeed the objections have been numerous and pressing. Of these objections Comte had foreseen the two most important, and he had endeavoured to answer them beforehand. According to him, the theory of progress implies neither fatalism nor optimism, nor the quietism which has been represented as a consequence of it.274   On the first point, Comte draws our attention to the fact that the necessary consequence of his principle of laws is not the absolute determinism of phenomena, whether it be a question of social or other phenomena. Positive philosophy admits nothing absolute. Determinism, like free-will, is a metaphysical thesis, Comte is not compelled to take sides either with one or the other: he leaves them to mutually refute each other. The positive conception of the moral and intellectual faculties of man, as Gall clearly established, does not imply that human actions might not be otherwise than they269 are. Similarly, if in general natural phenomena are subject to laws, this does not prevent us from conceiving these phenomena as modifiable by man’s intervention. Now, of all natural phenomena, social phenomena are precisely the most modifiable; so much so that for a long time it was possible to ignore that they were governed by laws.   There is then no contradiction in affirming the reality of these laws, and in considering at the same time the intervention of human activity in social phenomena as efficacious. As early as 1824 Comte wrote to his friend Valat: “It would be misunderstanding my thought to conclude from it that I forbid all improvement, since, on the contrary, I formally establish that every government must change in consequence of the progress of civilisation, and that it is in no way a matter of indifference that these changes should take place by the mere force of circumstances, or by calculated planes based upon observation. I do not deny the power of political measures, I limit it.”275   It belongs to social science to determine the limits of the useful action of man upon social phenomena. These limits are narrow enough. Man can only modify, from the static point of view, the intensity, and from the dynamic point of view, the speed of social phenomena. Indeed, here as elsewhere, modifications can only be produced in conformity with laws. To suppose the contrary would be to deny the very existence of these laws. Now, the fundamental law of statics is the intimate solidarity and the mutual dependence of all social elements, at all the moments of their common evolution. There is, therefore, no disturbing influence, whatever its origin may be, which can “cause unsympathetic opposing elements to coexist in a given society.”276 Rather would it destroy this society. All that is possible is to modify the respective tendencies which indeed coexist in this society, but without270 causing the appearance or disappearance of any of them. In the same way, from the dynamic point of view, the order of the successive phases of progress is determined by laws. No external influence (nor in particular that of man), could overturn or disturb this order, or “skip” one of the stages. The evolution could only be made more rapid, that is to say, easier. The statesman, infatuated with his power, will perhaps find this a very humble part to play. But, even within these limits, human intervention could still be of capital importance provided that it were directed by science.   History confirms these views. In it we never see social phenomena modified by man otherwise than in their intensity, or in their speed. Where we best know their evolution, that is to say, in the social series, which includes the history of the sciences, of the arts, of morals and institutions, the verification of this law is constant. For instance, among the scientific men at Alexandria astronomy stopped at a certain point, because the further development of this science was not compatible with the general conditions of society at that time. And if Montesquieu’s attempt to subject social facts to laws failed, it is because, before sociology, positive biology had first to be founded. Analogous examples abound, and a contrary case has never presented itself.   Three secondary factors, race, climate, and man’s political action especially modify progress, in the measure which has just been indicated. In the present state of science it is impossible to arrange them in the order of their importance. Montesquieu, made too much of climates: others have made too much of races.277 Those elements of social evolution have not yet been studied by the positive method. Until the foundation of social dynamics their part was, of necessity, wrongly conceived. It was not known that the essential law, the law of the three states, is independent of these secondary factors, whilst on271 the contrary the secondary factors can only act in conformity with this law, without ever suspending it. In order that the modifications which they produce should become intelligible, it was necessary that the normal type of evolution should first be known. To study the influence of climates and of races before first possessing the general laws of social dynamics, was, almost, to pretend to establish pathology without having first constituted physiology.   As to man’s political action, it too has been wrongly understood. In the absence of a positive conception of social phenomena, some denied the efficacy of this action, others exaggerated it. When it was used in the direction of progress, it almost necessarily appeared to be the principal cause of the results which social evolution would have brought about in any case. The illusion was all the more inevitable from the fact that social forces are always personified in individuals. On the other hand, how often have the most vigorous political efforts only been successful for a day, because the general evolution of society was proceeding in the contrary direction!   So long as the theological and metaphysical period lasts, man does not hesitate to ascribe to himself an almost boundless action upon natural phenomena. Having reached the positive period, he knows that phenomena are only, modifiable within certain limits, determined by their laws, and that he can only aspire to relative results. Once positive sociology is established it wholly transforms the familiar idea of political art. But because it entertains less great and less gratifying ambitions, this art will only be all the more effective. Compare what medicine and surgery are able to do to-day for the good of the sick with what they could do before chemistry and biology became positive sciences!   But, it is said, admitting that man can modify social phenomena, what reason has he to interfere with them, since272 progress takes place of itself? Why not allow the natural evolution which most certainly realises it to work itself out?   This objection confuses progress understood as a succession of states which unfold according to a law, with progress understood in the sense of indefinite improvement. On this point again the comparison of society with living organisms is instructive. Do not these develop in conformity with invariable laws? Yet, Comte regards them as extremely imperfect, and in what concerns the human body, the intervention of the doctor or the surgeon is often useful and even indispensable. When we reproach the sociological theory of progress with having optimism as its consequence, we take the scientific notion of spontaneous order for the systematic justification of any existing order.278 There is, however, a very long distance from one to the other. Spontaneous order may often be a very rough form of order.   Here, as everywhere else, positive philosophy substitutes the scientific principle of the conditions of existence to the metaphysical principle of final causes. It admits that spontaneously, according to natural laws, a certain necessary order is established; but it acknowledges that this order offers serious and numerous disadvantages, modifiable, in certain degrees, by man’s intervention. The more complex these phenomena, the more are the imperfections multiplied and intensified. The biological phenomena are “inferior” in this respect to those of inorganic nature. By reason of their complication, which is maxima, social phenomena must be the most “disorderly” of all. In a word if the idea of a natural law implies that of a certain order, the notion of this order must be completed by the “simultaneous consideration of its inevitable imperfection.”   The theory of progress is then incompatible neither with the ascertainment of social evil, nor with the effort to remedy it.273 The most complex of all organisms, the social organism, is also the one most subject to diseases and to crises. Thus, Comte foresees in a near future great internal struggles in our society, in consequence of our mental and moral anarchy.279 To-day, only that is systematised which is destined to disappear, and what is not yet systematised, that is to say all that lives, will not be organised without violent conflicts. It is enough here to think of the relations between masters and workmen.   Revolutions occur which nothing can prevent. It is an inevitable evil, and Comte gives a striking psychological reason for it. Our mind is too weak and our life too short for us ever to form a positive idea of a social system other than the one in which we were born and in which we live. It is from this one that, willingly or unwillingly, we draw the elements of our political and social ideas. Even men of a utopian turn of mind do not escape this necessity. Their dreams always reflect, at bottom, either the past, or a contemporary social state. In order that a new political system should appear, and especially for it to find access to men’s minds, the destruction of the preceeding system must be already very far advanced. Until then “even the most open minds could not perceive the characteristic nature of the new system hidden from all eyes by the spectacle of the old organisation.”280 Hence, the lengthy processes of decomposition of worn-out régimes, the no less lengthy birth of new institutions, and the cruel periods of transition, full of troubles, of wars, and of revolutions.   With this same cause are connected what we may call the phenomena of survival. Institutions, powers, as also doctrines, have a tendency to subsist beyond the function which the general advance of the human mind had assigned to them.281 Conflicts then take place which it is beyond anybody’s power274 to prevent: happy is he who can make them shorter and less acute! The solution only comes with time when the vanquished ideas fall into “disuse.” The combat never ceases except from the lack of combatants.   All this in no way excludes the possibility for man to exercise a beneficent or a detrimental action. To understand is not always to justify. It is true that a comprehensive view of history disposes us to be indulgent, because it brings out the close solidarity of all the social elements of the same period. The responsibilities being shared, and so to speak diffused, appear to be less serious for each individual. Nevertheless this philosophy allows praise and blame for the past, and active intervention in social phenomena for the present.   But this intervention will only produce the desired results if it rests upon social science. The positive polity does not propose to direct the human race towards an arbitrarily selected end. It knows that humanity is moved by its own impulse, “according to a law no less necessary, although more modifiable than that of gravitation.”282 It is only a question for politics to facilitate this advance by throwing light upon it. It is a very difficult thing to undergo the action of a law without understanding it, or to submit to it with a full knowledge of the case. It remains in man’s power to soften and to shorten crises, as soon as he grasps their reasons and foresees the issue. He will not pretend to govern the phenomena, but only to modify their spontaneous development. “This demands that he should know their laws.”283   Let us also know how to own that in respect to many of these phenomena, and not the least important of them, we are absolutely powerless. Their conditions escape our grasp. For instance, the duration of human life is far from being as favourable to social evolution as might be conceived.284 On the contrary, after the extreme imperfection of our organism, the275 brevity of life is one of the causes of the slowness of social development. How many powerful minds have died before their full maturity had yielded all its fruit! What would not have been expected of their genius if they had been in full possession of their faculties during three or four centuries!   The positive theory of progress therefore entails neither optimism nor quietism. The intervention of man being excluded, the social state, which evolves, according to laws, at each period is just as good and as bad as it can be, “according to the whole of the situation.”285 More than one pessimist would be satisfied with this formula. It is legitimately drawn from the principle of the conditions of existence. But, truly, from the point of view of this principle, that is to say, from the point of view of positive and relative philosophy, there can be no question either of optimism or of pessimism. Metaphysics alone can offer an absolute judgment upon the whole of the social reality. The positive doctrine, here as elsewhere, only seeks the statical and dynamical laws of phenomena. It is true, that it finds that the social evolution is, as a matter of fact, accompanied by improvement. But this improvement is so slow, so laborious, interrupted by so many crises, disturbed by so many conflicts, that if humanity aspires to a better condition, it is mainly from her own efforts that she must expect a slightly more rapid progress.