CHAPTER V THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

 If social dynamics is a science, and if the law of the three states, discovered by Comte, is its fundamental law, this law (and those which proceed from it), must explain the successive phases of humanity, from the first dawn of civilisation, to the present condition of the most advanced nations. They must “introduce unity and continuity into this immense spectacle, where in general we see so much confusion and incoherence.”286 Thus the counterpart of social science is a philosophy of history. In it, social science finds its concrete expression and its verification. In the absence of the prevision of social facts for the future, a prevision which is rendered almost impossible by the extreme complication of these facts, social science at least allows of the “rational co-ordination” of the whole of the past.   In order to establish this philosophy of history, Comte gave himself two postulates. The first is common to him and to all those who endeavoured to set forth the evolution of humanity from its beginnings, especially before the recent progress made by anthropology. Comte “constructs” primitive man and the society in which he lived. The second postulate consists in considering, instead of the history of the whole of humanity, “the most complete and the most characteristic evolution,” that is to say, that of the white race; and in this race, only the populations of western Europe.287 Comte will277 almost confine himself to the periods dealt with by Bossuet in the Discours sur l’histoire universelle, which, moreover, he greatly esteems. His philosophy of history only embraces Egyptian civilisation, very little known in his time, then Greece and Rome, and finally after the fall of the Roman Empire, the development of some Latin and Germanic peoples in Europe.   We can understand that Bossuet should have so limited universal history as to include in it only a small portion of humanity gathered on the shores of the Mediterranean. He was obliged to do so by the leading idea in his work which makes the appearance of Christianity the culminating point in the human drama. All that precedes it must tend to bring it about, all that comes after it must arise from it. But is Auguste Comte, like Bossuet, justified in leaving out of universal history the great civilisations of the far east, almost the whole of Africa, and the whole of the new world? Since, according to him, there is no chosen people, nor “providential direction,” must he not consider the total evolution of humanity? He has no right to isolate a part of it in an arbitrary manner, and to neglect the rest. He has it all the less in that he considers the species in its entirety as an individual, and that this hypothesis of Condorcet has become a principle of social science with him.   But Comte believes his postulate to be as well justified by his definition of sociology, as Bossuet’s plan could have been by his theological doctrine. Resembling on this point the other positive sciences, sociology is made of laws not of facts. The pure and simple knowledge of facts is only an end from the point of view of scholarship. Science only seeks for this knowledge in the measure in which it is indispensable for the determination of laws. Consequently, if the evolution of human society proceeded simultaneously at different points278 on the globe, as, this evolution takes place, as we suppose, everywhere according to invariable laws, and as climate and race can only modify it within very narrow limits, the sociologist is not bound to study all the societies of the past and of the present. He will only do so in order to make use of the comparative method, in the measure which is judged useful and within the limitations permitted by this method. In the second place, among those historical evolutions, up to the present time independent of one another, to which will he give the preference to seek in it the verification of abstract social dynamics? Evidently to the most complete and the most characteristic: for there he will have least difficulty in disengaging the laws from the extraordinary complexity of facts. Have we not seen that the idea of progress, without which sociology cannot be constituted, has only been definitely formulated since the French Revolution? Comte then thought himself authorised to “limit his historical study to the sole examination of a homogeneous and continuous series, which was nevertheless justly qualified as universal.” At every moment in history, the people whose evolution is most advanced represent the whole of humanity since the rest of humanity is destined, sooner or later to pass through the same phase. Hence the idea, which is found equally in Hegel and in Renan, of a “mission” of races and of peoples. A temporary mission which, while it lasts, constitutes their might and their right, but which, too often, they have the misfortune to survive. I.   The positive philosophy of history takes as its guiding principle the idea of unity. In virtue of a postulate which is an audacious anticipation concerning an uncertain future, the human species, in it, is regarded as an immense social unity.279 Similarly, in it, the evolution of humanity is regarded as ending in the moral and religious unity of all men. Humanity goes from spontaneous religion where it begins, to demonstrated religion where it becomes finally established. Between the two lies the domain of history. The successive states through which humanity passes in evolving are not homogeneous. The theological and the positive spirit are mingled in them at various degrees. They struggle one against the other. These states then contain within themselves the principle of their own destruction. Each one necessarily prepares the appearance of the following one, until the final state in which the positive spirit alone will predominate.   The spring of these concrete views of history is the logical need of unity. It is this which determined the initial movement. For the primitive religions, unity was never perfect. Even at the period when fetichism rules without question, some rudiments of the positive spirit exist. Human nature, being invariable, the germ of its final state was already contained in a primitive state. From that time it was certain that, if humanity emerged from its primitive state, it would evolve until it found unity in the final religion.   If this be so, how is it that Comte did not regard the succession of religious forms as the supreme dynamic law, as the principle of the philosophy of history? Why did he believe rather that he had found this principle in the law of the evolution of philosophies? It is because, according to him, the evolution of religious forms is a function of intellectual evolution. It is even subordinate to intellectual evolution, in this sense, that progress in the knowledge of the laws of nature sooner or later brings about a religious revolution. In the second place, if the philosophy of history had chosen the succession of religious forms as its chief axis, it would only have studied the process of decomposition of beliefs, which, up to the present time, has led them from the period280 when all thought is religious (fetichism), to that when no thought seems to be so any more (philosophical deism). It would not show at the same time the inverse and simultaneous process of the positive spirit, which not only determines this progressive decomposition, but also prepares the elements of a new faith. It would not show how by degrees, by means of science, this spirit establishes a conception of nature which by becoming social will become universal, and which will be the basis of the final religion. This is why Comte, while making religion the chief element in individual and social human life, was nevertheless to take the evolution of the intellect, that is to say, the sciences and the philosophies, as the “guiding thread” of his philosophy of history. II.   It does not come within the purpose of this work to give even a summary outline of the philosophy of history developed by Comte first in the Cours de philosophie positive, and then in the third volume of the Politique positive. Neither shall we disengage the ingenious or profound views of detail with which it abounds. It will suffice for us to show how, according to Comte, the laws of social dynamics are always verified, and how apparent exceptions end by being interpreted in the direction of these laws.   Fetichism, properly so-called, was succeeded by astrology, then by polytheism, which was first conservative (the régime of castes in Egypt), then intellectual (Greece), and social (the Roman empire). With the Christian religion monotheism comes to be substituted to polytheism. But does not the theory of progress soon meet with an insurmountable obstacle? How does it explain the Middle Ages, that long succession of centuries which Voltaire and the philosophers had described as full of darkness, of superstition, and of ignorance, as the281 disgrace of history? How to reconcile this lamentable “retrogression” with the “continuity” of progress affirmed by social dynamics?   Auguste Comte’s answer is presented in two forms.   In the first place the “retrogression” was never complete. At the time when the Middle Ages were at their darkest in Europe, Arab civilisation was going through its most brilliant period. In it many of the sciences were going beyond the extreme point reached by them in antiquity. The continuity of evolution was then not interrupted. It suffices to understand, in conformity with the postulate laid down by Comte at the beginning of social dynamics, that, at this period, the Arabs were the part of humanity whose intellectual evolution was most advanced, and who, consequently, represented the rest.   But, above all, the current opinion concerning the Middle Ages is erroneous. The philosophers of the XVIII. century did not know it. They only saw this period through their prejudices, or rather they did not deign to look at it. Nevertheless, the whole spiritual movement of modern centuries goes back to those “memorable times, unjustly qualified as dark by metaphysical criticism, of which Protestantism was the first organ.”288   In the first place—and this is a capital proposition in historical philosophy289—the feudal régime as a temporal organisation, was the natural result of the situation of the Roman world. In any case it would have been formed, even if the invasions had not taken place. In virtue of the consensus which is the fundamental principle of social statics, the other series of phenomena which accompanied the establishment of the feudal régime were then also produced as a “natural development,” and it is a misunderstanding to see in them an interruption of “progress.” The superiority282 of Antiquity over the Middle Ages, especially in the fine arts, will be raised as an objection. But Comte only recognises this superiority in the plastic arts, and especially in sculpture.290 According to him, it is explained by certain features in Greek customs which were sure to make the people of antiquity incomparable in the art of expressing the beauty of the human form. For the rest, the ?sthetic education of humanity “progressed during the Middle Ages. Architecture produced marvels of which antiquity had no idea. Dante is a unique poet. Modern music has its origin in the old Gregorian. Finally, the art of the Middle Ages presented two characteristics which the art of the aristocratic societies of antiquity did not possess, at least in the same degree. It was spontaneous, that is to say, in full natural harmony with the whole of the surrounding conditions. Consequently, it was popular, it expressed marvellously for the people, the very soul of the people.   If then it be true that “the mainspring of the fine arts is to be found under the sway of polytheism,” none the less has the development of our ?sthetic faculties been continuous: and the law of progress has not been reversed. It is true that since antiquity these faculties have not found a combination of such favourable circumstances, such a direct and energetic stimulus; but that proves nothing “against their intrinsic activity, nor against the real merit of their productions.” The ?sthetic spirit has become more widespread, more varied, and even more complete than it could ever have been in antiquity.291 Hence it is that the Renaissance did more harm than good to the fine arts. It inspired an exclusive and servile admiration for the masterpieces of antiquity, which are related to an absolute social system. “In this sense,” says Comte, “the appreciation of the present romantic school only sins in the direction of historical exaggeration; but its recriminations are far from being groundless.”292   283   Similarly, the intellectual activity of the Middle Ages has been very unjustly treated. Certainly, positive philosophy cannot be suspected of partiality in favour of theological dogmas and metaphysical subtleties. But, just as in physics we distinguish the material changes, which are within reach of our senses, and the molecular movements which escape them, so at certain periods the human intellect produces outside itself works which testify to its activity, and at other moments, without being less active its labour remains an internal one. There are periods of secret and silent preparation. Such, for instance, was the first portion of the Middle Ages. Far from the human mind remaining stationary and inactive at that time it did, on the contrary, a very considerable work: it was creating the modern languages, that is to say, the indispensable instrument for subsequent progress of thought.   We must also be fair to two immense series of labours, (alchemy and astrology), which have contributed so greatly and for so long to the development of human reason. In coming after the astrologers and the alchemists, modern scientific men not only found “science roughly outlined by the perseverance of these bold precursors,”293 they further received from them the indispensable principle of the invariability of natural laws. Astrology tended to suggest a high view of human wisdom. Alchemy restored the feeling of man’s power, which had been lowered by theological beliefs. In speaking of Roger Bacon, Comte goes so far as to say that the greater number of the scientific men of to-day who despise the Middle Ages so much, would be incapable not only of writing but even of reading “the great composition of this admirable monk,” on account of the immense variety of views on all orders of phenomena contained in it.294   Comte further enlarges with pleasure upon the mutual284 obligations of feudal tenure, “an admirable combination of the instinct of independence and of the feeling of devotion,” upon the appearance of chivalry, upon the raising of the condition of women, upon the enfranchisement of the commons upon the formation of the tiers état, etc.295 Like the romantic school, being preoccupied with the duty of fighting the systematic detractors of the Middle Ages, he goes to the opposite extreme. He no longer sees the famines, the the plagues, the stakes, the interminable wars. He is not content with showing that, in spite of all, the Middle Ages was a period of progress. He wants it to be a model period, in which we should find the indication, in all essential aspects, of the programme which we are to realise to-day.296   The secret of Comte’s partiality for the Middle Ages is not hard to discover. He never tires of praising the Catholic organisation of this period, the separation of the temporal from the spiritual power,297 last of all “the miracle of the papal hegemony.” Nothing of the kind was known in antiquity. That alone suffices to establish the superiority of the Middle Ages. Positive philosophy will restore this separation of the two powers to-day. It will complete the “admirable sketch” drawn of old by the Catholic Church.   Positivism, says Huxley, is “Catholicism minus Christianity.” Comte would not have protested very violently against this definition. Indeed, in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, he distinguishes between the doctrine and the institutions. The doctrine is on the decline and will disappear. But the institutions were masterpieces of political wisdom, and they have only been ruined by having seemed to be inseparable from this doctrine. They ought to be re-established upon intellectual bases at once broader and more permanent.298 Positive philosophy furnishes these bases. It285 will know how to restore the “government of souls,” according to the model left by the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages.   It has often been said that the social action of Catholicism was especially due to its moral teaching. Comte reverses this proposition. The moral efficacy of Catholicism principally depended upon the constitution of the Church, and only in an accessory way upon its doctrine.299 Without the constant action of an organised spiritual power, a religion, however pure it may be, cannot have much power over the conduct of men. Catholicism had understood this. It had founded a system of common education which was equally received by rich and poor. Morality thus acquired the “ascendency which belongs to it.” The feelings were subjected to an admirable discipline, which exerted itself to uproot even the smallest seeds of corruption.300   To conclude, “the eternal honour”301 of Catholicism is to have brought a decisive improvement into the theory of the social organism, by the separation of the two powers. Many causes have contributed to its being misunderstood; the excessive admiration of the modern historians for the city of classical times, the partiality of Protestants for the early Church, and finally the contempt of philosophers for the supposed darkness of the Middle Ages. We judge of it better to-day. Positive philosophy does not confine itself to rehabilitating the Catholic organisation: it takes it up again on its own account. “The more I investigate this immense subject,” writes Comte to John Stuart Mill, “the more confirmed I become in the view which I already held twenty years ago, at the time of my work upon the spiritual power, of regarding ourselves, we, systematic positivists, as the real successors of the great men of the Middle Ages, by taking up the social work again at the point to which Catholicism had carried it.”302 Undoubtedly the286 conditions are not the same to-day, and we must take the differences into account. But as to the extent and the intensity of action, we may say that for each of the social relations on which the Catholic clergy had to pronounce, an analogous attribution exists for the modern spiritual power.303 In a word, excepting for the dogma, Comte borrows from the Catholicism of the Middle Ages almost everything, its organisation, its régime, its worship, and, if he could, its clergy and its cathedrals. His religion will be a Catholicism raised upon another basis. III.   The separation between the temporal and spiritual power realised by Catholicism in the Middle Ages marks a decisive progress in the history of humanity. But it was not finally established. The régime of which it formed a part was bound to disappear, because of the “mutual antipathy” between the elements included within it. The Catholic organisation of the thirteenth century was first shaken and then destroyed by the advancing ascendancy of the positive spirit, and the resistance of theological dogma. From this “organic” period European society has passed to a “critical” period which has filled centuries, and which positive philosophy alone is able to bring to a close. The whole of modern history, political, religious, scientific, ?sthetic, economic, etc., is, at bottom, merely the succession of the necessary stages in this double work; the decomposition of the régime of the Middle Ages, and the preparation for the positive period. In a first phase, which occupies the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the movement remains a spontaneous one. It ignores the end to which it is tending. In the second, which extends to the end of the eighteenth century, the disorganisa287tion becomes deeper under the influence of an entirely negative philosophy.304   The first signs of the decomposition which was beginning were of an economic order. The phenomena of this order are indeed a factor of the highest importance in the whole of social life. The economic evolution, according to Comte, necessarily precedes the ?sthetic and scientific evolution. It is the former, far more than the two latter, which characterises our civilisation in contrast with the societies of antiquity.305 Through it the organisation of modern societies was to begin. The freeing of the serfs, the foundation of independent urban communes, the transformation of industry which arose from this, are described by Comte almost in the same terms as those used by Augustin Thierry, (who like him had worked by the side of Saint-Simon). It is the ending of an economic organisation, and the heralding of a new régime.   When this spontaneous decomposition had reached a certain point, the critical doctrines could appear and push it further. But, to see in these doctrines the original cause of this great movement, is to credit them with an exaggerated influence, and even, strictly speaking, an incomprehensible one. In order that doctrines may arise and prosper they must find favourable ground. The contrary opinion exaggerates “beyond all possibility” the political influence of the intellect, and creates a kind of vicious circle.306   The principle of “free examination” was at first, in the XVI century, only a natural result of the new social situation gradually brought about by the two preceding centuries. For this principle corresponds to a state of “non-government” of minds. And this state, in turn, comes from the progressive dissolution of mental discipline. It lasts so long as a spiritual power has not been reconstituted upon new foundations. In a society where spiritual power is normally288 exercised, that is to say, where it governs the universality of minds, united by a body of common beliefs, the need of intellectual liberty is not developed in individuals. At any rate it does not challenge unanimously accepted principles. But, when this power is weakened, the principles begin to be discussed. Each one soon claims to be a judge of their value. Everything then depends on the combination of social conditions. We can no more produce than we can stifle this disposition of minds, “outside the conditions which are favourable or unfavourable to it.” It is only developed during the periods which are not “organic.” “It is through having misunderstood this law of social statics that so many historical errors have been committed, in which the symptom is mistaken for the cause, and the result for the principle.”307   The first general form of the principle of freedom of examination expressed itself in Protestantism. In it this freedom at first remained confined within the more or less narrow limits of Christian theology. The spirit of criticism at first especially endeavoured, in the very name of Christianity, to ruin the admirable system of the Catholic hierarchy, which was its social realisation. This is the characteristic inconsequence of the metaphysical spirit, which always denies the logical deductions while claiming to maintain the principles, and which, in this particular case, aspired to reform Christianity at the same time that it destroyed the necessary conditions of its existence, that is to say, its organisation.   In the same way, as in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, Comte chiefly admires “the masterpiece of political wisdom,” which knew how to separate the attributes of temporal power from those of spiritual power; so in Protestantism he especially sees the destructive principle of this masterpiece. He unceasingly reproaches it with having subordinated289 the spiritual to the temporal power in the whole of Europe. This “chief perturbation” was the origin of all the others. In accordance with the leaders of the traditionalist school, with de Maistre and de Bonald in France, with Haller in Germany, Comte insists upon the close relationship between the Protestant spirit and the revolutionary spirit. Once it has been demanded, the right of examination spreads by a necessity which is at once mental and social and cannot be overcome, to all individuals and all questions. The name of Protestantism should not be restricted to religious reform. It is no less suitable for the whole of the revolutionary philosophy. For this philosophy, from Lutheranism to the Deism of the XVIII. century, “without excluding Atheism which constitutes its extreme phase” is a protestation, at first against the principles of the old social order, and then against any organisation, whatever.308   The “absolute and indefinite” dogma of free examination sets up each individual judgment as an arbiter upon all social questions. From this dogma gradually emerge absolute liberty in speaking and writing, the political sovereignty of the masses at will creating or destroying institutions, the equality of all men, the isolation of nations: in a word, as Haller has said, “social and political atomism.” These consequences had become inevitable from the day when Protestantism gave the supreme decision in religious questions to every one, without taking into account conditions either of competence, or authority. This first step was a decisive one. If, supposing an impossibility, modern society were replaced in the state in which it was when Protestantism succeeded in becoming established, the same necessary succession of social and political consequences would again unfold themselves.   After that, it matters little that Protestantism should have fought against the revolutionary spirit, and that it should290 have disavowed “anarchical” philosophy. It matters little that it should have made repeated efforts to constitute a spiritual authority, and that it should have produced a multitude of sects “of which each pitied the preceding one and abhorred the one which followed it.”309 Whatever it may do, Protestantism remains purely critical, negative and disorganising. Consequently the part it plays can only be transitory. It contains no element which the positive organisation should preserve. It naturally ends in philosophical Deism.   This Deism appears as early as the XVII. century in England, and in Holland with Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle. The right of examination is henceforth recognised as indefinite in principle, but in fact, it is thought possible to maintain the metaphysical discussion within the more general limits of monotheism.310 At bottom they continue “to destroy religion in the name of the religious principle.” A “rational theology” is constructed; and the natural religion, dear to the XVIII. century, is finally reached.   Now, in Comte’s eyes, rational theology is an “incoherent expression,”311 and natural religion “a monstrous drawing together of terms.” As if every religion (with the exception of the positive one), was not necessarily supernatural! The harmony between reason and belief, even when sought for with perfect sincerity, is deadly for faith. For the strength of theological conceptions lies in their spontaneity. Logical proof, even admitting that it be really demonstrative, never fortifies and can only weaken them. The innumerable proofs of the existence of God which have appeared since the XII. century, not only state the bold doubts of which this existence has been the object: it can also be asserted that they have largely contributed to the propagation of those doubts, “either through the contempt which the weakness of many291 of these arguments was bound to reflect upon ancient beliefs, or even by consideration of the strongest of these arguments.”312 Popular instinct was not mistaken in calling the metaphysicians who were working at these proofs atheists. Their work was essentially anti-theological. Our century sees it in another light. As the decay of theology still continues, that which formerly was judged by public opinion as impious, may to-day appear to be a pious occupation.   The criticism of religious beliefs has been developed and spread without giving too much offence to temporal power, thanks to the care taken by philosophers in general to reassure it upon the immediate consequences of their labours. Hobbes in the XVII. century, Voltaire in the XVIII. are as conservative from the political point of view as they are revolutionary from the religious point of view. The precaution was a very wise one on their part. But it did not arrest the consequences which arose from their principles. Critical philosophy, urging the dogma of the freedom of examination to the assault of all the principles of the established régime, shook and ruined them one after the other, until the “final explosion” of the French Revolution. This was the conclusion in fact of the long work of decomposition which had been going on during five centuries. The old régime was rotten; the Revolution overturned it, meaning to clear the ground.   But did it lay down the basis of the régime which was to succeed this one? It did not, replies Comte with Saint-Simon and de Maistre. He admires the energy of the political gifts of the Convention. Nevertheless it was wrong in believing that “critical” principles could take the place and carry out the functions of “organic” principles. So long as the struggle lasted, the critical principles had been all the more effective in that they were credited with an absolute value. Thus the292 dogma of boundless liberty of conscience had served to destroy the spiritual power of the catholic clergy, the dogma of the sovereignty of the people to upset the temporal government, finally the dogma of natural equality to decompose the system of social classes. But, once the old régime was abolished the error of taking these dogmas as the basis of “reorganisation” was committed.   It was not seen that they were incompatible not only with the régime which they had just destroyed, but with any social system whatever. In this way it is moral and political disorder which was upheld as the end of social perfection. For, each of the dogmas of the critical doctrine, when it is taken in an organic sense, “comes exactly to lay down as a principle that in this particular respect society must not be organised.”313   What becomes of government, for instance in this system? “By a direct and total supervision of the most fundamental political notions,” government is represented, the necessary enemy of society.314 The latter must always hold it in a state of suspicion and of supervision, it must more and more restrict its modes of activity, and finally only leave it functions of general police, without its contributing in any way to the direction of the collective life and social development. In a word, with no action upon ideas, upon beliefs or feelings, the government would only have charge of the protection of interests. But is not this formally denying the very idea of government, which by definition, should on the contrary represent “the spirit of the whole,” and the “directing function” of society? Is it not giving up at the same time the great progress realised by the Middle Ages, that is to say a spiritual power independent of the temporal power? Even considering interests alone, this system only maintains order with great difficulty. It is obliged to have recourse to corruption, and it leads to continual increase in public expenditure.   293   The principles of critical philosophy cannot then be used as a foundation for a new social organisation. The attempt has been made and has been condemned by history. This failure could have been foretold. For, being essentially metaphysical, this philosophy implies a contradiction which necessarily renders it powerless. It tends to preserve the general bases of the old political system, whose chief conditions of existence it has however destroyed.315 There is a very close relationship between the natural religion of philosophers and the political conceptions of the revolutionists. The latter are still connected by their deepest roots with the old order of beliefs which they have fought against with all their strength. Liberty, equality, the sovereignty of the people, the whole of the “absolute” rights which constitute the basis of the revolutionary doctrine is shielded, in the last place, by a kind of “religious although vague consecration.” The French Revolution was the work of the Deists. Comte has set apart the thinkers of the XVIII century whom he considers as his precursors, that is to say, as the anticipatory representatives of the positive spirit: Fontenelle, Hume, Montesquieu, Diderot, and d’Alembert, Turgot, Condorcet and a few others. He judges the rest of the philosophy of the century more severely. He does not spare the Encyclopédie, and in the majority of the philosophical writings of this period he finds little but “a frivolous and feeble sophistic argumentation.” Circumstances almost alone have made its success. This philosophy is incomparably inferior to that which the counter-revolution opposed to it. In the logical respect which finally predominates, says Comte, the revolutionary criticism cannot to-day resist the system of the “retrograde school.” In a regular discussion, the latter would soon have compelled it to admit that it allows the essential principles of the old régime while refusing to accept their most indispensable consequences.316   294   The inmost contradiction from which the revolutionary philosophy suffers will become more and more apparent. A not far distant moment will arrive when the effort to restore the past will include a large number of those who have contributed to its destruction. The partisans of natural religion, and even those of the most advanced Deism will rally to Catholicism as to the real foundation of the social organisation which they defend. The alternative will then be set up between the only two solutions which are logical and organic: either the old régime, with the Catholic organisation, or the new, with the positive organisation. Between these two there is no room for the critical, liberal, metaphysical, revolutionary system, which, by whatever name it may be called, signifies “no organisation at all.” IV.   The old régime was bound to perish because in it, the social organisation was connected with a system of beliefs and of dogmas which could not withstand the spirit of investigation. In order that the new régime may escape this cause of death, must it be able without suffering to bear the indefinite exercise of an absolute freedom of examination?——No, replies Comte, there is no system capable of enduring under these conditions. But it suffices that in constituting itself, the new faith, which is the basis of social order, should have undergone the test of free examination as we see it practised in the positive sciences. It suffices that, instead of a revealed faith, we should have a demonstrated faith which will then be immovable, and which will no more have to be called in question.   Comte then admits the preliminary test, but he is opposed to free examination indefinitely renewed. This distinction allows us to reconcile some of his declarations which otherwise would appear contradictory. His language differs according295 as he speaks of the positive dogma in the process of formation, or of that dogma once it has been formed. When it is in process of formation the dogma is subject to criticism, and if it is not victorious in resisting it it does not become an object of belief. No matter how much we may deplore the ever-dissolving energy of the spirit of analysis and of examination, it remains beneficial none the less, by compelling, for the intellectual and moral reorganisation, the production of a philosophy capable of sustaining the decisive test of a deep discussion, “freely prolonged until the entire conviction of public reason” has taken place. This is a condition from which nothing henceforth can exempt us.317 The spiritual reorganisation, says Comte, will be the result of purely intellectual action. It supposes a voluntary and unanimous assent at the end of complete discussion without the intervention of the spiritual powers to hasten the conclusion.   But does it follow that freedom of examination should remain indefinitely without limits? Undoubtedly it has been a good thing that men should see in this liberty an indefeasible right which they were all to enjoy. The dissolution of old beliefs in this way was easier and more rapid. The better this “singular phase” in our social development is analysed, the more will the conviction gain ground that without the conquest and use of this unlimited freedom social reorganisation could not have been prepared. But this singular phase was a transitory one. When it has been gone through, when common principles have again become universally accepted, “after sufficient verification,” the right of examination will again return within its normal and permanent limits, which consist in discussing the connection of consequences with fundamental and uniformly respected rules, but without again questioning these rules themselves.318   The question then reduces itself to knowing when the test296 may be legitimately considered as at an end. Will the individual approbation of all the members of society be required, and a kind of consecration by universal suffrage? As a matter of fact, such unanimity will perhaps never be realised. In justice it is not necessary. When we demand it we forget that Politic science is a positive science, the highest and most complicated of all. No one possesses any authority in the sciences if he is not competent. The people has no thought of making its opinion prevail in them; and, in matters of science, all who are not in a condition to understand demonstrations are the people. The convergence of intellects presupposes the voluntary and intentional renunciation on the part of the greater number of their “sovereign right of examination.”319   In this way the right is taken from no one. The use of it is simply intrusted by those who are incompetent to the competent ones. This intrusting, freely accepted by all, lasts as long as the conditions which made it necessary. No moral order could be compatible with the “wandering liberty of minds at the present time,” if it were to persist indefinitely. It is not possible that any man, whether he be competent or not, should every day call into discussion the very bases of society. “Systematic tolerance cannot exist, and has never really existed, except on the subject of opinions which are regarded as indifferent or as doubtful.”320   Such is the meaning of the celebrated passages on liberty of conscience with which Comte has so often been reproached. He had written it in 1822, and quoted it himself in the fourth volume of the Cours de philosophie positive,321 never suspecting that anything could be said against it. “There is no liberty of conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, in physiology, in the sense that everyone would deem it absurd not to take on trust the principles established in these sciences297 by competent men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is because the old principles have fallen, and, as the new ones are not yet formed, there are, properly speaking, in this interval no established principles.” It is then in no way a question of imposing beliefs upon men of which they are not to judge, by a kind of spiritual despotism. Comte merely wishes to extend to politics, considered as a positive science, what is admitted in the other sciences by common consent. V.   Without much trouble, it is easy to see whence originate the essential features of this philosophy of history. In so far as it represents the development of humanity as subject to a law of evolution, which causes it to go through a succession of phases whose order is rationally determined, in a word as progress, the leading-idea is due to Comte’s “spiritual father,” to Condorcet.   For the interpretation of more recent events, and for the judgment passed upon the Middle Ages, Comte draws his inspiration from Joseph de Maistre, from the traditionalist school, and from Saint-Simon. To the latter, among other ideas, Comte owes the distinction between the critical and the organic periods. But, on Comte’s own confession, Joseph de Maistre’s influence over his mind was especially decisive. Like de Maistre, he thinks that the entirely negative philosophy of the XVIII. century knew very well how to destroy, but showed itself powerless to construct. Like de Maistre again, he is persuaded of the fact that social order requires a spiritual power beside the temporal power, and that the régime of the Middle Ages was a “masterpiece of political wisdom” precisely because at that period the Catholic Church had brought about the independence of the spiritual power. Finally, like de Maistre, he makes the salvation of humanity298 in the future depend upon their return to a unity of beliefs.   Comte then equally proceeds from the learned ideologist with whom the philosophical effort of the XVIII. century ends, and from the ardent traditionalist for whom this very century is the abhorred period of error and of moral perversion. He undertakes, not indeed to reconcile them (who can reconcile things which exclude each other?), but to found a more comprehensive doctrine in which he will combine what he has received from the one and the other. As such his own task appears to him, and he does not believe it to be above his power; he feels himself in a position to avoid the mistakes which his predecessors were bound to make. Condorcet had a clear idea of social science; but that did not prevent him from misunderstanding the real onward movement of the human mind, and only to estimate his own century justly at the expense of preceding periods. De Maistre in his turn, no less prejudiced, though in another way, does not understand history any better. To restore society, to re-establish it in the state in which it was in the XIII. century, he goes to absurd lengths. He claims to take no notice of the advance of civilisation, and of the development of the sciences. Condorcet, who brought to light the idea of progress, understood nothing in the Middle Ages. De Maistre, who so clearly saw the excellence of the Middle Ages, denies the glaring fact of progress.   Both are excusable, because they were still too close to the French Revolution to grasp its full meaning. In the heart of the fray they were still partially blinded. Comte, who sees things from a greater distance, also sees them from a higher standpoint. He especially has at his disposal an instrument which neither Condorcet nor de Maistre possessed: he has completed the positive method, and he applies it to the science of historical phenomena. In a word, he has founded Sociology.   299   If he did not push social science as far forward as he believed, at any rate he was right in thinking that his originality lay in this attempt. The problem was clearly set: to blend into a new and positive science the social ideas proceeding from the speculation of the XVIII. century with the historical truths brought to light by the adversaries of this philosophy. The solution given by Comte is the very soul of his system. By a twofold and vigorous effort, he created “social physics.” On the one hand, he carries to the past the idea of progress which Condorcet could only apply to the future, and this allowed him to institute a positive philosophy of history. At the same time, he projects into the future that spiritual order which de Maistre had only seen in the past, and this furnishes him with the frame for his “social reorganisation”.   This philosophy of history, which no longer contains anything metaphysical, is social dynamics; this “reorganisation” of society, by means of a spiritual power, will be the positive polity.