CHAPTER III THE IDEA OF HUMANITY

 In this world there is nothing absolute, everything is relative; Comte wrote this to his friend Valat as early as 1818.354 But as a matter of fact, there exists a supreme reality to which all others are subordinated, the idea of which is the principle of a rational conception of the world. Comte calls this reality humanity. Instead of being the ultimate end of all thought and all action “in itself,” it is the ultimate end “for us.” But this difference simply signifies that the new philosophy leaves the metaphysical for the positive point of view. With these limitations the idea of humanity “corresponds” to the old idea of the absolute. It takes its place and fulfils its religious part. It is truly, if one dares to say so, a “relative absolute.”   In Comte’s doctrine, the idea of humanity is presented under several successive aspects, or, to put it better, the development of his system has brought to light, in turns, the various attributes of this “Great Being.” In his first career, Comte prefers to consider humanity as an object of science. In his second career, it rather appears to him as an object of adoration and of love. Here we can follow the progress of the mystical and religious feeling which, especially from 1846, filled his thoughts and modified his language, his philosophical doctrine, nevertheless, remaining essentially the same.   334 I.   We must not, says Comte, define Humanity by man, but on the contrary man by Humanity. In general this formula is understood in a moral and social sense. It is understood as a condemnation of “individualism,” and one of the directing principles of the positivist régime. This interpretation is not a false one, and consequences of this kind can indeed be drawn from Comte’s formula. But they are only consequences. The immediate object of the formula is not to subordinate the individual to the multitude. In the first place it expresses a fact. If we consider a man by himself, positive science only allows us to define him as an animal, in whom as in all others, the end of animal life is to insure organic life. Do we wish to define him by what is essentially human in him, that is to say, by intellect and sociability? One must then pass from the consideration of the individual to that of the species. From the strictly biological point of view M. Bonald’s saying must be reversed; we must say that man is an organism served by an intellect. It is only if we leave the biological for the social point of view, if we look upon the human species as a single “immense and eternal” individual (a conception which is justified by the continued development of intelligence and sociability),355 that we can consider the voluntary and systematic subordination of vegative to animal life as the ideal type towards which civilised humanity is tending. We can then make use of this subordination to refine it. In a word, we are really men only by our participation of humanity.   The essential attributes of this “immense and eternal social unity” are solidarity and continuity.356 These attributes are at once social and moral and it could have no others. The attributes of the theological and metaphysical absolute had reference to the categories of substance, of cause, of time, of space, etc.335 It was one, simple, infinite, etc., all often incomprehensible and contradictory expressions of this idea that the supreme principle is “absolute.” On the contrary, positive philosophy admits that in the scale of beings, dependence grows with dignity. Humanity, which is the most “complex” and the “noblest” of all beings known to us, is therefore also the most dependent. Its existence will necessarily end with that of the planet which it inhabits. Its unity is one of “collection.” It is imperfect and subject to crises of all kinds. Such as it is, however, science and morality show us in it the highest term which our mind can reach, the loftiest ideal which our heart can love, and finally the object most worthy of our devotion.   Human solidarity has been studied by statical sociology. We have seen with what admiration the social consensus inspired Comte, a consensus, according to him, even closer and more intimate than the vital consensus. Positive education will develop the feeling of solidarity and make it the principle of moral instruction. Every individual in all his ways of thinking and acting, will be imbued with two convictions which imply one another. In the first place he will know that he is only really a man by his participation in humanity, since his intelligence and his morality are essentially social things. He will also know that the life of humanity is in part made up of what he brings to it, and that each of his actions, independently of his will has a social interest and a social counterpart. Once we are thoroughly persuaded that we live in humanity and by humanity, we shall also become convinced that we must live for humanity. Malebranche said that God is the locus of intellects: Comte would readily say that humanity is the locus of good wills.   As, in sociology, dynamics is more important than statics, so among the attributes of humanity, continuity is placed above solidarity. Not only are the individuals and the peoples of the same epoch bound by a common solidarity, but the successive336 generations co-operate in the same work. Each one has its “determined participation” in it: and their combination in time produces “a still nobler and more perfect conception of human unity.” This is the conception which Comte admired so much in Condorcet, which he borrowed from him, and which he developed in the positive idea of progress.   Humanity so understood will inspire us with the strongest feelings of gratitude. Do we not owe to her all that is good, precious and human in us? Man will see “co-operators” in the men of all time.357 Each of us has to reflect only upon his physical, intellectual and moral being to realise what he owes to the whole of his predecessors. The man who would think himself independent of others could not even formulate this error (which in Comte’s eyes becomes blasphemy) without contradicting himself; for is not language itself a collective and social work?358   History will become the “sacred science” of humanity. To put it more simply, it will be the ever clearer consciousness which humanity will have of itself, through the study of its intellectual and moral activity in the past. Gradually, with the progress of the historical spirit, the idea of an evolution subject to laws, the idea of “order conceived as capable of development,” will become substituted to the prejudice which attributes to man boundless power of action upon social facts. It will become apparent that the part played by each generation in the common work of humanity is necessarily a very small one, as compared with what is transmitted to it by previous generations. To refuse this inheritance would be to refuse to be what we are: it would be an absurd and immoral pretention, and, moreover, entirely fruitless. It is impossible for man to disown humanity without ceasing to exist. He necessarily represents, while he lives, a long past of intellectual and moral efforts. And this is the most essential attribute of337 human life, although we meet with more or less developed solidarity also among other animal species. But continuity belongs to humanity alone. In a word, according to Comte’s fine formula: “Humanity is made up more of the dead than of the living.”   However, neither the “yoke” which presses upon the living with all the weight of history and of prehistoric times, nor the consensus which makes of humanity a great “collective organism” take from man his liberty of action. The consequence of human solidarity and continuity is not a kind of fatalism. Individuals remain responsible. We must regard them neither as the wheels in a machine, nor as the cells in an organism, nor as the members of an animal colony. Humanity is not a polyp. This comparison, says Comte, “shows a very imperfect philosophical appreciation of our social solidarity, and a great biological ignorance of the kind of existence peculiar to polypi.”359 It likens a voluntary and deliberate association to an involuntary and indissoluble participation. Humanity, as a collective organism, stands out, on the contrary, as distinct by its own characteristics from animal colonies. In these colonies, the individuals are physically bound together and physiologically independent. In humanity, the individuals are independent physically, and are only bound together in space and in time by their highest functions.   Thus this “immense organism” is especially distinguished from other beings in that it is made up of separable elements, of which each one can feel its own co-operation, can will it, or even withhold it, so long as it remains a direct one.360 The individual undoubtedly cannot “unhumanise” himself: that is too evident. But he retains a partial independence. As he can collaborate in the collective work by free consent, he is also free to impede it in the measure of his strength. Briefly, although the evolution of the Great Being is subject338 to laws, every individuality, far from being annulled,361 plays its part and can have its merit in it. The very knowledge of sociological laws is a rule for human activity and not a tyranny. II.   In the latter part of his life, Comte drew out precisely the features of what he henceforth called the new Great Being. Although we were not here to undertake to write an account of positive religion, we must nevertheless, in a few words, indicate the form which this supreme idea ended by assuming in Comte’s mind.   Firstly, humanity is not conceived simply as the sum of all the individuals or human groups present, past and future. For all men are necessarily born children of humanity; but all do not become her servants. Many remain in the condition of parasites. All those who are not or were not “sufficiently assimilable,”362 all those who were only a burden to our species, do not form a part of the Great Being. A selection takes place among men. Some finally enter into humanity never to leave it; others leave it never to return. The selection takes place according to the life they have preferred. Those who have lived in the purely biological sense of the word, that is to say, those in whom the higher faculties have been made to serve the organic function, those whom with brutal energy Comte calls “producteurs de fumier,”363 will only have been part of humanity in a transitory manner. Death for them, as for their anatomical system, will be an end without further appeal. Those in whom the “sublime inversion” has been accomplished, or at least those who have made an effort to subordinate the organic to the higher functions, those finally who have worked for a pre-eminently339 human end: to make the intellect predominate over the inclinations, and altruism over egoism; those having lived for humanity will always live in her. human end: to make the intellect predominate over the inclinations, and altruism over egoism; those having lived for humanity will always live in her.   As the conduct of each one can only be finally judged after his death, humanity is essentially made up of the dead and “the admission of the living within her will hardly ever be more than provisional.”364 Each generation, while it lives, furnishes the indispensable physiological substratum for the exercise of the superior human functions. But this privilege which momentarily distinguishes it from the others, soon slips away from it, as it slipped away from the preceding ones, and from the men of which they were composed; they alone who are worthy of it are incorporated into humanity. Moreover, they are only incorporated in it by their noblest elements. Death causes them to pass through a “purification.”   This theory allows Comte to attain at the same time two results, which he considers equally desirable. In the first place, the religious idea of humanity remains in perfect accordance with the idea given of it by biology and sociology. Humanity conceived as the Great Being, is a kind of hypostasis of the functions by which man tends to become distinguished from the animal. It is the progressive realisation through time, of the intellectual and moral potentialities contained in human nature: it is also its ideal impersonation. In this last sense, it becomes an object of love and adoration. Thus, the positivist religion naturally leads to a “commemoration” of great men, the benefactors of humanity. Here we have one of the ideas which were defined very early in Comte’s mind.   On the other hand, the desire for immortality is very strong in the heart of man. On principle Comte recognised at any rate a provisional value in all that arises spontaneously from human nature. In science he saw a prolongation of “public reason,” in systematic morality a development of spontaneous340 morality. He was thus led to take into account the almost irresistible tendency which impels man to desire to triumph over death.365 This tendency, up to the present time, has satisfied itself by means of illusions. But beliefs of this kind have become incompatible with the progress of our mental evolution. Moreover, the social efficacy of hopes and fears concerning the future life has been much exaggerated. As a matter of fact, says Comte (and the science of religions bears him out on this point), the tendency to desire, and consequently to accept the idea of an ultimate survival, existed for a long time before it was made use of to support religious beliefs or to preserve public order. Here, again, positive philosophy does not deny, does not destroy: it transforms. To the chimerical and vulgar notion of objective immortality, it substitutes the notion, which is alone acceptable, of subjective immortality. The same doctrine which takes from us the consolations so dear to past generations, gives us an adequate compensation, by allowing each one to hope that he may be united to the Great Being.   “To continue to live in others,” is a very real mode of existence.366 It is the only one which we can hope for after death; but it is also the only one which we ought to desire, if it be true that what most constitutes ourselves in us does not consist in the individual in the biological sense of the word, but truly in intelligence and good will, that is to say, in the social and human element. He who has only lived for himself, who has selfishly sought for life, has lost it: for death takes him away altogether. He who has lived for others, he who has not sought life for himself, has found it: for he survives in others. In the religions of the past, salvation was found in union with God: in the positive religion, salvation is found in union with humanity.   Once incorporated in the Great Being, the individual341 becomes inseparable from it.367 Being from that time withdrawn from the influence of all the physical laws, he only remains subjected to the higher laws which regulate directly the evolution of humanity. Being even withdrawn from the influence of the laws of time and space, he can live again at the same time in several organisms. Do we not see that the thought of a poet, of an artist, of a man of science revives in a great number of living men at the same time on the most distant points of the globe? Subjective immortality, renewed by an uninterrupted sequence of successive resurrections, will last as long as humanity itself. “To live with the dead,” says Comte “constitutes one of our most precious privileges.”368 But, in the same way, the dead live with us. They live in us, and those who have been most truly men, those who have made humanity by the effort of their intellect and their will, they are within us the best and most lasting part of ourselves. For, when our generation disappears, it is this part of us which will survive. We shall also survive in the measure in which we have contributed to the increase of this inheritance, in the measure in which we shall have deserved well of our contemporaries and our successors. The present life is a trial. The “subjective” life, that is to say, incorporation into humanity, is at once a liberation and a reward for those who have passed victoriously through this trial.369 We see to what extent the old moral and religious ideal subsists in the positive conception. We are little surprised at this, when we know that, towards the end of his life, Comte made the Imitation his daily reading.   It is then towards the idea of humanity as their centre that the scientific, social and religious ideas of Auguste Comte converge. If this convergence be perfect, his work is accomplished. Henceforth mental and moral anarchy is cured; political and religious anarchy is about to disappear. Unity342 will be everywhere re-established. This is already done in the understanding, since henceforth all our conceptions are homogenous, that is to say positive, since the same method is made use of in all our researches, since finally the whole sum of the sciences is regulated from the social point of view. Unity is also accomplished in the whole soul, since the intellect, henceforth conscious of its laws and of its essential functions, subjects itself to the heart, to be directed by love. Finally, unity will be brought about in society, since a new spiritual power, possessed of universally admitted principles, will give to all men and women a common education, will teach them all the same morality, and will rally them all within a same religion of love and goodness. The harmony which is realised in the individual soul is the symbol and, as it were, the guarantee of the harmony which will be established in the social body. Undoubtedly, obstacles remain to be overcome. The positive spirit must still struggle to become altogether universal. The old mental régime will not disappear without struggles which, Comte foresees, will be both formidable and bloody. But these crises, however acute they may be, cannot prevent the human evolution from taking place in accordance with its law.