CHAPTER II
THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF POSITIVISM, AS SHOWN BY ITS CONNEXION WITH THE GENERAL REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT OF WESTERN EUROPE
As the chief characteristic of Positive Philosophy is the paramount importance that is given, and that on speculative grounds, to social considerations, its efficiency for the purposes of practical life is involved in the very spirit of the system. When this spirit is rightly understood, we find that it leads at once to an object far higher than that of satisfying our scientific curiosity; the object, namely, of organizing human life. Conversely, this practical aspect of Positive Philosophy exercises the most salutary influence upon its speculative character. By keeping constantly before us the necessity of concentrating all scientific efforts upon the social object which constitutes their value, we take the best possible means of checking the tendency inherent in all abstract inquiries to degenerate into useless digressions. But this general connexion between theory and practice would not by itself be sufficient for our purpose. It would be impossible to secure the acceptance of a mental discipline, so new and so difficult, were it not for considerations derived from the general conditions of modern society; considerations calculated to impress philosophers with a more definite sense of obligation to do their utmost towards satisfying the wants of the time. By thus arousing public sympathies and showing that the success of Positivism is a matter of permanent and general importance, the coherence of the system as well as the elevation of its aims will be placed beyond dispute. We have hitherto been regarding Positivism as the issue in which intellectual development necessarily results. We have now to view it from the social side; for until we have done this, it is impossible to form a true conception of it.
The relation of Positivism to the French Revolution
And to do this, all that is here necessary is to point out the close relation in which the new philosophy stands to the whole course of the French Revolution. This revolution has now been agitating Western nations for sixty years5. It is the final issue of the vast transition through which we have been passing during the five previous centuries.
In this great crisis there are naturally two principal phases; of which only the first, or negative, phase has yet been accomplished. In it we gave the last blow to the old system, but without arriving at any fixed and distinct prospect of the new. In the second or positive phase, which is at last beginning, a basis for the new social state has to be constructed. The first phase led as its ultimate result to the formation of a sound philosophical system; and by this system the second phase will be directed. It is this twofold connexion which we are now to consider.
The negative or destructive phase of the Revolution stimulated the desire of Progress, and consequently the study of social phenomena
The strong reaction which was exercised upon the intellect by the first great shock of revolution was absolutely necessary to rouse and sustain our mental efforts in the search for a new system. For the greatest thinkers of the eighteenth century had been blinded to the true character of the new state by the effete remnants of the old. And the shock was especially necessary for the foundation of social science. For the basis of that science is the conception of human Progress, a conception which nothing but the Revolution could have brought forward into sufficient prominence.
Social Order was regarded by the ancients as stationary: and its theory under this provisional aspect was admirably sketched out by the great Aristotle. In this respect the case of Sociology resembles that of Biology. In Biology statical conceptions were attained without the least knowledge of dynamical laws. Similarly, the social speculations of antiquity are entirely devoid of the conception of Progress. Their historical field was too narrow to indicate any continuous movement of Humanity. It was not till the Middle Ages that this movement became sufficiently manifest to inspire the feeling that we were tending towards a state of increased perfection. It was then seen by all that Catholicism was superior to Polytheism and Judaism; and this was afterwards confirmed by the corresponding political improvement produced by the substitution of Feudalism for Roman government. Confused as this first feeling of human Progress was, it was yet very intense and very largely diffused; though it lost much of its vitality in the theological and metaphysical discussions of later centuries. It is here that we must look if we would understand that ardour in the cause of Progress which is peculiar to the Western family of nations, and which has been strong enough to check many sophistical delusions, especially in the countries where the noble aspirations of the Middle Ages have been least impaired by the metaphysical theories of Protestantism or Deism.
But whatever the importance of this nascent feeling, it was very far from sufficient to establish the conviction of Progress as a fundamental principle of human society. To demonstrate any kind of progression, at least three terms are requisite. Now the absolute character of theological philosophy, by which the comparison between Polytheism and Catholicism was instituted, prevented men from conceiving the bare possibility of any further stage. The limits of perfection were supposed to have been reached by the mediaeval system, and beyond it there was nothing but the Christian Utopia of a future life. The decline of mediaeval theology soon set the imagination free from any such obstacles; but it led at the same time to a mental reaction which for a long time was unfavourable to the development of this first conception of Progress. It brought a feeling of blind antipathy to the Middle Ages. Almost all thinkers in their dislike of the Catholic dogmas were seized with such irrational admiration for Antiquity as entirely to ignore the social superiority of the mediaeval system; and it was only among the untaught masses, especially in the countries preserved from Protestantism, that any real feeling of this superiority was retained. It was not till the middle of the seventeenth century that modern thinkers began to dwell on the conception of Progress.
It re-appeared then under a new aspect. Conclusive evidence had by that time been furnished that the more civilized portion of our race had advanced in science and industry, and even, though not so unquestionably, in the fine arts. But these aspects were only partial: and though they were undoubtedly the source of the more systematic views held by our own century upon the subject, they were not enough to demonstrate the fact of a progression. And indeed, from the social point of view, so far more important than any other, Progress seemed more doubtful than it had been in the Middle Ages.
But this condition of opinion was changed by the revolutionary shock which impelled France, the normal centre of Western Europe, to apply itself to the task of social regeneration. A third term of comparison, that is to say the type on which modern society is being moulded, now presented itself; though it lay as yet in a distant and obscure future. Compared with the mediaeval system it was seen to be an advance as great as that which justified our ancestors of chivalrous times in asserting superiority to their predecessors of antiquity. Until the destruction of Catholic Feudalism became an overt fact, its effete remnants had concealed the political future, and the fact of continuous progress in society had always remained uncertain. Social phenomena have this peculiarity, that the object observed undergoes a process of development as well as and simultaneously with the observer. Now up to the time of the Revolution, political development, on which the principal argument for the theory of Progress must always be based, corresponded in its imperfection to the incapacity of the scientific spirit to frame the theory of it. A century ago, thinkers of the greatest eminence were unable to conceive of a really continuous progression; and Humanity, as they thought, was destined to move in circles or in oscillations. But under the influence of the Revolution a real sense of human development has arisen spontaneously and with more or less result, in minds of the most ordinary cast; first in France, and subsequently throughout the whole of Western Europe. In