A General View of Positivism by Auguste Comte (learn to read books TXT) 📕

his own nation merely, but of all the West. To secure the genuineness and efficiency of aesthetic development, attention must first be given to the poets who depict our own modern society. Afterwards, as I have said, the young Positivist will be advised to complete his poetical course, by studying the poets who have idealized antiquity. But his education will not be limited to poetry, it will embrace the special arts of sound and form, by which the principal effects of poetry are reproduced with greater intensity. Thus the contemplation and meditation suggested by Art, besides their own intrinsic charm, will prepare the way for the exercise of similar faculties in Science. For with the individual, as with the species, the combination of images will assist the combination of signs: signs in their origin being images which have lost their vividness. As the sphere of Art includes every subject of human interest, we shall become familiarized, during the aesthetic period of education, with the principal conceptions that are afterwards to be brought before us systematically in the scientific period. Especially will this be true of historical studies. By the time that the pupil enters upon them, he will be already familiar with poetic descriptions of the various social phases, and of the men who played a leading part in them.

And if Art is of such importance in the education of the young, it is no less important in the afterwork of education; the work of recalling men or classes of men to those high feelings and principles which, in the daily business of life, are so apt to be forgotten. In the solemnities, private or public, appointed for this purpose, Positivism will rely far more on impressions such as poetry can inspire, than on scientific explanations. Indeed the preponderance of Art over Science will be still greater than in education properly so called. The scientific basis of human conduct having been already laid down, it will not be necessary to do more than refer to it. The philosophic priesthood will in this case be less occupied with new conceptions, than with the enforcement of truth already known, which demands aesthetic rather than scientific talent.

A vague presentiment of the proper function of Art in regulating public festivals was shown empirically by the Revolutionists. But all their attempts in this direction proved notorious failures; a signal proof that politicians should not usurp the office of spiritual guides. The intention of a festival is to give public expression to deep and genuine feeling; spontaneousness therefore is its first condition. Hence it is a matter with which political rulers are incompetent to deal; and even the spiritual power should only act as the systematic organ of impulses which already exist. Since the decline of Catholicism we have had no festivals worthy of the name; nor can we have them until Positivism has become generally accepted. All that governments could do at present is to exhibit unmeaning and undignified shows before discordant crowds, who are themselves the only spectacles worth beholding. Indeed the usurpation of this function by government is in many cases as tyrannical as it is irrational; arbitrary formulas are often imposed, which answer to no preexisting feeling whatever. Evidently the direction of festivals is a function which more than any other belongs exclusively to the spiritual power, since it is the spiritual power which regulates the tendencies of which these festivals are the manifestation. Here its work is essentially aesthetic. A festival even in private, and still more in public life, is or should be a work of art; its purpose being to express certain feelings by voice or gesture, and to idealize them. It is the most aesthetic of all functions, since it involves usually a complete combination of the four special arts, under the presidence of the primary art, Poetry. On this ground governments have in most cases been willing to waive their official authority in this matter, and to be largely guided by artistic counsel, accepting even the advice of painters and sculptors in the default of poets of real merit.

The aesthetic tendencies of Positivism, with regard to institutions of this kind, are sufficiently evident in the worship of Woman, spoken of in the preceding chapter, and in the worship of Humanity, of which I shall speak more particularly afterwards. From these, indeed, most Positivist festivals, private or public, will originate. But this subject has been already broached, and will be discussed in the next chapter with as much detail as the limits of this introductory work allow.

While the social value of Art is thus enhanced by the importance of the work assigned to it, new and extensive fields for its operations are opened out by Positivism. Chief amongst these is History, regarded as a continuous whole; a domain at present almost untouched.

Modern poets, finding little to inspire them in their own times, and driven back into ancient life by the classical system, have already idealized some of the past phases of Humanity. Our great Corneille, for instance, is principally remembered for the series of dramas in which he has so admirably depicted various periods of Roman history. In our own times where the historical spirit has become stronger, novelists, like Scott and Manzoni, have made similar though less perfect attempts to idealize later periods. Such examples, however, are but spontaneous and imperfect indications of the new field which Positivism now offers to the artist; a field which extends over the whole region of the Past and even of the Future. Until this vast domain had been conceived of as a whole by the philosopher, it would have been impossible to bring it within the compass of poetry. Now theological and metaphysical philosophers were prevented by the absolute spirit of their doctrines from understanding history in all its phases, and were totally incapable of idealizing them as they deserved. Positivism, on the contrary, is always relative; and its principal feature is a theory of history which enables us to