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

done during the Orleanist government by the retrograde instincts of Catholicism. Catholic resistance to political reconstructions was strong, but blind: its place will now be more than supplied by wise indifference on the part of the public, which has learnt by experience the inevitable failure of these incoherent attempts to realize metaphysical Utopias. The only danger of the position is lest it divert the public, even the more reflective portion of it, from deep and continuous thought, to practical experiments based on superficial and hasty considerations. It must be owned that the temper of mind which now prevails would have been most unfavourable for the original elaboration of Positivism. That work, however, had already been accomplished under the Constitutional system; which, while not so restrictive as the preceding government, was yet sufficiently so to concentrate our intellectual powers, which of themselves would have been too feeble, upon the task. The original conception had indeed been formed during the preceding reign; but its development and diffusion took place under the parliamentary system. Positivism now offers itself for practical application to the question of social progress, which has become again the prominent question, and will ever remain so. Unfavourable as the present political temper would have been to the rise of Positivism, it is not at all so to its diffusion; always supposing its teachers to be men of sufficient dignity to avoid the snare of political ambition into which thinkers are now so apt to fall. By explaining, as it alone can explain, the futility and danger of the various Utopian schemes which are now competing with each other for the reorganization of society, Positivism will soon be able to divert public attention from these political chimeras, to the question of a total reformation of principles and of life.

Republicanism, then, will offer no obstacle to the diffusion of Positivist principles. Indeed, there is one point of view from which we may regard it as the commencement of the normal state. It will gradually lead to the recognition of the fundamental principle that spiritual power must be wholly independent of every kind of temporal power, whether central or local. It is not merely that statesmen will soon have to confess their inability to decide on the merits of a doctrine which supposes an amount of deep scientific knowledge from which they must necessarily be precluded. Besides this, the disturbance caused by the ambition of metaphysical schemers, who are incapable of understanding the times in which they live, will induce the public to withdraw their confidence from such men, and give it only to those who are content to abandon all political prospects, and to devote themselves to their proper function as philosophers. Thus Republicanism is, on the whole, favourable to this great principle of Positivism, the separation of temporal from spiritual power, notwithstanding the temptations offered to men who wish to carry their theories into immediate application. The principle seems, no doubt, in opposition to all our revolutionary prejudices. But the public, as well as the government, will be brought to it by experience. They will find it the only means of saving society from the consequences of metaphysical Utopias, by which Order and Progress are alike threatened. Thinkers too, those of them at least who are sincere, will cease to regard it with such blind antipathy, when they see that while it condemns their aspirations to political influence, it opens out to them a noble and most extensive sphere of moral influence. Independently of social considerations, it is the only way in which the philosopher can maintain the dignity to which his position entitles him, and which is at present so often compromised by the very success of his political ambition.

The political attitude which ought for the present to be assumed is so clearly indicated by all the circumstances of the time, that practical instinct has in this respect anticipated theory. The right view is well expressed in the motto, “Liberty and Public Order,” which was adopted spontaneously by the middle class at the commencement of the neutral period in 1830. It is not known who was the author of it; but it is certainly far too progressive to be considered as representing the feelings of the monarchy. It is not of course the expression of any systematic convictions; but no metaphysical school could have pointed out so clearly the two principal conditions required by the situation. Positivism, while accepting it as an inspiration of popular wisdom, makes it more complete by adding two points which should have been contained in it at first, only that they were too much opposed to existing prejudices to have been sanctioned by public opinion. Both parts of the motto require some expansion. Liberty ought to include perfect freedom of teaching; Public Order should involve the preponderance of the central power over the local. I subjoin a few brief remarks on these two points, which will be considered more fully in the fourth volume of this treatise.

Positivism is now the only consistent advocate of free speech and free inquiry. Schools of opinion which do not rest on demonstration, and would consequently be shaken by any argumentative attacks, can never be sincere in their wish for Liberty, in the extended sense here given to it. Liberty of writing we have now had for a long time. But besides this we want liberty of speech; and also liberty of teaching; that is to say, the abandonment by the State of all its educational monopolies. Freedom of teaching, of which Positivists are the only genuine supporters, has become a condition of the first importance: and this not merely as a provisional measure, but as an indication of the normal state of things. In the first place, it is the only means by which any doctrine that has the power of fixing and harmonizing men’s convictions can become generally known. To legalize any system of education would imply that such a doctrine had been already found; it most assuredly