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

of Public Opinion; such opinion being organized by competent minds, and diffused freely amongst the people. In fact, the whole question, whether the solution of the twofold problem before us is to be empirical, revolutionary, and therefore confined simply to France; or whether it is to be consistent, pacific, and applicable to the whole of Western Europe, depends upon the preference or the postponement of the organization of Labour to the organization of Education.

This conclusion involves a brief explanation of the general system of education which Positivism will introduce. This the new spiritual power regards as its principal function, and as its most efficient means of satisfying the working classes in all reasonable demands.

It was the great social virtue of Catholicism, that it introduced for the first time, as far as circumstances permitted, a system of education common to all classes without distinction, not excepting even those who were still slaves. It was a vast undertaking, yet essential to its purpose of founding a spiritual power which was to be independent of the temporal power. Apart from its temporary value, it has left us one imperishable principle, namely that in all education worthy of the name, moral training should be regarded as of greater importance than scientific teaching. Catholic education, however, was of course, extremely defective; owing partly to the circumstances of the time, and partly to the weakness of the doctrine on which it rested. Having reference almost exclusively to the oppressed masses, the principal lesson which it taught was the duty of almost passive resignation, with the exception of certain obligations imposed upon rulers. Intellectual culture in any true sense there was none. All this was natural in a faith which directed men’s highest efforts to an object unconnected with social life, and which taught that all the phenomena of nature were regulated by an impenetrable Will. Catholic Education was consequently quite unsuited to any period but the Middle Ages; a period during which the advanced portion of Humanity was gradually ridding itself of the ancient institution of slavery, by commuting it first into serfdom, as a preliminary step to entire personal freedom. In the ancient world Catholic education would have been too revolutionary; at the present time it would be servile and inadequate. Its function was that of directing the long and difficult transition from the social life of Antiquity to that of Modern times. Personal emancipation once obtained, the working classes began to develop their powers and rise to their true position as a class; and they soon became conscious of intellectual and social wants which Catholicism was wholly incapable of satisfying.

And yet this is the only real system of universal education which the world has hitherto seen. For we cannot give that name to the so-called University system which metaphysicians began to introduce into Europe at the close of the Middle Ages; and which offered little more than the special instruction previously given to the priesthood; that is, the study of the Latin language, with the dialectical training required for the defence of their doctrines. Morals were untaught except as a part of the training of the professed theologian. All this metaphysical and literary instruction was of no great service to social evolution, except so far as it developed the critical power; it had, however, a certain indirect influence on the constructive movement, especially on the development of Art. But its defects, both practical and theoretical, have been made more evident by its application to new classes of society, whose occupations, whether practical or speculative, required a very different kind of training. And thus, while claiming the title of Universal, it never reached the working classes, even in Protestant countries, where each believer became to a certain extent his own priest.

The theological method being obsolete, and the metaphysical method inadequate, the task of founding an efficient system of popular education belongs to Positivism; the only doctrine capable of reconciling these two orders of conditions, the intellectual and the moral, which are equally necessary, but which since the Middle Ages have always proved incompatible. Positivist education, while securing the supremacy of the heart over the understanding more efficiently than Catholicism, will yet put no obstacle in the way of intellectual growth. The function of Intellect, in education as in practical life, will be to regulate Feeling; the culture of which, beginning at birth, will be maintained by constant exercise of the three classes of duties relative to Self, to the Family, and to Society.

I have already explained the mode in which the principles of universal morality will be finally coordinated; a task which, as I have shown, is connected with the principal function of the new spiritual power. I have now only to point out the paramount influence of morality on every part of Positive Education. It will be seen to be connected at first spontaneously, and afterwards in a more systematic form, with the entire system of human knowledge.

Positive Education, adapting itself to the requirements of the Organism with which it has to deal, subordinates intellectual conditions to social. Social conditions are considered as the main object, intellectual as but the means of attaining it. Its principal aim is to induce the working classes to accept their high social function of supporting the spiritual power, while at the same time it will render them more efficient in their own special duties.

Presuming that Education extends from birth to manhood, we may divide it into two periods, the first ending with puberty, that is, at the beginning of industrial apprenticeship. Education here should be essentially spontaneous, and should be carried on as far as possible in the bosom of the family. The only studies required should be of an aesthetic kind. In the second period, Education takes a systematic form, consisting chiefly of a public course of scientific lectures, explaining the essential laws of the various orders of phenomena. These lectures will be the groundwork of Moral Science, which will coordinate the whole, and point out the