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

relation of each part to the social purpose common to all. Thus, at about the time which long experience has fixed as that of legal majority, and when in most cases the term of apprenticeship closes, the workman will be prepared intellectually and morally for his public and private service.

The first years of life, from infancy to the end of the period of second dentition, should be devoted to education of the physical powers, carried on under the superintendence of the parents, especially of the mother. Physical education, as usually practised, is nothing but mere muscular exercise; but a more important object is that of training the senses, and giving manual skill, so as to develop from the very first our powers of observation and action. Study, in the ordinary acceptation, there should be none during this period, not even reading or writing. An acquaintance with facts of various kinds, such as may spontaneously attract the growing powers of attention, will be the only instruction received. The philosophic system of the infant individual, like that of the infant species, consists in pure Fetishism, and its natural development should not be disturbed by unwise interference. The only care of the parents will be to impress those feelings and habits for which a rational basis will be given at a later period. By taking every opportunity of calling the higher instincts into play, they will be laying down the best foundation for true morality.

During the period of about seven years comprised between the second dentition and puberty, Education will become somewhat more systematic; but it will be limited to the culture of the fine arts; and it will be still most important, especially on moral grounds, to avoid separation from the family. The study of Art should simply consist in practising it more or less systematically. No formal lectures are necessary, at least for the purposes of general education, though of course for professional purposes they may still be required. There is no reason why these studies should not be carried on at home by the second generation of Positivists, when the culture of the parents will be sufficiently advanced to allow them to superintend it. They will include Poetry, the art on which all the rest are based; and the two most important of the special arts, music and drawing. Meantime the pupil will become familiar with the principal Western languages, which are included in the study of Poetry, since modern poetry cannot be properly appreciated without them. Moreover, independently of aesthetic considerations, a knowledge of them is most important morally, as a means of destroying national prejudices, and of forming the true Positivist standard of Occidental feeling. Each nation will be taught to consider it a duty to learn the language of contiguous countries; an obvious principle, which, in the case of Frenchmen, will involve their learning all the other four languages, as a consequence of that central position which gives them so many advantages. When this rule becomes general, and the natural affinities of the five advanced nations are brought fully into play, a common Occidental language will not be long in forming itself spontaneously, without the aid of any metaphysical scheme for producing a language that shall be absolutely universal.

During the latter portion of primary Education, which is devoted to the culture of the imaginative powers, the philosophic development of the individual, corresponding to that of the race, will carry him from the simple Fetishism with which he began to the state of Polytheism. This resemblance between the growth of the individual and that of society has always shown itself more or less, in spite of the irrational precautions of Christian teachers. They have never been able to give children a distaste for those simple tales of fairies and genii, which are natural to this phase. The Positivist teacher will let this tendency take its own course. It should not, however, involve any hypocrisy on the part of the parents, nor need it lead to any subsequent contradiction. The simple truth is enough. The child may be told that these spontaneous beliefs are but natural to his age, but that they will gradually lead him on to others, by the fundamental law of all human development. Language of this kind will not only have the advantage of familiarizing him with a great principle of Positivism, but will stimulate the nascent sense of sociability, by leading him to sympathize with the various nations who still remain at his own primitive stage of intellectual development.

The second part of Positivist Education cannot be conducted altogether at home, since it involves public lectures, in which of course the part taken by the parent can only be accessory. But this is no reason for depriving the pupil of the advantages of family life; it remains as indispensable as ever to his moral development, which is always to be the first consideration. It will be easy for him to follow the best masters without weakening his sense of personal and domestic morality, which is the almost inevitable result of the monastic seclusion of modern schools. The public-school system is commonly thought to compensate for these disadvantages, by the knowledge of the world which it gives; but this is better obtained by free intercourse with society, where sympathies are far more likely to be satisfied. Recognition of this truth would do much to facilitate and improve popular education; and it applies to all cases, except perhaps to some special professions, where seclusion of the pupils may still be necessary, though even in these cases probably it may be ultimately dispensed with.

The plan to be followed in this period of education, will obviously be that indicated by the encyclopædic law of Classification, which forms part of my Theory of Development. Scientific study, whether for the working man or the philosopher, should begin with the inorganic world around us, and then pass to the subject of Man and Society; since our ideas on these two subjects form