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

error. Popular excitement, on the contrary, has often yielded to feminine influence, exerted though it has been hitherto without any systematic guidance. The difference is no doubt partly owing to the fact that there are now few or none who deserve the name of philosophers. For we cannot give that name to the superficial sophists and rhetoricians of our time, whether psychologists or ideologists, men wholly incapable of deep thought on any subject. Independently of this, however, the difference is explained by the character of the two classes. Women will always find it harder to deal with intellectual pride than with popular violence. Appeals to social feeling are their only weapons; and the social feelings of the workman are stronger than those of the philosopher. Sophistry is far more formidable to them than passion. In fact, were it not that the working classes are even now so amenable to female influence, society would be in extreme danger from the disorder caused by intellectual anarchy. There are many sophisms which maintain themselves in spite of scientific refutation, and which would be destructive of all order, were it not for our moral instincts. Of this the Communists offer a striking example, in avoiding, with that admirable inconsistency to which I have already called attention, the extension of their principle to the Family. Surrounded by the wildest theories, such as, if they were put in practice, would utterly destroy or paralyse society, we see large numbers of working men showing in their daily life a degree of affection and respect for women, which is unequalled by any other class. It is well to reflect on facts like these, not only because they lead us to judge the Communist school with more justice, but because, occurring as they do in the midst of social anarchy, they show what powerful agencies for good will be at our disposal in more settled times. Certainly they cannot be attributed to theological teaching, which has rather had the effect of strengthening the errors which it attacks by the absurdity of its refutations. They are simply the result of the influence which women have spontaneously exercised on the nobler feelings of the people. In Protestant countries where their influence is less, the mischievous effects of Communistic theories have been far greater. We owe it to women that the Family has been so little injured by the retrograde spirit of those republican reformers, whose ideal of modern society is to absorb the Family into the State, as was done by a few small tribes in ancient Greece.

The readiness shown by women in applying practical remedies to erroneous theories of morality is shown in other cases where the attractiveness of the error would seem irresistible to the coarser nature of men. The evils consequent on divorce, which has been authorized in Germany for three centuries, have been much lessened by women’s instinctive repugnance to it. The same may be said of recent attacks upon marriage, which are still more serious because the anarchy of modern life revives all the extravagances of the metaphysical spirit in ancient times. In no one case has a scheme of society hostile to marriage met with any real favour from women, plausible as many of them seemed. Unable in their ignorance of social science to see the fallacy of such schemes themselves, our revolutionary writers cannot conceive that women will not be convinced by them. But happily women, like the people, judge in these matters by the heart rather than by the head. In the absence of any guiding principle to direct the understanding and prevent the deviations to which it is always exposed, the heart is a far safer guide.

There is no need at present of pursuing these remarks farther. It is abundantly clear that women are in every respect adapted for rectifying the moral deviations to which every element in the social organism is liable. And if we already feel the value of their influence, springing as it does from the unaided inspirations of the heart, we may be sure it will become far more consolidated and will be far more widely felt, when it rests on the basis of a sound philosophical system, capable of refuting sophisms and exposing fallacies from which their unassisted instinct is insufficient to preserve us.

Thus the part to be played by women in public life is not merely passive. Not only will they give their sanction individually and collectively to the verdicts of public opinion as formed by philosophers and by the people; but they will themselves interfere actively in moral questions. It will be their part to maintain the primary principle of Positivism, which originated with themselves, and of which they will always be the most natural representatives.

But, how, it may be asked, can this be reconciled with my previous remark that women’s life should still be essentially domestic?

For the ancients, and for the greater part of the human race at the present time, it would be irreconcilable. But in Western Europe the solution has long ago been found. From the time when women acquired, as they did in the Middle Ages, a fair measure of domestic freedom, opportunities for social intercourse arose, which combined most happily the advantages of private and of public life, and in these women presided. The practice afterwards extended, especially in France, and these meetings became the laboratories of public opinion. It seems now as if they had died out, or had lost their character. The intellectual and moral anarchy of our times is most unfavourable to free interchange of thoughts and feelings. But a custom so social, and which did such good service in the philosophical movement preceding the Revolution, is assuredly not destined to perish. In the more perfect social state to which we are tending, it will be developed more fully than ever, when men’s minds and hearts have accepted the rallying point offered by the new philosophy.

This is, then, the mode in which women can with propriety participate