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

Italy and Spain will depend upon the women of those countries; and the appeal to them must come, not from a Frenchman, but from a Frenchwoman; for heart must speak to heart. Would that these few words might enable others to appreciate the inestimable worth of the colleague whom I had intended to write such an appeal; and that they might stimulate someone worthy to take her place!

Already, then, there is ground for encouragement. Already we have one striking instance of a woman ready to cooperate in the philosophical movement, which assigns to her sex a mission of the highest social consequence as the prelude to the function for which in the normal state they are destined. Such an instance, though it may seem now exceptional, does but anticipate what will one day be universal. Highly gifted natures pass through the same phases as others; only they undergo them earlier, and so become guides for the rest. The sacred friend of whom I speak had nothing that specially disposed her to accept Positivism, except the beauty of her mind and character, prematurely ripened by sorrow. Had she been an untaught working woman, it would perhaps have been still easier for her to grasp the general spirit of the new philosophy and its social purpose.

The result of this chapter is to show the affinity of the systematic element of the modifying power, as represented by philosophers, with women who form its sympathetic element; an affinity not less close than that with the people, who constitute its synergic element. The organization of moral force is based on the alliance of philosophers with the people; but the adhesion of women is necessary to its completion. With the union of all three, the regeneration of society begins, and the revolution is brought to a close. But more than this: their union is at once an inauguration of the final order of society. Each of these three elements will be acting as it will be called upon to act in the normal state, and will be occupying its permanent position relatively to the temporal power. The philosophic class whose work it is to combine the action of the other two classes, will find valuable assistance from women in every family, as well as powerful cooperation from the people in every city.

The result will be a union of all who are precluded from political administration, instituted for the purpose of judging all practical measures by the fixed rules of universal morality. Exceptional cases will arise when moral influence is insufficient: in these it will be necessary for the people to interfere actively. But philosophers and women are dispensed from such interference. Direct action would be most injurious to their powers of sympathy or of thought. They can only preserve these powers by keeping clear of all positions of political authority.

But while the moral force resulting from the combined action of women and of the people, will be more efficient than that of the Middle Ages, the systematic organs of that force will find their work one of great difficulty. High powers of intellect are required and a heart worthy of such intellect. To secure the support of women, and the cooperation of the people, they must have the sympathy and purity of the first, the energy and disinterestedness of the second. Such natures are rare; yet without them the new spiritual power cannot obtain that ascendancy over society to which Positivism aspires. And with all the agencies, physical or moral, which can be brought to bear, we shall have to acknowledge that the exceeding imperfections of human nature form an eternal obstacle to the object for which Positivism strives, the victory of social sympathy over self-love.

V The Relation of Positivism to Art

The essential principles and the social purpose of the only philosophy by which the revolution can be brought to a close, are now before us. We have seen too that energetic support from the People and cordial sympathy from Women are necessary to bring this philosophic movement to a practical result. One further condition yet remains. The view here taken of human life as regenerated by this combination of efforts, would be incomplete if it did not include an additional element, with which Positivism, as I have now to show, is no less competent to deal. We have spoken already of the place which Reason occupies in our nature; its function being to subordinate itself to Feeling for the better guidance of the Active powers. But in the normal state of our nature it has also another function; that of regulating and stimulating Imagination, without yielding passive obedience to it. The aesthetic faculties are far too important to be disregarded in the normal state of Humanity; therefore they must not be omitted from the system which aims to introduce that state. There is a strong but groundless prejudice that in this respect at least Positivism will be found wanting. Yet it furnishes, as may readily be shown, the only true foundation of modern Art, which, since the Middle Ages, has been cultivated without fixed principles or lofty purpose.

The reproach that Positivism is incompatible with Art arises simply from the fact that almost everyone is in the habit of confounding the philosophy itself with the scientific studies on which it is based. The charge only applies to the positive spirit in its preliminary phase of disconnected specialities, a phase which scientific men of the present day are making such mischievous efforts to prolong. Nothing can be more fatal to the fine arts than the narrow views, the overstraining of analysis, the abuse of the reasoning faculty, which characterize the scientific investigation of the present day; to say nothing of their injurious effects upon moral progress, the first condition of aesthetic development. But all these defects necessarily disappear when the Positive spirit becomes more comprehensive and systematic; which is the case as soon as it embraces the higher subjects in the