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

have been tending. To renew the aesthetic movement so admirably begun in the Middle Ages, but interrupted by classical influences, will form a part of the great work which Positivism has undertaken, the completion and reestablishment of the Medieval structure upon a firmer intellectual basis. And when Art is once restored to its proper place, its future progress will be unchecked, because, as I shall now proceed to show, all the influences of the final order, spontaneous or systematic, will be in every respect favourable to it. If this can be made clear, the poetic capabilities of Positive Philosophy will require no further proof.

As being the only rallying point now possible for fixed convictions, without which life can have no definite or permanent character, Positivism is on this ground alone indispensable to all further development of modern Art. If the poet and his readers are alike devoid of such convictions, no idealization of life, whether personal, domestic, or social, is in any true sense possible. No emotions are fit subjects for Art unless they are felt deeply, and unless they come spontaneously to all. When society has no marked intellectual or moral feature, Art, which is its mirror, can have none either. And although the aesthetic faculty is so innate in us that it never can remain inactive, yet its culture becomes in this case vague and objectless. The fact therefore that Positivism terminates the Revolution by initiating the movement of organic growth is of itself enough to prove its beneficial influence upon Art.

Art, indeed, would profit by any method of reorganization, whatever its nature. But the principle on which Positivism proposes to reconstruct is peculiarly favourable to its growth. The opinions and the modes of life to which that principle conducts are precisely those which are most essential to aesthetic development.

A more aesthetic system cannot be imagined than one which teaches that Feeling is the basis on which the unity of human nature rests; and which assigns as the grand object of man’s existence, progress in every direction, but especially moral progress. It may seem at first as if the tendency of the new philosophy was merely to make us more systematic. And systematization is assuredly indispensable; but the sole object of it is to increase our sympathy and our synergic activity by supplying that fixity of principle which alone can lead to energetic practice. By teaching that the highest happiness is to aid in the happiness of others, Positivism invites the poet to his noblest function, the culture of generous sympathies, a subject far more poetic than the passions of hatred and oppression which hitherto have been his ordinary theme. A system which regards such culture as the highest object cannot fail to incorporate Poetry as one of its essential elements, and to give to it a far higher position than it has ever held before. Science, although it be the source from which the Positive system emanates, will be restricted to its proper function of supplying the objective basis for human prevision; thus giving to Art and Industry, which must always be the principal objects of our attention, the foundation they require. Positivism, substituting in every subject the relative point of view for the absolute, regarding, that is, every subject in its relation to Humanity, would not prosecute the study of the True beyond what is required for the development of the Good and the Beautiful. Beyond this point, scientific culture is a useless expenditure of time, and a diversion from the great end for which Man and Society exist. Subordinate as the ideal must ever be to the real, Art will yet exercise a most salutary influence upon Science, as soon as we cease to study Science in an absolute spirit. In the very simplest phenomena, after reaching the degree of exactness which our wants require, there is always a certain margin of liberty for the imagination; and advantage may very well be taken of this to make our conceptions more beautiful and so far more useful. Still more available is this influence of the Beautiful on the True in the highest subjects, those which directly concern Humanity. Minute accuracy being here more difficult and at the same time less important, more room is left for aesthetic considerations. In representing the great historical types, for instance, Art has its place as well as Science. A society which devotes all its powers to making every aspect of life as perfect as possible, will naturally give preference to that kind of intellectual culture which is of all others the best calculated to heighten our sense of perfection.

The tendency of Positivism to favour these the most energetic of our intellectual faculties and the most closely related to our moral nature, is apparent throughout its educational system. The reader will have seen in the third chapter that in Positive education more importance is attached to Art than to Science, as the true theory of human development requires. Science intervenes only to put into systematic shape what Art, operating under the direct influence of affection, has spontaneously begun. As in the history of mankind aesthetic development preceded scientific development, so it will be with the individual, whose education on the Positive method is but a reproduction of the education of the race. The only rational principle of our absurd classical system is its supposed tendency to encourage poetical training. The futility, however, of this profession is but too evident: the usual result of the system being to implant erroneous notions of all the fine arts, if not utter distaste for them. A striking illustration of its worthlessness is the idolatry with which for a whole century our French pedants regarded Boileau; a most skilful versifier, but of all our poets perhaps the least gifted with true poetic feeling. Positivist education will effect what classical education has attempted so imperfectly. It will familiarize the humblest working man or woman from childhood with all the beauties of the best poets; not those of