Auguste Comte and Positivism | Page 2

had taken the place in the
world of thought which belonged to it, the important matter was not to
criticise it, but to help in making it known. To have put those who
neither knew nor were capable of appreciating the greatness of the book,
in possession of its vulnerable points, would have indefinitely retarded
its progress to a just estimation, and was not needful for guarding
against any serious inconvenience. While a writer has few readers, and
no influence except on independent thinkers, the only thing worth
considering in him is what he can teach us: if there be anything in
which he is less wise than we are already, it may be left unnoticed until
the time comes when his errors can do harm. But the high place which
M. Comte has now assumed among European thinkers, and the
increasing influence of his principal work, while they make it a more
hopeful task than before to impress and enforce the strong points of his
philosophy, have rendered it, for the first time, not inopportune to
discuss his mistakes. Whatever errors he may have fallen into are now
in a position to be injurious, while the free exposure of them can no
longer be so.
We propose, then, to pass in review the main principles of M. Comte's
philosophy; commencing with the great treatise by which, in this
country, he is chiefly known, and postponing consideration of the
writings of the last ten years of his life, except for the occasional
illustration of detached points.
When we extend our examination to these later productions, we shall
have, in the main, to reverse our judgment. Instead of recognizing, as in
the Cours de Philosophic Positive, an essentially sound view of
philosophy, with a few capital errors, it is in their general character that
we deem the subsequent speculations false and misleading, while in the
midst of this wrong general tendency, we find a crowd of valuable
thoughts, and suggestions of thought, in detail. For the present we put
out of the question this signal anomaly in M. Comte's intellectual career.
We shall consider only the principal gift which he has left to the world,
his clear, full, and comprehensive exposition, and in part creation, of
what he terms the Positive Philosophy: endeavouring to sever what in

our estimation is true, from the much less which is erroneous, in that
philosophy as he conceived it, and distinguishing, as we proceed, the
part which is specially his, from that which belongs to the philosophy
of the age, and is the common inheritance of thinkers. This last
discrimination has been partially made in a late pamphlet, by Mr
Herbert Spencer, in vindication of his own independence of thought:
but this does not diminish the utility of doing it, with a less limited
purpose, here; especially as Mr Spencer rejects nearly all which
properly belongs to M. Comte, and in his abridged mode of statement
does scanty justice to what he rejects. The separation is not difficult,
even on the direct evidence given by M. Comte himself, who, far from
claiming any originality not really belonging to him, was eager to
connect his own most original thoughts with every germ of anything
similar which he observed in previous thinkers.
The fundamental doctrine of a true philosophy, according to M. Comte,
and the character by which he defines Positive Philosophy, is the
following:--We have no knowledge of anything but Phaenomena; and
our knowledge of phaenomena is relative, not absolute. We know not
the essence, nor the real mode of production, of any fact, but only its
relations to other facts in the way of succession or of similitude. These
relations are constant; that is, always the same in the same
circumstances. The constant resemblances which link phaenomena
together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent
and consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phaenomena are all
we know respecting them. Their essential nature, and their ultimate
causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us.
M. Comte claims no originality for this conception of human
knowledge. He avows that it has been virtually acted on from the
earliest period by all who have made any real contribution to science,
and became distinctly present to the minds of speculative men from the
time of Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo, whom he regards as collectively
the founders of the Positive Philosophy. As he says, the knowledge
which mankind, even in the earliest ages, chiefly pursued, being that
which they most needed, was _fore_knowledge: "savoir, pour prevoir."
When they sought for the cause, it was mainly in order to control the

effect or if it was uncontrollable, to foreknow and adapt their conduct
to it. Now, all foresight of phaenomena, and power over them, depend
on