Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/264

Rh 236 C M T E theory. As Mr Mill puts it : &quot; If a sociological theory, collected from historical evidence, contradicts the estab lished general laws of human nature ; if (to use M. Comte s instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, any very decided natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction ; if it supposes that the reason, in average haniaii beings, predominates over the desires, or the disinterested desires over the personal, we may know that history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is false. On the other hand, if laws of social phenomena, empirically generalized from history, can, when once suggested, be affiliated to the known laws of human nature ; if the direction actually taksn by the developments and changes of human society, can be seen to be such as the properties of man and of his dwelling-place made ante cedently probable, the empirical generalizations are raised i.ito positive laws, and sociology becomes a science.&quot; The result o t this method is an exhibition of the events of human experience in co-ordinated series that manifest their own graduated connection. Njx.t, as all investigation proceeds from that which is known best to that which is unknown or less well known, and as, in social states, it is the collective phenomenon that is more easy of access to the observer than its parts, therefore we must consider and pursue all the elements of a given social state together and in common. The social organization must be viewed and explored as a whole. There is a nexus between each leading group of social phenomena and other leading groups ; if there is a change i.i one of then;, that change is accompanied by a corre- bpond mg modification of all the rest. &quot; Not only must political institutions and social manners, on the one hand, and manners and ideas, on the other, be always mutually connected ; but further, this consolidated whole must be always connected by its nature with the corresponding state of the integral development of humanity, considered in all its aspects of intellectual, moral, and physical activity &quot; (Comte.) Decisive Is there any one element which communicates the decisive importance impulse to all the rest, any predominating agency in the if mtellee- CO urse of social evolution 1 The answer is that all the vefopment ^&quot; r P ai ts f social existence are associated with, and drawn along by, the contemporary condition of intellectual development. The Reason is the superior and preponderant element which settles the direction in which all the other faculties shall expand. &quot; It is only through the more and more marked influence of the reason over the general con duct of man and of society, that the gradual march of our race has attained that regularity and persevering continuity which distinguish it so radically from the desultory and barren expansion of even the highest animal orders, which share, and with enhanced strength, the appetites, the passions, and even the primary sentiments of man.&quot; The history of intellectual development, therefore, is the key to social evolution, and the key to the history of intel- Ijctual development is the Law of the Three States. Among other central thoughts in Comte s explanation of history are these : The displacement of theological by positive conceptions has been accompanied by a gradual rise of an industrial r6gime out of the military regime j the great permanent contribution of Catholicism was the separation which it set up between the temporal and the spiritual powers ; the progress of the race consists in the increasing preponderance of the distinctively human elements over the animal elements; the absolute tendency of ordinary social theories will be replaced by an unfailing adherence to the relative point of view, and from this it follows that thu social state, regarded as a whole, has been as perfect in each period as the co-existing condition of iuumanitv and its environment would allow. The elaboration of these ideas in relation to the history Th of the civilization of the most advanced portion of the am human race occupies two of the volumes of the Positive lar Philosophy, and has been accepted by competent persons of very different schools as a master-piece of rich, luminous, and far-reaching suggestion. Whatever additions it may receive, and whatever corrections it may require, this analysis of social evolution will continue to be regarded as one of the great achievements of human intellect. The demand for the first of Comte s two works has gone on increasing in a significant degree. It was completed, as we have said, in 1842. A second edition was published in 1864 ; a third some years afterwards ; and while we write (1876) a fourth is in the press. Three editions within twelve years of a work of abstract philosophy in six considerable volumes are the measure of a very striking influence. On the whole, we may suspect that no part of Comte s works has had so much to do with this marked success as his survey and review of the course of history. The third volume of the later work, the Positive Polity, Soc treats of social dynamics, and takes us again over the |b ground of historic evolution. It abounds with remarks of V? extraordinary fertility and comprehensiveness ; but it is often arbitrary ; its views of the past are strained into coherence with the statical views of the preceding volume; and so far as concerns the period to which the present writer happens to have given special attention, it is usually slight and sometimes random. As it was composed in rather less than six months, and as the author honestly warns us that he has given all his attention to a more profound co ordination, instead of working out the special explanations more fully, as he had promised, we need not be surprised if the result is disappointing to those who had mastered the corresponding portion of the Positive Philosophy. Comte explains the difference between his two works. In the first his &quot; chief object was to discover and demonstrate the laws of progress, and to exhibit in one unbroken sequence the collective destinies of mankind, till then invariably regarded as a series of events wholly beyond tho rea^h of explanation, and almost depending on arbitrary will. The present work, on the contrary, is addressed to those who are already sufficiently convinced of the certain existence of social laws, and desire only to have them reduced to a true and conclusive system.&quot; What that system is it would take far more space than we Th can afford to sketch even in outline. All we can do is to tiv enumerate some of its main positions. They are to be tei: drawn not only from the Positive Polity, but from two other works, the Posit ivist Catechism: a Summary Exposition of the Universal Jteliyion, in Tivelve Dialogues between a Woman and a Priest of Humanity ; and, second, The Subjective Synthesis (1856), which is the first and only volume of a work upon mathematics announced at tho end of the Positive Philosophy. The system for which the Positive Philosophy is alleged to have been the scientific preparation contains a Polity and a Religion ; a complete arrangement of life in all its aspects, giving a wider sphere to Intellect, Energy, and Feejing than could be found in any of the previous organic types, Greek, Roman, or Catholic-feudal. Comte s immense superiority over such pne-Revolutionary Utopians as the Abbe Saint Pierre, no less than over the group of post-revolutionary Utopians, is especially visible in his firm grasp of the cardinal truth that the improvement of the social organism can only be efiected by a moral development, and never by any changes in mere political mechanism, or any violences in the way of an auificial redistribution of wealth. A moral transforma tion must precede any real advance. The aim, both in public and private life, is to secure to the utmost possible extent the victory of the social feeling over self-love, or