Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/120

 106 CBITICAL NOTICES : As he says himself (p. 10), fine art, poetry, virtue, heroism and metaphysics are " excentric," and their phases escape calculation. But the difference between them and mechanical contrivances or religious beliefs is surely one of degree. It is indeed strange to find an adherent of the " positive " philosophy treating intellectual development as if it were not at all dependent upon the social en- vironment. " La race, 1'epoque, le milieu ne sont pas. comme on 1'a pretendu, les facteurs de la production intellectuelle " (p. 13). They are not the factors, i.e., the sole factors; but they may be factors for all that. Having laid down an abstract distinction, M. Coste here, as in other matters, goes on to admit qualifica- tions. He allows, e.g., that architecture, the writing of history, jurisprudence, are in many ways related to the utilitarian arts and are therefore not independent of political and social conditions. (p. 15). The important truth underlying M. Ctoste's distinction of ideo- logy from sociology seems really to be this, that a very large part of the events dealt with by history, and what some may think the most interesting part, are the outcome of individual genius, of individual caprice and passion, of what (in our ignorance) we call chance or accident, and cannot therefore be brought under the generalisations of the sociologist or fitted into statistical tables. M. Coste himself suggests a definition of history, which marks well his difference from Mr. Herbert Spencer : " the picture of the intervention of great personalities in the development of social forces" (p. 11), or, as he puts it elsewhere, "the embroidery of chance on the sociological canvas " (p. 190). But it is one thing to recognise that history cannot be merged in sociology : it is another to attempt to draw a hard and fast line between the " individual" and the " social " factors in human evolution. Again, if it be admitted (as against Cornte) that it is important to distinguish psychology, ethics and aesthetics from sociology, it is most unscientific to restrict psychology, as M. Coste's classifica- tion does, to the higher phases of man's intellectual development. The ordinary feelings and sentiments which are involved in " sociality " require psychological investigation, and must be taken account of by ethics and to some extent by aesthetics also, as well as the conscious reflections of the scientific thinker and the conscious ideals of the hero, the saint or the artist. If M. Coste had limited himself to arguing that it was better to place sociology before, than after, psychology in the hierarchy of the sciences, his position would have been less assailable. He shows very well (p. 82) that Mr. H. Spencer's arrangement, which places psycho- logy before sociology, results in " an exaggeration of individualism and of its influence on society ". In other respects, however, M. Coste seems hardly quite just to the merits of Mr. Spencer's classification of the sciences, which is made on a different (and perhaps a safer) basis than Comte's. Into Comte's "law of the three stages" M. Coste introduces