IN London and in Paris his followers-1907-met to commemorate the death of Auguste Comte, on 5th Sept., 1857. This event, unnoticed at the time by men, is year by year recalled by groups of associated fellow believers in many places in this country, in France, in Germany, and across the Atlantic. That fact is itself very striking and significant; I am not sure that it does not stand without example in modern Europe. At least, I can recall no single philosopher in this century whose life and death is being continually commemorated by growing bodies of organised adherents. Neither Bentham nor Mill, nor Carlyle or Coleridge, nor Kant or Hegel, nor Cousin or St. Simon, nor Darwin, nor Spencer have left behind them what is a real church or community, with common beliefs and institutions, to carry on their ideas and revere their memory.
And yet we must avoid any sort of exaggeration in thinking of this. From a different point of view, the numbers of Comte's adherents are few, scattered, and slowly increasing in comparison with many religious movements around us. We are continually being reminded of our scanty numbers, and asked what have we to show beside the millions of Churchmen, Catholics, Mahometans, nay Mormons, or the Salvation Army. Assuredly we have nothing of the kind to show. The truth seems to be that Auguste Comte has left behind him an influence and a body of followers far larger and more definite than any modern philosopher; yet in every way smaller and less visible than any founder of religion, sect, or church. Happily the power of a great religious teacher or reformer is not measured by the ballot box or the counting of heads. But it is a complete misconception to compare the work of Comte with that of any known founder of religion, sect, or church.
The very word religion has, in ordinary speech, so stunted and distorted a meaning that the use of it in Positivism is apt to mislead the unthinking. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, as first presented to converts, and so in later times, the Reformation, Methodism, Ritualism, and the like, appealed directly and passionately to the imagination and the feelings. They were simple, intense, overpowering ideas addressed to more or less emotional natures in ages of childlike credulity. Those who received these ideas at all took them like a violent disease, and often behaved like people smitten with disease.
There is nothing of the kind about the work of Comte. It is the essence of his scheme to address at once the reason, the character, and the emotions. His work is primarily a philosophy, and next a polity-that is, a system of methodized knowledge and afterwards a system of social life; and it is a religion in that it seeks to base a given type of social life on a regular scheme of methodized knowledge. To reduce Positivism to a mere appeal to the personal emotions is, in fact, to reduce it to impotence. And they who think that the religion of Humanity means the mere revival of medieval Catholicism, with the human ideal substituted for God, and Comte in the place of Pope, or the Positivist Society in place of the Church, are nursing, as I think, a ridiculous piece of self-delusion.
The real aim of Comte is far other. It is to transform society, to reform conduct, by a coherent set of doctrines, themselves subordinate to a central idea. This is a very complex task, one which appeals at once to the intellect, the character, and the heart. In an age of infinite diversity, mobility, and individual specialism, it is necessarily a task of slow growth and gradual achievements. Assume the most perfect and miraculous gospel of human life ever dreamed by theological zealot, as sent direct from Divine inspiration, covering this ground and undertaking these complex tasks, and yet we know that it would only find here and there a few prepared to receive it and welcome it as a whole. There is nothing, therefore, to surprise us, if we find that the progress of Positivism is slow and feeble when compared with so many movements which appeal simply to emotions, consist of simple and plain ideas, calculated to gain an easy entrance into the hearts of the more impressionable and untrained natures.
Positivism is primarily a philosophy; and it is therefore not on the same plane with what are called the religious movements, which appeal to ignorance, to excitability, to credulity. The influence of every philosophy is proverbially slow, necessarily slow, for its very business is to co-ordinate those ideas which for the time are disparate or incompatible, and to weld the discordant and the conflicting is obviously a slow and gradual work. All great philosophers have needed centuries to make their power felt, some of them even have had no power till the very civilisation which first produced them was itself on the wane. For centuries the influence of Aristotle himself was completely overshadowed by that of Plato and Plato's various interpreters. The century in which Bacon and Descartes lived and died had not the remotest idea of their greatness as philosophers, though in many parts of Europe their special inquiries in science were well known. During the century in which he lived Hume was regarded as a master of belles lettres, and Leibnitz as a mathematician or a theologian. The influence of Kant and of Hegel had hardly begun to be felt by their own contemporaries; nor for 50 years at least after the first appearance of their principal work.
Indeed, there is no surer test of the difference between the great thinker and the literary exponent of thoughts-that the latter is immediately recognised as a power, and the former is not recognised for generations, it may be for centuries. And the reason of this is obvious enough. The creator of new master-thoughts speaks to the generations about him a strange tongue, which they do not comprehend, which revolts all their prejudices, and conflicts with their entire mental training. A new philosophy which seeks to co-ordinate the incongruous, discipline the disorderly, and reform mental habits, is by the nature of things an intruder and an usurper to the mass of men and a dangerous rival to their established teacher and guides. It is, hence, the law of human nature that a great new philosophic thinker can be no prophet in his own country and his own time. By the conditions of his existence he is at war with them and he is an alien to them.
Auguste Comte, therefore, so far as he is a great and new philosophic thinker, meets with the same law, and is subject to the same adverse conditions. So far from wondering that his influence is not already more widespread, the marvel is that a new and most daring philosophic thinker, bent on introducing system into one of the most anarchical ages in human history, who has swept away the last refuge and remnant of theological and metaphysical dreaming, the marvel is that such an one should have influence as yet at all, that his least word should be carefully studied and explained by associated students in many countries in many different languages, that the fiftieth anniversary of his death should be bringing together in many places groups of devoted friends. Such a fact in itself is almost without example in the history of philosophy. It would be inexplicable now, were Comte simply a philosopher. It was because he was much more than a philosopher-something even greater than one of the master-intellects which have directed the mind of mankind.
Assume that this was so-that Comte was one of the great regenerators of modern philosophy, that he laid the axioms and ground-plan of social science, that he revealed to man the true central ideal towards which man had been tending for centuries, and more than this I am not at all desirous of claiming-assume that Auguste Comte was all this, and what, judging by previous examples in man's history, should we expect to find? We should expect to find the new philosophy, the new religion gradually forcing its way into those societies and centres of thought, amongst those classes of men who were best prepared to receive it, we should expect to find much opposition, much outcry, much misunderstanding, and a great deal of idle criticism and random invective; and we should expect to find a gradual reduction of this opposition and a constant convergence of opinion in the least expected quarters, and a manifest tendency to recognise the new philosophy, the new religion, as substantially falling in with the spirit of the age and as resting on fundamental truths which more and more command assent.
This is precisely what has happened. I have so often in Newton Hall and Essex Hall spoken of the general philosophy of Auguste Comte, that I will deal with Auguste Comte as a man and of the value of the example which his life has left behind him. It is now quite superfluous to insist that we in no way pretend that the life of Auguste Comte is a perfect type, or that his character and qualities are a model of goodness for our imitation and adoration. No one can now with good faith impute to us anything of the kind. It would be wholly alien to the spirit of Positivism, a contradiction of what Comte himself taught, a retrograde imitation of the extravagant mysticism of supernatural systems of religion. We have repudiated the term of "Comtists" from the first. Comte in no sort of way is to us what Christ is to Christians, or even Mahomet to Mahometans or Buddha to Buddhists. We neither ascribe to him any ideal perfection, nor any preternatural sanctity, nor any exceptional inspiration. All such ideas are abhorrent to us and to all that we have learned from him. We recognise no kind of duty to accept him as a model for imitation, nor to take his words on any subject as conclusive and sufficient. Let us leave to theological schools all attempts to deify a teacher, even to idealise his memory, or in any way whatever to remove him from the strict sphere of the collective progress of man in intellect and in character.
There were no doubt defects and perversities about Comte's intellect, resulting, it may well be, here and there in flagrant errors or sophisms. The history of philosophy is marked by astounding blunders and enormous absurdities, many of them committed by the greatest philosophers of all. It would be contrary to human experience if the future should ultimately find that Auguste Comte was the only philosopher who had been free from error. So, too, there were doubtless, as we can all see now, serious defects in his moral nature, and assuredly much to be regretted in his conduct much asperity, great pride, and on one side of morality, and for one period of life a disregard of continence, as we now understand it, and as he came to understand it himself. No man has ever unveiled his inner soul with more naked simplicity or direct truthfulness than did Auguste Comte, and his memory has perhaps suffered unjustly for the unsparing faithfulness of the inner man he has revealed. Enough has been said, I think too much has been said, about the standard of sexual morality which Comte with naked truthfulness tells us was his own at one period of his life. It was a standard of morality almost universally accepted in the age and in the society in which he lived, a standard which if it fell wholly below that of every Christian ideal, whether Protestant or Catholic, was always far above that adopted by some of the greatest benefactors of, mankind.
The coarseness, for it is this rather than sensuality, that certainly marked Comte's unregenerate days is liable to be exaggerated by British Pharisaism, though it is quite sufficient to warn us against any temptation to set up Comte as a model of ideal perfection. It is enough for us that every line of Comte's teaching earnestly preaches an intense, an almost hyperbolical standard of sexual purity, and of connubial delicacy, one which has often been attacked as fantastic and extravagant, but which assuredly no man could ever pretend to be lax. And it is enough for us that, for the whole period of his second and regenerate life, for the whole period of his career as a religious teacher, his own life and conduct were in complete agreement with his own ultimate and lofty standard of purity, with this more than monastic standard of sexual asceticism.
The whole history of human thought contains no more pathetic picture of strenuous and unflagging labour at a great aim without a ray of popular encouragement or help. I suppose there is no example of a thinker of such eminence who during his own lifetime was so utterly abandoned and unknown. His wife, his early adherents, his literary acquaintances left him one by one. All his projects were rejected; and his writings ignored. One by one his pupils disappeared, and his official duties were taken from him. In extreme poverty, scarcely providing the bare necessities of physical life, oppressed by a concerted silence which effectually shut out his very name from his contemporaries, with not a single acquaintance who was not as poor, as powerless, and as unknown as himself, supported only by a small band of friends, whom he saw but once a week, with his wife and his earlier colleagues now become his bitter enemies, with the sole tender feeling still active in him, his memory for the dead woman whom he had loved with devotion and without sin, Auguste Comte toiled on during the whole period of his second career as a reformer of religion, without one hour of flinching, of relaxation, or of subordinate work. Living for ten years the life of the sternest hermit, denying himself alcohol, coffee, tobacco, everything but the barest modicum of food and clothing able to maintain life, too often, it must be feared, falling below that minimum, in silence, penury, solitude, and neglect, Auguste Comte worked out his gigantic scheme of philosophy and religion, never turning aside from his task for one instant or wasting an hour in profitless controversy.
It was then, that I saw him; nor can I easily forget the severe simplicity of his material existence, the intense conviction which gave him fire within, his personal courteousness and dignity, and the pure and noble spirit which he threw into all that he touched. And, not for an instant, in this long time of labour and neglect, did he ever show an hour of weakness. Never did he utter one word which was to call out public attention or conciliate the literary opposition, or seek to break the conspiracy of silence. With his eloquence, his courage, passion, and vast attainments it would have been easy to him to have forced himself on the world, to have won some immediate distinction, to have formed a party, or founded a school. With none of these would he deign to parley for an instant. Year after year his intense philosophic activity struggled on without the loss of an hour. The silent, stately, patient man kept silence even from good words, labouring with intense energy at his task, leaving it to those who might be able and willing to work out for themselves the meaning of his abstract ideas and difficult argument, but as indifferent to immediate popularity and the approval of his age as is the oak sapling, silently stretching out its roots into the soil and its branches into the air of heaven.
For thirty-five years he continued (without one hour's interval or deviation) his intense labour of philosophie absorption, unlighted by one ray of popular fame; living day by day the same silent, methodical, laborious, self-denying life. And can men ask if it were a life of high morality, of self-devotion, of purity? Can one impute to such a man egotism, self-indulgence, vanity, or vice? Assuredly a life of such terrible martyrdom in the cause of truth, of such utter and unnatural absorption in the future, such hermit-like exclusion of all that gives ease and sweetness to man's existence, had its dangers and its evils. It is manifest to all men that the price even the greatest and the purest pay for such solitary devotion to truth is excess of passion, self-reliance pushed to the limit of arrogance. Be it so, the ideal Christ, the Saints of the Catholic Church, the Protestant heroes, the Puritans, the Quietists, the Quakers, the Covenanters, Wesley himself-all had not a little of these things. Be it so, and there stands out far above these, perhaps inevitable, shortcomings of the martyr and, prophet, a clear image of dauntless courage and self-devotion to the cause of human progress.
It was a life of the most intense philosophic concentration. Not Kant in his study at Königsberg was more rigidly punctual and exact in his habits of solitary meditation. Nor was Hegel more lonely when he cried, "I have but one disciple who understands me, and he misunderstands me." No Jerome or Aquinas or a-Kempis was ever more abstemious and ascetic in personal habit, weighing out his food ounce by ounce and cutting off one indulgence after another, lest by chance one grain of food might be consumed without necessity or one hour of life wasted without its product. No Pascal, or Fénelon, or Jeremy Taylor was ever more anxiously scrupulous about the inner purity of the conscience and the mysterious relation between the clear brain and the passionless sense. Nor was this anchorite's life of meditation cheered by fantastic vision of angels and saints secretly sustaining the creature in its life of trial on earth until it shortly entered into ecstatic bliss hereafter. Earth, this mortal existence of the body, the silent rest of the grave, the slow and painful improvement of the human race on earth-this was all that he had-sufficient, certain, and real, but like all else in his life, unrecognised by the opinion of the world around, resting only in his own unconquerable faith.
Nor was this man surrounded, as was Jesus of Nazareth, by thousands of eager and admiring hearers, living in a strange halo of mystical supernaturalism; nor as Socrates was, the gay comrade of all that was brightest in his city, the oracle of the market-place, and the perpetual president of a friendly club of bright spirits and noble intellects. This St. Bernard and Aquinas of the nineteenth century, this Luther of a new Reformation, this sane and pure Rousseau of a bloodless and stormless Revolution, lived and died in a small apartment in a dingy street of Paris, almost friendless, practically unknown, absolutely unhonoured, meagrely fed, with no relaxation but his weekly visit to the Church of St. Paul and to the grave of her whom he had loved for ten months of respectful affection and occasional intercourse. I say it advisedly-the whole story of human thought contains no example of powers so vast-powers of intellect, powers of will-even by the grudging testimony of those who oppose him-powers so vast, I say, exerted incessantly to a great end and yet from birth to the grave so completely unrecognised by men, so utterly without a ray of sympathy or respect by the world around, so all but utterly buried in systematic neglect and obloquy.
Shall we do nothing to reverse this neglect of his day, we who testify to the debt we owe to his labours and to our sense of the nobleness of his teaching, shall we do nothing to reverse this cruel blindness of his contemporaries, except by coldly setting ourselves up as critics of his secret thoughts, as the fastidious judges of his life, picking and choosing suggestions of his which seem to our wisdom to be useful or true?
As I claim for Comte nothing like an ideal type of character for our imitation, so I do not claim for his teaching any abstract authority or universal supremacy. The idea of imitating Comte's life is hardly a rational idea-so exceptional, so abnormal, so intensely characteristic a life was his, as must be that of every thinker of powers so transcendent in conditions so peculiar. That he has left to future ages splendid examples of constancy, of courage, of patience, of intense zeal is most true-but the conditions of his life and labours are not for us-and the evils of such a life for any but some exceptional genius are obvious enough, nor are we at all concerned to disguise or forget its shortcomings. Such a life as that of Comte, like the life of some Aquinas, or Descartes, Newton, or Kant, is not for us to imitate or adopt-but rather for us to dwell on with wonder and sympathy, with gratitude and reverence, in humble thankfulness to the Humanity which inspired and sustained their toils, and to whose splendour and fecundity they have each so deeply contributed.
Nor shall I be misunderstood when I ask those who consult me not to set up for critics of Comte, as empowered to pick and choose what in his writings is to them wise or foolish. I shall not be misunderstood as if I asked them to take all that Comte has written as a nineteenth century gospel, to be literally set up in practice, if only it be in a sort of working toy model. We have continually rejected such an idea as unworthy of rational Positivism, injurious to Comte's memory, and a weak imitation of theological extravagance. Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, and Hume all made manifest, astounding, inconceivable blunders -and it would be a miracle, and a very unsatisfactory miracle, if Comte had made none whatever. At the same time many of the supposed blunders which his critics have made much of turn out, in my opinion, to be misunderstandings of the critics themselves. But for my part I am not at all convinced that it belongs to any single intellect whatever, in the nineteenth century at all events, be that intellect that of Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz combined to group and co-ordinate all human science in one whole, complete and accurate in all its parts.
I am absolutely convinced that no system of science whatever-not that elaborated by the combined intellect of the whole human race-can have any finality about it, so as to dispense Humanity in the future with the duty of further developing knowledge and art. Nay, rather, the mere suggestion of such a thing fills me with loathing and antagonism as the old dry bones of dead obscurantism and superstition. What I claim for Auguste Comte is something far different. It is that at the earliest possible moment when such a thing was conceivable in the history of human thought he made a first rough sketch of the broad lines of a possible synthesis or co-ordination of knowledge. Such a sketch was absolutely impossible whilst the whole series of the social sciences were regarded as within theological or metaphysical domains-as not in pari materiâ with the science of the physical world. And until Auguste Comte himself instituted Sociology as a definite science, no such general idea existed in the world of thought. To Comte therefore belongs the double honour of having instituted Sociology as a science and as having given the first rough sketch of a general co-ordination of science. In the latter his task may be compared with that of Aristotle. It was, perhaps, less difficult and less original than that of Aristotle, but also it was far more approximate to the truth. In the former, his task may be compared to that of Newton when he constituted Celestial Physics and the general theory of the solar system.
And whilst it was both more difficult and more original than the work of Newton, it was also, I think we must admit, very far less permanent and conclusive, very far less founded in true scientific demonstration. Newton constituted Celestial Physics, which Kepler and Galileo had instituted. Comte instituted Sociology as a science, which it remains for others hereafter to constitute. It is possible, as life went on, and as he dwelt on the regeneration of Science, the resuscitation of Religion, that he himself was wont to assume a certainty, perhaps a finality, about his own creation which the very axioms of Positive logic forbid. It is to me always doubtful how far Comte himself regarded his own reasonings as the outcome of scientific demonstrations, or how far he hazarded them as working hypotheses subject to ultimate verification. Perhaps he never settled that question in any definite way satisfactory to his own mind; and it may be that he was often wont to ignore the necessity of settling it some time. But to my mind, I say it without hesitation or qualification, the bulk of the sociology of August Comte still remains working hypothesis subject to ultimate verification-almost the only hypothesis which we yet possess, and much of it, as I think, already supported by practical verification. But as that which is absolutely beyond ultimate modification, I am not myself prepared to adopt more than the ground plan and the fundamental doctrines.
It is the same, too, with the religious side of his work, with the religion of Humanity, as an organised system of discipline, education, and worship. It is to me inconceivable that such a vast regimenting of human society can have been finally composed for Humanity by one solitary intelligence in a period of less than ten years. Discipline, education, worship-these things grow by the spontaneous efforts of Humanity, working through countless organs in ways unperceived, in long succession of ages, under forms the least expected, and from beginnings the least promising. And although the conscious strivings of Humanity towards a more perfect life, on the basis of demonstrable knowledge, and by the light of a fully organised philosophy, will become more and more systematic as civilisation proceeds, the character of spontaneous growth will never, I think, be wanting to the highest manifestations of the human spirit.
To me, therefore, this splendid Utopia that Comte has given us of the religion of Humanity, systematic in all its attributes and complete in all its parts, remains an Ideal-an Ideal which every day is bringing more distinct and living to my eyes, an Ideal in which every day I see fresh meaning and new dignity, an Ideal which I shrink from criticising and would not presume to modify, an Ideal which my whole life is devoted to make real-but which Truth, Reason, and Conscience forbid me from mistaking for reality as it stands. Our duty is to make that Ideal real, not blindly to mistake it for reality; to fashion our hearts and conduct in the spirit in which the religion of Humanity was conceived, and not blindly to return to the superstition which of old saw inspiration in a book or a man. We have no King Log thrown down from above into our marsh which we are abjectly to serve and to obey. We have a living Power, which we have to make manifest and to comprehend.
The details and the final conclusions of our Philosophy await, as we know, ages of human labour to complete, to verify, to modify, and to co-ordinate. The ground plan and the dominant lines of it we know to be clear and permanent. The constitution of the church, the modes of education, the forms of worship, are yet, as we trust, to be evolved and consolidated by the enlightened conscience of generations to come. There exists no possibility of doubt about the necessity for a spiritual society wider than country, deeper than social classifications, and purer than political or material societies. The exact limits and methods of education may yet remain to work out. There is no possibility of doubting that education in the future shall be the equal inheritance of all, shall be based on science, shall be co-extensive with the range of human knowledge, and shall be directed to the moral elevation of true men and true women. There can be no uncertainty in our belief that Worship, for the future of Humanity, can be nothing but the outpouring of our reverence, gratitude, and love for Humanity, which surrounds all that is good in our lives, and for those human beings through whose lives that working of Humanity is made real to us.
Let us not, whilst debating the precise form in which the worship of Humanity should be expressed, forget that most obvious and practical of all forms that the worship of Humanity can assume-the loving care for those near to us, to whom we owe life, or who owe their lives to us, the sympathetic consideration of all sons and daughters of men with whom we have dealings, and love, reverence, and submission towards all whom it is right to honour, respect, and obey.
And if we are ever disposed to repine or doubt when we think of the scanty numbers of those who call themselves Positivists and who outwardly profess the faith in Humanity, let us beware that we are not all the while like the Pharisee who rejoiced that he was not as other men, that we are not ignoring the real and fruitful faith in Humanity of some Sadducee who may not talk of Comte, who may never have heard of Comte, to whom the very word Positivism is unintelligible, to whom the word Humanity means simply-a good heart and a love of doing well to others.
Positivism, in so far as it means the conscious surrender of all supernatural hopes and the frank acceptance of truth, demonstration, science, and good sense as the ultimate guides of life, Positivism in this sense is the sure and growing belief of all that is strongest and best in the people of our age. As Comte did not invent Positivism as a form of thought, but only reduced it to system, so there is a mass of Positivism on lines not at all identical with Comte's. As Comte did not discover the Religion of Humanity, but only put into organic shape the floating aspirations of his century, so there are millions who confess Humanity in ways it may be different from ours, not openly with their lips, but visibly in their lives and passionately in their hearts, and who may be far nearer it may be to the real Humanity than those who have seen Comte with their eyes, and who yearly or weekly appeal to Humanity in their services. The "service" of Humanity, the only service I much value, is a heart full of loving sympathies and a life full of humane acts.