A PHILOSOPHIC SYNTHESIS
By Frederic Harrison
Two lectures delivered at the Royal Institution,
London, May 15, 1920.
Published in De Senectute. More Last Words,
London, T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1923, pp. 166-201.
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A PHILOSOPHIC SYNTHESISBy Frederic Harrison Two lectures delivered at the Royal Institution,
London, May 15, 1920. |
T0 define the term-philosophical synthesis, or, in other words, a synthetic philosophy-Johnson, quoting Newton's Optics and Dr. Watts' Logick, tells us that Synthesis is the act of joining, opposed to analysis-and Synthetic is forming composition, opposed to analytic which is separation. These terms have been in use for science and philosophy ever since Aristotle and Plato-always meaning compounding, generalising particulars on a system. Littré calls synthèse-"tableau présentant l'ensemble d'une science"; in philosophy, the "construction of a system." He quotes Descartes as identifying synthèse with composition. Kant speaks of the " synthetical unity of the manifold "! But the most familiar account of these terms in English is Mr. Herbert Spencer's title of Synthetic philosophy which he uses as describing the whole of his system. Science, he says, is "partially unified knowledge; Philosophy is completely-unified knowledge." Accordingly, a philosophic synthesis is a system of all general principles co-ordinated and harmonised.
As might be expected from the vast scale of such a system-the examples of a true synthetic philosophy have been extremely few. Certainly, the earliest-perhaps until our own age the only complete synthesis-is that of Aristotle, the greatest mind ever given to man. For the first time in the history of thought, almost, we may say, for the last time, Aristotle grasped the whole range of then existing knowledge, cosmic, physic, biologic, sociologic, and ethic: he signally enlarged many of these, and reduced the whole to systematic order. Of course, his astronomy and his physics were rudimentary, his biology a mere torso, and in sociology his want of any recorded history and any wide experience of a civilised world left his ideas of evolution almost nil. But his conception of a synthetic philosophy marks one of the grandest epochs in the whole intellectual story of man.
After Aristotle the ancient thinkers parted-one series to pursue the special sciences, the other to devote themselves to metaphysics, logic, and ethics. Aristotle's works were neglected, and even lost until they were recovered by Musulmans and Jews from Baghdad and Spain and handed on to the mediaeval schoolmen. The greatest of these, Thomas Aquinas, basing his thought on Aristotle-in fact a Catholic interpreter of Aristotle -in his short and laborious life produced what, with the very limited science of the age, may be regarded as a synthetic philosophy on a strictly theological basis. Descartes and Bacon no doubt conceived some such scheme, but the science of both was too imperfect, and Bacon's mind was too analytic, to produce a really synthetic philosophy, nor can we take Kant, or Hume, or Hegel, to have achieved such an encyclopaedic task on their metaphysical basis. Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, and Condorcet, saw such a possible Utopia on a scientific basis, but they were all of too revolutionary a temper to attempt so vast a reconstruction of knowledge. Of the moderns, Leibnitz perhaps was the nearest to succeed in the task; for Leibnitz was as great in science, as he was in law, morals, and social philosophy.
I reserve criticism of the Hegelian and the Spencerian systems and any comparison of these with the Positivist system to a subsequent lecture; and here I will only say that the former two are, to my mind, inadequate; first, because the relative philosophy repudiates all forms of absolute doctrine, whether metaphysical or scientific; secondly, because neither Hegel nor Spencer attempt to co-ordinate the physical sciences; and the dynamics of sociology (i.e., history) are left too vague by Hegel and are totally ignored by Spencer. My thesis to-day is that the relative, that is the human, synthesis of Auguste Comte, is the only adequate co-ordination of ultimate principles of knowledge as yet before the world ---though I freely admit that seventy years have made an enormous advance in the sciences, amounting indeed in some of their branches to complete recasting; and also that much of the synthesis itself must be regarded as a Utopian ideal of what may ultimately be achieved on similar lines.
In this summary of the earlier philosophies it would be impossible to attempt an estimate of how far any of them can be said to have attained to a system of general principles of human knowledge. It is enough to say that neither the physical sciences nor the evolution of civilisation were sufficiently advanced to make success possible-at least down to the time of living memory, i.e., the middle of the nineteenth century. Many thinkers, and no doubt most specialists, would deny that it is possible now-if it ever will be. But the school of thought in which I have lived, holds that some attempt to such a synthesis can now be made, and ought to be made-and has been made. Without disputing the value of other systems, I hold that there have been in the nineteenth century three systems which can be called philosophic syntheses: the absolute ontological synthesis-on the lines of Hegel: the absolute scientific synthesis on the lines of Herbert Spencer; the relative scientific synthesis on the lines of Auguste Comte. It is these three only which I am about to discuss.
Before describing the relative (or human) synthesis, I must state the principal postulates on which it is built. I call them postulates, though we regard them as demonstrated certainties, because I could not here attempt to set out the demonstration: I am well aware' that all who hold by ontological metaphysics would deny every one. These postulates, or axioms, are: the universal reign of Law, the Relativity of knowledge, the idea of Evolution in the moral as in the material world. These axioms are the groundwork of modern science. To analyse these dogmas more in detail, we say:
1. All facts of observation, physical or moral, are subject to invariable law.
2. All knowledge is based on observation of facts, direct or indirect, and as being obtained by the human organism, we cannot eliminate sensation as in part the source of everything we know or conceive.
3. Hence, all knowledge must be relative to the human faculties, which are composed of physical, moral, and mental powers. Comte carries to the furthest limit the relative philosophy by the axiom: " Everything is relative not absolute-unless it be this axiom itself."
4. All observations of the material, moral and social worlds manifest a continuous development-now known as evolution. "Progress is the development of Order," i.e., effective advance can only issue out of elements already prepared for new conditions.
5. Psychology or the laws of mind can be based only on the facts of man's nervous organism, and so far must start with Biology. To " interrogate the consciousness " apart from the entire human organism is futile and misleading.
6. Society is subject to the invariable law of evolution; and hence arises a science of Sociology-a name which Comte invented in 1837-and which for the first time he reduced to a systematic-albeit a rudimentary form.
All these propositions are the common ground of the philosophy of experience and of relativity, as expounded by Mill and his followers, and by Spencer and his followers, and by many important schools of biology and social science. I now add the dominant laws which are specially distinctive of the Positivist school.
7. The law of the Three States, i.e., of intellectual advance, first by fictitious, or fanciful agencies, then by crude generalisations from hypothetical causes; lastly, from scientific proof. This series of explanations is usually relative to specific branches of thought, and all three states may coexist in the same mind as to different classes of things.
8. Comte's classification of the true or pure Sciences in the order of their increasing complexity of subject and decreasing generality of range are these seven-Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Sociology, Morals. All admit numerous sub-divisions and compositions, as Geology needs Astronomy, Physics, and Biology, as Sociology needs Biology, Psychology, Economics, and History. The seven pure sciences are independent, but serial in the order named, and are abstract, dealing with general principles, not concrete or practical.
9. The philosophy of history used is specially the work of Comte. It has no rival as a detailed and continuous story of civilisation-and has been warmly supported by Mill, by Littré, and others at home and abroad.
10. Philosophy is not, and cannot be, a system merely of intellectual doctrines, but, as Aristotle said, must aim at guiding and directing human life. Philosophy cannot be detached from morality, society, and religion. All of these necessarily rest on Philosophy -which unites those dominant and general ideas that practically determine character and life.
I reserve the cardinal question which may seem to cut the ground from under all I have to say about a synthetic philosophy. Even if it were a possible search, they say, what would be the use of it in the vast range and diversity of modern thought, and the infinite problems of practical life?
Today, I only say that all serious men, whatever their duties, their learning, or their religion, have ultimate general ideas on which their minds and their lives rest, even if they are not conscious of any system of thought. That is their philosophy. And as philosophy must deal with the co-ordination of ideas about the World and Man and give some rational clue to their relations, Philosophy must group scientific knowledge and practical morals, and form a synthesis of knowledge and life, however rough and vague this may be.
All men and women, who are not ignorant or triflers, have at the back of their brains some sort of philosophy of things, which they regard as the rational ground of their conduct. Accordingly, a synthetic philosophy is not only a necessity of the human mind, but is the indispensable ideal which determines practical life.
As I have said there are but three possible syntheses of ultimate generalisations: (1) an absolute ontological synthesis which conceives the Universe as under some pervading Power; (2) an absolute scientific synthesis which undertakes to explain the Universe on demonstrable laws; (3) the relative synthesis of positive science, limited in space to our visible system, in time to the real or historic record, and in subject to human life. The governing idea of the Positive Philosophy is to carry out to its legitimate consequences the conception of Relativity that has won so large a realm in the world of modern thought. If all later Metaphysics fall back on the basic truth of the Limitation of the human mind, if all that we can know and can do, must be subject to the conditions of our human organism, it is in vain to spin cobwebs about the Universe, whether you think that intuition or that science can supply them, and it is vain to waste labour on such knowledge as would be useless to human life even if it could be attained, or to nourish dreams about an existence which is not that of men and women at all.
The human synthesis which we propose repudiates any objective, i.e., non-human, unity, whether metaphysical or scientific, and holds firmly to a human or subjective unity, that is, in conception and in aim, limited to man's resources and to his life on this earth. Instead of trying to know things as they are, or as they might be, we aim at systematising the knowledge of that which affects man, and which groups knowledge round its relation to man, and its power of affecting man's life. This means an arrangement of all our ideas from the central point of Man, that is, the entire life of the human race, in its noblest and highest aspirations. The Positive Philosophy is geocentric in its science, i.e., regards everything outside this earth from the point of view of our Earth, and it is anthropocentric in its moral and spiritual aspect, i.e., its beliefs and its hopes are concentrated on human life.
After stating the six general axioms of thought which are common to the philosophy of Comte and to the Philosophy of all schools of Relativity, Experience, Law, and Evolution, I will now speak more in detail of those principles which are more specially distinctive of Positivism, and originate with Auguste Comte. The first of them is the law of the Three States, through which all subjects of inquiry pass--(1) the Fictitious, without attempt at proof; (2) the Metaphysical, reference to abstractions, or unverified scientific guesses; (3) Positive conclusions from strict scientific proof. These three modes of thought pass gradually into each other, in this order. They are all to be found together in the same individual mind, and in all ages-on different subjects of thought. An astronomer may believe the Universe to be ruled by the Creator, or by Mind, or by Chance: he may believe that history revolves in fixed cycles, and he may hold the Newtonian theory of Gravitation. The fictitious stage does not mean the Theological, because the Lucretian belief in Chance, Atheism, and Materialism are examples of the fictitious theory. The metaphysical stage is not peculiar to Ontology. It includes unverified hypotheses under a scientific mask, such as crude dogmatism about racial characteristics. The Positive stage of thought includes all true scientific belief, a state of mind in which all educated men rest for a very large part of their settled thoughts; but which few exact for every conceivable matter of thought, from the origin of the Universe to Nature, and to the limits of human consciousness. This primary Law of the evolution of thought was formulated by Comte in 1822, 100 years ago. It lies at the basis of Positivism; it has been ardently supported by Mr. Mill and his school in England, by Littré and his school in France, and has triumphantly resisted all attempts to displace it. Recent attempts to do so seem based on an imperfect understanding of Comte's law.
The Classification of the Sciences is the cardinal instrument of the Synthetic Philosophy. It proposes to form an ascending scale of the Sciences in the order of their increasing complexity of matter and decreasing generality of range. Again, they are abstract, meaning general laws of each order of Science-not concrete applications and combinations. All seven sciences have many sub-divisions and innumerable cross divisions in practice. The seven master sciences lead up to one another and form the basis of each other in that order. Mathematics are the foundation of all science. It is the logic, or organon of Science. It is the groundwork of Astronomy-which has a special and narrower range but is deeply complicated with Physics. Physics in all its various branches, dealing with the whole range of cosmic phenomena is a science more general in range than Chemistry, which practically deals with terrestrial matter. So, too, Biology is general to all living organisms, and is obviously wider than Sociology, which has to include not only Social biology-but the interaction of mind, will, and feeling-Psychology, history, economics, and religion-and thereby is a more complex and less exact science than Biology. Lastly, Morals is a specialised branch of Sociology-not so wide but even less exact. As the code of human Duty, it is the ultimate crown and aim of all knowledge-i.e., the highest of the Sciences.
It must be understood that this classification of the Sciences is confined to the abstract, i.e., the most general laws, independent of all applied science and practical uses in concrete things, and independent of all composite sciences of mixed science-such as geology, economics, psychology, physiology, geography, botany, electricity and the innumerable sub-divisions and interactions of the concrete sciences. To form any sort of scale or synthesis of these would be futile. The seven Positive Sciences are strictly abstract, general, fundamental, dealing only with dominant laws of a kind which are distinctive and not interchangeable, nor intermixed: as is geology, which uses alternately many sciences astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology. Astronomy has no need of Biology, nor has Biology of Morals. Comte's classification of the sciences has been actively supported by Mill and his followers in England and by Littré and his school in France and elsewhere. Both have refuted the criticism of Herbert Spencer, which turned entirely on his confusing abstract laws with concrete applications, and with failing to notice that Comte's classification was strictly limited to the abstract sciences, on the ground that a classification of the mixed concrete branches of knowledge would lead to endless confusion and useless detail.
Taking these seven master sciences in their order, Auguste Comte proceeded to group their elementary laws in a coherent system-tracing the gradual evolution in the order of historic formation and of their influence, each on the successive science, as Astronomy grew out of Mathematics, As Physics grew out of Astronomy, and Sociology out of Biology. I risk the contradiction-I may say the derision-of the learned when I claim that this is the first attempt at a synthesis of all knowledge, and is still the only synthesis extant. I am far from pretending that it is adequate-much less that it is final. But it is the only sketch yet offered to the seekers after Philosophy. I shall not presume to state even in summary this attempt to fuse scientific knowledge into a coherent scheme. It may be studied in the six volumes of Comte's Philosophie, in the four volumes of his Politique, in his Astronomie Populaire, in his Synthèse Subjective. All these are now seventy or even eighty years old. In these three generations enormous strides have been made in such sciences as Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, whilst little essential has been added to the Astronomy of the Solar System. Nor was Comte a master in any of these sciences, as they existed even in 1840. He was a specialist in Mathematics. He was a student of the great Physicists and Biologists of his time. He published a specialist work on Astronomy, and he was the real founder of Sociology, and he sketched his own special science of Morals. Of course, in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, the outlines of a co-ordination of their principles made in 1840 could be little but an ideal, a suggestion of what might be done, nor do we claim for these any higher value. But in Philosophy, ideals, and even mere creative Thoughts, are of immense value. How crude was the science of Physics and of Biology in the age of Aristotle and Plato! How potent have been their attempts at a synthesis! How fanciful was the Ontology of Aquinas, and yet what a world has it enslaved! How primitive was the Astrology of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Yet how great was its dominion, even over religion, for 1600 years! I-low scanty was the science of Descartes and Bacon. Yet how deeply did it transform the thought of mankind!
Turning now to the third of the distinctive principles of the Positivist School, the Science of Sociology, we claim that this was truly founded by Auguste Comte in the three latter volumes of his Philosophie Positive, 1839, 1841, 1842, and in the four volumes of his Politique Positive, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854. But the general idea of sociology had been sketched in essays of 1819, 1820, 1822, 1825, 1826. The science is thus one hundred years old. In his great Dictionary Littré describes Sociology as the science of the development and constitution of human societies, and he adds that the hybrid title was due to Comte, who called it a happy combination which recalled the Greek and Roman societies with whom ideas of social systems arose. The title Sociology and the legitimacy of the Science so called has been adopted by various schools of thought in the civilised world and has been popularised in the English-speaking world by the works of Herbert Spencer and his followers. It must be specially noted that Comte made no claim to have done more than to have instituted the science, i.e., to have given its elements and scheme, not to have constituted it in a complete and permanent form. This, he said, must be left to, his successors.
The institution of Sociology as a real science is the main achievement of Comte, as it occupies the larger half of his earlier work, the Philosophie, and the whole of the subsequent work, the Politique. We claim it to be the most important contribution to General Philosophy, since the ages of Descartes, Bacon, and Leibnitz. Since it involves, as its intellectual basis, the physical sciences and prepares the ground for Morals, Comte's Sociology is in effect a Synthetic Philosophy of human progress. Of profound importance is the division of the Social Science into Statics and Dynamics -i.e., into the essentials and permanent institutions of human society-and the progressive development of society in the ages, in fact, the history of civilisation. This conception of Statics and Dynamics, first published in 1839 (Vol. IV, Phil Pos.), has been adopted by most students of Sociology, and especially by Herbert Spencer and his followers. The grand dualism of Sociology- between the study of the fixed and elementary organisations of Society and that of its development and evolution was naturally founded by a mathematician to whom Statics and Dynamics were fundamental ideas. This brilliant conception threw a flood of light on all subsequent philosophy and has been the guide of all who reason about the progress of Society, especially since Herbert Spencer published his Social Statics in 1851.
Social Statics, indispensable as they are, take up only the initial parts of Comte's Sociology and consist entirely of abstract or indestructible laws of human societies-such as Religion, Property, Family, Language, Government, Education, Morality. Now, all of these are treated from the point of view of permanent principles, not of the practical and special forms in past or present nations. Thus religion is treated not as it is in any human creed, but in the conditions to which all creeds conform, i.e., having Doctrine, Worship, and Government-a dogma, or intellectual foundation-Worship, or the appeal to emotions--Discipline, or the rules of practical conduct and order. These are treated as indispensable elements of any kind of religion, without reference even to Comte's own scheme of a religion of Humanity. Indeed, I remember that an eminent Anglican Bishop spoke of this analysis as of profound value as a scientific instrument of thought. After thus analysing these seven normal institutions of all types of society, even the most rudimentary type and the most revolutionary, Comte's Social Statics proceed to formulate the conditions of social harmony, to be attained only by a co-ordination of intellectual, moral, and practical bonds of unity and peace.
But the second part of Sociology, Social Dynamics, is far the larger and most original side of Comte's contribution to the science. He calls it " the necessary and continuous movement of humanity "-in other words, the Science of Progress. But by Progress, he does not mean invariable advance to a higher state, as a recent critic assumes, but evolution or growth, the expansion of a previous condition under normal forces of life. It is plain how widely Social Dynamics distinguish Sociology from Biology, dealing as it does with all animal life. The world of the higher brutes exhibits elementary Social Statics, the germs of Family, Government, Morality, even of Language. But Social Progress is exclusively human. The glorious privilege of Humanity is that it hands on from generation to generation its knowledge, its laws, its habits, its aspirations and its hopes. Whatever objections may be raised to apply to individuals Campbell's fine line, " to live in hearts we leave behind us is not to die," is certainly true of generations of men in social organisms. Civilisation hands on the torch of life, as the old poet said. To reduce this to scientific laws is to found a Philosophy of history.
Comte never pretended that he was the sole originator of Sociology. No philosopher has ever been so anxious to do justice to his predecessors in thought. As to Social Statics, he amply records all that was done by Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras, and the Roman moralists. In Social Dynamics the ancients could do nothing, for they had no possible history of civilisation, nor could the medieval thinkers do anything, for they had only a distorted history of civilisation. But Vico, Pascal, Leibnitz, Montesquieu and Condorcet, had fertile views of human progress-though none of them had any sound theories of history from the dawn of records to our own days. I claim that for the first time in human thought Comte produced a really scientific scheme of History from Fetishist times to 1848. This history is contained in Vols. V and VI of the Philosophie, 1841, 1842, and in Vol. III of his Politique, 1853. When I turn back in mind to all that is contained in these two works, I say first, that Comte was too modest in saying that he had instituted, or founded, Sociology, but had not constituted, or elaborated it. He really went far to elaborate it as a developed science in all its parts and scheme. Secondly, I say that this Philosophy of History is the most original, most important, most creative, step that was taken by the Philosophy of the nineteenth century.
If such language sounds extravagant, I may remind critics that, in the midst of his attack on Comte's later work, J. Stuart Mill used language almost as strong of this Philosophy of History, and especially of the New Calendar of Great Men, in which Comte gave his synthesis of history an artistic symmetry. All Mill's school adopts and uses the same sketch of history, as do Littré, and many others in France, in Europe, and in America. I will make a clean breast of it personally. I have studied this vast revelation of the past now for more than 60 years. I have weighed it, tested it, taught it, lived in it-much as the Puritans of Milton's time lived in their Bible as the revelation of man's past and future. And though I am not convinced of every part of it, though much else of Comte is to me held in suspense, this sketch of History seems to me decisive-but merely, as a provisional programme.
The Calendar, with its classified list of 559 names of typical men and women in the history of all ages and nations, is a conspectus of general civilisation-and with the Biographies of which there is now a second edition, it forms a scientific conception of the past. So the Library, or list of some 270 works by 140 authors, ancient and modern-in four groups-Poetry and Fiction, Science, History, Philosophy and Religion forms an organised scheme of general Literature. Then follows the general Scheme of Philosophy, with an arrangement of Laws of Thought, the analysis of Psychology, and the foundations of Morals.
Taken together-this concrete theory of all human history, the artistic grouping for each day of the year, the leading pioneers and leaders of civilisation-the Library of all that is most invaluable in the world's literature-the canons of Philosophy and Morals-these connected and correlated Schemes of Art, of Action, of Philosophy, of Science and Society, form a Synthesis of knowledge. And I claim for it that it is the only complete, coherent, and scientific synthesis now extant. In a future Lecture I propose to treat its reaction upon modern thought, its critics and its future aspirations.
Having in the first lecture explained the philosophic Synthesis of Auguste Comte, I now deal with its Reaction on modern thought, and its principal critics, confining myself as before to the intellectual side, and not touching on its social, ethical, and religious development.
By the reactions of this Synthesis I mean its general and indirect influence not merely on systematic philosophy, but its subtle permeation on ideas of every kind. There was once a popular notion that Positivists were an exceedingly small, narrow, bigoted sect, rigidly bound to a hard-and-fast body of dogmas, in which no doubt or qualification could exist, and which must be believed as having a sort of virtual inspiration. If any such there be, they are quite unknown to me and to my friends. We are not Comtists: we have no sect, no orthodoxy, no creeds. Wee know that much in the voluminous works of Comte is a utopian ideal, waiting for adequate proof, and, in the world as it is, quite impracticable.
Very different is the case with Comte's general philosophy or Synthesis-the relative, human, subjective systematising of all knowledge round the ideal of the evolution of humanity. This has slowly grown in the hundred years since it was first elaborated into an axiom of thought which colours and inspires modern reasoning about science as well as about society. On every side we recognise in all forms of serious thought an unconscious Positivism of which we trace the original source. Positivism is in the air-so far as it means the spirit of scientific demonstration, the concentration of all knowledge to the practical improvement of human life, the organisation of the past to form a base for our social enlargement in the future. The instrument-as Bacon would say, the Novum Organum-of this idea was the conception of Sociology-a science of Society in its two essential branches of Statics and Dynamics the unity of all useful knowledge, not in order to form an intellectual triumph, but to found a practical science of life-the law of the three successive stages of thought -a philosophy of history-a subjective synthesis.
Now, this conception of Sociology-of Social Statics and Dynamics-this philosophy of history, of civilisation passing through successive stages: of wax, local defence, and industry-is clearly due to Comte and is about 100 years old. It was first suggested in his essays of 1819-1826 and fully described in the Philosophie of 1830-1842. The term Social Physics was changed into the new term of Sociology in 1839. The name and the science were a revelation. Vico, Kant, Herder, Hegel, Condorcet, had written on the Philosophy of History as a side of their own metaphysical views of Nature and Man. But none of these had reduced their theories to strictly scientific form, nor did they elaborate a concrete system of historical facts and persons so as to prove a true filiation of ideas and manners. All of these great thinkers had prepared the way for Sociology; and Comte and his school have always done justice to their work. But their theory of history was so completely incorporated with Ontology or was left so obscure, vague, and impersonal, that it cannot be called science.
A hundred years earlier Vico had grasped the idea of law in things social; but his theory of cycles was so obviously untrue in fact, and so fatal to ideas of human progress, that it could not be regarded as a scientific basis of evolution. Montesquieu perhaps was the first to formulate a sound definition of a general law; but he grossly overrated the material environment as affecting civilisation. And Condorcet, master of physical science as he was, was misled by his revolutionary prejudices to ban the whole medieval world. Kant's essay of twenty pages is worthy of his great name; but this profound sketch could not pretend to be a science of history. And the great work of Herder was instinct with the idea of human evolution, but was far from reducing the facts of history to definite and coherent laws. Of all these philosophies of history that of Hegel is far the most important. Its publication was nearly contemporary with the Lectures of Comte, and it was quite unknown to him. Hegel's is an attempt to make the history of humanity fall into line with, and fill a vacant space in, his Ontology of the Universe, and it is inspired by the central purpose of showing how the Welt-idee had been incarnated in great men, and had fashioned the successive epochs of civilization. This theory, the most intelligible and most popular of the works of this great genius, is full of brilliant suggestions. But it is a metaphysical, not a scientific, view of the Past. It is bound up with airy visions of the Mind of the Universe; and it disappears when that bubble bursts. Those of us who regard the Absolute Mind of the Universe as a grandiloquent dream cannot accept Hegel's Philosophy of history as being in any sense a preparation for Sociology as a science.
Comte was always referring us back to those who had prepared the ground for Sociology as a Science. First of all was Aristotle, who laid the solid foundations of Social Statics, the permanent elements of Society, Family, Property, Government, Class, Education, and _Discipline. For Dynamics, Aristotle was debarred by having no material for the progressive history of Society or of any history but that of Contemporary Greece. The Catholic Church, succeeding to the Roman Empire, realized in mind one of the secular evolutions both in Thought and in Life. Vico and Montesquieu, in the first half of the eighteenth century, had a clear sense of scientific laws in Society. Pascal, Turgot, Kant, Hume, Condorcet, adumbrated evolutionary laws of Society in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was not until after the Revolutionary upheaval and the end of the great European wars that it was possible to form a scientific Sociology. Nor would this have been possible then but for the advance of physical and biologic science, and the new revelation of primitive societies in the Asiatic, American, and Pacific worlds. Early in the nineteenth century, physical and moral science, primitive and cultured societies, the Past and the Present, had been brought together as they never were before. In spite of two generations of revolution, of worldwide war, of bitter race antagonism-the idea of the unity of humanity filled the general mind. A great synthetic genius appeared and the science of Sociology was founded.
See how, in this period since 1840, ideas of a social science, social laws, social evolution, have come to be familiar to all through the Press, through education, even in politics-among those who never heard of Comte and perhaps consider Sociology to be pedantic jargon. That is the way with new seminal ideas which fall in a soil duly prepared to nourish them. So it was in the middle of the last century when Darwin propounded the theory of physical evolution by natural selection. In seventy years this has gone round the world, and has taken new forms with those who have never studied Darwin's books and even with those who think many of his conclusions inadequate and wrong. It was so with Hume, with Locke, with Adam Smith, pre-eminently so with Bacon, with Descartes, with Harvey, Newton, Galileo, and Kepler. We may go back and think of Aquinas, Augustine, the Roman lawyers and moralists, and above all of Archimedes and Hipparchus, of Plato and Aristotle. Great evolutionary and creative ideas ultimately govern the world. And they do this, even when they are misunderstood, modified and corrected, and when they are mixed up with much that is rejected.
What melancholy, almost comic, chapters in the history of human thought, are those which record the wonderful defects and aberrations of the great thinkers who in fact transformed the mental atmosphere of after ages. The grand truths of Adam Smith are words of scorn to, modern Socialists who misinterpret-rather than misuse-his scientific axioms. The great influence of Bacon is not lost because of his very poor knowledge of science and of his ignorance of mathematical deduction. Descartes, again, so exaggerated mathematical deduction that he tried to construct a universe by his formulas, and ended in the grand dream of concentric Vortices. Turn to the ancients-the astronomy of Hipparchus and Ptolemy ruled men's minds for fifteen centuries though it was based on the primitive fancy that the earth was the centre of the solar system. The influence of Aristotle has been the most efficient and the most permanent of all human minds in the evolution of philosophy; but his physical science was rudimentary, he had no history at all, and even in his great creation of Social Statics, he took slavery to be an institution of Nature. As to Plato, whose influence on thought altogether was only second to that of Aristotle, he committed himself and his successors to those mischievous extravagances about Family and Property, Marriage and Government, which have been recently described as " the most notable example of systematic wrong thinking ever given to the world." I recall these cases to show that the mighty synthetic ideas in general philosophy do not fail to live and work because they are found to be in part mistaken, premature, and doubtful. I am far from applying any of these terms to the Subjective Synthesis and the Sociology of Auguste Comte. But I do say that attempts to reject his system as worthless, because specialists think they can pick holes in details, or incidents of it, is contrary to all that has happened in the evolution of philosophy. And nearly all the current criticism, at any rate of Comte's Sociology, consists of special and entirely subordinate details.
The sociology and the scientific systematization of human evolution is the most original, and now the most efficient contribution of Auguste Comte to modern thought. But for general philosophy a far wider scope, and what will ultimately prove to, be his decisive influence, is the construction of a relative scientific synthesis-that is, a systematic philosophy of Thought and of Life based on the logic of demonstration and reality, and limited to Humanity and our World. Comte's Synthesis is the only one to which both these conditions-relative and scientific-can apply. All forms of Ontologic philosophy-of which that of Hegel is the type and the most important-are absolute-not relative-in that they claim to explain the Universe, or Things-in-themselves; nor are they scientific, because they claim to transcend scientific knowledge, in which, to our mind, the laws of sensation have to be an inseparable part. Again, all forms of Evolutionary philosophy, of which Spencer's is the most systematic and important, whilst claiming to be scientific are still absolute, in seeking to explain the Universe, and in any case to transcend the field of human knowledge, which we maintain to be the only possible sphere of our human powers. Comte's relative and scientific synthesis stands apart and alone.
I shall waste no words in answer to those who, calling themselves practical men, experts in special departments of science and economics, declaim against system altogether. All serious thinkers know that ideas which defy generalization and co-ordination cannot be either lasting or efficient. The loose disparate notions of the man-in-the-street may work well enough in material business, but they are liable to change and have no creative power. Morally and intellectually, as in armies in the field, unorganized crowds are easily broken up. In science, in philosophy, in politics, in religion, organization-that is system-is the sole bond of power. All men who do anything, who found anything, or lead others in action or in brain, hold on by some kind of system they take to be true and useful-whether they are conscious of it or not, and certainly, whether or not they could express it clearly in words. The supreme form of system is a Synthetic Philosophy of knowledge and of life. All serious men believe that they have something of the kind -though too many of them refuse to state it-perhaps are not able to state it. The great question is-Is it true, is it useful to man, is it within human range? In other words-Is it relative as well as scientific?
Now Comte's classification of the Sciences in the abstract-in the series of their increasing complexity and their decreasing range, from Mathematics to Sociology and Morals-attacks the supreme task of Philosophy-the co-ordination of general knowledge. I believe there has been as yet no other. Down to the first half of the nineteenth century, none could be formed, owing to the imperfect condition of such sciences as Physics and Biology and the total want of Sociology. However high we rate the metaphysics and the Psychology, the Logic and the Ethic of Hegel and of all the eminent post-Hegelians-no one pretends that they have produced such a co-ordinated scheme of the interdependence of the Sciences as is contained in the ten volumes of the Positive Philosophy and the Positive Polity. A long succession of eminent specialists, Littré, Lévy-Bruhl, Mill, Lewes, Bridges, abroad and at home, have accepted the value of this scheme. I do not pretend to defend it in its complete elaboration. Science in these seventy years has passed far on, and has left much of its special work more or less derelict. But the conception of a coherent scheme of all scientific knowledge was as important as the premature attempt of Aristotle; it was far more truly scientific than that of Descartes and Bacon-and far more systematic than that of the Encyclopaedists in France, or of Locke and Hume at home.
The attempts of all the great Metaphysicians to, unify knowledge are based upon the idea of finding dominant principles which underlie and co-ordinate all the sciences and -apply alike to man's knowledge and mind and to the world without. They do not undertake to connect the positive sciences in an ascending series so as to show their evolution one out of the other, apart from unifying principles governing all sciences alike. Comte's Synthesis is a totally different thing, for it repudiates any identity of governing principle, and recognises appropriate methods and special logic for each science in turn. Besides which, it repudiates all kind of attempts to explain the sciences by general principles that rule in the Universe, or such as rest upon intuitional revelation, that is, are independent of solid proof, and eliminate from evidence any contribution from physical data. The sciences grow from generation to generation from accepted truths which are permanent. Intuitional revelation dissolves in successive mists as each thinker refutes his predecessor.
I turn now to the "Synthetic Philosophy" of Herbert Spencer. No doubt this is designed to be a real Synthesis-or co-ordination of general knowledge-a science of the sciences. It is, or professes to be, strictly scientific, resting on demonstration and verifiable evidence. I have before described it as an absolute scientific synthesis: and it is the only British synthesis yet extant. I have known intimately Mr. Spencer all my life and I have often professed my profound admiration for his vast intelligence and noble character. When I was called upon to deliver at the University of Oxford the first Herbert Spencer Lecture in 1905, now published in Vol. 1 by the Clarendon Press, I made abundantly clear my sense of his great powers and the measure of my own agreement with his philosophy. My present purpose is simply to compare his " Synthetic Philosophy " with that of Auguste Comte. The conception, the name, the arrangement of his Philosophy was obviously borrowed from Comte, as were the titles of " Social Statics," " Sociology," " Environment " (or milieu), " Social Organism I know the persistent efforts made by Spencer to deny any filiation of his system with that of Comte. They are too obsolete to be even arguable now. Herbert Spencer's first work, " Social Statics," was issued in 1853. Comte's " Positive Philosophy," adumbrated in essays from 1820, the year of Spencer's birth, was published in the years 1830-1842, and was quite complete when Spencer, aged 22, was working as a civil engineer student on a railway at Worcester. In 1853, when he published his first work, he had been for three years the intimate friend of G. H. Lewes, who was an active adherent of Comte, and had published his " History of Philosophy " in 1845-46, and his " Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences " in 1853. It is idle to pretend that Spencer, who read very little, but picked up his great knowledge, as Huxley told me, by conversation with specialists, did not read Comte. Nor did he read Kant or Hegel. But for years before his first work he had been in close intercourse with Lewes and George Eliot, both keenly interested in Comte's System. To pretend now that Spencer, when in 1862 he began to issue his " Synthetic Philosophy " knew nothing of Comte's " Synthetic Philosophy," completed in 1842, is as preposterous as to tell us that the author of the Gospel of St. John knew nothing of Plato.
Mr. Spencer's Synthesis is not only an imitation of Comte's, and adopts most of his distinctive terminology, but it accepts the most important of the postulates or axioms on which the Positivist Synthesis is built, viz., the universal reign of Law-the Law of Evolution-the Relativity of knowledge-the repudiation of non-verifiable hypotheses-the idea of a synthesis of science the end of philosophy being the amelioration of the human organism. But the decisive differences between the Synthesis of Spencer and that of Comte are these. First, Spencer's is an objective Synthesis applying to the Universe. Spencer attempts the problem of solving the mystery of the Universe-not on metaphysical, idealist, or intuitional methods-but on methods, he thinks, of positive science. His primary axiom is this. " Throughout the Universe, in general and in detail, there is an unceasing redistribution of matter and motion. " The cardinal principle of his Cosmical Philosophy is " an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion." And his law of Evolution governs and co-ordinates all the Sciences in turn. This is in his system the Unity of Knowledge. Now, the Positivist system repudiates such a Cosmical Philosophy as a pretentious dream. Even if this law of evolution were both intelligible and true, to apply it to the Universe is as completely metaphysical and hypothetical as the Cosmogony of Moses or of Brahma, or any of the sonorities of a Welt-idee.
The second decisive difference is this. Spencer's Science of the Sciences opens with " First Principles " -a volume of 500 pages full we admit of profound thought-in 22 chapters, all of which apply to the world in general. The system of Philosophy then passes to Biology, going on to Psychology, Sociology, and Morality. But Mathematics, Geometry, Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry, the whole world of numbers, space, mechanics, inorganic science, is entirely dropped -and on grounds so inadequate as these that-" the scheme is too extensive," and that " organic nature is of more immediate importance." So this co-ordination of all the sciences omits what Positivists call four or five master sciences, each with their countless subdivisions. See how more patiently Comte works through his science of the sciences. The first volume of his 'I Philosophie " (1830, 739 pp.) is devoted to the theory of Mathematics, with eighteen Lectures on the Calculus, on Analysis, on Geometry, on Mechanics, on Statics, on Dynamics. The second volume of his '"Philosophie " (1835, 772 pp.), is devoted to Astronomy and Physics: having eighteen Lectures on the Astronomy of the earth and of the solar system, on gravitation, side-real astronomy, and positive cosmogony, on Physics, barology, thermology, acoustics, optics, electrology. Five Lectures in the Third Volume of the " Philosophic " (1838, 260 pp.) are occupied with Chemistry, inorganic, organic, and electro-chemical. Here then are 41 separate essays on the entire range of the Sciences which precede Biology. They occupy the greater part also of the first volume of the " Politique " (1851); and Comte published separate works on " Analytic Geometry " (1843), on " Popular Astronomy " (1844), and on " Positive Logic " (1856). Whatever may be the value of these treatises, and Auguste Comte was a consummate master of Mathematics, Geometry, and Astronomy, his scheme of a science of the sciences included an elaborate, but abstract, analysis of the dominant ideas in all this enormous ocean of knowledge. Even if the future finds that it failed, it contained an illuminating and inspiring idea of the concatenation of the inorganic sciences and of their successive evolution one out of the others. In Spencer's so-called " Synthetic Philosophy " this mighty Ocean of Thought is a vast Mare ignotum.
The third decisive difference between the Synthesis of Spencer and that of Comte is this. Whilst in both the principles of Sociology and of Ethics form by far the largest part of the whole, Spencer limits his Sociology to Statics, i.e., to the elements and origins of society, institutions, government, and social organization; he entirely puts aside history, the evolution of society, Social Dynamics, in fact. Now the three later volumes of Comte's " Philosophie " (1839, 41, 42), the third volume of the " Politique " (1853) are entirely occupied with a philosophy of history. This is a real explanation of the successive types of human civilization and of the dominant epochs and events from primitive times down to the Revolution of 1848. Even those who are most opposed to every utterance of Comte on things political, economic, or religious, have been profoundly impressed by his philosophy of history as a coherent scheme of social and racial evolution. It has subtly infused itself into the historical mind of our age. Of all this Mr. Spencer has absolutely nothing to say. His whole explanation of the Past of Humanity is obsessed by the illusion of an arid Pacifism, which to those who have lived through the Great War is comic when it is not repulsive.
Any Philosophy which pretends to dogmatise about the Universe or even the accessible World, but which drops out of its purview the whole range of inorganic science, which has no practical and concrete philosophy of history-is not Synthetic Philosophy at all. Comte alone has produced a truly Synthetic Philosophy. In the sciences of Physics and Chemistry-which in the last hundred years have been so enormously developed -his knowledge was limited by the deficiencies of his age; nor do we claim that in these he was himself a recognised master as he was in the mathematical and social sciences. But it was a trivial form of controversy when chemists and electricians and other specialists declared that, since the chemistry of 1830 was obsolete, Comte's classification was worthless; when biologists declared that those who wrote before Darwin could be nothing but tiros. I remember how a very eminent biologist ridiculed Comte for doubting the reality of ether-" the fundamental basis," he said, " of modern physics." Well! fifty years have passed; and now men of science are still debating many things untouched or misunderstood by Darwin; and as to the absolute reality of ether in the Universe, modern science is inclined to hold that the relativity of our knowledge of the World without is far from postulating the existence of ether as its basis.
The seminal effect of a synthesis of Thought, which concentrates ideas and lights up diverse kinds of learning into a glow of harmony, is not to be required to answer the last new puzzle to be solved, nor is it to be condemned by technical details. Descartes, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Kant, Hegel, and their successors, propounded many things which the world has found to be visions and even absurdities. What in the end really tells on the progress of Thought is the genius of symmetry. That which tells in the work of Auguste Comte will prove to be these things-his profound sense of the limitations of the human mind-his dominant sense of the human Organism-his constructive picture of the human Past. Of all his works, the " Calendar," or tableau of the authors of civilization from Moses to Bichat is the most artistic, as well as the best known. Take that co-ordinated scheme of the great men of all ages and races, as explained in the volume of which a new edition is now published, and we have in summary a philosophy of the human race, which is a prose poem, not unlike in design the great epic of Dante; and it is as truly a work of art, though on far more solid foundations of scientific reality and fact.
Time would not allow me to expand what Comte described as Primary Philosophy. The general Laws of Thought-that is, a System of Logic, which underlying both the Classification of the Sciences and their correlation, the scheme of Social evolution, the analysis of human nature in action, intelligence, and feeling, and the ultimate ascendancy of Morals. Though I have confined my argument in these two Lectures to the Philosophy of Comte's system, I cannot conclude without noting that this, from first to last, stood as a foundation for a wider purpose. From youth till death, from 1819 down to 1857, his scientific philosophy and his social polity were one coherent and consistent scheme. It was an organic scheme of thought and of life, fully conceived from the first as having two correlated aspects -conviction and practice, sound knowledge leading up to right conduct-in other words, science and. a good life. The attempts at home and abroad to show that his Philosophy and his Polity are at variance have been proved to be due to inadequate study of both works and also to moral and intellectual divergence on principles. Miss Martineau in her translation of the Philosophy purposely omitted the last 10 pages which I have restored in the edition of 1896.
The distinctive feature of both as an entire scheme of thought and life is this: It is the only known system of philosophy (at least since the Middle Ages) which avowed itself as the basis of a new form of life. Conversely it is the only known scheme of Social and religious union which is necessarily based on a scientific philosophy. No other Synthesis-whether theological, metaphysical, or material, combines social reorganization with science. This interdependence of knowledge, action, and feeling is common to all Comte's works from youth to death. From the first he regarded his scientific studies as the instrument of a social reorganization. His mind was filled with the idea of social, economic, political, and even international harmony and peace to be maintained by means of a sound education in physical, sociological and moral science. It is from this dualism that opposition to all he wrote has arisen. The teachers of moral and religious regeneration are too often scandalized by being told they must begin with demonstration of physical laws and natural science. Specialists in natural science too often ask what have experimental discoveries to do with social reorganization?
All this comes out especially in Comte's repeated explanation of the ideas which he regarded as inherent in the term POSITIVE. Of course, he used it in the ordinary French sense of scientific, not in the English sense of dogmatical, stubborn in belief (as Johnson explains a word of which he was a past master). For us, Positive has seven meanings: 1, Real, i.e., not imaginary or miraculous: 2, Useful, of some benefit to mankind: 3, Certain, i.e., having scientific proof.: 4, Precise, i.e., exact, according to the true degree of exactness possible in each science, infinitesimal precision in Astronomy and Physics, practical precision in History and Psychology: 5, Organic, i.e., constructive rather than destructive; living, or progressive, rather than fixed and immutable-in a word, evolutionary: 6, Relative, i.e., not absolute always referring us to human faculties, earthly conditions, and ideas that are subordinate to the facts and purposes before us, and not arbitrary, or the result of our pre-possessions, wishes or dogmas: 7, Sympathetic, i.e., having some relation to human feelings and emotions. Accordingly, for years past I have myself used the terms Positivism and Humanism as interchangeable; and in the POSITIVIST REVIEW recently I saw it proposed to drop the term Positivist and adopt that of Humanist.
In the last years of his life Comte published his Synthèse Subjective " which opens with the following passage-a summary of his entire system. It is somewhat close and esoteric in expression-but not nearly so complex as Mr. Herbert Spencer's famous dogma of universal evolution and the instability of the homogeneous. Philosophy from Aristotle to Hegel has abounded in esoteric language. Well! Comte's opening sentence is this:
To subordinate Progress to Order, Analysis to Synthesis, Egoism to Altruism; such are the three statements, practical, theoretical, and moral, of the problem which man has to solve, and by solving to attain a complete and stable harmony.
The meaning is plain. Order, i.e., the external conditions of terrestrial life and the permanent institutions of human society precede and form the foundation of all Progress, or Evolution :-Physical, social or moral. Change, if called Evolution or Improvement, cannot escape from the domination of existing facts. The Future must start from the Past, in knowledge, in society, in morality. Synthesis, i.e., general conceptions, must inspire Analysis, or the direct observation of concrete phenomena. To observe accurately we must start with and aim at some governing theory. Altruism, that is, due and rational regard for other beings, must govern egoism-the pursuit of personal aims. It does not eliminate, suppress, or dominate egoism; but altruism must be kept in view as a superior object. These three laws of human nature refer respectively to activity, to intelligence, to feeling-to man's energy, brain, and heart. Together they form the task which humanity has to carry out: and when Humanity has succeeded in so doing, social and moral harmony will be achieved by man.
Comte goes on in this passage to say: These three forms of the task of human life are not distinct and separable. They must be jointly achieved, for they are closely united by reason of the interdependence of activity, intellect, and feeling. Intellectual harmony and practical harmony are impossible without moral harmony. Thus improvement is subordinate to conservation, the spirit of detail to the genius of synthesis. Religion is as much superior to Philosophy as it is to Politics. This is the last word of Auguste Comte.
I cite this concentrated programme of human Thought, Society, and Duty as a real Philosophical Synthesis-and so far as I know it is the only Synthesis extant-which combines and gives equal consideration to man's energies, his mind, and his emotions.