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optimism of the advocates of final causes: for if, in this as in every other case, the actual order is necessarily more or less accordant with the course of the phenomena, it is very far from being true that the arrangement of the natural economy is as good for its purposes as we can easily conceive. The slowness of our social development is no doubt partly owing to the extreme imperfection of our organism; but it is owing nearly as much to the brevity of human life: and there would be no risk to any other great arrangement if the duration of our life, while still limited by the conditions just specified, were doubled or trebled. We have hardly thirty years (and those. beset with impediments) to devote to other purposes than preparation for life or for death; and this is a very insufficient balance between what Man can devise and what he can execute. Probably no one has ever nobly devoted himself to the direct advancement of the human mind without bitterly feeling how time, employed to the utmost, failed him for the working out of more than an insignificant part of his conceptions. It will not do to say that the rapid succession of coadjutors compensates for this restriction of individual activity. Important as this compensation is, it is very imperfect, both on account of the loss of time in preparing each successor, and because the precise continuance of the work by different persons, occupying different points of view, is impossible, and the more out of the question exactly in proportion to the value of the new coadjutors. In the simplest material operations, no man's work has ever been carried on by others precisely as he would have done it himself; and the more difficult and lofty labours, which require intellectual and moral forces to complete them, are much more in need of a persistent unity in their management. These intellectual and moral forces no more admit of partition and addition by successors than by contemporaries; and, whatever the advocates of the indefinite distribution of individual efforts may say, a certain degree of concentration is necessary to the accomplishment of human progress.

Another cause which affects the rate of progress is the natural Increase of increase of population, which contributes more than population. any other influence to accelerate the speed. This increase has always been regarded as the clearest symptom of the gradual amelioration of the human condition; and nothing can be more unquestionable when we take the whole race into the account; or at least, all the nations which have any mutual interest: but this is not the view with which my argument is concerned. I have to consider only the progressive condensation of our species as a last general element concurring in the regulation of our rate of social progress. It is clear that by this condensation, and especially in its early stages, such a division of employments is favoured as could not take place among smaller numbers: and again, that the faculties of individuals are stimulated to find subsistence by more refined methods;

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and again, that society is obliged to react with a firmer and better concerted energy against the expansion of individual divergences. In view of these considerations, I speak, not of the increase of the numbers of mankind, but of their concentration upon a given space, according to the special expression which I have made use of, and which is particularly applicable to the great centres of population, whence, in all ages, human progression has started. By creating new wants and new difficulties, this gradual concentration develops new means, not only of progress but of order, by neutralizing physical inequalities, and affording a growing ascendency to those intellectual and moral forces which are suppressed among a scanty population. If we go on to inquire into the effect of a quicker or slower concentration, we shall perceive that the social movement is further accelerated by the disturbance given to the old antagonism between the conservative and the innovating instincts,-the last being strongly reinforced. In this sense the sociological influence of a more rapid increase of population is in analogy with that which we have just been considering in regard to the duration of life; for it is of little consequence whether the more frequent renewal of individuals is caused by the short life of some, or the speedier multiplication of others; and what was said in the former case will suffice for the latter. It must be observed, however, that if the condensation and rapidity were to pass beyond a certain degree, they would not favour, but impede this acceleration. The condensation, if carried too far, would render the support of human life too difficult; and the rapidity, if extreme, would so affect the stability of social enterprises as to be equivalent to a considerable shortening of our life. As yet, however, the increase of population has never nearly reached the natural limits at which such inconveniences will begin; and we have really no experience of them, unless in a few exceptional cases of disturbance caused by migrations, ill-managed as to their extent of numbers and of time. In an extremely distant future, our posterity will have to consider the question, and with much anxiety; because, from the smallness of the globe, and the necessary limitation of human resources, the tendency to increase will become extremely important, when the human race will be ten times as numerous as at present, and as much condensed everywhere as it is now in the west of Europe. Whenever that time. comes, the more complete development of human nature, and the more exact knowledge of the laws of human evolution, will no doubt supply new means of resistance to the danger; means of which we can form no clear conception, and about which it is not for us to decide whether they will, on the whole, afford a sufficient compensation.

These are not all the accelerating influences which could be mentioned; but they are the chief; and they are enough for us, in our abstract view of our subject. I have now only to exhibit the main

VOL. II.

I

subordination which the different aspects of human development must mutually present.

evolution.

Though the elements of our social evolution are connected, and The order of always acting on each other, one must be preponderant, in order to give an impulse to the rest, though they may, in their turn, so act upon it as to cause its further expansion. We must find out this superior element, leaving the lower degrees of subordination to disclose themselves as we proceed: and we have not to search far for this element, as we cannot err in taking that which can be best conceived of apart from the rest, notwithstanding their necessary connection, while the consideration of it would enter into the study of the others. This double characteristic points out the intellectual evolution as the preponderant principle. If the intellectual point of view was the chief in our statical study of the organism, much more must it be so in the dynamical case. If our reason required at the outset the awakening and stimulating influence of the appetites, the passions, and the sentiments, not the less has human progression gone forward under its direction. It is only through the more and more marked influence of the reason over the general conduct of Man and of society, that the gradual march of our race has attained that regularity and persevering continuity which distinguish it so radically from the desultory and barren expansion of even the highest of the animal orders, which share, and with enhanced strength, the appetites, the passions, and even the primary sentiments of Man. If the statical analysis of our social organism shows it resting at length upon a certain system of fundamental opinions, the gradual changes of that system must affect the successive modifications of the life of humanity and this is why, since the birth of philosophy, the history of society has been regarded as governed by the history of the human mind. As it is necessary, in a scientific sense, to refer our historical analysis to the preponderant evolution, whatever it may be, we must in this case choose, or rather preserve, the general history of the human mind as the natural guide to all historical study of humanity. One consequence of the same principle,—a consequence as rigorous but less understood,-is that we must choose for consideration in this intellectual history, the most general and abstract conceptions, which require the exercise of our highest faculties. Thus it is the study of the fundamental system of human opinions with regard to the whole of phenomena,-in short, the history of Philosophy, whatever may be its character, theological, metaphysical, or positive,-which must regulate our historical analysis. No other department of intellectual history, not even the history of the fine arts, including poetry, could, however important in itself, be employed for this object; because the faculties of expression, which lie nearer to the affective faculties, have always, in their palmiest days, been subordinated, in the eco

LAW OF SUCCESSION.

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nomy of social progress, to the faculties of direct conception. The danger (which is inherent in every choice, and which is least in the choice that I have made) of losing sight of the interconnection of all the parts of human development, may be partly guarded against by frequently comparing them, to see if the variations in any one corresponds with equivalent variations in the others. I believe we shall find that this confirmation is eminently obtainable by my method of historical analysis. This will be proved at once if we find that the development of the highest part of human interests is in accordance with that of the lowest, the intellectual with the material. If there is an accordance between the two extremes, there must be also between all the intermediate terms.

We have indicated the general direction of the human evolution, its rate of progress, and its necessary order. We may now proceed at once to investigate the natural laws by which the advance of the human mind proceeds. The scientific principle of the theory appears to me to consist in the great philosophical law of the succession of the three states :-the primitive theological state, the transient metaphysical, and the final positive state,-through which the human mind has to pass, in every kind of speculation. This seems to be the place in which we should attempt the direct estimate of this fundamental law taking it as the basis of my historical analysis, which must itself have for its chief object to explain and expand the general notion of this law by a more and more extended and exact application of it in the review of the entire past of human history. I hope that the frequent statement and application of this law throughout the preceding part of my work will enable me to condense my demonstration of it here, without impairing its distinctness, or injuring its efficacy in such ulterior use as we shall have to make of it.

Three Periods.

The reader is by this time abundantly familiar with the interpretation and destination of the law. All thoughtful Law of the persons can verify for themselves its operation in individual development, from infancy to manhood, as I pointed out at the beginning of this work. We can test it, as we have tested other laws, by observation, experiment, and comparison. I have done so through many years of meditation; and I do not hesitate to say that all these methods of investigation will be found to concur in the complete establishment of this historical proposition, which I maintain to be as fully demonstrated as any other law admitted into any other department of natural philosophy. Since the discovery of this law of the three periods, all positive philosophers have agreed on its special adaptation to the particular science in which each was interested, though all have not made the avowal with equal openness. The only objections that I have encountered have related merely to the universality of its application. I hold it to be now implicitly recognized with regard to all the sciences which are positive: that is, the triple evolution is admitted in regard to all

cases in which it is accomplished. It is only in regard to social science that its application is supposed to be impossible and I believe the objection to signify nothing more than that the evolution is in this case incomplete. Social science has, with all its complexity, passed through the theological state, and has almost everywhere fully attained the metaphysical; while it has nowhere yet risen to the positive, except in this book. I shall leave the assertion of the law in regard to sociology to the demonstration which my analysis will afford for those who cannot perceive in this volume, as a whole, the nascent realization of this last philosophical process could not be convinced by argument. Leaving the historical verification of the law therefore to the reader, I invite attention to its philosophical explanation. It is not enough that the succession of the three states is a general fact. Such generality would go for more in any other science than in sociology, because, as we have seen, our biological philosophy enables us to conceive of all the main relations of social phenomena à priori, independently of their direct investigation, and we need confirmation of our conceptions by direct knowledge of human nature and experience. An à priori conception of a law so important as this is of the deepest interest in the study of social dynamics; and, to confirm it, we must carefully mark the general grounds, derived from an exact knowledge, which have rendered indispensable on the one hand, and inevitable on the other, that succession of social phenomena which take their course under the operation of this law. The logical grounds have already been assigned, at the outset of the work, and repeatedly since: and it is with the moral and social that we now have to do, and we can review them without subjecting ourselves to the reproach of severing the parts of a philosophical demonstration which are in their nature bound up together.

The necessity of the intellectual evolution I assert lies in the The Theologi- primary tendency of Man to transfer the sense of his cal period. own nature into the radical explanation of all phenomena whatever. Philosophers tell us of the fundamental difficulty of knowing ourselves; but this is a remark which could not have been made till human reason had achieved a considerable advance. The mind must have attained to a refined state of meditation before it could be astonished at its own acts,--reflecting upon itself a speculative activity which must be at first incited by the external world. If, on the one hand, Man must begin by supposing himself the centre of all things, he must, on the other hand, next set himself up as a universal type. The only way that he can explain any phenomena is by likening them, as much as possible, to his own acts, the only ones whose mode of production he can suppose himself, by the accompanying sensations, to understand. We may therefore set up a converse statement, and say that Man knows nothing but himself; and thus, his philosophy, in his earliest

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