intellectual agreement which preceded it: and its operation would not be so erroneously exaggerated, but that religion has so far faded out of men's minds as to leave no other strong habitual remembrance than of its grossest impressions.

Institution

of a speculative class.

Another way in which the theological philosophy was politically indispensable to human progress was by instituting, in the midst of society, a special class regularly devoted to speculative activity. In this view, the social supremacy of the theological philosophy has lasted to our own time. It is scarcely possible for us to form any but an indirect idea of the difficulty of establishing, in the earliest period of society, any permanent division between theory and practice, such as is effected by the existence of a class regularly occupied with speculation. Even now, amidst all the refinement of our mental habits, we find extreme difficulty in duly estimating any new operation which has no immediate practical bearing and by this we may imperfectly understand how impossible it was, in the remotest ages, to institute among populations of warriors and slaves a corporation that should be disengaged from military and industrial employments, and whose activity should be mainly of an intellectual kind. Such a class could, in those times, have been neither established nor tolerated if it had not been introduced in the natural course of social movement, and invested with authority beforehand by the influence of the theological philosophy. The political function of that philosophy thus was to establish a speculative body whose social existence not only admitted of no preparatory discussion, but was itself an indispensable preparation for the regular organization of all other classes. Whatever might have been the confusion of intellectual labour, and the inanity of the leading investigations of the sacerdotal orders, it is not the less true that the human mind owes to them the first effectual separation between theory and practice, which could take place in no other manner. Mental progress, by which all other progress is directed, would certainly have been destroyed at its birth, if society had continued to be composed of families engaged in the cares of material existence, or, as the only alternative, in the excitement of a brutal military activity. Any spiritual expansion supposes the existence of a privileged class, enjoying the leisure indispensable to intellectual culture, and at the same time urged, by its social position, to develop to the utmost the kind of speculative activity compatible with the primitive state of humanity; and this description is answered by the sacerdotal institution established by the theological philosophy. Though, in the decrepitude of the old philosophy, we see the theological class sunk in mental lethargy, we must not forget that but for their activity in the days of its prime, human society would have remained in a condition much like that of a company of superior monkeys. By forming this speculative class,

THE POSITIVE STAGE.

139

then, the theological philosophy fulfilled the political conditions of a further progression of the human mind.

Such are the qualities, intellectual, moral, and social, which secured the supremacy of the theological philosophy, at the outset of human progress. This is the only part of my sociological demonstration which is at all open to dispute; and this is one reason why I have dwelt so long upon it: but it is not the only reason. other and a greater is that this view contains the radical principle of the whole demonstration, the remainder of which will not detain us long.

The Positive

stage.

An

If this starting-point of human development has been placed beyond dispute, the final, or positive stage, does not admit of it. We have seen enough of the establishment of the positive philosophy in other departments to be satisfied of its destined prevalence in sociology. For the same reasons which explain and justify the early supremacy of the theological philosophy, we see that it must be a provisional state, for its supremacy was owing to its aptitude to meet the needs of a primitive state of humanity; and those needs are not the same, nor requiring the same philosophy to satisfy them, as those which arise in a more advanced stage of the human evolution. After having awakened human reason, and superintended its progress, in the absence of a more real philosophy, theology began to repress the human mind from the first moment of its coming into direct antagonism with the positive philosophy. And in the same way, in its moral relations, it imparted at first a consolatory confidence and active energy, which have become transmuted, by too long a duration, into oppressive terror and a faint apathy which have been too common a spectacle since it has been driven to struggle to retain its hold, instead of extending its dominion. There is no more question of the moral than of the intellectual superiority and final supremacy of the positive philosophy, capable as it is of developing in us an unshaken vigour and a deliberate steadfastness, directly derived from our own nature, without any external assistance, or any imaginary hindrance. And again, in regard to its social bearings, though the ascendency of the theological philosophy lasted longer on this ground than on the other two, it is evident enough at present that, instead of uniting men, which was its proper function at first, it now divides them, so that after having created speculative activity, it has ended with radically hindering it. The function of reuniting, as of stimulating and directing, belongs more and more, as religious belief declines, to the conceptions of positive philosophy, which alone can establish that intellectual community all over the world on which the great future political organization is to be grounded. The intellectual destination of the two philosophies has been sufficiently established in our review of all the departments of natural philosophy. Their moral and social destination will be illustrated in succeeding chap

ters of this volume. My historical analysis will explain to us the continuous decline of the one and the corresponding rise of the other, from the earliest period of human progression. It may appear paradoxical to regard the theological philosophy as in a steadily declining state intellectually, at the very time that it was fulfilling its most exalted political mission; but we shall find satisfactory scientific evidence that Catholicism, its noblest social work, must necessarily be its last effort, on account of the germs of disorganization which must thenceforth grow more and more rapidly. We need here therefore only assign the general principle of the inevitable tendency of the human mind towards an exclusive positive philosophy, throughout the whole range of the intellectual system. The general, like the individual human mind, is governed by

Attempted union of the two philosophies.

imagination first, and then, after a sufficient exercise. of the faculties at large, more and more by reason. The same grounds on which the process takes place in the individual case determine that of the whole species; and with the more certainty and power on account of the greater complexity and perpetuity of the social organism. Supreme as the theological philosophy once was, it is certain that such a method of philosophizing was resorted to only because no other was possible. Wherever there has been a choice, in regard to any subject whatever, Man has always preferred the study of the laws of phenomena to that of their primary causes, though prior training, which there has been no rational education adapted to counteract, has often occasioned lapse into his old illusions. Theological philosophy has, however, never been absolutely universal. That is, the simplest and commonest facts in all classes of phenomena have always been supposed subject to natural laws, and not to the arbitrary will of supernatural agents. Adam Smith made the remark that there never was, in any age or country, a god of Weight. In more complex cases, if only the relations of phenomena are seen to be invariable, the most superficial observer recognizes the presence of law. Even among moral and social phenomena, where the entrance of positive philosophy has been interdicted, we are all obliged to act daily on the supposition of natural laws, in order to conduct the common affairs of life, for all forecast would be impossible if we supposed every incident to be ascribable to supernatural agency, and no other resource therefore possible than prayer, for influencing the course of human actions. It is even noticeable that the principle of the theological philosophy itself lies in the transference to the phenomena of external nature of the first beginnings of the laws of human action; and thus the germ of the positive philosophy is at least as primitive as that of the theological philosophy itself, though it could not expand till a much later time. This idea is very important to the perfect rationality of our sociological theory; because, as human life can never present any real

DIMINUTION OF SUPERNATURALISM.
MINUTIC

141

creation, but only a gradual evolution, the final spread of the positive spirit would be scientifically incomprehensible, if we could not trace its rudiments from the very beginning. From that scarcely appreciable presence at the beginning, the rise of the positive spirit has been recognizable, in proportion to the extension and generalization of our observations, and the theological philosophy has been slowly but steadily driven back within the narrowing limits of phenomena whose natural laws were still unknown. Thus was the function of the old philosophy clearly a provisional one,-to maintain our mental activity by the only exercise open to it, till the positive philosophy should usher it into the wide field of universal knowledge, made accessible to the whole race. This destination has only recently exhibited itself in an unquestionable way since the disclosure of natural laws in phenomena so numerous and so various as to suggest the necessary existence of analogous laws in all other departments, however remote their actual discovery may

be.

It does not follow, from anything that I have said, that the two philosophies were always visibly opposed to each other. On the contrary, the physical study must have succumbed to the theological spirit if they had seemed at the outset to be incompatible. In fact, the study of the laws of phenomena appeared, for a long course of time, to agree very well with the investigation into their causes. It was only when observations became more connected, and disclosed important relations, that the radical opposition of the two doctrines began to be felt. Before the antagonism was avowed, the positive spirit manifested its repugnance to the futile absolute explanations of the theological philosophy; and the theological spirit lavished its disdain on the circumspect march and modest investigations of the new school; while still there was no idea that the study of real laws was irreconcilable with that of essential causes. When natural laws of considerable scope were at length discovered, the incompatibility became clear between the preponderance of imagination and that of reason, between the absolute spirit and the relative; and, above all, between the ancient hypothesis of the sovereign direction of events by any arbitrary will, and the growing certainty that we can foresee and modify them by the rational access of human wisdom. It is only in our own time that the antagonism has been extended to all parts of the intellectual field and even up to the last moment, the students of special subjects have believed that by confining themselves to the investigation of natural laws, and paying no attention to the nature of beings and mode of production of phenomena, they might find physical researches compatible with the explanations of theology; while theology made its own concessions in the form of a provisional notion of a universal providence, combined with special laws which it had imposed on itself. The conduct of Catholicism, in interdicting the habitual use of miracle and prophecy, which prevailed so largely in ancient times,

seems to me to present, in religious affairs, a transient situation analogous to that which is exhibited by what is called the institution of constitutional monarchy in the political world; each being in its own way an indisputable symptom of decline. However this may be, the insufficiency of the theological philosophy manifests itself to popular observation in that form of popular evidence which can alone reach the majority of mankind,-in its comparison with its opponent in the application of means. The positive philosophy enables us to foresee and to modify natural events, and thus satisfies, more and more, as it advances, the most urgent intellectual needs of humanity, while the ancient philosophy remains barren; so that its fanciful explanations are more and more neglected, while the new philosophy obtains a perpetually firmer hold on the public reason. Those who have remained faithful in their attachment to the theological philosophy make no practical use of it in their daily life, and ground their predilection for it on its characteristic generality so that when its antagonist shall have become systematized as fully as it is destined to be, the ancient philosophy will have lost the last attribute which has ever entitled it to social supremacy.

We have now only to take a cursory survey of the intermediate The Metaphy state. I have pointed out more than once before, sical Period. that any intermediate state can be judged of only after a precise analysis of the two extremes. The present case is a remarkable illustration of this necessity; for, if it is once admitted that the human mind must set out from the theological state, and arrive certainly at the positive, we may easily understand how it must pass through the metaphysical, which has no other destination than to afford a transition from the one to the other. The bastard and mobile character of the metaphysical philosophy fits it for this office, as it reconciles, for a time, the radical opposition of the other two, adapting itself to the gradual decline of the one and the preparatory rise of the other, so as to spare our dislike of abrupt change, and to afford us a transition almost imperceptible. The metaphysical philosophy takes possession of the speculative field after the theological has relinquished it, and before the positive is ready for it so that in each particular case, the dispute about the supremacy of any of the three philosophies is reduced to the mere question of opportuneness, judged by a rational examination of the development of the human mind. The method of modification consists in substituting gradually the entity for a deity when religious conceptions become so generalized as to diminish perpetually the number of supernatural agents, as well as their active intervention, and at length arrive, professedly if not really, at rigorous unity. When supernatural action loses its original speciality, it consigns the immediate direction of the phenomenon to a mysterious entity, at first emanating from itself,