Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

SUPREMACY OF SOCIOLOGY.

421

abandonment if the mathematical spirit loses its rank in scientific speculation. I might allege, in the first place, that there would be no great harm in retarding the progress of a kind of activity which, from its facility, and its adaptation to the commonest inclinations, threatens to absorb all others that are more noble. There can never be any serious apprehension that the growth of ideas and feelings suitable to a renovated social condition will proceed so fast and so far as to occasion any dangerous industrial negligence and if such a thing could happen, the new philosophy, occupying the true point of view, would sufficiently rectify the fault. The mathematicians may be incapable of estimating social researches, but sociologists are free from their blindness, and can never possibly underrate mathematical labours. Again, we stand in much greater need, for industrial advancement, of a better use of means already acquired than of the unregulated accumulation of new ones so that the restraint of synthetic tendencies is precisely the safeguard that we want against the desultory enterprises of wild analytical impulses: and thus again is the sociological régime more favourable than the mathematical to material improvement. Once more, when the action of man upon nature is duly systematized under the new body of doctrine, it must be done under the guidance of sociological philosophy, which alone is able to combine all the scientific aspects requisite for the great work,-the conditions and difficulties of which are yet scarcely suspected by our engineers, as I hinted in my former volume. Near the beginning of that volume I pointed out the true principle which must regulate the agreement between contemplation and action and this reference must suffice, under my inability to go further into the subject here. Thus it appears that the supremacy of sociological philosophy over the mathematical is confirmed by all concrete, æsthetic, and technical considerations. The toilsome and protracted preparation by which this position must be attained is shown by the whole economy of this Work; and especially by the expositions of this volume. The vigour and patience requisite for the scientific and logical preparation, and for the ability to connect special progress with the general movement, form a striking contrast with the ease with which mathematicians qualify themselves for the authority which they claim. A few years spent in pursuing one kind of studies, so simple as to be accessible to average ability, are the mathematical qualification; but the result has been, in the most triumphant days of mathematical ambition, a supremacy more apparent than real, and wholly destitute, amidst all its pretensions to scientific universality, of the practical reality which belongs to sociological ascendency.

This unity, thus established and regarded both historically and dogmatically, puts an end to the long and fatal antagonism between the conceptions which relate to Man, and those which

.

gonisms.

concern the external world. Hitherto they have been concluded Solves anta- to be irreconcilable; but my philosophical solution combines them entirely and for ever. I need not repeat the history of this antagonism, from the first antipathy between the theological and positive spirit, owing to their assumption of the opposite points of view, through the Cartesian compromise, and the struggles of the mathematical philosophy with expiring theology and metaphysics, up to the present hour, when the solution is offered by the extension of the positive spirit to moral and social speculation, affording all the positivity of the one and all the generality of the other. With this antagonism disappears that other fatal one, closely implicated with it, by which intellectual progress appeared to be contradictory to moral progress. The state of things under which mental requirements gradually prevailed over moral needs, dates from the beginning of the modern transition, and it was its most deplorable condition. The more deplorable that condition, the more regard is due to the philosophy which alone can resolve the antagonism. We have seen how this philosophy takes up the best work of Catholicism, where Catholicism let it drop, through its connection with a worn-out system. The natural preponderance of Morals which I have shown to be ascribable to the positive system, is quite as indispensable to the efficacy of the intellectual, as of the social evolution; for indifference to moral conditions, so far from corresponding with the exigencies of intellectual conditions, is a growing impediment to their fulfilment, inasmuch as it impairs the sincerity and dignity of speculative efforts, already too subservient to personal ambition, so as to destroy, in course of time, the very germ of genuine scientific progress. To make this connection perfectly clear, it is necessary to strip away the last metaphysical illusions, and show what is the true human point of view,-that it is not individual but social; for under either the statical or the dynamical aspect, Man is a mere abstraction, and there is nothing real but Humanity, regarded intellectually or, yet more, morally. It is only through its holding this view, that the theological philosophy has retained any of its influence to this day; and the fate of the metaphysical philosophy is decided by its inability to treat of Man otherwise than individually. The same vice marked the positive system, while it was directed by the mathematical spirit alone; and this compelled philosophers, as Cabanis and Gall, for instance, to fix on biology as the centre of scientific unity. This was so far a good as that it brought the modern centre of organization much nearer to its real seat; but it would not answer further than for a necessary transition; and it protracted the old intellectual system by impeding the development of sound social speculation, which it looked upon as merely a natural corollary of biological studies. Whether the science of the individual is instituted metaphysically or positively,

IT RECONCILES PROCEDURES.

423

it must be utterly ineffectual for the construction of any general philosophy, because it is excluded from the only universal point of view. The evolution of the individual mind can disclose no essential law and it can afford neither indications nor verifications of any value unless brought under the methods of observation taught by the evolution of the human mind in general. Thus, the biological phase is only the last introductory stage, as each of the preceding sciences had been before, to the development of the positive spirit, by which its own scientific and logical constitution must be consolidated. The preparation being fully accomplished, and the positive spirit having reached the last degree of generality, we may judge of its claims by comparing it with the programme drawn so powerfully by Descartes and Bacon, whose chief philosophical aspirations are thus found to be united in their fulfilment, however incompatible they once appeared. Descartes denied himself all social research, as we have seen, to devote himself to inorganic speculation, from which he knew that the universal method must take its rise; while, on the contrary, Bacon applied himself to the renovation of social theories, to which he referred the advancement of natural science. The tendency of Hobbes was the same; and he was the type of the school. The two procedures, complementary to each other, accorded, the one to intellectual demands and the other to political needs, a too exclusive preponderance which must reduce both to a merely provisional rank, useful as both were in their place. Descartes directed the agency of the positive spirit in inorganic science and Hobbes brought to light the germs of true social science, besides assisting to overthrow the ancient system, which must be cleared away to make room for the new. The one method prepared the general position of the final question, and the other opened logical access to its solution. This work results from the combination of the two evolutions, determined under the influences of the great social crisis, by the extension of the positive spirit to subjects verging on social research. Thus, the new operation consists in completing the double initiatory procedure of Descartes and Bacon, by fulfilling the two conditions, indispensable, though long seeming irreconcilable, adopted by the two chief schools which prepared the way for the positive philosophy.

Spirit of the

Such is the relation of this solution to the present and the past. As to the future,-I need not point out the unreasonableness of any fears that the supremacy of the Method. sociological philosophy can injure any of the anterior sciences. That supremacy would be compromised by the neglect of any one of them, even if such neglect were possible. It may and will be the case that irrational and undisciplined labours will meet with less favour and less impunity than hitherto; and also that the highest scientific capacity, and the most earnest public attention,

will be directed to sociological researches, as the best ability and interest always are at the command of the needs of their time. But there is nothing to lament in either of these results. As to the effect on private education, there is no greater cause for anxiety. The sociological theory requires that the education of the individual should be a reproduction, rapid, but accurate, of that of the race. In his brief career, he must pass through the three stages which an aggregate of nations has wrought out with infinite comparative slowness; and if any material part of the experience is evaded, his training will be abortive. For the individual then, as for the race, mathematical speculation will be the cradle of rational positivity; and the claims of geometers are certain, therefore, of just consideration, and the more, as the order and urgency of the needs of the human mind become better understood. But it will not be forgotten that a cradle is not a throne; and that the first demand of positivity, in its humblest degree, is to have free way, and to pursue it up to the point of universality, which is the only limit of genuine education.

These are the considerations which prove the fitness of the positive philosophy to reconcile the antagonistic methods of counecting our various speculations,-the one taking Man and the other the external world for its starting-point. Here we find the solution of the great logical conflict which, from the time of Aristotle and Plato, has attended the entire evolution, intellectual and social, of the human race; and which, once indispensable to the double preparatory movement, has since been the chief obstacle to the fulfilment of its destination.

Having thus ascertained the spirit of the positive method, I have to indicate briefly its nature and destination, and then its institution and development, in its complete and indivisible state; that its attributes, hitherto spontaneous, may be duly systematized, from the sociological point of view.

The Positive philosophy is distinguished from the ancient, as Nature of we have seen throughout, by nothing so much as its the Method. rejection of all inquiring into causes, first and final; and its confining research to the invariable relations which constitute natural laws. Though this mature view is yet too recent to be fully incorporated with all our studies, it is applied to every class of elementary conceptions, and is firmly established in regard to the most simple and perfect,-showing that a similar prevalence in the more complex and incomplete is merely a question of time. The true idea of the nature of research being thus attained, the next step was to determine the respective offices of observation and reasoning, so as to avoid the danger of empiricism on the one hand, and mysticism on the other. We have accordingly sanctioned, in the one relation, the now popular maxim of Bacon, that observed facts are the only basis of sound speculation; so that we agree to

NATURE OF THE METHOD.

425

what I wrote a quarter of a century ago,-that no proposition that is not finally reducible to the enunciation of a fact, particular or general, can offer any real and intelligible meaning. On the other hand, we have repudiated the practice of reducing science to an accumulation of desultory facts, asserting that science, as distinguished from learning, is essentially composed, not of facts, but of laws, so that no separate fact can be incorporated with science till it has been connected with some other, at least by the aid of some justifiable hypothesis. Besides that sound theoretical Inquiry into indications are necessary to control and guide obser- laws.

vation, the positive spirit is for ever enlarging the logical province at the expense of the experimental, by substituting the prevision of phenomena more and more for the direct exploration of them; and scientific progress essentially consists in gradually diminishing the number of distinct and independent laws, while extending their mutual connection. I have explained before that our geometers have been led, by contemplating only the wonderful scope of the law of gravitation, and exaggerating even that, to expect and strive after an impracticable unity. Our intellectual weakness, and the scientific difficulties with which we have to cope, will always leave us in the midst of irreducible laws, even in regard to the interior of each science. The universality which is proper to the sociological point of view instructs us how to establish as wide a connection as our means admit, without repressing the spirit of each science under a factitious mathematical concentration. In this way, while sound generalization will be for ever reducing the number of really independent laws, it will not be forgotten that such progress can have no value whatever, except in its subordination to the reality of the conceptions which guide it.

Accordance with common

sense.

The next important feature of the positive method is the accordance of its speculative conclusions with the development of popular good sense. The time is past for speculation, awaiting divine information, to look down upon the modest course of popular wisdom. As long as philosophers were searching into causes, while the multitude were observing indications, there was nothing in common between them: but now that philosophers are inquiring for laws, their loftiest speculations are in essential combination with the simplest popular notions, differing in degree of mental occupation, but not in kind. I have repeatedly declared in this work that the philosophical spirit is simply a methodical extension of popular good sense to all subjects accessible to human reason,—practical wisdom having been unquestionably the agency by which the old speculative methods have been converted into sound ones, by human contemplations having been recalled to their true objects, and subjected to due conditions. The positive method is, like the theological and metaphysical, no invention of any special mind, but the product of the general mind;

« AnteriorContinuar »