We

and the positive philosopher takes the spontaneous wisdom of mankind for his radical type, and generalizes and systematizes it, by extending it to abstract speculations, which have thus obtained the advancement that they exhibit, both in their nature and treatment. It is only by the popular determination that the field of scientific research can be marked out, because that determination alone can be perfectly and certainly free from personal bias of every kind, and directed upon impressions common to all men; and it is in fact impossible to conceive of either the origin or the final unanimous propagation of positive speculations apart from the general impulse and interest in them. The commonest facts are, as I have often said, the most important, in all orders of knowledge; and we have seen that the best instrumentalities of rational positivity are the systematized logical procedures given out by common sense. see how modern psychology, setting out from the opposite point,— from the dogmatic formation of the first principles of human knowledge, and proceeding to analyse complex phenomena by the method which we now reject in the case of the simplest,-has never yet, with all its toil and perplexity, risen to the level of popular knowledge derived from general experience. Public reason determines the aim as well as the origin of science;-directing it towards previsions which relate to general needs; as when, for instance, the founder of astronomy foresaw that, as a whole, it would afford a rational determination of the longitudes, though that result was not realized till Hipparchus had been dead two thousand years. The proper task of positive philosophers is then simply to institute and develop the intermediate processes which are to connect the two extremes indicated by popular wisdom; and the real superiority of the philosophical spirit over common sense results from its special and continuous application to familiar speculations, duly abstracting them, ascertaining their relations, and then generalizing and co-ordinating them;-this last process being the one in which popular wisdom fails the most, as we see by the ease with which the majority of men entertain incompatible notions. Thus we perceive that positive science is, in fact, the result of a vast general elaboration, both spontaneous and systematic, in which the whole human race has borne its share, led on by the specially contemplative class. The theological view was widely different from this; and it is one of the distinctive characters of the positive philosophy that it implicates the thinking multitude with the scientific few in the general progress,-not only past but future; showing how familiar a social incorporation is reserved for a speculative system which is a simple extension of general wisdom. And here we recognize a fresh evidence that the sociological point of view is the only philosophical one.

So much has been said about the fundamental principle of sound philosophy being the subjection of all phenomena to invariable laws,

CONCEPTION OF NATURAL LAWS.

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that I need advert to it here only because it must occupy its place in the statement of our general conclusions. Conception of We have seen how late and partial was the develop- natural laws. ment of the germs of this truth; how the principle was long recognized only in geometrical and numerical subjects, which seemed naturally placed beyond the theological pale that included everything else: how it began to show its value when it made its way into astronomy: how it afforded the intellectual ground of transition from polytheism to monotheism: how it was introduced, by means of alchemy and astrology, into physico-chemical speculations: how scholasticism then took it up, and extended it into a new field by its transient doctrine of a Providence submitting its action to rules: a doctrine which, by its apparent reconciling tendency, has protected the positive principle to this day, while it was spreading through all the provinces of inorganic philosophy, and taking possession at last of the science of Man, with all his intellectual and moral attributes. Here its progress stopped, till I extended it to social phenomeną. Some metaphysical speculation there has been about the existence of general laws of society; but their germs have never been brought to light, nor their application to the most common and interesting phenomena been exhibited; but the exposition made in this work leaves no doubt of the universal presence of the principle, the generality of which is in the way henceforth of being proved, both by its philosophical ascendency and its agreement with the general mind, to the satisfaction of all thinking men. Nothing but the protracted influence of monotheistic conceptions could have thus long prevented its universal acceptance amidst the overwhelming evidence of law afforded by the fulfilment of rational human prevision; and now, the nascent discovery of sociological laws will extinguish all remaining opposition by withdrawing its last province from theological explanation, and uniting it with the rest of the empire of human knowledge. While completing and consolidating the great mental revolution begun by the preceding sciences, this sociological recognition of laws perfects the conception of law in all the other provinces, by securing to them that independence in the case of each science which they could not obtain under the supremacy of the mathematical spirit; for, instead of being regarded as an indirect consequence, in the later sciences, of their action in the earlier, and as even growing weaker and more remote, they are suddenly reinforced in importance and dignity by being found in full action in a region inaccessible to mathematical conceptions. The sense of the presence of invariable laws, which first arose in the mathematical province, is fully matured and developed in high sociological speculation, by which it is carried on to universality.

As to the scientific nature of these laws, our ignorance of anything beyond phenomena compels us to make a distinction which does not at all interfere with our power of prevision under any

laws, but which divides them into two classes, for practical use. Our positive method of connecting phenomena is by one or other of two relations,-that of similitude or that of succession,-the mere fact of such resemblance or succession being all that we can pretend to know; and all that we need to know; for this perception comprehends all knowledge, which consists in elucidating something by something else,-in now explaining and now foreseeing certain phenomena by means of the resemblance or sequence of other phenomena. Such prevision applies to past, present, and future alike, consisting as it does simply in knowing events in virtue of their relations, and not by direct observation. This general distinction between the laws of resemblance and those of succession has been employed in this work in the equivalent form of the statical and dynamical study of subjects,—that is, the study of their existence first, and then of their action. This distinction is not due to mathematics, in the geometrical part of which it cannot exist. It only begins to be possible in the mechanical portion of mathematics; manifests its character when the study of living bodies is arrived at, and organization and life are separately considered; and finally, is completely established in sociological science, where it attains its full practical use in its correspondence with the ideas of order and of progress.

Logically considered, these laws offer one more distinction, according as their source is experimental or logical. The force and dignity of the laws are in no way affected by the different degrees of credit attached to the modes of ascertaining them. And it is usually a mistake to assign different degrees of credit to two modes of ascertainment which are necessary to each other, and each preferable in some portion or other of the field of knowledge. What the one finds, the other confirms and elucidates; what the one indicates, the other searches for and finds. The positive system requires, on the whole, that deduction should be preferred for special researches, and induction reserved for fundamental laws. The different sciences present varying facilities for the application of the two methods, of which I will only briefly say that they go far to compensate each other. Sociology, for instance, might seem to be too complex for the deductive method, and at the same time less adapted to the inductive than the simpler sciences which admit of the broadest extension of positive argumentation: yet, through the dependence of the more complex sciences on the simpler, the latter yield à priori considerations to the former, which actually render the greater number of fundamental ideas deductive, which would be inductive in sciences that are more independent. Another consideration is that the more recent sciences, which are the more complex, have the advantage of being born at a more advanced stage of the human mind, when mental habits are improved by a stronger prevalence of the philosophical spirit. Thus, if a comparison were fairly established between the

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first and last terms of the scale of sciences, I will venture to say, that sociological science, though only established by this book, already rivals mathematical science itself, not in precision and fecundity, but in positivity and rationality. It is more completely emancipated from metaphysical influence; and it is so interconnected as to issue in unity, as I have shown by deducing from a single law the general explanation of each of the successive phases of the human evolution. There is nothing comparable to this in the whole range of the anterior sciences, except the perfect systematization achieved by Lagrange in his theory of equilibrium and motion, with regard to a subject much less difficult and much better prepared and this proves the natural aptitude of sociology for a more complete co-ordination, notwithstanding its recency and complexity in virtue simply of its natural position at the close of the encyclopædical scale.

Logical
method.

These considerations point out to us the correlative characters which distinguish the positive method of philosophizing, the logical and the scientific. The first consists in the preponderance of observation over imagination, contrary to the earliest mode of proceeding. We have no longer anything to fear from theological appeals to the imagination: but the metaphysical procedure, which follows neither fictions nor facts, but its own train of entities, is still too attractive to minds which are not sufficiently established in positive practices. It is still necessary to point out that laws are the true subject of investigation, and that the function of imagination in philosophizing is to create or perfect the means of connection between established facts, but not, in any case, to meddle with the point of departure or the direction of the inquiry. Even in the à priori mode of proceeding, the general considerations which direct the case have been derived from observation in the science concerned or in some other. To see in order to foresee is the business of science: to foresee everything without having seen anything is only an absurd metaphysical Utopia, which still obtains too much favour. The scientific view which corresponds with this logical one is, that the positive philosophy substitutes the relative for the absolute in the study of qualities. Every inquiry for causes and modes of production involves the tendency to absolute notions; and the tendency therefore existed throughout the theological and metaphysical periods. The greatest of modern metaphysicians, Kant, deserves immortal honour for being the first to attempt an escape from the absolute in philosophy, by his conception of a double reality, at once objective and subjective; an effort which shows a just sense of sound philosophy. Placed as he was however between the Cartesian philosophy behind and the positive philosophy in its completion before him, he could not give a truly relative character to his view; and his successors lapsed into the absolute

Scientific
method.

men.

tendencies which he had restrained for a time. Now that the scientific evolution comprehends social speculations, nothing can stop the decay of the absolute philosophy. Inorganic science, presenting the external world, where Man appears only as a spectator of phenomena independent of him, shows that all ideas in that sphere are essentially relative, as I have before remarked, especially with regard to Weight, for one instance. Biology confirms the testimony by showing, with regard to individual Man, that the mental operations, regarded as vital phenomena, are subject, like all other human phenomena, to the fundamental relation between the organism and its medium, the dualism of which constitutes life, in every sense. Thus, all our knowledge is necessarily relative, on the one hand, to the medium, in as far as it is capable of acting on us, and on the other to the organism, in as far as it is susceptible of that action; so that the inertia of the one or the insensibility of the other at once destroys the continuous reciprocity on which every genuine idea depends. This is especially noticeable in instances in which the communication is of a single kind, as in astronomical philosophy, where ideas cease in the case of dark stars or of blind All our speculations, as well as all other phenomena of life, are deeply affected by the external constitution which regulates the mode of action, and the internal constitution which determines its personal result, without our being able in any case to assign their respective influences to each class of conditions thus generating our impressions and our ideas. Kant attained to a very imperfect equivalent of this biological conception: but, if it could have been better accomplished, it would have been radically defective, because it relates only to the individual mind; a point of view much too remote from philosophical reality to occasion any decisive revolution. The only natural and sound view was obviously one which should present a dynamical estimate of collective human intelligence, through its whole course of development. This is at length done by the creation of Sociology, on which the entire elimination of the absolute in philosophy now depends. By it, biology is rendered complete and fertile; showing that in the great elementary dualism between the mind and the medium, the first is subjected also to successive phases; and especially disclosing the law of this spontaneous evolution. Thus the statical view showed us merely that our conceptions would be modified if our organization changed, no less than by a change in the medium: but, as the organic change is purely fictitious, we did not get rid of the absolute, as the unchangeableness seemed to remain. But our dynamical theory, on the contrary, considers prominently the gradual development of the intellectual evolution of humanity, which takes place without any transformation of the organism, the continuous influence of which could not have been left out of the inquiry but by the vicious freedom of abstraction that characterizes metaphysical