REQUIREMENTS OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY. 359 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 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 connecting our various speculations, the one taking Man and the other the external world for its startingpoint. 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. Nature of the The Positive philosophy is distinguished from the ancient, as we have seen throughout, by nothing so much as its 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 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 Inquiry into sound theoretical indications are necessary laws. to control and guide observation, 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 inde POSITIVE METHOD IN HARMONY WITH COMMON SENSE. 361 pendent 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. The next important feature of the positive Accordance method is the accordance of its speculative with common conclusions with the development of popular sense. 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; 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. We 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 dis ITS CONCEPTION OF NATURAL LAWS. 363 tinctive 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 funda mental principle of sound philosophy being natural laws. Conception of the subjection of all phenomena to invariable laws, that I need advert to it here only because it must occupy its place in the statement of our general conclusions. We have seen how late and partial was the development 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 phenomena. 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 ascendancy and its agreement with the general mind, to the satisfaction of all thinking men. Nothing but the protracted influence of monotheistic conceptions could have |