INVESTIGATION AND STATEMENT. 399 have nearly throughout been implicitly considered among the laws of succession, in which alone social physics can at present consist. The scientific link between biology and sociology is the connection of their two series, by which the second may be regarded as the prolongation of the first, though the terms of the one may be successive, and of the other, coexisting. With this difference, we find that the essential character of the human evolution results from the growing power of the superior attributes which place Man at the head of the animal hierarchy, where they also enable us to assign the chief degrees of animality. Thus we see the vast organic system really connecting the humblest vegetative existence with the noblest social life through a long succession, which, if necessarily discontinuous, is not the less essentially homogeneous. And, in as far as the principle of such a connection consists in the decreasing generality of the chief phenomena, this double organic series is connected with the rudimentary inorganic, the interior succession of which is determined by the same principle. The necessary direction of the human movement being thus ascertained, the only remaining task, in constituting sociology, was to mark out its general course. This was done by my ascertaining the law of evolution, which in connection with the hierarchical law, establishes a true philosophical system, the two chief elements of which are absolutely interconnected. In this dynamical conception, sociology is radically connected with biology, since the original state of humanity essentially coincides with that in which the superior animals are detained by their organic imperfection, their speculative ability never transcending the primitive fetichism from which man could not have issued but for the strong impulsion of the collective development. The resemblance is yet stronger in the practical aspect. The sociological theory being thus constituted, nothing remained but to put it to the proof by an historical application of it to the intellectual and social progression of the most advanced portion of the human race through forty centuries. This test has discredited all the historical conceptions proposed before, and has shown the reality of the theory by explaining and estimating each phase as it passed in review, so as to enable us to do honour to the services of the most opposite influences,-as in the case of the polytheistic and monotheistic states. A political and philosophical preparation like this was necessary to emancipate the mind of the inquirer from the old philosophy and critical prejudices, and to substitute for them the scientific condition of mind which is indispensable for the humblest speculations, but far more necessary, and at the same time more difficult, in the case of the most transcendent and the most impassioned researches that the human mind can undertake. Thus the same conditions which required this task, at this time, are especially favourable to it. Its practical efficacy is inseparable from its theoretical soundness, because it connects the present, under all possible aspects, with the whole of the past, so as to exhibit at once the former course and the future tendency of every important phenomenon; and thence results, in a political view, the possibility of a natural connection between the science and the art of modern society. New as is this science, it has already fulfilled the essential conditions of its institution, so that it has only to pursue its special development. Its complexity is more than compensated by its interconnection, and the consequent preponderance of the collective spirit over the spirit of detail: and from its origin, therefore, it is superior in rationality to all the foregoing sciences, and is evidently destined to extend its own collective spirit over them by its reactive influence, thus gradually repairing the mischiefs of the dispersive tendencies proper to the preparatory stages of genuine knowledge. Thus the scientific and logical estimate are complete, and found to have attained the same point; and the long and difficult preparation proposed and begun by Descartes and Bacon is accomplished, and all made ready for the advent of the true modern philosophy. It only remains for me to show the action of this philosophy, intellectual and social, as far as it is at present rationally ascertainable by means of a last and extreme application of our theory of human evolution. CHAPTER XV. ESTIMATE OF THE FINAL ACTION OF THE POSITIVE No PHILOSOPHY. O preceding revolutions could modify human existence to anything like the degree that will be experienced under the full establishment of the positive philosophy, which we have seen to be the only possible issue from the great crisis which has agitated Europe for half a century past. We have already perceived what must be the political task and character of this philosophy in a rapidly approaching time; and I have only therefore to point out, in a more general way, the natural action of the new philosophical system when it shall have assumed its throne. I will sketch the great impending philosophical regeneration from the four points of view which my readers will at once anticipate; the scientific, or rather rational; the moral; the political; and finally, the aesthetic. The scientific action. The positive state will, in the first place, be one of entire intellectual consistency, such. as has never yet existed in an equal degree, among the best organized and most advanced minds. The kind of speculative unity which existed under the polytheistic system, when all human conceptions presented a uniformly religious aspect, was liable to perpetual disturbance from a spontaneous positivity of ideas on individual, and familiar matters. In the scholastic period, the nearest approach to harmony was a precarious and incomplete equilibrium and the present transition involves such contradiction that the highest minds are perpetually subject to three incompatible systems. It is impossible to conceive' of the contrasting harmony which must arise from all conceptions being fully positive, without the slightest necessary intermixture of any heterogeneous philosophy. We may best form some idea of it by anticipating the total III. : D D . and final extension of the popular good sense, which, long confined to partial and practical operations, has at length taken possession of the speculative province. We are naturally familiar with the general wisdom which prevails in regard to the simplest affairs of life; and, when we shall habitually restrict our inquiries to accessible subjects, and understand, as of course, the relative character of all human knowledge, our approximation towards the truth, which can never be completely attained by human faculties, will be thorough and satisfactory as far as it goes; and it will proceed as far as the state of human progress will admit. This logical view will completely agree with the scientific conviction of an invariable natural order, independent of us and our action, in which our intervention can occasion none but secondary modifications; these modifications however being infinitely valuable, because they are the basis of human action. We have never experienced, and can therefore only imperfectly imagine, the state of unmingled conviction with which men will regard that natural order when all disturbing intrusions, such as we are now subject to from lingering theological influences, shall have been cast out by the spontaneous certainty of the invariableness of natural laws. Again, the absolute tendencies of the old philosophies prevent our forming any adequate conception of the privilege of intellectual liberty which is secured by positive philosophy. Our existing state is so unlike all this, that we cannot yet estimate the importance and rapidity of the progress which will be thus secured; our only measure being the ground gained during the last three centuries, under an imperfect and even vicious system, which has occasioned the waste of the greater part of our intellectual labour. The best way of showing what advance may be made in sciences which are, as yet, scarcely out of the cradle, when systematically cultivated in an atmosphere of intellectual harmony, will be to consider the effect of positivity on abstract speculation first, then on concrete studies, and lastly on practical ideas. Abstract speculation. In abstract science, men will be spared the preliminary labour which has hitherto involved vast and various error, scientific and INTELLECTUAL ACTION. 403 logical, and will be set forward far and firmly by the full establishment of the rational method. When the ascendancy of the sociological spirit shall have driven out that of the scientific, there will be an end of the vain struggle to connect every order of phenomena with one set of laws, and the desired unity will be seen to consist in the agreement of various orders of laws,—each set governing and actuating its own province; and thus will the free expansion of each kind of knowledge be provided for, while all are analogous in their method of treatment, and identical in their destination. Then there will be an end to the efforts of the anterior sciences to absorb the more recent,. and of the more recent to maintain their superiority by boasting of sanction from the old philosophies; and the positive spirit will decide the claims of each, without oppression or anarchy, and with the necessary assent of all. The same unquestionable order will be established in the interior of each science; and every proved conception ' will be secured from such attacks as all are now liable to from the irregular ambition or empiricism of unqualified minds. Though abstract science must hold the first place, as Bacon so plainly foresaw, the direct construction of concrete science is one of the chief offices of the new philosophical spirit, exercised under historical guidance, which can alone afford the necessary knowledge of the successive states of everything that exists. Besides the light which will thus be cast on the elementary laws of all kinds of action, and the valuable practical suggestions which must be thus obtained, there will be another result which I ought to point out, which could not be otherwise obtained, and which relates especially to the highest and most complex phenomena. I mean the fixing,-not yet possible, but then certainly practicable, of the general duration assigned by the whole economy to each of the chief kinds of existence; and, among others, to the rising condition of the human race. This great evolution, which has scarcely yet escaped from its preparatory stage, must certainly continue to be progressive through a long course of centuries, beyond which it would be equally inopportune and irrational to speculate; yet it is of consequence to the development of Concrete research. |