Books: The Idea of Progress

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In the authoritarian character of the organisation to which these
apostles of Progress wished to entrust the destinies of man we may
see the influence of the great theocrat and antagonist of Progress,
Joseph de Maistre. He taught them the necessity of a strong central
power and the danger of liberty.

But the fullest exposition of the Saint-Simonian doctrine of
development was given by Bazard, one of the chief disciples, a few
years later. [Footnote: Exposition de la doctrine saint-simonienne,
2 vols., 1830-1.] The human race is conceived as a collective being
which unfolds its nature in the course of generations, according to
a law--the law of Progress--which may be called the physiological
law of the human species, and was discovered by Saint-Simon. It
consists in the alternation of ORGANIC and CRITICAL epochs.
[Footnote: In the Globe, which became an organ of Saint-Simonism in
1831, Enfantin announced a new principle (Weill, op. cit. 107). He
defined the law of history as "the harmony, ceaselessly progressive,
of flesh and spirit, of industry and science, of east and west, of
woman and man." The role of woman played a large part in the
teaching of the sect.

Saint-Simon's law of organic and critical ages was definitely
accepted by H. de Ferron, a thinker who did not belong to the
school, as late as 1867. See his Theorie du progres, vol. ii. p.
433.]

In an organic epoch men discern a destination and harmonise all
their energies to reach it. In a critical epoch they are not
conscious of a goal, and their efforts are dispersed and discordant.
There was an organic period in Greece before the age of Socrates. It
was succeeded by a critical epoch lasting to the barbarian
invasions. Then came an organic period in the homogeneous societies
of Europe from Charlemagne to the end of the fifteenth century, and
a new critical period opened with Luther and has lasted till to-day.
Now it is time to prepare the advent of the organic age which must
necessarily follow.

The most salient fact observable in history is the continual
extension of the principle of association, in the series of family,
city, nation, supernational Church. The next term must be a still
vaster association comprehending the whole race.

In consequence of the incompleteness of association, the
exploitation of the weak by the strong has been a capital feature in
human societies, but its successive forms exhibit a gradual
mitigation. Cannibalism is followed by slavery, slavery by serfdom,
and finally comes industrial exploitation by the capitalist. This
latest form of the oppression of the weak depends on the right of
property, and the remedy is to transfer the right of inheriting the
property of the individual from the family to the state. The society
of the future must be socialistic.

The new social doctrine must not only be diffused by education and
legislation, it must be sanctioned by a new religion. Christianity
will not serve, for Christianity is founded on a dualism between
matter and spirit, and has laid a curse on matter. The new religion
must be monistic, and its principles are, briefly: God is one, God
is all that is, all is God. He is universal love, revealing itself
as mind and matter. And to this triad correspond the three domains
of religion, science, and industry.

In combining their theory with a philosophical religion the Saint-
Simonian school was not only true to its master's teaching but
obeying an astute instinct. As a purely secular movement for the
transformation of society, their doctrine would not have reaped the
same success or inspired the same enthusiasm. They were probably
influenced too by the pamphlet of Lessing to which Madame de Stael
had invited attention, and which one of Saint-Simon's disciples
translated.

The fortunes of the school, the life of the community at
Menilmontant under the direction of Enfantin, the persecution, the
heresies, the dispersion, the attempt to propagate the movement in
Egypt, the philosophical activity of Enfantin and Lemonnier under
the Second Empire, do not claim our attention; the curious story is
told in M. Weill's admirable monograph. [Footnote: It may be
noticed that Saint-Simonians came to the front in public careers
after the revolution of 1848; e.g. Carnot, Reynaud, Charton.] The
sect is now extinct, but its influence was wide in its day, and it
propagated faith in Progress as the key to history and the law of
collective life.[Footnote: Two able converts to the ideas of Saint-
Simon seceded from the school at an early stage in consequence of
Enfantin's aberrations: Pierre Leroux, whom we shall meet again, and
P. J. B. Buchez, who in 1833 published a thoughtful "Introduction a
la science de l'histoire," where history is defined as "a science
whose end is to foresee the social future of the human species in
the order of its free activity" (vol. i. p. 60,. ed. 2, 1842).]

CHAPTER XVI

THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE

1.

Auguste Comte did more than any preceding thinker to establish the
idea of Progress as a luminary which could not escape men's vision.
The brilliant suggestions of Saint-Simon, the writings of Bazard and
Enfantin, the vagaries of Fourier, might be dismissed as curious
rather than serious propositions, but the massive system wrought out
by Comte's speculative genius--his organic scheme of human
knowledge, his elaborate analysis of history, his new science of
sociology--was a great fact with which European thought was forced
to reckon. The soul of this system was Progress, and the most
important problem he set out to solve was the determination of its
laws.

His originality is not dimmed by the fact that he owed to Saint-
Simon more than he afterwards admitted or than his disciples have
been willing to allow. He collaborated with him for several years,
and at this time enthusiastically acknowledged the intellectual
stimulus he received from the elder savant. [Footnote: Comte
collaborated with Saint-Simon from 1818-1822. The final rupture came
in 1824. The question of their relations is cleared up by Weill
(Saint-Simon, chap. xi.). On the quarrel see also Ostwald, Auguste
Comte (1914), 13 sqq.] But he derived from Saint-Simon much more
than the stimulation of his thoughts in a certain direction. He was
indebted to him for some of the characteristic ideas of his own
system. He was indebted to him for the principle which lay at the
very basis of his system, that the social phenomena of a given
period and the intellectual state of the society cohere and
correspond. The conception that the coming age was to be a period of
organisation like the Middle Ages, and the idea of the government of
savants, are pure Saint-Simonian doctrine. And the fundamental idea
of a POSITIVE philosophy had been apprehended by Saint-Simon long
before he was acquainted with his youthful associate.

But Comte had a more methodical and scientific mind, and he thought
that Saint-Simon was premature in drawing conclusions as to the
reformation of societies and industries before the positive
philosophy had been constructed. He published--he was then only
twenty-two--in 1822 a "Plan of the scientific operations necessary
for the re-organisation of society," which was published under
another title two years later by Saint-Simon, and it was over this
that the friends quarrelled. This work contains the principles of
the positive philosophy which he was soon to begin to work out; it
announces already the "law of the Three Stages."

The first volume of the "Cours de philisophie positive" appeared in
1830; it took him twelve years more to complete the exposition of
his system. [Footnote: With vol. vi., 1842.]

2.

The "law of Three Stages" is familiar to many who have never read a
line of his writings. That men first attempted to explain natural
phenomena by the operation of imaginary deities, then sought to
interpret them by abstractions, and finally came to see that they
could only be understood by scientific methods, observation, and
experiment--this was a generalisation which had already been thrown
out by Turgot. Comte adopted it as a fundamental psychological law,
which has governed every domain of mental activity and explains the
whole story of human development. Each of our principal conceptions,
every branch of knowledge, passes successively through these three
states which he names the theological, the metaphysical, and the
positive or scientific. In the first, the mind invents; in the
second, it abstracts; in the third, it submits itself to positive
facts; and the proof that any branch of knowledge has reached the
third stage is the recognition of invariable natural laws.

But, granting that this may be the key to the history of the
sciences, of physics, say, or botany, how can it explain the history
of man, the sequence of actual historical events? Comte replies that
history has been governed by ideas; "the whole social mechanism is
ultimately based on opinions." Thus man's history is essentially a
history of his opinions; and these are subject to the fundamental
psychological law.

It must, however, be observed that all branches of knowledge are not
in the same stage simultaneously. Some may have reached the
metaphysical, while others are still lagging behind in the
theological; some may have become scientific, while others have not
passed from the metaphysical. Thus the study of physical phenomena
has already reached the positive stage; but the study of social
phenomena has not. The central aim of Comte, and his great
achievement in his own opinion, was to raise the study of social
phenomena from the second to the third stage.

When we proceed to apply the law of the three stages to the general
course of historical development, we are met at the outset by the
difficulty that the advance in all the domains of activity is not
simultaneous. If at a given period thought and opinions are partly
in the theological, partly in the metaphysical, and partly in the
scientific state, how is the law to be applied to general
development? One class of ideas, Comte says, must be selected as the
criterion, and this class must be that of social and moral ideas,
for two reasons. In the first place, social science occupies the
highest rank in the hierarchy of sciences, on which he laid great
stress. [Footnote: Cours de phil. pos. v. 267. Law of consensus: op.
cit. iv. 347 sqq., 364, 505, 721, 735.] In the second, those ideas
play the principal part for the majority of men, and the most
ordinary phenomena are the most important to consider. When, in
other classes of ideas, the advance is at any time more rapid, this
only means an indispensable preparation for the ensuing period.

The movement of history is due to the deeply rooted though complex
instinct which pushes man to ameliorate his condition incessantly,
to develop in all ways the sum of his physical, moral, and
intellectual life. And all the phenomena of his social life are
closely cohesive, as Saint-Simon had pointed out. By virtue of this
cohesion, political, moral, and intellectual progress are
inseparable from material progress, and so we find that the phases
of his material development correspond to intellectual changes. The
principle of consensus or "solidarity," which secures harmony and
order in the development, is as important as the principle of the
three stages which governs the onward movement. This movement,
however, is not in a right line, but displays a series of
oscillations, unequal and variable, round a mean motion which tends
to prevail. The three general causes of variation, according to
Comte, are race, climate, and deliberate political action (such as
the retrograde policies of Julian the Apostate or Napoleon). But
while they cause deflections and oscillation, their power is
strictly limited; they may accelerate or retard the movement, but
they cannot invert its order; they may affect the intensity of the
tendencies in a given situation, but cannot change their nature.

3.

In the demonstration of his laws by the actual course of
civilisation, Comte adopts what he calls "the happy artifice of
Condorcet," and treats the successive peoples who pass on the torch
as if they were a single people running the race. This is "a
rational fiction," for a people's true successors are those who
pursue its efforts. And, like Bossuet and Condorcet, he confined his
review to European civilisation; he considered only the ELITE or
advance guard of humanity. He deprecated the introduction of China
or India, for instance, as a confusing complication. He ignored the
ROLES of Brahmanism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism. His synthesis,
therefore, cannot claim to be a synthesis of universal history; it
is only a synthesis of the movement of European history. In
accordance with the law of the three stages, the development falls
into three great periods. The first or Theological came to an end
about A.D. 1400, and the second or Metaphysical is now nearing its
close, to make way for the third or Positive, for which Comte was
preparing the way.

The Theological period has itself three stages, in which Fetishism,
Polytheism, and Monotheism successively prevail. The chief social
characteristics of the Polytheistic period are the institution of
slavery and the coincidence or "confusion" of the spiritual and
temporal powers. It has two stages: the theocratic, represented by
Egypt, and the military, represented by Rome, between which Greece
stands in a rather embarrassing and uneasy position.

The initiative for the passage to the Monotheistic period came from
Judaea, and Comte attempts to show that this could not have been
otherwise. His analysis of this period is the most interesting part
of his survey. The chief feature of the political system
corresponding to monotheism is the separation of the spiritual and
temporal powers; the function of the spiritual power being concerned
with education, and that of the temporal with action, in the wide
senses of those terms. The defects of this dual system were due to
the irrational theology. But the theory of papal infallibility was a
great step in intellectual and social progress, by providing a final
jurisdiction, without which society would have been troubled
incessantly by contests arising from the vague formulae of dogmas.
Here Comte had learned from Joseph de Maistre. But that thinker
would not have been edified when Comte went on to declare that in
the passage from polytheism to monotheism the religious spirit had
really declined, and that one of the merits of Catholicism was that
it augmented the domain of human wisdom at the expense of divine
inspiration. [Footnote: Cours de philosophic positive, vi. 354.] If
it be said that the Catholic system promoted the empire of the
clergy rather than the interests of religion, this was all to the
good; for it placed the practical use of religion in "the
provisional elevation of a noble speculative corporation eminently
able to direct opinions and morals."

But Catholic monotheism could not escape dissolution. The
metaphysical spirit began to operate powerfully on the notions of
moral philosophy, as soon as the Catholic organisation was complete;
and Catholicism, because it could not assimilate this intellectual
movement, lost its progressive character and stagnated.

The decay began in the fourteenth century, where Comte dates the
beginning of the Metaphysical period--a period of revolution and
disorder. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the movement is
spontaneous and unconscious; from the sixteenth till to-day it has
proceeded under the direction of a philosophical spirit which is
negative and not constructive. This critical philosophy has only
accelerated a decomposition which began spontaneously. For as
theology progresses it becomes less consistent and less durable, and
as its conceptions become less irrational, the intensity of the
emotions which they excite decreases. Fetishism had deeper roots
than polytheism and lasted longer; and polytheism surpassed
monotheism in vigour and vitality.

Yet the critical philosophy was necessary to exhibit the growing
need of solid reorganisation and to prove that the decaying system
was incapable of directing the world any longer. Logically it was
very imperfect, but it was justified by its success. The destructive
work was mainly done in the seventeenth century by Hobbes, Spinoza,
and Bayle, of whom Hobbes was the most effective. In the eighteenth
all prominent thinkers participated in developing this negative
movement, and Rousseau gave it the practical stimulus which saved it
from degenerating into an unfruitful agitation. Of particular
importance was the great fallacy, which Helvetius propagated, that
human intellects are equal. This error was required for the full
development of the critical doctrine. For it supported the dogmas of
popular sovranty and social equality, and justified the principle of
the right of private judgement.

These three principles--popular sovranty, equality, and what he
calls the right of free examination--are in Comte's eyes vicious and
anarchical.[Footnote #1 Op. cit. iv. 36-38.] But it was necessary
that they should be promulgated, because the transition from one
organised social system to another cannot be direct; it requires an
anarchical interregnum. Popular sovranty is opposed to orderly
institutions and condemns all superior persons to dependence on the
multitude of their inferiors. Equality, obviously anarchical in its
tendency, and obviously untrue (for, as men are not equal or even
equivalent to one another, their rights cannot be identical), was
similarly necessary to break down the old institutions. The
universal claim to the right of free judgement merely consecrates
the transitional state of unlimited liberty in the interim between
the decline of theology and the arrival of positive philosophy.
Comte further remarks that the fall of the spiritual power had led
to anarchy in international relations, and if the spirit of
nationality were to prevail too far, the result would be a state of
things inferior to that of the Middle Ages.

But Comte says for the metaphysical spirit in France that with all
its vices it was more disengaged from the prejudices of the old
theological regime, and nearer to a true rational positivism than
either the German mysticism or the English empiricism of the same
period.

The Revolution was a necessity, to disclose the chronic
decomposition of society from which it resulted, and to liberate the
modern social elements from the grip of the ancient powers. Comte
has praise for the Convention, which he contrasts with the
Constituent Assembly with its political fictions and
inconsistencies. He pointed out that the great vice in the
"metaphysics" of the crisis--that is, in the principles of the
revolutionaries--lay in conceiving society out of relation to the
past, in ignoring the Middle Ages, and borrowing from Greek and
Roman society retrograde and contradictory ideals.

Napoleon restored order, but he was more injurious to humanity than
any other historical person. His moral and intellectual nature was
incompatible with the true direction of Progress, which involves the
extinction of the theological and military regime of the past. Thus
his work, like Julian the Apostate's, exhibits an instance of
deflection from the line of Progress. Then came the parliamentary
system of the restored Bourbons which Comte designates as a
political Utopia, destitute of social principles, a foolish attempt
to combine political retrogression with a state of permanent peace.

4.

The critical doctrine has performed its historical function, and the
time has come for man to enter upon the Positive stage of his
career. To enable him to take this step forward, it is necessary
that the study of social phenomena should become a positive science.
As social science is the highest in the hierarchy of sciences, it
could not develop until the two branches of knowledge which come
next in the scale, biology and chemistry, assumed a scientific form.
This has recently been achieved, and it is now possible to found a
scientific sociology.

This science, like mechanics and biology, has its statics and its
dynamics. The first studies the laws of co-existence, the second
those of succession; the first contains the theory of order, the
second that of progress. The law of consensus or cohesion is the
fundamental principle of social statics; the law of the three stages
is that of social dynamics. Comte's survey of history, of which I
have briefly indicated the general character, exhibits the
application of these sociological laws.

The capital feature of the third period, which we are now
approaching, will be the organisation of society by means of
scientific sociology. The world will be guided by a general theory,
and this means that it must be controlled by those who understand
the theory and will know how to apply it. Therefore society will
revive the principle which was realised in the great period of
Monotheism, the distinction of a spiritual and a temporal order. But
the spiritual order will consist of savants who will direct social
life not by theological fictions but by the positive truths of
science. They will administer a system of universal education and
will draw up the final code of ethics. They will be able, more
effectively than the Church, to protect the interests of the lower
classes.

Comte's conviction that the world is prepared for a transformation
of this kind is based principally on signs of the decline of the
theological spirit and of the military spirit, which he regarded as
the two main obstacles to the reign of reason. Catholicism, he says,
is now no more than "an imposing historical ruin." As for
militarism, the epoch has arrived in which serious and lasting
warfare among the ELITE nations will totally cease. The last general
cause of warfare has been the competition for colonies. But the
colonial policy is now in its decadence (with the temporary
exception of England), so that we need not look for future trouble
from this source. The very sophism, sometimes put forward to justify
war, that it is an instrument of civilisation, is a homage to the
pacific nature of modern society.

We need not follow further the details of Comte's forecast of the
Positive period, except to mention that he did not contemplate a
political federation. The great European nations will develop each
in its own way, with their separate "temporal" organisations. But he
contemplated the intervention of a common "spiritual" power, so that
all nationalities "under the direction of a homogeneous speculative
class will contribute to an identical work, in a spirit of active
European patriotism, not of sterile cosmopolitanism."

Comte claimed, like Saint-Simon, that the data of history,
scientifically interpreted, afford the means of prevision. It is
interesting to observe how he failed himself as a diviner; how
utterly he misapprehended the vitality of Catholicism, how
completely his prophecy as to the cessation of wars was belied by
the event. He lived to see the Crimean war. [Footnote: He died in
1857.] As a diviner he failed as completely as Saint-Simon and
Fourier, whose dream that the nineteenth century would see the
beginning of an epoch of harmony and happiness was to be fulfilled
by a deadly struggle between capitalism and labour, the civil war in
America, the war of 1870, the Commune, Russian pogroms, Armenian
massacres, and finally the universal catastrophe of 1914.

5.

For the comprehension of history we have perhaps gained as little
from Comte's positive laws as from Hegel's metaphysical categories.
Both thinkers had studied the facts of history only slightly and
partially, a rather serious drawback which enabled them to impose
their own constructions with the greater ease. Hegel's method of a
PRIORI synthesis was enjoined by his philosophical theory; but in
Comte we also find a tendency to a PRIORI treatment. He expressly
remarks that the chief social features of the Monotheistic period
might almost be constructed a PRIORI.

The law of the Three Stages is discredited. It may be contended that
general Progress depends on intellectual progress, and that
theology, metaphysics, and science have common roots, and are
ultimately identical, being merely phases in the movement of the
intelligence. But the law of this movement, if it is to rank as a
scientific hypothesis, must be properly deduced from known causes,
and must then be verified by a comparison with historical facts.
Comte thought that he fulfilled these requirements, but in both
respects his demonstration was defective. [Footnote: Criticism of
Comte's assumption that civilisation begins with animism: Weber's
criticisms from this point of view are telling (Le Rythme du
progres, 73-95). He observes that if Comte had not left the
practical and active side of intelligence in the shade and
considered only its speculative side, he could not have formulated
the law of the Three Stages. He would have seen that "the positive
explanation of phenomena has played in every period a preponderant
role, though latent, in the march of the human mind." Weber himself
suggests a scheme of two states (corresponding to the two-sidedness
of the intellect), technical and speculative, practical and
theoretical, through the alternation of which intellectual progress
has been effected. The first stage was probably practical (he calls
it proto-technic). It is to be remembered that when Comte was
constructing his system palaeontology was in its infancy.]

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