A General View of Positivism - Auguste Comte (the snowy day read aloud TXT) 📗

is action and authoritative direction. This is the only right distribution of power; and the people will insist on maintaining it in its integrity, seeing, as they will, that without it the harmonious existence of Humanity is impossible.

From this view of the practical side of the religion of Humanity taken in connection with its intellectual and moral side, we may form a general conception of the final reorganization of political institutions, by which alone the great Revolution can be brought to a close. But the time for effecting this reconstruction has not yet come. There must be a previous reconstruction of opinions and habits of life upon the basis laid down by Positivism; and for this at least one generation is required. In the interval all political measures must retain their provisional character, although in framing them the final state is always to be taken into account. As yet nothing can be said to have been established, except the moral principle on which Positivism rests, the subordination of Politics to Morals. For this is in fact implicitly involved in the proclamation of a Republic in France; a step which cannot now be recalled, and which implies that each citizen is to devote all his faculties to the service of Humanity. But with regard to the social organization, by which alone this principle can be carried into effect, although its basis has been laid down by Positivism, it has not yet received the sanction of the Public. It may be hoped, however, that the motto which I have put forward as descriptive of the new political philosophy, “Order and Progress,” will soon be adopted spontaneously.

In the first or negative phase of the Revolution, all that was done was utterly to repudiate the old political system. No indication whatever was given of the state of things which was to succeed it. The motto of the time, “Liberty and Equality,” is an exact representation of this state of things, the conditions expressed in it being utterly contradictory, and incompatible with organization of any kind. For obviously, Liberty gives free scope to superiority of all kinds, and especially to moral and mental superiority; so that if a uniform level of Equality is insisted on, freedom of growth is checked. Yet inconsistent as the motto was, it was admirably adapted to the destructive temper of the time; a time when hatred of the Past compensated the lack of insight into the Future. It had, too, a progressive tendency, which partly neutralized its subversive spirit. It inspired the first attempt to derive true principles of polity from general views of history; the memorable though unsuccessful essay of my great predecessor Condorcet.14 Thus the first intimation of the future influence of the historical spirit was given at the very time when the anti-historical spirit had reached its climax.

The long period of reaction which succeeded the first crisis gave rise to no political motto of any importance. It was a period for which men of any vigour of thought and character could not but feel secret repugnance. It produced, however, a universal conviction that the metaphysical policy of the revolutionists was of no avail for constructive purposes. And it gave rise to the historical works of the Neo-Catholic school, which prepared the way for Positivism by giving the first fair appreciation of the Middle Ages.

But the Counterrevolution, begun by Robespierre, carried to its full length by Bonaparte, and continued by the Bourbons, came to an end in the memorable outbreak of 1830. A neutral period of eighteen years followed, and a new motto, “Liberty and Public Order,” was temporarily adopted. This motto was very expressive of the political condition of the time; and the more so that it arose spontaneously, without ever receiving any formal sanction. It expressed the general feeling of the public, who, feeling that the secret of the political future was possessed by none of the existing parties, contented itself with pointing out the two conditions essential as a preparation for it. It was an improvement on the first motto, because it indicated more clearly that the ultimate purpose of the revolution was construction. It got rid of the antisocial notion of Equality. All the moral advantages of Equality without its political danger existed already in the feeling of Fraternity, which, since the Middle Ages, has become sufficiently diffused in Western Europe to need no special formula. Again, this motto introduced empirically the great conception of Order; understanding it of course in the limited sense of material order at home and abroad. No deeper meaning was likely to be attached to the word in a time of such mental and moral anarchy.

But with the adoption of the Republican principle in 1848,15 the utility of this provisional motto ceased. For the Revolution now entered upon its Positive phase; which indeed, for all philosophical minds, had been already inaugurated by my discovery of the laws of Social Science. But the fact of its having fallen into disuse is no reason for going back to the old motto, Liberty and Equality, which, since the crisis of 1789, has ceased to be appropriate. In the utter absence of social convictions, it has obtained a sort of official resuscitation; but this will not prevent men of good sense and right feeling from adopting spontaneously the motto “Order and Progress,” as the principle of all political action for the future. In the second chapter I dwelt at some length upon this motto, and pointed out its political and philosophical meaning. I have now only to show its connection with the other mottoes of which we have been speaking, and the probability of its adoption. Each of them, like all combinations, whether in the moral or physical world, is composed of two elements; and the last has one of its elements in common with the second, as the second has in common with the first. Moreover, Liberty, the element common to the two first, is in