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agreement which preceded it: and its operation would not be so errone-
ously exaggerated, but that religion has so far faded out of men’s minds
as to leave no other strong habitual remembrance than of its grossest
impressions.
Another way in which the theological philosophy was politically
indispensable to human progress was by instituting, in the midst of so-
ciety, a special class regularly devoted to speculative activity. In this
view, the social supremacy of the theological philosophy has lasted to
Positive Philosophy/265
our own time. It is scarcely possible for us to form any but an indirect
idea of the difficulty of establishing, in the earliest period of society, any
permanent division between theory and practice, such as is effected be
the existence of a class regularly occupied with speculation. Even now,
amidst all the refinement of our mental habits, we find extreme diffi-
culty in duly estimating any new operation which has no immediate
practical bearing: and by this we may imperfectly understand how im-
possible it was, in the remotest ages, to institute among populations of
warriors and slaves a corporation that should be disengaged from mili-
tary and industrial employments, and whose activity should be mainly
of an intellectual kind. Such a class could, in those times, have been
neither established nor tolerated if it had not been introduced in the
natural course of social movement, and invested with authority before-
hand by the influence of the theological philosophy. The political func-
tion of that philosophy thus was to establish a speculative body whose
social existence not only admitted of no preparatory discussion, but was
itself an indispensable preparation for the regular organization of all
other classes. Whatever might have been the confusion of intellectual
labour, and the inanity of the leading investigations of to sacerdotal
orders, it is not the less true that the human mind owes to them the first
effectual separation between theory and practice, which could tale place
in no other manlier. Mental progress, by which all other progress is
directed, would certainly have been destroyed at its birth, if society had
continued to be composed of families engaged in the cares of material
existence, or, as the only alternative, in the excitement of a brutal mili-
tary activity. Any spiritual expansion supposes the existence of a privi-
leged class, enjoying the leisure indispensable to intellectual culture,
and at the same time urged, be its social position, to develop to the
utmost the kind of speculative activity compatible with the primitive
state of humanity; and this description is answered by the sacerdotal
institution established by the theological philosophy. Though, in the
decrepitude of the old philosophy, we see the theological c lass sunlit in
mental lethargy, we must not forget that but for their activity in the days
of its prime, human society would have remained in a condition much
like that of a company of superior monkeys. By forming this speculative
class, then, the theological philosophy fulfilled the political conditions
of a further progression of the human mind.
Such are the qualities, intellectual, moral, and social which secured
the supremacy of the theological philosophy at the outset of human
266/Auguste Comte
progress. This is the only part of my sociological demonstration which
is at all open to dispute; and this is one reason why I have dwelt so long
upon it: but it is not the only reason. Another and a greater is that this
view contains the radical principle of the whole demonstration, the re-
mainder of which will not detain us long.
If this starting-point of human development has been placed beyond
dispute, the final, or positive stage, does not admit of it. We have seen
enough of the establishment of the positive philosophy in other depart-
ments to be satisfied of its destined prevalence in sociology. For the
same reasons which explain and justify the early supremacy of the theo-
logical philosophy, are see that it must be a provisional state, for its
supremacy was owing to its aptitude to meet the needs of a primitive
state of humanity; and those needs are not the same, nor requiring the
same philosophy to satisfy them, as those which arise in a more ad-
vanced stage of the human evolution. After having awakened human
reason, and superintended its progress, in the absence of a more real
philosophy, theology began to repress the human mind from the first
moment of its coming into direct antagonism with the positive philoso-
phy. And in the same way, in its moral relations, it imparted at first a
consolatory confidence and active energy, which have become trans-
muted, by too long a duration, into oppressive terror and a faint apathy
which have been too common a spectacle since it has been driven to
struggle to retain its hold, instead of extending its dominion. There is no
more question of the moral than of the intellectual superiority and final
supremacy of the positive philosophy, capable as it is of developing in
us an unshaken vigour and a deliberate steadfastness, directly derived
from our own nature, without any external assistance, or any imaginary
hindrance. And again, in regard to its social bearings, though the ascen-
dancy of the theological philosophy lasted longer on this ground than on
the other two, it is evident enough at present that, instead of uniting
men, which was its proper function at first, it now divides them, so that
after having created speculative activity, it has ended with radically hin-
dering it. The function of reuniting, as of stimulating and directing,
belongs more and more, as religious belief declines, to the conceptions
of positive philosophy, which alone can establish that intellectual com-
munity all over the world on which the great future political organiza-
tion is to be grounded. The intellectual destination of the two philoso-
phies has been sufficiently established in review of all the departments
at natural philosophy. Their moral and social destination will be illus-
Positive Philosophy/267
trated in succeeding chapters of this work My historical analysis will
explain to us the continuous decline of the one and the corresponding
rise of the other from the earliest period of human progression. It may
appear paradoxical to regard the theological philosophy as in a steadily
declining state intellectually, at the very time that it was fulfilling its
most exalted political mission but we shall find satisfactory scientific
evidence that Catholicism, its noblest social work, must necessarily be
its last effort, on account of the germs of disorganization which must
thenceforth grow more and more rapidly. We need here therefore only
assign the general principle of the inevitable tendency of the human
mind towards an exclusive positive philosophy, throughout the whole
range of the intellectual system.
The general, like the individual human mind, is governed by imagi- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]