to calm our restlessness under pain by the conviction that it is by natural laws that they are rendered insurmountable. Human nature suffers in its relations with the astronomical world, and the physical, chemical, and biological, as well as the political. How is it that we turbulently resist in the last case, while, in the others, we are calm and resigned, under pain as signal, and as repugnant to our nature? Surely it is because the positive philosophy has as yet developed our sense of the natural laws only in regard to the simpler phenomena; and when the same sense shall have been awakened with regard to the more complex phenomena of social life, it will fortify us with a similar resignation, general or special, provisional or indefinite, in the case of political suffering. An habitual conviction of this kind cannot but conduce to public tranquillity, by obviating vain efforts for redress, while it equally excludes the apathy which belongs to the passive character of religious resignation, by requiring submission to nothing but necessity, and encouraging the noblest exercises of human activity, wherever the analysis of the occasion opens any prospect whatever of genuine remedy. Finally, the positive philosophy befriends public order by bringing back men's understandings to a normal state through the influence of its method alone, before it has had time to establish any social theory. It dissipates disorder at once by imposing a series of indisputable scientific conditions on the study of political questions. By including social science in the scientific hierarchy, the positive spirit admits to success in this study only well-prepared and disciplined minds, so trained in the preceding departments of knowledge as to be fit for the complex problems of the last. The long and difficult preliminary elaboration must disgust and deter vulgar and ill-prepared minds, and subdue the most rebellious. This consideration, if there were no other, would prove the eminently organic tendency of the new political philosophy.

I have dwelt on this influence of the Positive philosophy, in Its effect on favour of Order, because it is that which is, as yet, Progress. least recognized, while the retrograde and stationary schools continue to found their claims upon that very point. There is less mistake about its favourable influence on Progress. In all its applications, the positive spirit is directly progressive; its express office being to increase our knowledge, and perfect the connection of its parts. Even the illustrations of progression are, at the present day, derived from the positive sciences. Whatever rational idea of social progress (that is, of continuous development, with a steady tendency towards a determinate end), anywhere exists, should, as we shall hereafter see, be attributed to the unperceived influence of the positive philosophy, in disengaging this great notion from its present vague and fluctuating state by clearly assigning the aim and the general course of progress. Though Christianity

ITS EFFECT ON PROGRESS.

39

certainly bore a part in originating the sentiment of social progress by proclaiming the superiority of the new law to the old, it is evident that the theological polity, proceeding upon an immutable type, which was realized only in the past, must have become radically incompatible with ideas of continuous progression, and manifests, on the contrary, a thoroughly retrograde character. The metaphysical polity, in its dogmatic aspect, has the same incompatibility, though the feeble connection of its doctrines renders it more accessible to the spirit of our time. Indeed, it was only after the decline of that school had begun, that ideas of progress took any general possession of the public mind: Thus the progressive, as well as the organic instinct, is to be developed by the positive philosophy alone.

The only idea of progress which is really proper to the revolutionary philosophy, is that of the continuous extension of liberty; that is, in positive terms, the gradual expansion of human powers. Now, even in the restricted and negative sense in which this is true, -that of the perpetual diminution of obstacles,-the positive philosophy is incontestably superior: for true liberty is nothing else than a rational submission to the preponderance of the laws of nature, in release from all arbitrary personal dictation. Decisions of sovereign assemblies have been called laws by the metaphysical polity, and have been fictitiously regarded as a manifestation of popular will. But no such homage paid to constitutional entities can disguise the arbitrary tendency which marks all the philosophies but the positive. The arbitrary can never be excluded while political phenomena are referred to Will, divine or human, instead of being connected with invariable natural laws; and liberty will remain illusory and precarious, notwithstanding all constitutional artifices, and whatever be the will to which we pay our daily obedience. By substituting the empire of genuine convictions for that of arbitrary will, the positive philosophy will put an end to the absolute liberty of the revolutionary school,-the license of running from one extravagance to another, and, by establishing social principles, will meet the need at once of order and of progress. The special office of the revolutionary philosophy, that of extinguishing all but the historical existence of the ancient political system, is virtually committed to the positive principle; and, in fact, the power exercised by the critical doctrine in this direction has been owing to its serving the purpose of a provisional organ to the positive philosophy. In other sciences, the critical action, however energetic, is only a collateral consequence of its organic development; and the organic development, which is fatal to the old theological system, involves in the same condemnation the metaphysical spirit, which is even the less logical of the two. The most serious difficulty of contemporary politics is the condition of the lower classes; and in this case, the positive philosophy affords

practical amelioration most favourable to progress. The revolutionary polity opened only an insurrectionary issue to this difficulty, and merely shifted without solving the question. The question is not settled by opening a way to popular ambition, the gratification of which must be confined to a few (probably deserters from their class), and can do nothing to soothe the murmurs of the multitude. The general lot is even aggravated by the excitement of unreasonable hopes, and by the elevation of a few by the chances of the political game. As it is the inevitable lot of the majority of men to live on the more or less precarious fruits of daily labour, the great social problem is to ameliorate the condition of this majority, without destroying its classification, and disturbing the general economy and this is the function of the positive polity, regarded as regulating the final classification of modern society. We shall have occasion to see hereafter that the mental reorganization, by habitually interposing a common moral authority between the working classes and the leaders of society, will offer the only regular basis of a pacific and equitable reconciliation of their chief conflicts, nearly abandoned in the present day to the savage discipline of a purely material antagonism.

In this brief sketch of the prominent characteristics of the positive polity, we have seen that, notwithstanding its severe estimate of the different existing parties, it commands access to the spirit of each by proving itself adapted to fulfil the aims which each has pursued too exclusively. It can also turn to the profit of its gradual ascendency all the important incidents of existing society which it could not intercept. Whether in its hour of exultation, the one school manifests its insufficiency; or whether, in the despair of failure, the other shows a disposition to welcome new means of political action; or whether, again, a kind of universal torpor exhibits in its nakedness the aggregate of social needs, the new philosophy can always lay hold of a certain general issue to introduce, by a daily application, its fundamental instruction. In doing this however, we must, it seems to me, lay aside all hope of a real conversion of the retrograde school. Setting aside some happy individual anomalies, such as always exist, and may become more frequent, it remains indisputable that there is such an antipathy, in regard to social questions, between the theological and the positive philosophies, that the one can never estimate the other, and must disappear before it, without being able to undergo any radical modification of its present form. It is, in fact, not Order that the ancient régime aims at, but only its own preconception of a unique order, connected with its habits of mind and special interests, outside of which everything appears disorderly, and therefore indifferent. In the midst of its pretended devotion to general order, the retrograde school has often betrayed its tendency to care for the means more than the end. It is through the stationary school, whose love

AVENUE OF THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.

4I

of order is at least more impartial, if not more disinterested, that the positive polity must obtain the access which it could not hope for from the retrograde school. The metaphysical fictions of the parliamentary or constitutional philosophy may have diverted the mind of the stationary school from the true issue; but they have not attained such an ascendency among the nations of the European continent as to render them deaf to the rational voice of the new philosophy, when it appeals to a school so openly disposed as is the stationary party to establish permanent order, on whatever principles, in modern society. Some useful action may therefore be hoped for through this medium.-Nevertheless, I avow that it is on the revolutionary school alone that, in my opinion, we can expect that the positive polity can exercise a predominant influence, because this school is the only one that is always open to new action on behalf of progress. All its indispensable provisional doctrines will be absorbed by the new philosophy, while all its anarchical tendencies will be extinguished. There will be more explosions of revolutionary doctrine, as long as there are any remains of the retrograde system; for the natural course of events does not wait for our slow philosophical preparation. Whether in virtue of our intellectual condition, or of faults committed by existing governments, such outbreaks will occur; and perhaps they may be necessary to the uprooting of all hope of reconstructing social order on the old basis; but the positive philosophy will have foreseen such conflicts, and will take no part in them, further than to make use of the instruction that they afford. It will not interfere with the last operations of the revolutionary preponderance ;-knowing that they are the last. Nor will it paralyse so important a general disposition as that which constitutes the critical spirit, properly so called. By subordinating it for ever to the organic spirit, it will open to it broad political aims; it will afford it employment in destroying all metaphysical and theological interference, using for this end the satirical faculties which produced nothing in the last century, but which may be of a secondary value in influencing the development of the political character that will be finally assigned to each school. On the whole, we may hope that the positive philosophy will find grounds of support among the most advanced sections of the revolutionary school; and, whatever may be the hopes of that school from different political parties, it will be unable to dispense with the scientific superiority of the positive doctrine, which is the certain cause and guarantee of its gradual ascendency. It might have been hoped that the renovation we are anticipating would have been largely aided by the scientific class of society, as that which must be most familiar with positive Anarchical science. But it is not so. At present the anarchical tendencies of that class appear to be as strong as any.

tendencies of the scentific class.

The indifference of scientific men to the most interesting and most

urgent of all classes of problems may be partly accounted for by their deep intellectual disgust at the irrational character of the social doctrines of their day; but there are other reasons, even less honourable than this. They are themselves defective in scientific discipline. They abhor generalities, and have a systematic predilection for specialities. Under the idea of an organization of labour, they restrict their several pursuits within the narrowest bounds, without providing for the investigation of general relations; and thus, science becomes a pastime, grounded on no adequate preparation. It is not wonderful then that they have no interest in the entire generality which is the indispensable attribute of any philosophy that aspires to the moral government of mankind. Daily experience shows that, when learned bodies are brought into junction, for any political purpose, with sensible men who know nothing of science, but are accustomed to general views, the superiority rests with the latter, even in regard to matters which particularly concern the scientific class. As long as this is the case, the scientific class decrees its own political subordination. Their social sentiment is on a par with their ideas; and their egotism is aggravated by their devotion to specialities, when it ought to be subdued by a mastery of positive science; and would be so, if they could admit its general ideas. This is no fault of individuals among them. It is imputable to the defective scientific education of our time; and all that men of science are censurable for is their dogmatic denial of the need of a better. We must, however, abandon all hope of their co-operation in extending the positive method to the study of social phenomena. If we may anticipate anything in that direction, it must be from a rising generation for whom a more adequate training must be provided, and who will be led by a really scientific education beyond the special and isolated studies to which they now conceive themselves to be destined, and which constitute at present their only idea of scientific pursuit.

I have now presented a view of the chief points of support which the present state of the social world affords to the Conclusion. renovating influence of the new political philosophy. This introduction may appear long; but it will abridge my future labour by furnishing my readers with a kind of rational programme of the conditions of the subject. Yet more, it indicates clearly what is apt to escape the notice of minds habituated to the superficial and irrational treatment of social questions,—the complete political efficacy of the positive philosophy. The high practical utility of the theory I am about to offer cannot be questioned by the haughtiest politician when it has once been demonstrated that the deepest want of modern society is, in its nature, eminently theoretical, and that, consequently, an intellectual, and then a moral re-organization must precede and direct the political.-This mutual relation being established, with a care proportionate to its importance, we must now