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IV

To the Catéchisme des industriels, which was to spread these doctrines further, Auguste Comte contributed the third part, a substantial volume called a Plan for the Scientific Operations Necessary for Reorganizing Society,13.61 and two years later (1824) republished by its author under the even more ambitious title, System of Positive Policy--``a title premature indeed, but rightly indicating the scope'' of his labors, as Comte said thirty years later.13.62 It is the most significant single tract of the whole body of literature with which we are here concerned.

In this first form the ``positive system'' is little more than a brilliant restatement of Saint-Simon's doctrine.13.63Comte here carries still further his hatred of the dogma of the liberty of conscience, which is the great obstacle to reorganization.13.64 Just as in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and physiology there is no such thing as liberty of conscience,13.65 so this transitory fact will disappear once politics has been elevated to the rank of a natural science and the true and final doctrine has been definitely established.13.66 This new science of social physics, that is to say, the study of the collective development of the human race, is really a branch of physiology, or the study of man conceived in its entire extension. In other words, the history of civilization is nothing but the indispensable result and complement of the natural history of man.13.67 Politics is thus on the point of becoming a positive science in accordance with the law of the three stages, which is now pronounced in its final form: ``Each branch of knowledge is necessarily obliged to pass through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictitious state; the metaphysical or abstract state; last the scientific or positive state,'' the definite state of all knowledge whatsoever.13.68

The object of social physics is to discover the natural and unavoidable laws of the progress of civilization which are as necessary as that of gravitation.13.69 By civilization Comte means ``the development of the human mind and its result, the increasing power of man over nature,'' the ways in which he has learned to act upon nature to modify it to his own advantage.13.70 It is civilization in this sense, that is, the state of science, fine arts, and industry, which determines and regulates the course of social organization.13.71 Social physics, which, like all science, aims at prevision, enables us by observing the past to determine the social system which the progress of civilization tends to realize in our own day.13.72 The superiority of positive politics consists in the fact that it discovers what is made necessary by these natural laws while other systems invent.13.73 All that remains for us to do is to help into life the positive system which the course of civilization tends to produce, and we are certain to secure the best system now obtainable if we discover that which is `most in harmony with the present state of civilization.13.74

It will be noticed how close Comte's view on the philosophy of history, which is commonly regarded as the opposite of a ``materialist'' interpretation, comes to that view--particularly if we remember the exact meaning which he gives to the term civilization. In fact, what anticipation of the materialist interpretation of history can be found in the Saint-Simonian writings-- and we believe that they are the main source of that doctrine--can be traced directly to this and some of the earlier works of Comte. 13.75

Although soon after the publication of the Catéchisme des industriels Comte was finally to break with Saint-Simon when the latter began to turn his doctrine into a religion, the next two works which Comte published shortly after Saint-Simon's death in the Saint-Simonian Producteur13.76 still continue the common line of thought. The first of these is of interest mainly for the more careful analysis of the progress toward the positive method. He shows how man ``necessarily begins by regarding all the bodies which attract his attention as so many beings animated with a life resembling his own,''13.77and it is interesting that at this stage Comte, who only a few years later was to deny the possibility of all introspection,13.78 was still explaining this by the fact that ``the personal action exerted by man on other beings is the only kind of which he comprehends the modus operandi through his consciousness of it.''13.79 But already he is on the way to denying the legitimacy of the disciplines which are based precisely on this knowledge. His attacks now aim not merely at the ``revolting monstrosity,'' the antisocial dogma of the liberty of conscience,13.80 and anarchy of unregulated individualism generally,13.81 but are already more specifically directed against the teachings of political economy.13.82 Only by historical considerations can it be explained how that ``strange phenomenon,'' the idea that a society ought not to be consciously organized, could ever have arisen.13.83 But as ``everything that develops spontaneously is necessarily legitimate during a certain period,''13.84 so the critical doctrine has had a relative justification during the past. But a perfect social order can be established only if we can in all cases ``assign to every individual or nation that precise kind of activity for which they are respectively fitted.''13.85 But this presupposes a spiritual power, a moral code, of which again Comte cannot conceive except as deliberately constructed.13.86 The necessary moral order can therefore be created only by a government of opinion which determines ``the entire system of ideas and habits necessary for initiating individuals into the social order under which they must live.''13.87 The ideas, which, after he had allowed himself for twenty years to be deeply influenced by Comte, finally so revolted J. S. Mill that he described them as ``the completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated from a human brain, unless possibly that of Ignatius Loyola,''13.88 were present in Comte's thoughts from the beginning. They are a necessary consequence of the whole system of thought which not only J. S. Mill but the whole world has taken over from Comte.


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