it were from the bottom of a well. Time, that exact observer, applies his micrometer to every one of us, determining our rank among celestial bodies without appeal and from time to time enrolling in his _ephemeris_ such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages.
If there is one thing that endears London to men of superior order–to true aristocrats, no matter of what species, it is that universal equality of outward condition, that republicanism of everyday life, which pervades the vast multitudes who hum, and who drone, who gather honey, and who, without gathering, consume the products of this gigantic hive. Here you can never be extinguished or put out by any overwhelming interest.
Neither are we in London pushed to the wall by the two or three hundred great men of every little place. We are not invited to a main of small talk with the cock of his own dung-hill; we are never told, as a great favour, that Mr Alexander Scaldhead, the phrenologist, is to be there, and that we can have our “bumps” felt for nothing; or that the Chevalier Doembrownski (a London pickpocket in disguise) is expected to recite a Polish ode, accompanying himself on the Jew’s harp; we are not bored with the misconduct of the librarian, who _never_ has the first volume of the last new novel, or invited to determine whether Louisa Fitzsmythe or Angelina Stubbsville deserves to be considered the heroine; we are not required to be in raptures because Mrs Alfred Shaw or Clara Novello are expected, or to break our hearts with disappointment because they didn’t come: the arrival, performances, and departure, of Ducrow’s horses, or Wombwell’s wild beasts, affect us with no extraordinary emotion; even Assizes time concerns most of us nothing.
Then, again, how vulgar, how commonplace in London is the aristocracy of wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a provincial town, keeps her carriage, and is at once the envy and the scandal of all the Ladies who have to proceed upon their ten toes, we wot not the existence. Mr Bill Wright, the banker, the respected, respectable, influential, twenty per cent Wright, in London is merely a licensed dealer in money; he visits at Camberwell Hill, or Hampstead Heath, or wherever other tradesmen of his class delight to dwell; his wife and daughters patronize the Polish balls, and Mr Bill Wright, jun., sports a stall at the (English) opera; we are not overdone by Mr Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs Bill Wright, or the Misses Bill Wright, nor overcrowed by Mr Bill Wright the younger: in a word, we don’t care a crossed cheque for the whole Bill Wrightish connexion.
What are carriages, or carriage-keeping people in London? It is not here, as in the provinces, by their carriages shall you know them; on the contrary, the carriage of a duchess is only distinguishable from that of a _parvenu_, by the superior expensiveness and vulgarity of the latter.
The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth with us, defeats the end it aims at. That expense which is lavished to impress us with awe and admiration, serves only as a provocative to laughter, and inducement to contempt; where great wealth and good taste go together, we at once recognize the harmonious adaptation of means and ends; where they do not, all extrinsic and adventitious expenditure availeth its disbursers nothing.
What animal on earth was ever so inhumanly preposterous as a lord mayor’s footman, and yet it takes sixty guineas, at the least, to make that poor lick-plate a common laughing-stock?
No, sir; in London we see into, and see through, all sorts of pretension: the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever kind of quackery and imposture. When I say _we_, I speak of the vast multitudes forming the educated, discriminating, and thinking classes of London life. We pass on to _what_ a man _is_, over _who_ he is, and what he _has_; and, with one of the most accurate observers of human character and nature to whom a man of the world ever sat for his portrait–the inimitable La Bruyere–when offended with the hollow extravagance of vulgar riches, we exclaim–“_Tu te trompes, Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant, ce grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent, et ces six betes qui te trainent, tu penses qu’on t’en estime d’avantage: ou ecarte tout cet attirail qui t’est etranger, pour penetrer jusq’a toi qui n’es qu’un fat_.”
In London, every man is responsible for himself, and his position is the consequence of his conduct. If a great author, for example, or artist, or politician, should choose to outrage the established rules of society in any essential particular, he is neglected and even shunned in his private, though he may be admired and lauded in his public capacity. Society marks the line between the _public_ and the _social_ man; and this line no eminence, not even that of premier minister of England, will enable a public man to confound.
Wherever you are invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form the Cockney school proper of art, literature, the drama, every thing; and they go about seeking praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects, with their mouths wide open; they pursue their prey in troops, like Jackals, and like them, utter at all times a melancholy, complaining howl; they imagine that the world is in a conspiracy not to admire them, and they would bring an action against the world if they could. But as that is impossible, they are content to rail against the world in good set terms; they are always puffing in the papers, but in a side-winded way, yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention. They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears to the rest of mankind.
These are the men who cultivate extensive tracts of forehead, and are deeply versed in the effective display of depending ringlets and ornamental whiskers; they dress in black, with white _chokers_, and you will be sure to find a lot of them at evening parties of the middling sort of doctors, or the better class of boarding-houses.
This class numbers not merely literary men, but actors, artists, adventuring politicians, small scientifics, and a thousand others, who have not energy or endurance to work their way in solitary labour, or who feel that they do not possess the power to go alone.
Public men in London appear naked at the bar of public opinion; laced coats, ribands, embroidery, titles, avail nothing, because these things are common, and have the common fate of common things, to be cheaply estimated. The eye is satiated with them, they come like shadows, so depart; but they do not feed the eye of the mind; the understanding is not the better for such gingerbread; we are compelled to look out for some more substantial nutriment, and we try the inward man, and test his capacity. Instead of measuring his bumps, like a landsurveyor, we dissect his brain, like an anatomist; we estimate him, whether he be high or low, in whatever department of life, not by what he says he can do, or means to do, but by what he _has_ done. By this test is every man of talent tried in London; this is his grand, his formal difficulty, to get the opportunity of showing what he can do, of being put into circulation, of having the chance of being tested, like a shilling, by the _ring_ of the customer and the _bite_ of the critic; for the opportunity, the chance to edge in, the chink to _wedge_ in, the _purchase_ whereon to work the length of his lever, he must be ever on the watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement, the April shower of praise, he must await the long winter of “hope deferred” passing away. Patience, the _courage_ of the man of talent, he must exert for many a dreary and unrewarded day; he must see the quack and the pretender lead an undiscerning public by the nose, and say nothing; nor must he exult when the too-long enduring public at length kicks the pretender and the quack into deserved oblivion. From many a door that will hereafter gladly open for him, he must be content to be presently turned away. Many a scanty meal, many a lonely and unfriended evening, in this vast wilderness, must he pass in trying on his armour, and preparing himself for the fight that he still believes _will_ come, and in which his spirit, strong within him, tells him he must conquer. While the night yet shrouds him he must labour, and with patient, and happily for him, if, with religious hope, he watch the first faint glimmerings of the dawning day; for his day, if he is worthy to behold it, will come, and he will yet be recompensed “by that time and chance which happeneth to all.” And if his heart fails him, and his coward spirit turns to flee, often as he sits, tearful, in the solitude of his chamber, will the remembrance of the early struggles of the immortals shame that coward spirit. The shade of the sturdy Johnson, hungering, dinnerless, will mutely reproach him for sinking thus beneath the ills that the “scholar’s life assail.” The kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith, pursued to the gates of a prison by a mercenary wretch who fattened upon the produce of that lovely mind, smiling upon him, will bid him be of good cheer. A thousand names, that fondly live in the remembrance of our hearts, will he conjure up, and all will tell the same story of early want, and long neglect, and lonely friendlessness. Then will reproach himself, saying, “What am I, that I should quail before the misery that broke not minds like these? What am I, that I should be exempt from the earthly fate of the immortals?”
Nor marvel, then, that men who have passed the fiery ordeal, whose power has been tried and not found wanting, whose nights of probation, difficulty, and despair are past, and with whom it is now noon, should come forth, with deportment modest and subdued, exempt from the insolent assumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and friendships: that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who, successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques, coteries, and _conversaziones_, and all the littleness of inferior fry: that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should live for and with such men alone.
But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of _pseudo_ talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt, miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou father of multifarious fools? Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter’s bench, the schoolmaster’s desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and _claqueurs_, and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts. Thou, too, O Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:–Time misspent, industry misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!
True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no _social_ pre-eminence, nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of themselves: they are _individually_ admired, not worshipped as a congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar, the man of rank, the politician, the _millionaire_, must merge in the gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or submitted to any where else.
The rewards of intellectual labour applied to purposes of remote, or not immediately appreciable usefulness, as in social literature, and the loftier branches of the fine arts, are, with us, so few, as hardly to be worth mentioning, and pity ’tis that it should be so. The law, the church, the army, and the faculty of physic, have not only their fair and legitimate remuneration for independent labour, but they have their several prizes, to which all who excel, may confidently look forward when the time of weariness and exhaustion shall come; when the pressure of years shall slacken exertion, and diminished vigour crave some haven of repose, or, at the least, some mitigated toil, with greater security of income: some place of honour with repose–the ambition of declining years. The influence of the great prize of the law, the church, and other professions in this country, has often been insisted upon with great reason: it has been said, and truly said, that not only do these prizes reward merit already passed through its probationary stages, but serve as inducements to all who are pursuing the same career. It is not so much the example of the prize-holder, as the _prize_, that stimulates men onward and upward: without the hope of reaching one of those comfortable stations, hope would be extinguished, talent lie fallow, energy be limited to the mere attainment of subsistence; great things would not be done, or attempted, and we would behold only a dreary level of indiscriminate mediocrity. If this be true of professions, in which, after a season of severe study, a term of probation, the knowledge acquired in early life sustains the professor, with added experience of every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety of characters and figures!
A few years of hard reading, constant attention in the chambers of the conveyancer, the equity craftsman, the pleader, and a few years more of that disinterested observance of the practice of the courts, which is liberally afforded to every young barrister, and indeed which many enjoy throughout life, and he is competent, with moderate talent, to protect the interests of his client, and with moderate mental labour to make a respectable figure in his profession. In like manner, four or five years sedulous attendance on lectures, dissections, and practice of the hospitals, enables your physician to see how little remedial power exists in his boasted art; knowing this, he feels pulses, and orders a recognized routine of draughts and pills with the formality which makes the great secret of his profession. When the patient dies, nature, of course, bears the blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered with, recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pillbox and pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of a book, grand power of head-shaking, shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a religious connexion.
For the clergyman, it is only necessary that he should be orthodox, humble, and pious; that he should on no occasion, right or wrong, set himself in opposition to his ecclesiastical superiors; that he should preach unpretending sermons; that he should never make jokes, nor understand the jokes of another: this is all that he wants to get on respectably. If he is ambitious, and wishes one of the great prizes, he must have been a free-thinking reviewer, have written pamphlets, or made a fuss about the Greek particle, or, what will avail him more than all, have been tutor to a minister of state.
Thus you perceive, for men whose education is _intellectual_, but whose practice is more or less _mechanical_, you have many great, intermediate, and little prizes in the lottery of life; but where, on the contrary, are the prizes for the historian, transmitting to posterity the events, and men, and times long since past; where the prize of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic, the epic, or the lyric poet, the essayist, and all whose works are likely to become the classics of future times; where the prize of the public journalist, who points the direction of public opinion, and, himself without place, station, or even name, teaches Governments their duty, and prevents Ministers of State becoming, by hardihood or ignorance, intolerable evils; where the prize of the great artist, who has not employed himself making faces for hire, but who has worked in loneliness and isolation, living, like Barry, upon raw apples and cold water, that he might bequeath to his country some memorial worthy the age in which he lived, and the art _for_ which he lived? For these men, and such as these, are no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful country sets apart for them no places where they can retire in the full enjoyment of their fame; condemned to labour for their bread, not in a dull mechanical routine of professional, official, or business-like duties, but in the most severe, most wearing of all labour, _the labour of the brain_, they end where they begun. With struggling they begin life, with struggling they make their way in life, with struggling they end life; poverty drives away friends, and reputation multiplies enemies. The man whose thoughts will become the thoughts of our children, whose minds will be reflected in the mirror of _his_ mind, who will store in their memories his household words, and carry his lessons in their hearts, dies not unwillingly, for he has nothing in life to look forward to; closes with indifference his eyes on a prospect where no gleam of hope sheds its sunlight on the broken spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble friends to a lowly sepulchre, and the newspapers of some days after give us the following paragraph:–
“We regret to be obliged to state that Dr —-, or —- —-, Esq. (as the case may be) died, on Saturday last at his lodgings two pair back in Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his cottage (a miserable cabin where he retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames. It is our melancholy duty to inform our readers that this highly gifted and amiable man, who for so many years delighted and improved the town, and who was a most strenuous supporter of the (Radical or Conservative) cause, (_it is necessary to set forth this miserable statement to awaken the gratitude of faction towards the family of the dead_,) has left a rising family totally unprovided for. We are satisfied that it is only necessary to allude to this distressing circumstance, in order to enlist the sympathies, &c. &c., (in short, _to get up a subscription_).”
We confess we are at a loss to understand why the above advertisement should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted with only the interpolation of name and date, when any man dies who has devoted himself to pursuits of a purely intellectual character. Nor are we unable to discover in the melancholy, and, as it would seem, unavoidable fates of such men, substantial grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy of talent to the pursuit of professional distinction, accompanied by profit, of which our literature, art, and science are now suffering, and will continue to suffer, the consequences.
In a highly artificial state of society, where a command, not merely of the essentials, but of some of the superfluities of life are requisite as passports to society, no man will willingly devote himself to pursuits which will render him an outlaw, and his family dependent on the tardy gratitude of an indifferent world. The stimulus of fame will be inadequate to maintain the energies even of _great_ minds, in a contest of which the victories are wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any man willingly consume the morning of his days in amassing intellectual treasures for posterity, when his contemporaries behold him dimming with unavailing tears his twilight of existence, and dying with the worse than deadly pang, the consciousness that those who are nearest and dearest to his heart must eat the bread of charity. Nor is it quite clear to our apprehension, that the prevalent system of providing for merely intellectual men, by a State annuity or pension, is the best that can be devised: it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy of talent should be exposed to the taunt of receiving the means of their subsistence from this or that minister, upon suppositions of this or that ministerial assistance which, whether true or false, cannot fail to derogate from that independent dignity of mind which is never extinguished in the breast of the true aristocrat of talent, save by unavailing struggles, long-continued, with the unkindness of fortune.
We wish the aristocracy of power to think over this, and so very heartily bid them farewell.
* * * * *
THE LOST LAMB.
BY DELTA.
A shepherd laid upon his bed,
With many a sigh, his aching head, For him–his favourite boy–on whom
Had fallen death, a sudden doom.
“But yesterday,” with sobs he cried, “Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side, Life’s loveliest blossom, and to-day,
Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay! It cannot be that thou art gone;
It cannot be, that now, alone,
A grey-hair’d man on earth am I,
Whilst thou within its bosom lie? Methinks I see thee smiling there,
With beaming eyes, and sunny hair, As thou were wont, when fondling me,
To clasp my neck from off my knee! Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,
My boy, or else my heart will break!”
Each adding to that father’s woes,
A thousand bygone scenes arose;
At home–a field–each with its joy, Each with its smile–and all his boy!
Now swell’d his proud rebellious breast, With darkness and with doubt opprest;
Now sank despondent, while amain
Unnerving tears fell down like rain: Air–air–he breathed, yet wanted breath– It was not life–it was not death–
But the drear agony between,
Where all is heard, and felt, and seen– The wheels of action set ajar;
The body with the soul at war.
‘Twas vain, ’twas vain; he could not find A haven for his shipwreck’d mind;
Sleep shunn’d his pillow. Forth he went– The noon from midnight’s azure tent
Shone down, and, with serenest light, Flooded the windless plains of night;
The lake in its clear mirror show’d Each little star that twinkling glow’d; Aspens, that quiver with a breath,
Were stirless in that hush of death; The birds were nestled in their bowers; The dewdrops glitter’d on the flowers; Almost it seem’d as pitying Heaven
A while its sinless calm had given To lower regions, lest despair
Should make abode for ever there; So tranquil–so serene–so bright–
Brooded o’er earth the wings of night.
O’ershadow’d by its ancient yew,
His sheep-cot met the shepherd’s view; And, placid, in that calm profound,
His silent flocks lay slumbering round: With flowing mantle, by his side,
Sudden, a stranger he espied,
Bland was his visage, and his voice Soften’d the heart, yet bade rejoice.– “Why is thy mourning thus?” he said,
“Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head? Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so
Abroad despairing thou dost go?
As if the God who gave thee breath, Held not the keys of life and death!
When from the flocks that feed about, A single lamb thou choosest out,
Is it not that which seemeth best That thou dost take, yet leave the rest? Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,
With his choice little ones below Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks Their earthly bands, and homeward takes, Early, ere sin hath render’d dim
The image of the seraphim!”
Heart-struck, the shepherd home return’d; Again within his bosom burn’d
The light of faith; and, from that day, He trode serene life’s onward way.
* * * * *
COMTE.
_Cours de Philosophie Positive_, par M. Auguste Comte.
It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work, written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate views. Our sober philosophy, like some familiar landscape seen after a thunder storm, comes out but the more distinct, the brighter, and the more tranquil, for the bursting cloud and the windy tumult that had passed over its surface. Some such experience have we just had. Our Conservative principles, our calm and patient manner of viewing things, have rarely received a stronger corroboration than from the perusal or the extraordinary work of M. Comte–a work written, assuredly, for no such comfortable purpose, but for the express object (so far as we can at present state it to our readers) of re-organizing political society, by means of an intellectual reformation amongst political thinkers.
We would not be thought to throw an idle sneer at those generous hopes of the future destiny of society which have animated some of the noblest and most vigorous minds. It is no part of a Conservative philosophy to doubt on the broad question of the further and continuous improvement of mankind. Nor will the perusal of M. Comte’s work induce, or permit, such a doubt. But while he leaves with his reader a strong impression of the unceasing development of social man, he leaves a still stronger impression of the futile or mischievous efforts of those–himself amongst the number–who are thrusting themselves forward as the peculiar and exclusive advocates of progress and improvement. He exhibits himself in the attitude of an innovator, as powerless in effect as he is daring to design; whilst, at the same time, he deals a _crashing_ blow (as upon rival machinators) on that malignant party in European politics, whether it call itself liberal or of the movement, whose most distinct aim seems to be to unloose men from the bonds of civil government. We, too, believe in the silent, irresistible progress of human society, but we believe also that he is best working for posterity, as well as for the welfare of his contemporaries, who promotes order and tranquil effort in his own generation, by means of those elements of order which his own generation supplies.
That which distinguishes M. Comte’s work from all other courses of philosophy, or treatises upon science, is the attempt to reduce to the _scientific method_ of cogitation the affairs of human society–morality, politics; in short, all those general topics which occupy our solitary and perplexed meditation, or sustain the incessant strife of controversy. These are to constitute a new science, to be called _Social Physics_, or _Sociology_. To apply the Baconian, or, as it is here called, the positive method, to man in all phases of his existence–to introduce the same fixed, indissoluble, imperturbable order in our ideas of morals, politics, and history, that we attain to astronomy and mechanics, is the bold object of his labours. He does not here set forth a model of human society based on scientific conclusions; something of this kind is promised us in a future work; in the present undertaking he is especially anxious to compel us to think on all such topics in the scientific method, _and in no other_. For be it known, that science is not only weak in herself, and has been hitherto incompetent to the task of unravelling the complicate proceedings of humanity, but she has also a great rival in the form of theologic method, wherein the mind seeks a solution for its difficulties in a power above nature. The human being has contracted an inveterate habit of viewing itself as standing in a peculiar relation to a supreme Architect and Governor of the world–a habit which in many ways, direct and indirect, interferes, it seems, with the application of the positive method. This habit is to be corrected; such supreme Architect and Governor is to be dismissed from the imagination of men; science is to supply the sole mode of thought, and humanity to be its only object.
We have called M. Comte’s an extraordinary book, and this is an epithet which our readers are already fully prepared to apply. But the book, in our judgment, is extraordinary in more senses than one. It is as remarkable for the great mental energy it displays, for its originality and occasional profundity of thought, as it is for the astounding conclusions to which it would conduct us, for its bold paradoxes, and for what we can designate no otherwise than its egregious errors. As a discipline of the mind, so far as a full appreciation is concerned of the scientific method, it cannot be read without signal advantage. The book is altogether an anomaly; exhibiting the strangest mixture that ever mortal work betrayed of manifold blunder and great intellectual power. The man thinks at times with the strength of a giant. Neither does he fail, as we have already gathered, in the rebellious and destructive propensities for which giants have been of old renowned. Fable tells us how they could have no gods to reign over them, and how they threatened to drive Jupiter himself from the skies. Our intellectual representative of the race nourishes designs of equal temerity. Like his earth-born predecessors, his rage, we may be sure, will be equally vain. No thunder will be heard, neither will the hills move to overwhelm him; but in due course of time he will lie down, and be covered up with his own earth, and the heavens will be as bright and stable as before, and still the abode of the same unassailable Power.
For the _style_ of M. Comte’s work, it is not commendable. The philosophical writers of his country are in general so distinguished for excellence in this particular, their exposition of thought is so remarkably felicitous, that a failure in a Frenchman in the mere art of writing, appears almost as great an anomaly as any of the others which characterize this production. During the earlier volumes, which are occupied with a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its prolixity, has become intolerable.
Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features, remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors–supposing we are capable of coping with them–are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics, eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more calculated to render us content with an _empirical_ condition of tolerable well-being, than the exhibition (and such, we think, is here presented to us) of a strong mind palpably at fault in its attempt to substitute, out of its own theory of man, a better foundation for the social structure than is afforded by the existing unphilosophical medley of human thought. Upon that portion of the _Cours de Philosophie Positive_ which treats of the sciences usually so called, we do not intend to enter, nor do the general remarks we make apply to it. Our limited object is to place our reader at the point of view which M. Comte takes in his new science of Sociology; and to do this with any justice to him or to ourselves, in the space we can allot to the subject, will be a task of sufficient difficulty.
And first, as to the title of the work, _Philosophie Positive_, which has, perhaps, all this while been perplexing the reader. The reasons which induced M. Comte to adopt it, shall be given in his own words; they could not have been appreciated until some general notion had been given of the object he had in view.
“There is doubtless,” he says, in his _Avertissement_, “a close resemblance between my _Philosophie Positive_, and what the English, especially since the days of Newton, understand by _Natural Philosophy_. But I would not adopt this last expression, any more than that of _Philosophy of the Sciences_, which would have perhaps been still more precise, because neither of these has yet been extended to all orders of phenomena, whilst _Philosophie Positive_, in which I comprehend the study of the social phenomena, as well as all others, designs a uniform manner of reasoning applicable to all subjects on which the human mind can be exerted. Besides which, the expression _Natural Philosophy_ is employed in England to denote the aggregate of the several sciences of observation, considered even in their most minute details; whereas, by the title of _Philosophie Positive_, I intimate, with regard to the several positive sciences, a study of them only in their generalities, conceiving them as submitted to a uniform method, and forming the different parts of a general plan of research. The term which I have been led to construct is, therefore, at once more extended and more restricted than other denominations, which are so far similar that they have reference to the same fundamental class of ideas.”
This very announcement of M. Comte’s intention to comprehend in his course of natural philosophy the study of the several phenomena, compels us to enquire how far these are fit subjects for the strict application of the scientific method. We waive the metaphysical question of the free agency of man, and the theological question of the occasional interference of the Divine Power; and presuming these to be decided in a manner favourable to the project of our Sociologist, we still ask if it be possible to make of the affairs of society–legislation and politics, for instance–a department of science?
The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in under his conclusions _all_ the political truths he is master of! He reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone to others of more extensive or more urgent application.
But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict application of _the method_. There is, however, one essential, distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and incessant _developement_ which humanity has displayed, and is still displaying. Who can tell us that that _experience_ on which a fixed and positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From age to age that experience is enlarging.
In all recognized branches of science nature remains the same, and continually repeats herself; she admits of no novelty; and what appears new to us, from our late discovery of it, is as old as the most palpable sequence of facts that, generation after generation, catches the eye of childhood. The new discovery may disturb our theories, it disturbs not the condition of things. All is still the same as it ever was. What we possessed of real knowledge is real knowledge still. We sit down before a maze of things bewildering enough; but the vast mechanism, notwithstanding all its labyrinthian movements, is constant to itself, and presents always the same problem to the observer. But in this department of humanity, in this sphere of social existence, the case is otherwise. The human being, with hand, with intellect, is incessantly at work–has a progressive movement–_grows_ from age to age. He discovers, he invents, he speculates; his own inventions react upon the inventor; his own thoughts, creeds, speculations, become agents in the scene. Here _new facts_ are actually from time to time starting into existence; new elements are introduced into society, which science could not have foreseen; for if they could have been foreseen, they would already have been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey society, a _creator_. In short, that stability in the order of events, that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us, but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but half grown, but half developed. How can we know whereabouts _we are_ in our course, and what is coming next? We want the history of some extinguished world in which a humanity has run its full career; we need to extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand such a race as ours.
What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of society than that of property?–a law which so justly governs all our political reasonings, and determines the character of our political measures the most prospective–a law which M. Comte has not failed himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress? That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted. Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the participated prosperity of the general body–where the good of the whole should be felt as the interest of each. _How_ such a principle is to be established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and establish such a principle–this is what no scientific mind would venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of activity, nor need it, nor _can_ it, pass beyond that sphere. We know that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we know this also, that _at no time_ can its opposite principle be established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. Our convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?
“The great Aristotle himself,” says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of his age–“The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of ancient times, (_la plus forte tete de toute l’antiquite_,) could not conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards.”–Vol. iv. p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a fundamental law.
There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte’s work, (we cannot now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the comparative _happiness_ of the savage and the civilized man. He will not entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and contents himself with asserting the fuller _development_ of his nature displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind–of the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are, for the most part, practically decided by those who have to _feel_; but to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to establish a _standard measure_ for human felicity.
We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science. A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the moralist, the jurist, and the politician–though it is worthy of observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author, for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and obeyed.
With relation to the _past_, and in one point of view–namely, so far as regards the development of man in his speculative career–our Sociologist has endeavoured to supply a law which shall meet the peculiar exigencies of his case, and enable him to take a scientific survey of the history of a changeful and progressive being. At the threshold of his work we encounter the announcement of a _new law_, which has regulated the development of the human mind from its rudest state of intellectual existence. As this law lies at the basis of M. Comte’s system–as it is perpetually referred to throughout his work–as it is by this law he proceeds to view history in a scientific manner–as, moreover, it is by aid of this law that he undertakes to explain the _provisional existence_ of all theology, explaining it in the past, and removing it from the future–it becomes necessary to enter into some examination of its claims, and we must request our readers’ attention to the following statement of it:–
“In studying the entire development of the human intelligence in its different spheres of activity, from its first efforts the most simple up to our own days, I believe I have discovered a great fundamental law, to which it is subjected by an invariable necessity, and which seems to me capable of being firmly established, whether on those proofs which are furnished by a knowledge of our organization, or on those historical verifications which result from an attentive examination of the past. The law consists in this–that each of our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different states of theory: the _theologic_, or fictitious; the _metaphysic_, or abstract; the scientific, or _positive_. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature, employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic method, then the metaphysical, and last the positive method. Hence three distinct philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which mutually exclude each other; the first is the necessary starting-point of the human intelligence; the third is its fixed and definite state; the second is destined to serve the purpose only of transition.
“In the _theologic_ state, the human mind, directing its researches to the intimate nature of things, the first causes and the final causes of all those effects which arrest its attention, in a word, towards an absolute knowledge of things, represents to itself the phenomena as produced by the direct and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the apparent anomalies of the universe.
“In the _metaphysic_ state, which is, in its essence, a modification of the former, the supernatural agents are displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena–whose explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its corresponding entity.
“At last, in the _positive_ state the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the search after the origin and destination of the universe, and the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is to say, their invariable relations of succession and of similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established between the various individual phenomena and certain general facts, the number of which the progress of science tends continually to diminish.
“The _theologic_ system has reached the highest state of perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted the providential action of one only being for the capricious agency of the numerous independent divinities who had previously been imagined. In like manner, the last term of the _metaphysic_ system consists in conceiving, instead of the different special entities, one great general entity, _nature_, considered as the only source of all phenomena. The perfection of the _positive_ system, towards which it unceasingly tends, though it is not probable it can ever attain to it, would be the ability to represent all observable phenomena as particular cases of some one general fact; such, for instance, as that of gravitation.”–Vol. I. p. 5.
After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought whatever, he proceeds thus:–
“It is easily conceivable that our understanding, compelled to proceed by degrees almost imperceptible, could not pass abruptly, and without an intermediate stage, from the _theologic_ to the _positive_ philosophy. Theology and physics are so profoundly incompatible, their conceptions have a character so radically opposed, that before renouncing the one to employ exclusively the other, the mind must make use of intermediate conceptions of a bastard character, fit, for that very reason, gradually to operate the transition. Such is the natural destination of metaphysical conceptions; they have no other real utility. By substituting, in the study of phenomena, for supernatural directive agency an inseparable entity residing in things, (although this be conceived at first merely as an emanation from the former,) man habituates himself, by degrees, to consider only the facts themselves, the notion of these metaphysical agents being gradually subtilized, till they are no longer in the eyes of men of intelligence any thing but the names of abstractions. It is impossible to conceive by what other process our understanding could pass from considerations purely supernatural, to considerations purely natural, from the theologic to the positive _regime_.”–P. 13.
We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition that theology is not the _last_, as well as the _first_, of our forms of thought–against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work, made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject, though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with this protest, and with adding–as a fact of experience, which, in estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted on–that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident. Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great article of religion–that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times, men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their inductive labours by assigning that _unity_ and _correlation_ which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read _thought_ in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.
Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration of the _new law_. That there is, in the statement here made of the course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a _law_–a scientific law–which from its nature admits of no exception; at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger commixtures than this, they should “mutually exclude each other”–that, in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and proportions, both _theologic_ and _positive_.
What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the _succession_ of these several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here called the positive method of thought is not equally _spontaneous_ to the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified, or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have been a portion of his experience entertained merely _as experience_. The very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?
Or does M. Comte mean this only–which we presume to be the case–that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity? If so, what necessity for this _metaphysic_ apparatus for the sole purpose of _transition_? If each of these great modes, the positive and theological, has its independent source, and is equally spontaneous–if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though in different stages of development, the function attributed to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it; there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of _a law of succession_ in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of invariable sequence, between the phenomena?
Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are _not_ equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition, it would follow–since the mind, or _organization_, of man remains from age to age the same in its fundamental powers–that, at this very time, no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic. Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a theology of the rudest description–a result certainly not contemplated by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they _are_ equally spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and “indispensable” part ascribed to the _metaphysic_ of effectuating a transition between them? And how can we describe that as a scientific _law_ in which there is confessedly no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or laws, capable of explaining it.
Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps, concluded that this author could not have here required their assent, strictly speaking, to a _law_, but that he used the term vaguely, as many writers have done–meaning nothing more by it than a course of events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth contained in it than to cavil at the form of the statement. But indeed M. Comte uses the language of science in no such vague manner; he requires the same assent to this law that we give to any one of the recognized laws of science–to that of gravitation for instance, to which he himself likens it, pronouncing it, in a subsequent part of his work, to have been as incontrovertibly established. Upon this law, think what we may of it, M. Comte leans throughout all his progress; he could not possibly dispense with it; on its stability depends his whole social science; by it, as we have already intimated, he becomes master of the past and of the future; and an appreciation of its necessity to him, at once places us at that point of view from which M. Comte contemplates our mundane affairs.
It is his object to put the scientific method in complete possession of the whole range of human thought, especially of the department, hitherto unreduced to subjection, of social phenomena. Now there is a great rival in the field–theology–which, besides imparting its own supernatural tenets, influences our modes of thinking on almost all social questions. Theology cannot itself be converted into a branch of science; all those tenets by which it sways the hopes and fears of men are confessedly above the sphere of science: if science, therefore, is to rule absolutely, it must remove theology. But it can only remove by explaining; by showing how it came there, and how, in good time, it is destined to depart. If the scientific method is entirely to predominate, it must explain religion, as it must explain every thing that exists, or has existed; and it must also reveal the law of its departure–otherwise it cannot remain sole mistress of the speculative mind. Such is the office which the law of development we have just considered is intended to fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing its purpose we must now leave our readers to decide.
Having thus, as he presumes, cleared the ground for the absolute and exclusive dominion of the positive method, M. Comte proceeds to erect the _hierarchy_, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which presume the existence of other laws; in such manner that at every stage of our scientific progress we are supporting ourselves on the knowledge acquired in the one preceding.
“The positive philosophy,” he tells us, “falls naturally into five divisions, or five fundamental sciences, whose order of succession is determined by the necessary or invariable subordination (estimated according to no hypothetical opinions) of their several phenomena; these are, astronomy, mechanics, (_la physique_,) chemistry, physiology, and lastly, social physics. The first regards the phenomena the most general, the most abstract, the most remote from humanity; they influence all others, without being influenced by them. The phenomena considered by the last are, on the contrary, the most complicated, the most concrete, the most directly interesting to man; they depend more or less on all the preceding phenomena, without exercising on them any influence. Between these two extremes, the degrees of speciality, of complication and personality, of phenomena, gradually increase, as well as their successive dependence.”–Vol. I. p. 96.
The principle of classification is excellent, but is there no rank dropt out of this _hierarchy_? The metaphysicians, or psychologists, who are wont to consider themselves as standing at the very summit–where are they? They are dismissed from their labours–their place is occupied by others–and what was considered as having substance and reality in their proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician, with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte considers the _mind_ as one of those abstract entities which it is the first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man, of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his _mind_. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the _metaphysic_ stage of theorizing. “There is no place,” he cries, “for this illusory psychology, the last transformation of theology!”–though, by the way, so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the _metaphysic_ condition of our knowledge appears to be quite as old, quite as primitive, as any conception whatever of theology. Now, whether M. Comte be right in this preference of the phrenologist, we will not stay to discuss–it were too wide a question; but thus much we can briefly and indisputably show, that he utterly misconceives, as well as underrates, the _kind of research_ to which psychologists are addicted. As M. Comte’s style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole class of Parisian _savans_, added something to the piquancy of the style?
“Such has gradually become, since the time of Bacon, the preponderance of the positive philosophy; it has at present assumed indirectly so great an ascendant over those minds even which have been most estranged from it, that metaphysicians devoted to the study of our intelligence, can no longer hope to delay the fall of their pretended science, but by presenting their doctrines as founded also upon the observation of facts. For this purpose they have, in these later times, attempted to distinguish, by a very singular subtilty, two sorts of observations of equal importance, the one external, the other internal; the last of which is exclusively destined for the study of intellectual phenomena. This is not the place to enter into the special discussion of this sophism. I will limit myself to indicate the principal consideration, which clearly proves that this pretended direct contemplation of the mind by itself, is a pure illusion.
“Not a long while ago men imagined they had explained vision by saying that the luminous action of bodies produces on the retina pictures representative of external forms and colours. To this the physiologists [query, the _physiologists_] have objected, with reason, that if it was _as images_ that the luminous impressions acted, there needed another eye within the eye to behold them. Does not a similar objection hold good still more strikingly in the present case?
“It is clear, in fact, from an invincible necessity, that the human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own. For by whom can the observation be made? It is conceivable that, relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe himself in regard to the passions which animate him, from this anatomical reason, that the organs which are the seat of them are distinct from those destined to the function of observation. Though each man has had occasion to make on himself such observations, yet they can never have any great scientific importance; and the best means of knowing the passions will be always to observe them without; [_indeed_!] for every state of passion very energetic–that is to say, precisely those which it would be most essential to examine, are necessarily incompatible with the state of observation. But as to observing in the same manner intellectual phenomena, while they are proceeding, it is manifestly impossible. The thinking individual cannot separate himself in two parts, of which the one shall reason, and the other observe it reasoning. The organ observed and the organ observing being in this case identical, how can observation be carried on?
“This pretended psychological method is thus radically absurd. And only consider to what procedures profoundly contradictory it immediately conducts! On the other hand, they recommend you to isolate yourself as much as possible from all external sensation; and, above all, they interdict you every intellectual exercise; for if you were merely occupied in making the most simple calculation, what would become of your _internal_ observation? On the other hand, after having thus, by dint of many precautions, attained to a perfect state of intellectual slumber, you are to occupy yourself in contemplating the operations passing in your mind–while there is no longer any thing passing there. Our descendants will one day see these ludicrous pretensions transferred to the stage.”–P. 34.
They seem transferred to the stage already–so completely burlesqued is the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them, in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering, in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate, this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in search–something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences; observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology, let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the fundamental principles of Gall’s system, but repudiates, as consummately absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the cranium, and establish a more reasonable one, unless by a course of craniological observations directed and confirmed by those internal observations which he is pleased here to deride?
His hierarchy being erected, he next enters on a review of the several received sciences, marking throughout the successful, or erroneous, application of the positive method. This occupies three volumes. It is a portion of the work which we are restricted from entering on; nor shall we deviate from the line we have prescribed to ourselves. But before opening the fourth volume, in which he treats of social physics, it will not be beside our object to take a glance at the _method_ itself, as applied in the usual field of scientific investigation, to nature, as it is called–to inorganic matter, to vegetable and animal life.
We are not here determining the merits of M. Comte in his exposition of the scientific method; we take it as we find it; and, in unsophisticated mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline–to make room for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid waste.
Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of their succession–such is the material of science. All enquiry into causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory; the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed, perhaps, to have a meaning–such is the supreme dictate of the method, and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities, than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen, gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls through space–ask not how!–the mathematician will tell you at what rate it flies–let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous transformations–the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of proportions–names and figures both–_why_ these transmutations take place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from the earth, and _grow_, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask what is _life?_ Science will generalize the fact to you–give you its formula for the expression of _growth, decomposition, and recomposition_, under circumstances not as yet very accurately collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain! Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his formula of decomposition and recomposition. As _attraction_ in the planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical expression, so _life_ in the plant is to be known only as decomposition and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances. Think of it as such–no more. But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something I do not know. Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what life is. Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks why? Child! I respond, that the hands _do_ move is an ultimate fact–so, represent it to yourself–and here, moreover, is the law of their movement–the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter revolves once. This is knowledge, and will be of use to you–more you cannot understand. And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.
But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth–what is this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing, seeking, this way and that, its pasture?–what have we here? _Irritability and a tissue._ Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself–what is this? _Sensation and a nerve._ Does the nerve _feel_? you inconsiderately ask, or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which sensation resides? A smile of derision plays on the lip of the philosopher. _There is sensation_–you cannot express the fact in simpler or more general terms. Turn your enquiries, or your microscope, on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected. Ask not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of ontology. And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter? Not more perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the surface of the earth. Does the organization of the man, or something else within him, _think_?–does the organization of that worm, or something else within it, _feel_?–they are virtually the same questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science. Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with which it is, or _was_, connected.
All this “craves wary walking.” It is a trying course, this _method_, for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem, by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the fantastic, inexplicable interval.
We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of _Physique Social_. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the work–perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole–where, in order to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the purpose of exposition will allow:–
“It is impossible to deny that the political world is intellectually in a deplorable condition. All our ideas of _order_ are hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient system of religious and military power, regarded especially in its constitution, catholic and feudal; a doctrine which, from the philosophic point of view of this treatise, represents incontestably the _theologic_ state of the social science. All our ideas of _progress_ continue to be exclusively deduced from a philosophy purely negative, which, issuing from Protestantism, has taken in the last age its final form and complete development; the doctrines of which constitute, in reality, the _metaphysic_ state of politics. Different classes of society adopt the one or the other of these, just as they are disposed to feel chiefly the want of conservation or that of amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these antagonist doctrines present themselves in all their plenitude, and with their primitive homogeneity; they are found less and less in this form, except in minds purely speculative. But the monstrous medley which men attempt in our days of their incompatible principles, cannot evidently be endowed with any virtue foreign to the elements which compose it, and tends only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.
“However pernicious may be at present the theologic doctrine, no true philosophy can forget that the formation and first development of modern societies were accomplished under its benevolent tutelage; which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate in the historical portion of this work. But it is not the less incontestably true that, for about three centuries, its influence has been, amongst the nations most advanced, essentially retrograde, notwithstanding the partial services it has throughout that period rendered. It would be superfluous to enter here into a special discussion of this doctrine, in order to show its extreme insufficiency at the present day. The deplorable absence of all sound views of social organization can alone account for the absurd project of giving, in these times, for the support of social order, a political system which has already been found unable to sustain itself before the spontaneous progress of intelligence and of society. The historical analysis which we shall subsequently institute of the successive changes which have gradually brought about the entire dissolution of the catholic and feudal system, will demonstrate, better than any direct argument, its radical and irrevocable decay. The theologic school has generally no other method of explaining this decomposition of the old system than by causes merely accidental or personal, out of all reasonable proportion with the magnitude of the results; or else, when hard driven, it has recourse to its ordinary artifice, and attempts to explain all by an appeal to the will of Providence, to whom is ascribed the intention of raising a time of trial for the social order, of which the commencement, the duration, and the character, are all left equally obscure.”…–P.14
“In a point of view strictly logical, the social problem might be stated thus:–construct a doctrine that shall be so rationally conceived that it shall be found, as it develops itself, to be still always consistent with its own principles. Neither of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition, even by the rudest approximation. Both display numerous and direct contradictions, and on important points. By this alone their utter insufficiency is clearly exhibited. The doctrine which shall fulfil this condition, will, from this test, be recognized as the one capable of reorganizing society; for it is an _intellectual reorganization_ that is first wanted–a re-establishment of a real and durable harmony amongst our social ideas, disturbed and shaken to the very foundation. Should this regeneration be accomplished in one intelligence only, (and such must necessarily be its manner of commencement,) its extension would be certain; for the number of intelligences to be convinced can have no influence except as a question of time. I shall not fail to point out, when the proper opportunity arrives, the eminent superiority, in this respect, of the positive philosophy, which, once extended to social phenomena, will necessarily combine the ideas of men in a strict and complete manner, which in no other way can be attained.”–P. 20.
M. Comte then mentions some of the inconsistencies of the theologic school.
“Analyze, for example, the vain attempts, so frequently renewed during two centuries by so many distinguished minds, to subordinate, according to the theologic formula, reason to faith; it is easy to recognize the radical contradiction this attempt involves, which establishes reason herself as supreme judge of this very submission, the extent and the permanence of which is to depend upon her variable and not very rigid decisions. The most eminent thinker of the present catholic school, the illustrious _De Maistre_, himself affords a proof, as convincing as involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction in his philosophy, when, renouncing all theologic weapons, he labours in his principal work to re-establish the Papal supremacy on purely historical and political reasonings, instead of limiting himself to command it by right divine–the only mode in true harmony with such a doctrine, and which a mind, at another epoch, would not certainly have hesitated to adopt.”–P. 25.
After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school, he turns to the _metaphysic_, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes _doctrine critique_, for M. Comte is rich in names.
“In submitting, in their turn, the _metaphysic_ doctrine to a like appreciation, it must never be overlooked that, though exclusively critical, and therefore purely revolutionary, it has not the less merited, for a long time, the title of progressive, as having in fact presided over the principal political improvements accomplished in the course of the three last centuries, and which have necessarily been of a _negative_ description. If, when conceived in an absolute sense, its dogmas manifest, in fact, a character directly anarchical, when viewed in an historical position, and in their antagonism to the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state, necessary to the introduction of a new political organization.
“By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social system to another can never be direct and continuous; it supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we see the legitimate source of the present _doctrine critique_–a source which at once explains the indispensable services it has hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies….
“Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of political notions, the most fundamental, it represents government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of society, against which it sedulously places itself in a constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity, in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to leave it no other than the simple functions of general police, without any essential participation in the supreme direction of the action of the collective body or of its social development.
“Approaching to a more detailed examination of this doctrine, it is evident that the absolute right of free examination (which, connected as it is with the liberty of the press and the freedom of education, is manifestly its principal and fundamental dogma) is nothing else, in reality, but the consecration, under the vicious abstract form common to all metaphysic conceptions, of that transitional state of unlimited liberty in which the human mind has been spontaneously placed, in consequence of the irrevocable decay of the theologic philosophy, and which must naturally remain till the establishment in the social domain of the positive method.[49] … However salutary and indispensable in its historical position, this principle opposes a grave obstacle to the reorganization of society, by being erected into an absolute and permanent dogma. To examine always without deciding ever, would be deemed great folly in any individual. How can the dogmatic consecration of a like disposition amongst all individuals, constitute the definitive perfection of the social order, in regard, too, to ideas whose finity it is so peculiarly important, and so difficult, to establish? Is it not evident, on the contrary, that such a disposition is, from its nature, radically anarchical, inasmuch as, if it could be indefinitely prolonged, it must hinder every true mental organization?
“No association whatever, though destined for a special and temporary purpose, and though limited to a small number of individuals, can subsist without a certain degree of reciprocal confidence, both intellectual and moral, between its members, each one of whom finds a continual necessity for a crowd of notions, to the formation of which he must remain a stranger, and which he cannot admit but on the faith of others. By what monstrous exception can this elementary condition of all society be banished from that total association of mankind, where the point of view which the individual takes, is most widely separated from that point of view which the collective interest requires, and where each member is the least capable, whether by nature or position, to form a just appreciation of these general rules, indispensable to the good direction of his personal activity. Whatever intellectual development we may suppose possible, in the mass of men it is evident, that social order will remain always necessarily incompatible with the permanent liberty left to each, to throw back every day into endless discussion the first principles even of society….
“The dogma of _equality_ is the most essential and the most influential after that which I have just examined, and is, besides, in necessary relation to the principle of the unrestricted liberty of judgment; for this last indirectly leads to the conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental character–an equality of intelligence. In its bearing on the ancient system, it has happily promoted the development of modern civilization, by presiding over the final dissolution of the old social classification. But this function constitutes the sole progressive destination of this energetic dogma, which tends in its turn to prevent every just reorganization, since its destructive activity is blindly directed against the basis of every new classification. For, whatever that basis may be, it cannot be reconciled with a pretended equality, which, to all intelligent men, can now only signify the triumph of the inequalities developed by modern civilization, over those which had predominated in the infancy of society….
“The same philosophical appreciation is applicable with equal ease to the dogma of the _sovereignty of the people_. Whilst estimating, as is fit, the indispensable transitional office of this revolutionary dogma, no true philosopher can now misunderstand the fatal anarchical tendency of this metaphysical conception, since in its absolute application it opposes itself to all regular institution, condemning indefinitely all superiors to an arbitrary dependence on the multitude of their inferiors, by a sort of transference to the people of the much-reprobated right of kings.”
[49] “There is,” says M. Comte here in a note, which consists of an extract from a previous work–“there is no liberty of conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit to the principles established in these sciences by competent men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is because the ancient principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed, there are, properly speaking, in this interval no established principles.”
As our author had shown how the _theologic_ philosophy was inconsistent often with itself, so, in criticising the _metaphysics_, he exposes here also certain self-contradictions. He reproaches it with having, in its contests with the old system, endeavoured, at each stage, to uphold and adopt some of the elementary principles of that very system it was engaged in destroying.
“Thus,” he says, “there arose a Christianity more and more simplified, and reduced at length to a vague and powerless theism, which, by a strange medley of terms, the metaphysicians distinguished by the title of _natural religion_, as if all religion was not inevitably _supernatural_. In pretending to direct the social reorganization after this vain conception, the metaphysic school, notwithstanding its destination purely revolutionary, has always implicitly adhered, and does so, especially and distinctly, at the present day, to the most fundamental principle of the ancient political doctrine–that which represents the social order as necessarily reposing on a theological basis. This is now the most evident, and the most pernicious inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine. Armed with this concession, the school of Bossuet and De Maistre will always maintain an incontestable logical superiority over the irrational detractors of Catholicism, who, while they proclaim the want of a religious organization, reject, nevertheless, the elements indispensable to its realization. By such a concession the revolutionary school concur in effect, at the present day, with the retrograde, in preventing a right organization of modern societies, whose intellectual condition more and more interdicts a system of politics founded on theology.”
Our readers will doubtless agree with us, that this review of political parties (though seen through an extract which we have been compelled to abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible in quoting from an author) displays a singular originality and power of thought; although each one of them will certainly have his own class of objections and exceptions to make. We said that the impression created by the work was decidedly _conservative_, and this quotation has already borne us out. For without implying that we could conscientiously make use of every argument here put into our hands, we may be allowed to say, as the lawyers do in Westminster Hail, _if this be so_, then it follows that we of the retrograde, or as we may fairly style ourselves in England–seeing this country has not progressed so rapidly as France–we of the stationary party are fully justified in maintaining our position, unsatisfactory though it may be, till some better and more definite system has been revealed to us, than any which has yet made its advent in the political world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic, or liberal school have no proper office but that of destruction–if its nature be essentially transitional–can we be called upon to forego this position, to quit our present anchorage, until we know whereto we are to be transferred? Shall we relinquish the traditions of our monarchy, and the discipline of our church, before we hear what we are to receive in exchange? M. Comte would not advise so irrational a proceeding.
But M. Comte has himself a _constructive_ doctrine; M. Comte will give us in exchange–what? The Scientific Method!
We have just seen something of this scientific method. M. Comte himself is well aware that it is a style of thought by no means adapted to the multitude. Therefore there will arise with the scientific method an altogether new class, an intellectual aristocracy, (not the present race of _savans_ or their successors, whom he is particularly anxious to exclude from all such advancement,) who will expound to the people the truths to which that method shall give birth. This class will take under its control all that relates to education. It will be the seat of the moral power, not of the administrative. This, together with some arguments to establish what few are disposed to question, the fundamental character of the laws of property and of marriage, is all that we are here presented with towards the definite re-organization of society.
We shall not go back to the question, already touched upon, and which lies at the basis of all this–how far it is possible to construct a science of Sociology. There is only one way in which the question can be resolved in the affirmative–namely, by constructing the science.
Meanwhile we may observe, that the general consent of a cultivated order of minds to a certain class of truths, is not sufficient for the purposes of government. We take, says M. Comte, our chemistry from the chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer; if these were fixed principles, we should take our politics with the same ease from the graduated politician. But it is worth while to consider what it is we do when we take our chemistry from the chemist, and our astronomy from the astronomer. We assume, on the authority of our teacher, certain facts which it is not in our power to verify; but his reasonings upon these facts we must be able to comprehend. We follow him as he explains the facts by which knowledge has been obtained, and yield to his statement a rational conviction. Unless we do this, we cannot be said to have any knowledge whatever of the subject–any chemistry or astronomy at all. Now, presuming there were a science of politics, as fixed and perfect as that of astronomy, the people must, at all events, be capable of understanding its exposition, or they could not possibly be governed by it. We need hardly say that those ideas, feelings, and sentiments, which can be made general, are those only on which government can rest.
In the course of the preceding extract, our author exposes the futility of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of their reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of the very same kind, and even still more hopeless. A multitude once taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a submission of their reason to political teachers–teachers who have no sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine. But this is a difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.
We are afraid, notwithstanding all his protestations, M. Comte will be simply classed amongst the _Destructives_, so little applicable to the generality of minds is that mode of thought, to establish which (and it is for this we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely, for so great sacrifices.
The fifth volume–the most remarkable, we think, of the whole–contains that historical survey which has been more than once alluded to in the foregoing extracts. This volume alone would make the fortune of any expert Parisian scribe who knew how to select from its rich store of original materials, who had skill to arrange and expound, and, above all, had the dexterity to adopt somewhat more ingeniously than M. Comte has done, his abstract statements to our reminiscences of historical facts. Full of his own generalities, he is apt to forget the concrete matter of the annalist. Indeed, it is a peculiarity running through the volume, that generalizations, in themselves of a valuable character, are shown to disadvantage by an unskilful alliance with history.
We will make one quotation from this portion of the work, and then we must leave M. Comte. In reviewing the theological progress of mankind, he signalizes three epochs, that of Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of Monotheism. Our extract shall relate to the first of these, to that primitive state of religion, or idolatry, in which _things themselves_ were worshipped; the human being transferring to them immediately a life, or power, somewhat analogous to its own.
“Exclusively habituated, for so long a time, to a theology eminently metaphysic, we must feel at present greatly embarrassed in our attempt to comprehend this gross primitive mode of thought. It is thus that fetishism has often been confounded with polytheism, when to the latter has been applied the common expression of idolatry, which strictly relates to the former only; since the priests of Jupiter or Minerva would, no doubt, have as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of worshipping images, as do the Catholic doctors of the present day a like unjust accusation of the Protestants. But though we are happily sufficiently remote from fetishism to find a difficulty in conceiving it, yet each one of us has but to retrace his own mental history, to detect the essential characters of this initial state. Nay, even eminent thinkers of the present day, when they allow themselves to be involuntarily ensnared (under the influence, but partially rectified, of a vicious education) to attempt to penetrate the mystery of the essential production of any phenomenon whose laws are not familiar to them, they are in a condition personally to exemplify this invariable instinctive tendency to trace the generation of unknown effects to a cause analogous to life, which is no other, strictly speaking, than the principle of fetishism….
“Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated, has always necessarily for its base pure fetishism, which deifies instantly each body and each phenomenon capable of exciting the feeble thought of infant humanity. Whatever essential transformations this primitive philosophy may afterwards undergo, a judicious sociological analysis will always expose to view this primordial base, never entirely concealed, even in a religious state the most remote from the original point of departure. Not only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy has presented, at the time of its greatest splendour, the established and prolonged coexistence, in the several castes of the hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs, since the inferior ranks still remained in simple fetishism, whilst the higher orders were in possession of a very remarkable polytheism, and the most exalted of its members had probably raised themselves to some form of monotheism; but we can at all times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in the theologic spirit traces of this original fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical forms. What, in reality, is that celebrated conception of a soul of the world amongst the ancients, or that analogy, more modern, drawn between the earth and an immense living animal, and other similar fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the pomp of philosophical language? And, in our own days even, what is this cloudy pantheism which so many metaphysicians, especially in Germany, make great boast of, but generalized and systematized fetishism enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze the vulgar.”–Vol. V. p. 38.
He then remarks on the perfect adaptation of this primitive theology to the initial torpor of the human understanding, which it spares even the labour of creating and sustaining the facile fictions of polytheism. The mind yields passively to that natural tendency which leads us to transfer to objects without us, that sentiment of existence which we feel within, and which, appearing at first sufficiently to explain our own personal phenomena, serves directly as an uniform base, an absolute unquestioned interpretation, of all external phenomena. He dwells with quite a touching satisfaction on this child-like and contented condition of the rude intellect.
“All observable bodies,” he says “being thus immediately personified and endowed with passions suited to the energy of the observed phenomena, the external world presents itself spontaneously to the spectator in a perfect harmony, such as never again has been produced, and which must have excited in him a peculiar sentiment of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us in the present day to be characterized, even when we refer back with a meditation the most intense on this cradle of humanity.”
Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The principle here laid down as that of fetishism, is important in many respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application; but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst rude thinkers–we do not find any condition of mankind which displays that complete ascendancy of the principle here described. Our author would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly a species of explanation of natural phenomena. The accounts we have of fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with a desire to explain _their_ phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied relation between those objects and the human being. The _charm_ or the _amulet_–some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases, or bring good-luck–grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of granting his prayer.[50]
[50] Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism in Africa. It is the best which just now falls under our hand, and perhaps a longer search would not find a better. Those only who never read _The Doctor_, will be surprised to find it quoted on a grave occasion:–
“The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for witchcraft, _feitico_; the vernacular name is _Bossum_, or _Bossifoe_. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree, is generally the national Fetish. The king’s is usually the largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one, take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless–a stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance, and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god, in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and with as much reason. Barbot says that some of the Europeans on that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this superstition, but believed in it, and practised it themselves.”–Vol. V. p. 136.
We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating the impracticable _unmanageable_ nature of our author’s generalizations when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such scientific precision, fixed it.
“Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance–an importance extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious _regime_ to the other.”–P. 97.
The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects, and classified them into one species, so they approximated the corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became a god.
“For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their indeterminate residence. They, each of them, administer a special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only, from which it is inseparable. Now, in proportion as the resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a god–that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible, whose residence is not rigorously fixed. There could not exist, properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily endowed with a material individuality. When, for example, the similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks, led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what was _common_ in these objects, this abstract being could no longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the forest.”–P. 101.
This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is utterly uncalled for. The same uncultured imagination that could animate a tree, could people the air with gods. Whenever the cause of any natural event is _invisible_, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism; it must create some being to produce it. If thunder is to be theologically explained–and there is no event in nature more likely to suggest such explanation–the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it must create some being that thunders. No one, the discipline of whose mind had not been solely and purely _scientific_, would have created for itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.[51]
[51] At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is taken, the _Doctor_ tells a story which, if faith could be put in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves, (and such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,) might deserve a place in the history of superstition.
“One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful schoolmaster; and in the state of mind which that constant fear produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged.”
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