Jacques
Maritain Center
1 Catéchisme positiviste (1852), 3rd ed., 1890, Paris, 10 rue Monsieur-le-Prince, p. 336.
2 "It suffices then that an angelic impulse came to regenerate morally the founder of sociology, in whom aesthetic appreciation thus serves as a link between the preparation of the mind and the supremacy of the heart." Synthèse subjective (1856), 2nd ed., Paris, 1900, Fonds typographique de l'ex~cution testamentaire d'Auguste Comte, p. 5.
1 Western anarchy mainly involves the intelligence, the disorder of which is the principal source of the alteration of feeling and the deviation of activity. My Synthèse subjective is therefore in special harmony with the essential needs of the modern situation in which the theoretical spirit has alone become a direct source of disturbance. It must make our time undergo an irresistible discipline, first by regenerating is mathematical source, then by establishing its moral destination." Synthèse subjective, p. 5.
2 "Thus the natural order always constitutes a modifiable fatality, which becomes the indispensable basis of the artificial order. Our true destiny is therefore a compound of resignation and action." Catéchisme positiv., pp. 56-57. -- Cf above, chap. XI, p. 290, note 4.
2 "In itself, [the word "religion"] denotes the state of perfect unity
which characterizes our existence, at once personal and social, when
all its parts, moral as well as physical, converge habitually towards a
common end. . . . Religion, then, consists in regulating each
individual nature and in rallying all the separate individuals."
Catdchismepositiviste, p. 44.
3 Cf. Catechisme positiviste, p. 64.
4 Synthèse subjective, p. 40. -- Cf p. 26: "Restored and
disciplined by such a connection the intelligence is again freely
subordinated to feeling, against which it had been in increasing
opposition since the beginning of the flight into abstraction."
5 Ibid., p. 38.
6 Catéchisme positiviste, p. 34.
7 Ibid., p. 59.
8 Synthèse subjective, p. 47.
9 In fact, "in the 'final structure' sympathy was to rule synthesis and
fashion it to its own liking. Criticism of the 'empty presidency of the
mind' tended more and more to become distrust of the understanding, the
mere exercise of which was to be regarded as a manifestation of egoism
and vanity." H. de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans.
Edith M. Riley, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950, p. 146; London, Sheed
and Ward, 1949.
1 L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 15. -- "Then we do not have
the right to speak of contradiction when we follow the logical
development of Comte's thought; he aimed only at the subjective
synthesis, this is to say social, of our knowledge; he has written his
philosophy of science only to prepare the way for his politics and the
establishment of the new spiritual power. . . . Georges Dumas, op.
cit., pp. 172-173.
2 The first crisis (1826) was an "attack of well-characterized
insanity" (Georges Dumas, op. cit., p. 127). The three other
crises were rather threats of relapse. "Without any doubt Auguste Comte
was insane for a time, and he rightly sensed he was liable to relapses.
But once free of the mania, he avoided it by all possible means, he
cheated it, and in the last analysis he vanquished it." And Georges
Dumas rightly concludes that "this fight against insanity speaks much
more for his will than for his intellect". (Ibid., p. 159.)
It is, therefore, false to claim with Madame Comte and Littré
that he fell into insanity during his second career. But it remains a
fact that his congenital psychopathic disposition revealed itself more
and more with the years and made him beyond any question a medical case
(Henri Gouhier has shown that Comte's heredity was worse than Georges
Dumas thought it was). This pathological background stimulated certain
tendencies and emphasized certain characteristics of Comte's
intellectual work, but it could not play an essential and formally
determining part in an elaboration which remained under the control of
the mind.
3 Lettres d'Auguste Comte à John Stuart Mill, pp.
356-357.
4 Polit. pos., II, xx. -- The following text shows well how
Comte conceives the mutual relation between "establishing the true
religion" (subjective synthesis) and constructing the "sound
philosophy" (objective synthesis): "Guided by the heart, we adhere
directly to Humanity, and then to the universal order which serves as
the basis of its existence. But the intellect, substituting for the
order of dignity the order of simplicity, submits in the first place to
external laws, and through them it subsequently recognizes human laws.
Extended to their legitimate limits, these two methods converge
spontaneously, since the Great-Being constitutes both the main element
and the necessary summary of universal order." Synthèse
subjective, p. 39.
1 After pointing out that "the eminent Condorcet" was his "essential
precursor", Comte writes: "So, under the political aspect, Condorcet
required, for me, to be completed by De Maistre, from whom, at the
commencement of my career, I appropriated all his essential principles,
which now find no adequate appreciation except in the Positive school."
Catéch. positiv., p. 10.
2 "The growing struggle of Humanity against the fatalities which weigh
upon it, presents to the heart as well as to the mind a better
spectacle than the omnipotence, necessarily capricious, of its
theological precursor. . . ." Catéch. positiv., p. 59. --
"Our emancipation should mainly consist in the substitution of the true
Great-Being for its fictitious precursors. . . ." Synthèse
subjective, p. 36.
3 L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 330.
4 Cf. Catéch. positiv., pp. 248-250. -- Briefly,
socio-temporal progress constitutes "the ultimate goal of dogma and
worship, thus preserved from any ascetical or quietist deviation,
according to the impulse of true love". Polit. pos., II, p.
77.
1 Lettres d'Auguste Comte à John Stuart Mill (1841-1845),
Paris, 1877, p. 359.
2 L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 332.
1 On Comte's hope of seeing the Jesuits "regenerated into Ignatians"
ally themselves to him in order to help him "to reorganize the West",
and on the amusing history of the visit of Alfred Sabatier, as
ambassador of positivism, to the General of the Jesuits, see Georges
Dumas, Revue de Paris, Oct. 1, 1898, and H. de Lubac, op.
cit., pp. 124-127.
2 "Auguste Comte", writes Father de Lubac, "is here the instrument of a
temptation which, always latent, becomes particularly strong when
Catholicism seems to have its back against the wall. What he
proposes to the Church, with the utmost naivete, is a betrayal. . . ."
In another passage the same author rightly observes: "Can it at least
be said that the positivist menace is not very formidable? To my mind
it is, on the contrary, one of the most dangerous that beset us. At any
moment the failure of other nostrums, with greater outward attractions,
may suddenly send its stock up. Many of the present campaigns against
individualism already derive their inspiration from the ideas of Comte
and his disciples, too often at the cost of the human person. They may
loudly proclaim their agreement with traditional philosophy, but what
they understand by that term, too, is often nothing but a
traditionalist philosophy -- completely heterodox in some of its
fundamental propositions -- which is actually one of the sources of
Comtian thought. They lead believers astray by ambiguous
pronouncements. They pay homage to Catholicism; but, in varying degrees
and often without being clearly aware of it, their purpose is to rid it
more effectually of the Christian spirit. They stress the elements of
superstition which still subsist in a body so large as the Church, and
which it is so easy to exacerbate, especially in periods of unrest. It
sometimes happens that churchmen, paying too little heed to the Gospel,
let themselves be caught by this. Positivism is gaining ground, as its
founder repeatedly predicted, far less by any conquest over former
'metaphysicians' or 'revolutionaries', than by a slow and imperceptible
dechristianization of a large number of Catholic souls. The
'accommodations' and 'alliances' favoured by Comte have actually borne
fruit. They were followed by a period of spontaneous assimilation, and
the faith which used to be a living adherence to the Mystery of Christ
then came to be no more than attachment to a social programme, itself
twisted and diverted from its purpose. Without any apparent crisis,
under a surface which sometimes seemed the reverse of apostasy, that
faith has slowly been drained of its substance." op. cit., p.
127; pp. 157-158.
3 In Catéchisme positiviste (pp. 76-77), dogma, as
theoretical, is declared to be inferior to worship and regime, which
are both practical and depend on love. But in Politique positive
(IV, pp. 86-91) Comte affirms the essential primacy of worship over
both dogma and regime.
1 Cf. Politique positive, IV, General Appendix
(Considérations sur le pouvoir spirituel, March, 1826), pp. 207-
208: "Faith, that is to say the disposition to believe spontaneously,
without previous demonstration, in dogmas proclaimed by a competent
authority", is, as "Catholic philosophy" had realized but in an
"essentially empirical" manner, "a fundamental virtue, the immutable
and necessary basis of private and public happiness". And this is
more true than ever in the positive age, "for in this new state,
characterized as it is by a more complete and ever increasing
separation of the various functions, each person, whatever may be his
capacity, can, unaided, grasp but a very small portion of the
Doctrine which he needs for his guidance". (Italics ours.)
"In other people he [Comte] increasingly preferred the faith of the
heart to 'scientific faith', and that is one of the reasons why he
increasingly dissuaded would-be readers from studying his
Cours." H. de Lubac, op. cit., p. 143.
2 Cours, IV, p. 40. -- On the opuscule of 1822 (Prospectus
des travaux nécessaires pour réorganiser la
société), see above,
chapter Xl, p. 277, note 2.
1 Synthèse subjective, p. 26.
2 Ibid., p. 39. -- Cf. Catéch. positiv., pp. 327
and 337. See also on fetishistic incorporation the Appendix
(composed by Pierre Laffitte) to Catéchisme positiviste,
pp. 391-395.
3 Ibid., p. 771.
4 Ibid., p. 23.
5. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 386.
6 Ibid., p. 384. -- Cf. Cours, III, pp. 232 ff.
1 Synthèse subjective, p. 31.
2 Catéch. positiv., p. 73.
3 Politique positive, I, p. 354; cf. ibid., II, p.
59.
4 Ibid., I, p. 330.
5 Catéch. positiv., p. 380. (Italics ours.) -- Thanks to
the contempt for historical exactness natural to every philosophy of
history which reconstructs the past by means of necessary laws, Comte
was persuaded that this substitution had begun in the Middle Ages with
the cult of the Virgin, image of Humanity. "After inaugurating
admirably the worship of Woman, the necessary prelude to the Religion
of Humanity, the feudal feeling really brought about, in the century of
the Crusades, the change which Western monotheism underwent when the
Virgin tended therein to take the place of God." Ibid., p.
363.
6 L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 389. -- Cf. Polit.
pos. , I, p. 411.
7 Catéch. positiviste, p. 69.
1 "De resurrectione autem mortuorum non legistis quod dictum est a Deo
dicente vobis: Ego sum Deus Abraham, et Deus Isaac, et Deus Jacob? Non
est Deus mortuorum, sed viventium." Matt. XXII, 31-32.
2 L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 390. Polit,
positive, I, p. 411.
3 Cf. below, p. 325, note 3.
4 Synthese subjective, p. 19.
1 "Nothing can give a better idea of the two extreme regimes [fetishism
and positivism] than their inherent tendencies always to give dominion,
the one to Wills, the other to laws. . . ." But, on the other hand,
"fetishism may be considered as having spontaneously introduced the
subjectivity which Positivism has systematically to make paramount in
the universal synthesis". (Ibid., p. 6.) It is to this final
subjective synthesis that corresponds the "need, both theoretical and
practical, which I have characterized in this systematic line: To
complete laws, we need wills." (Ibid., p. 25.)
2 Ibid., p. 18.
3 Ibid., p. 24.
4 Ibid. This "active and benevolent seat", incidentally, "is not
at all limited to the Earth with its twofold liquid envelope", but it
"includes also the stars which are really connected with the human
planet as objective or subjective adjuncts; and especially the Sun and
the Moon, which we must specially honor".
5 "After having irrevocably regenerated, in this volume, the
fundamental science . . ." Synthèse subjective, p. 772.
-- "Limited to the Great-Milieu, the fundamental science aspires to the
Great-Fetish, through the mediation of the heavens and of the twofold
terrestrial envelope in order to attain to the Great-Being, when
vegetable life followed by animality renders it theoretically
accessible." (Ibid., p. 769.) -- The "final systematization of
mathematical studies", by reaching minds engaged in practical life,
will have considerable social efficacy. "But the result of the final
regeneration of the mathematical spirit must then consist in having it
gradually obtain the most decisive sanction, by reconciling to it the
poetical and feminine natures whom its dryness repelled. They can
already perceive, in the founder of positivism, the extent to which the
most profound influence of the mathematical beginning is becoming
normally compatible with the most active impulse of synthetic and
sympathetic dispositions which subordinate dogma to worship."
(Ibid., p. 771.)
6 Ibid., p. 24.
7 Ibid., p. 22.
8 Ibid., pp. 24-25.
9 Ibid., p. 22.
10 Ibid., p. 21.
1 Synthèse subjective, p. 43.
2 Ibid., p. 19.
Besides, no matter how honestly these fictions are put forth as such,
it appears clear that, by a practically unavoidable effect of our
psychological mechanism, the state of mind developed by the positive
worship resolves in fact into pure and simple idolatry -- an object
sincerely adored, Great-Being, Great-Fetish or Great-Milieu, losing by
the very fact of this adoration the psychological possibility of being
regarded, at the very moment when the mind prostrates itself before it,
as a purely fictitious existence. Scorn is all the more inevitable the
more the fictions in question are constructed on something
"demonstrated" (the Great-Being, for example, on humanity as the object
of sociology). Will not Comte present Humanity as "the only true
Great-Being" (Polit. pos., I, p. 330)? In contradistinction to
this authentic Goddess will he not speak of the chimerical beings whom
"religion provisionally made use of" before the coming of positivism
(Catéch. pos., p. 58); and of "the fictitious nature
of provisional religion" in which worship had reference to
"imaginary beings" (Polit. pos., IV, p. 87; italics
ours)? Comte was the first to be caught in the trap; he was an idolater
of the most authentic and the most pathologically prostrated sort.
Cf. the accurate remarks of Edward Caird (La Philosophie sociale et
religieuse d'Auguste Comte, pp. 129-130) quoted by H. de Lubac,
Le drame de l'humanisme athée (3rd ed., Paris: Spes,
1945), p. 235: Comte feels that "the idea of an indifferent exterior
necessity must be a hindrance to the perfect union of submission and
love. Hence he calls on poetry to revive the spirit of fetishism and to
reanimate the world by the images of benevolent divine agents. Comte
thus ends in what someone has called the system of 'spiritual
book-keeping by double entry', which permits imagination to revive, for
practical purposes, the fictions which science has destroyed. Poetry
. . . has to make us forget in our worship the antagonism of Nature and
Humanity, and to reconcile us to Fate by giving it the semblance of a
Providence. It is obvious that poetry is thus made into a kind of
deliberate superstition . . ." (this text does not appear in the
English translation of de Lubac's work that we have been citing). --
See also Jean Devolve, "Auguste Comte et la religion," Revue
d'histoire de la philosophie, 1937.
1 Cf. Catéchisme posit., p. 96. -- "To wish with fervor
to become more tender, more reverential, or even more courageous, is
already to realize, to some degree, the desired improvement; at least
by a sincere avowal of our actual imperfection, the first condition of
the subsequent improvement." (Ibid.)
2 Ibid., pp. 109 ff.
3 "Seven years after death, when all the disturbing passions are
sufficiently quieted, and yet while the best special documents are
still available, a solemn judgment, the germ of which sociocracy
borrows from theocracy, irrevocably decides the lot of each. If the
priesthood pronounces for incorporation, it presides over the stately
transfer of the sanctified remains which, up till then deposited in the
civic burial-place, now take their place for ever in the sacred wood
that surrounds the temple of Humanity. Every tomb in it is ornamented
with a simple inscription, a bust, or a statue, according to the degree
of glorification obtained."
But Comte does not forget the rejected ones either. "As to exceptional
cases of marked unworthiness, the disgrace is manifested by
transporting with propriety the ill-omened burden to the wilderness
allotted to the rejected ones, among the executed criminals, the
suicides, and the duellists." Catéchisme positiviste, pp.
122-123.
4 Politique pos., IV, pp. 241, 275.
5 Catéch. positiv., p. 288.
6 Politique pos., IV, p. 68.
7 Lettres d'Auguste Comte à divers, published by the
executors of his testament, Vol. 1, Part I, Paris, January 1902, 114th
year of the Great Crisis -- On Archimedes 23, 63 (April 22, 1851) he
wrote to de Tholouze: "I am sure that before 1860, I shall preach
positivism in Notre-Dame, as the only real and complete religion."
(Correspondance inédite, III, p. 101.)
1 Cf. Revue Occidentale, September, 1889, p. 169. -- "Often,"
said Longchampt, "he changed the Parisian Pantheon into the temple of
Humanity; he placed there the statues, the portraits and the
inscriptions of all those whose memory will be blessed by posterity. On
the central altar shone the supreme image, a woman of thirty years
holding her son; in front of the altar the holy seat; all around, the
saintly widows. Then came the faithful in great numbers, the organ
wailed; succeeding an harmonious orchestra; then the deep voice of the
kneeling celebrant intoned three times: Amem te plus quam me,
and each time the choir, supported by the instruments, responded:
nec me nisi propter te." Quoted in Georges Dumas, op.
cit., p. 220.
2 Catéch. positiviste, p. 20: "It is through her ['the
angelic interlocutress who, after a single year of objective influence,
has been now for more than six years subjectively associated with all
my thoughts as well as with all my feelings'] that I have finally
become for Humanity a truly twofold medium, as does anyone who has
worthily submitted to woman's influence."
3 "More even than the theological priesthood does the positive
priesthood require complete maturity, especially in virtue of its
immense encyclopaedic preparation. That is why I have fixed the
ordination of the priests of Humanity at the age of forty-two, after
the complete termination of the bodily and cerebral development, as
also of the first social life." Catéch. positiv., p. 22.
-- The positivist clergy will renounce all wealth and all inheritance,
but will be "maintained by the active class"; and Comte takes care to
fix "the yearly stipends appropriate to the different sacerdotal
ranks". Ibid., pp. 271-274.
4 Cf. Catéch. positiv., pp. 116 ff.
5 "Without such a complement, monogamy becomes illusory, since the new
marriage always creates a psychological polygamy, unless the previous
wife is forgotten, which can but little comfort the other."
Ibid., p. 291.
1 "Whether ascending or descending, the encyclopaedic course always
represents ethics as the science par excellence, since it is at once
the most useful and the most complete." Catéch. positiv.,
p. 175. Cf. Polit. pos., II, pp. 434-438; III, pp. 46-50; IV, p.
233.
2 "Its spontaneous study belongs to all, in proportion to their natural
aptitude and their empirical lights. But it can be systematized only
by the priesthood, according to its necessary relations with the
ensemble of real theories." Thus ethics is "the essential domain of
religion, first as science, then even as art". Catech. positiv.,
p. 249. (Italics ours.)
1 The perfecting of our feelings surpasses, in importance and in
difficulty, the immediate improvement of our actions."
Catéch. positiviste, p. 77. -- Cf. ibid., p. 25:
speaking of his second Guardian Angel, Comte declares that the
remembrance of his mother "will always be an incitement to me to give
precedence, more than in my youth, to the constant cultivation of
feeling over that of intelligence and even of activity". And p. 224:
"Their [feelings'] proper laws can be suitably studied only by ethics,
where they acquire the preponderance due to their higher dignity in the
sum total of human nature."
2 Cf. the Appendix to Catéchisme positiviste, 3rd ed.,
pp. 396-397.
3 Cf. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 349.
4 "You must, my daughter, conceive at the outset this great science as
composed of two essential parts: the one static, which constructs the
theory of order; the other dynamic, which develops the doctrine of
progress." Catéch. positiv., p. 211.
1 "Although each human function is necessarily performed by an
individual medium, its true nature is always social." Catéch.
positiv., p. 277.
2 "Thus you see why, at the top of the encyclopaedic scale, I place
Ethics or the science of the human individual." Ibid., p.
166.
"Auguste Comte had first made no distinction between Ethics and
Sociology. Beginning in 1848, with his Discours sur l'ensemble du
positivisme, he makes this necessary separation, which he
accomplishes definitively in his Système de politique positive
(1851-1854).
"Sociology studies the structure and the evolution of the collective
beings formed by man. Ethics, on the contrary, studies individual man
as developed for and by the collective beings: Family, Fatherland,
Humanity." Pierre Laffitte, Appendix to Catéchisme
positiviste, 3rd ed., p. 395.
In the synthetic table found on p. 170 of Catéchisme
positiviste Comte divides the "direct study of the human order"
into the study of the collective order, or Sociology properly
so-called, and the study of the individual human order, or Ethics.
3 "The fundamental dogma, then, of the universal religion is the
established existence of an immutable order to which all events of
every kind are subject . . . . Such an order can only be established,
never explained." Catéch. positiv., p. 54.
4 Cf. Catéch. positiv., p. 57.
1 "Attributing to the best of words the sense normally corresponding to
its origin and first meaning, you would not hesitate to congratulate me
for having systematically summed up the true philosophy of history in
this fundamental aphorism: Man becomes more and more religious."
Synthtèse subjective, Dedication, p. lxv.
2 Although he clainis kinship for himself with the Scottish school, all
the while criticizing it.
3 Cf. Polit, positive, I, 9. -- "Already," writes L.
Lévy-Bruhl, "positive science is a prolongation of political
reason. . . . Likewise, systematic morality is a prolongation of
spontaneous morality." op. cit., p. 356.
1 Catéch. positiv., pp. 277-278. -- "The least gifted man
feels himself continually indebted to Humanity for a host of
other treasures. . . . The cleverest and most active man can never
pay back but a very slight portion of what he receives.
He continues, as in his childhood, to be fed, protected, developed,
etc., by Humanity To live for others becomes then in each of us the
enduring duty which results rigorously from this irrecusable
fact: to live by others." Ibid., pp. 278-279. (Italics ours.)
2 "Such a regime is summed up in this systematic line: Between Man
and the World, Humanity must be." Synthèse subjective,
p. 35.
3 Catéch. positiv. (Preface to the first edition), 3rd
ed., p. 35. -- "The sublimest of the Mystics" is the author of the
Imitation, whom Comte read assiduously.
1 The "mere idea" of the Great Being "suggests at once the sacred
formula of Positivism: Love for principle, Order for basis, and
Progress for end". Catéch. positiv., p. 59. 2 Cf. H. de
Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, pp. 144 if.
2 I am referring here to the Aristotelico-Thomistic concept, not to the
Kantian conception of will. On the Thomist positions concerning love,
cf. L. B. Geiger, Le problème de l'amour chez Saint Thomas
d'Aquin, Paris: Vrin, 1952; and Jean-Hervé Nicolas, "Amour
de soi, amour de Dieu, amour des autres", Revue Thomiste, 1956,
No. 1.
1 On Gall's system, of which Comte retains, with admiration, the
principle and the directive idea, but not the detail, cf. Cours,
III, pp. 626-668; Polit. pos., I, pp. 729-732; Catéch.
positiv., p. 229.
1 Their [duty's and happiness'] necessary harmony results directly from
the natural existence of benevolent inclinations, which was
scientifically demonstrated, in the last century, from a general survey
of animals, in which the respective roles of heart and mind can be more
easily perceived." Catéch. positiv., p. 279. -- We know
that according to Auguste Comte the study of mental and moral functions
has for principle "sociological inspiration controlled by zoological
appreciation". (Polit. pos., I, pp. 671, 673.)
2 Cf. Catéch. positiv. p. 237.
3 "The great St. Paul, in constructing his general doctrine on the
permanent conflict between nature and grace, really sketched, in his
own way, the whole moral problem, not merely the practical, but also
the theoretical problem. For this valuable fiction was provisionally a
compensation for the radical incompatibility of monotheism with the
natural existence of the benevolent instincts, which impel all
creatures to mutual union instead of devoting themselves separately to
their Creator." Catéch. positiv., p. 227.
4 Ibid., p. 299. -- "Such is", Comte adds, "the indestructible
basis on which the founder of Positive religion then constructed the
systematic theory of the brain and soul, when he had instituted
sociology, from which alone could come the requisite inspiration."
1 "No interested motive any longer stains the purity of our effusions."
Ibid., p. 96.
2 In Comte's eyes, to love one's neighbor as oneself stems from
"a purely personal calculation". The as oneself shocks him; "one
thus sanctions egoism instead of repressing it". Ibid., p. 281.
1 According to the illusionist psychology of Comte, the good positivist
performs his duty out of pure love. But (here is the wonder) into the
bargain he is overwhelmed with delights by "that pure and disinterested
love" which is "true happiness", and "in which really consists the
sovereign good that former philosophers sought so futilely"
(Politique positive, I, p. 221), -- duty and happiness being
thus melted with one another (cf. Catéchisme posit., p.
279) in an epicureanism of disinterestedness which is a brilliant lucky
find.
2 Ibid., p. 281.
3 Ibid., p. 30 (cf. above, chapter
XI, p. 309, note 2).
4 Polit. positive, III, p. 447.
5 Catéch. posit., p. 72.
6 Ibid., p. 281.
7 Ibid., p. 281.
8 Ibid., p. 282; cf. p. 51.
1 Cf. above, chapter XI, p. 298.
2 Cf. chapter X, pp. 233-234.
1 Georges Dumas, op. cit.,p. 218.
2 Catéch. positiv., p. 21.
3 In a sealed envelope inscribed Addition secrete au testament
d'Auguste Comte, he revealed "that Mme. Comte, under her maiden
name Caroline Massin, had been a prostitute before her marriage", and,
with the objectivity peculiar to long resentments, he described the
ingratitude and misconduct which had followed. "The executors were to
break the seal and make use of this revelation against Mme. Comte if
she refused to comply with the last wishes of her husband." George
Dumas, op. cit., p. 124.
1 Polit, positive, I, p. vii.
2 Catéch. positiv., p. 279.
3 Ibid., p. 280.
4 Cf. L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 358; Georges Dumas,
op. cit., p. 208.
5 "The intervention of right," said the lady catechumen (and in
quite feminine terms), "has almost always appeared to me as designed to
dispense with reason and affection. It is fortunately forbidden to
women, and they are the better for it. You know my favorite maxim:
More than others, our species needs duties to engender
feelings." Catéch. positiv., p. 298.
1 Discours sur l'esprit positif (1944), Paris: Soc. pos.
intern., 1914, p. 145.
2 Polit. posit., I, p. 363; cf. ibid., II, p. 87.
3 Ibid., I, p. 361.
4 "Above discussion," that is to say, which admit of no discussion.
5 In this, Comte is quite right. One of his disciples (Antoine Baumann,
La religion positive, 1903, 222, quoted by de Lubac, op.
cit., p. 156) will likewise say: "If one rules out the hypothesis
of a God who is master of the world . . . I cannot see on what reality
you can base the notion of a right enabling the individual, as an
isolated monad, to set himself up in front of the other beings around
him and to say to them: 'There is something intangible in me which I
conjure you to respect because its principle is independent of
you.'"
6 Catéch. positiv., pp. 298-300. Cf. Polit posit.,
I, p. 361: "Each has duties, and towards all; but no one has a right
properly speaking."
1 Cf. Catéch. positiv., p. 271.
2 Comte promises the positivists "the universal empire" in the
following terms: "Take possession of the social world, for it belongs
to you, not according to any right, but according to an evident duty,
founded on your exclusive capacity to direct it well, whether as
speculative counsellors or as active commanders." Lettres
inédites à C. de Blignières, p. 35 (27 Dante 63).
-- "Speculative counsellors" designates the spiritual power; "active
commanders", the temporal power: both of them have an "evident duty"
to direct the world.
3 Catéch. positiv., p. 305.
4 "'Spiritual power will be in the hands of the savants and temporal
power will be exercised by those in charge of industrial enterprises.'
op. cit., p. 148.
5 "Any choice of superiors by inferiors is profoundly anarchical."
Catéch. positiv., p. 309. -- This assertion has a
semblance of truth which explains its success in anti-democratic
circles. As a matter of tact it is purely sophistical, and would have
sense only if it were a question of "superiors" already superior and of
"inferiors" already inferior (as to human quality) before the
choice; whereas in reality it is the choice itself which makes the ones
"inferiors" and the others "superiors" (as to authority). An
intellectual and moral superiority in the subject who will hold
authority is certainly eminently desirable; but what constitutes
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the specific object of choice or election is not the designation of the
best or the granting of an award for virtue, but the designation of a
leader -- and, besides, choice or election has more chances than
heredity of providing leaders endowed with at least certain superior
human capabilities. In religious Orders superiors are elected by those
who will thenceforth be their "inferiors", and these Orders have never
been regarded as incarnating the anarchical principle.
1 Catéch. positiv., p. 303.
2 Ibid., p. 304.
3 Ibid., p. 320.
4 Ibid., p. 304.
5 Ibid., p. 309.
6 Ibid., p. 311.
7 Ibid., p. 311.
8 Ibid., p. 312.
9 Ibid., p. 312.
1 Catéch. positiv., p. 320.
2 Ibid., p. 320-321.
3 Ibid., p. 321.
4 Cf. Ibid., p. 266-267.
5 Ibid., pp. 267.
6 Ibid., pp. 267-268.
7 "Then [after social excommunication] the guilty one, however rich or
powerful he may be, will at times, without undergoing any material
loss, see himself gradually abandoned by his subordinates, his
servants, and even his nearest relatives. Despite his wealth, he might,
in extreme cases, be reduced to getting his own food, as no one would
be willing to serve him. Though free to leave the country, he will
escape the censure of the universal priesthood only by taking refuge
with populations not as yet acquainted with the Positive faith, which
will ultimately extend over the whole human planet." Catéch.
positiv., p. 268.
8 Lettres inédites à C. de Blignières, p. 58.
9 Catéch. positiv., p. 30.
1 The founder of positivism did not foresee the microphone, but he knew
that the police system must be regarded "as eminently social, the
decrease of its role being due only to the indifference for the general
interest as a result of the total absence of real convictions". He
counted, in this regard, on the services rendered "almost without
charge" by "true believers" -- who "will feel themselves obliged to
provide the priesthood with the personal information without which its
influence would be too uncertain". Lettres à divers, I, 2,
pp. 367-368 (Homer, 1, 69).
2 H. de Lubac, op. cit., pp. 156-157.
2 L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., pp. 355-356.
1 Cahéch. positiv., p. 165.
2 Ibid., p. 167.
3 "This necessary subordination" to the "social purpose" is "the only
possible basis of really unassailable prescriptions". Ibid., pp.
282-283.
4 Catéch. positiv., p. 263.
5 Cf. above, pp. 320-321, and the text
of Synthèse subjective we have quoted there: "The
necessary basis of human order" is "the entire subordination of man to
Humanity".
1 "Humanity being, in fact, but the principal degree of animality", we
must consider "each animal species as a more or less abortive
Great-Being. . . . For collective existence always constitutes the
necessary tendency of the life of relation which characterizes
animality." Catéch. positiv., pp. 202-203. -- Cf.
Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit., pp. 244-246.
2 Confusing the notion of being materially conditioned by with
the notion of being subordinated to, Comte holds as a
fundamental encyclopaedic law that "the noblest phenomena are
everywhere subordinated to the lowest". Catéch. positiv.,
p. 179; Polit, posit., II, p. 274.
3 Catéch. positiv., p. 280.
4 Synthèse subjective, pp. 35-36.
5 Polit. positiv., II, p. 42.
6 Ibid., p. 375.
7 Saint Paul, Gal., 4, 3.
1 Cf. Cours, IV, p. 351; L. Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit.,
p. 274 and p. 388.
2 See above, chapter XI, pp. 262-263.