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any hope of a future life. We shall see presently that it was not till a
much later period that that hope exercised any important social influ-
ence: and even in more recent times, we shall find that the effect of the
religious spirit on the conduct of human life proceeds much more from
belief in actual and special immediate aid than from the uniform per-
spective of a remote future existence. This seems to me the leading as-
pect of the remarkable state which is produced in the human brain by
the important intellectual and moral phenomenon of prayer; the admi-
rable properties of which, when it has attained its full physiological
efficacy, are very manifest in the earliest stage of progress. After a long
decline of the religious spirit, the notion of miracle was naturally formed,
to characterize the events which had become exceptional, and were at-
tributed to divine intervention: but the very conception shows that the
general principle of natural laws had become familiar, and even prepon-
derant, because the only sense of miracle was a transient suspension of
natural laws. While the theological philosophy was all in all, there were
no miracles, because everything was equally marvellous, as we see by
the artless descriptions of ancient poetry, in which the commonest inci-
dents are mixed up with the most monstrous prodigies, and undergo
analogous explanations. Minerva intervenes to pick up the whip of a
warrior in military games, as well as to protect him against a whole
army: and in our time, the devotee is as importunate in graving for his
smallest personal convenience as for the largest human interests. In all
ages. the priest has been more occupied with the solicitations of his
flock about immediate favours of Providence than with their care for
their eternal state. However this may be. we see that it is a radical prop-
erty of the theological philosophy to be the sole support and stimulus of
Man’s moral courage, as well as the awakener and director of his intel-
Positive Philosophy/263
lectual activity.—To this we must add, as another attraction of Man to
this philosophy, that the affective influence comes in to fortify the specu-
lative. Feeble as are the intellectual organs, relatively considered, the
attractive moral perspective of an unbounded power of modifying the
universe, by the aid of supernatural protectors, must have been most
important in exciting mental action. In our advanced state of scientific
progress, we can conceive of the perpetual pursuit of knowledge for the
sane of the satisfaction of intellectual activity, joined to the tranquil
pleasure which arises from the discovery of truth: yet it is doubtful
whether such natural stimulus as this would always suffice without col-
lateral instigations of glory, of ambition, or of lower and stronger pas-
sions, except in the case of a very few lofty minds; and with them, only
after training in the requisite habits. And nothing of this kind can be
supposed possible in the early days, when the intellect is torpid and
feeble, and scarcely accessible to the strongest stimulus; nor yet after-
wards, when science is so far advanced as to have attained some specu-
lative success. In the working out of such speculation, the mental activ-
ity can be sustained by nothing short of the fictions of the theological
philosophy about the supremacy of man and his unbounded empire over
external nature; as we have seen in regard to astrology and alchemy. In
our own time, when there are enlightened men who hold such delusions
in regard to social speculations alone, we see how irrationally they ex-
pect to modify at will the whole course of political phenomena, in which
they could not take any adequate scientific interest without such an ex-
pectation. What we see of the influence of this view in maintaining the
old polities give us some faint idea of its power when it pervaded every
part of the intellectual system, and illusion beset the reason of Man,
whichever way he turned. Such then was the moral operation of the
theological philosophy,—stimulating Man’s active energy by the offer,
in the midst of the troubles of his infantine state, of absolute empire over
the external world, as the prize of his speculative efforts.
The social evidences under this head will be fully treated in the
following chapters, so that we may dismiss them now with a very short
notice, important as they are, and the more easily, because this class of
evidences is the most indisputable of the three. There are two views
which must be considered, in relation to the high social office of the
theological philosophy: first, its function in organizing society; and next,
its provision for the permanent existence of a speculative class.—As to
the first, we must perceive that the formation of any society, worthy to
264/Auguste Comte
be so called supposes a system of common opinions, such as may re-
strain individual eccentricity; and such an influence, if needful now,
when men are connected together by such a concurrence of obligations
as high civilization introduces, must be absolutely indispensable in the
infancy of society, when families adhere to each other so feebly, by
means of relations as precarious as they are defective. No concurrence
of interests, nor even sympathy in sentiment, can give durability to the
smallest society, if there be not intellectual unanimity enough to obviate
or correct such discordance as must inevitably arise. It has been shown
that indolent as our intellectual faculties are in comparison with the
others, reason must rule, not domestic but social, and yet more political
life: for through it alone can there be any organization of that reaction of
society on the individual which appoints the function of government,
and absolutely requires a system of common opinions about nature and
Man. Such a system, then, is a political necessity; and especially in the
infancy of society. But, on the other hand, we must admit that the hu-
man mind, having thus furnished a basis for social organization, must
depend for its further development on society itself, whose expansion is
really inseparable from that of human intelligence. Here we see that
society is in a vicious circle in a political, as well as a logical view,
through the opposition of two equal necessities; and here, again, the
only possible issue is afforded by the theological philosophy. It directs
the first social organization, as it first forms a system of common opin-
ions, and by forming such a system. Because we see it now in such a
state of decomposition that its advocates lose sight of the unity of opin-
ions that it once secured, and are themselves involved in intellectual
discordance, we must not forget how, in those days of vigour by which
it must be judged, it established an intellectual communion which con-
stituted its most remarkable political function. The police consideration
of a future life is wrongly attributed to this period of human society. It [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]