Aquinas is the legitimate spiritual father of such men. The discussions of Nominalists and Realists, and of the more difficult points of the Aristotelian philosophy, had an indirect, if not a direct, bearing upon the physical problems which soon agitated the thinking world. How far some of the schoolmen carried their inquiries into the nature and being of God, may be gathered from Matthew Arnold's "God and the Bible." He writes in it, about philosophers and God, as follows: "Finally, in considering God, they were obliged, if they wanted to escape from difficulties, to drop even the one characteristic they had assigned to their substance, that of admitting modes and accidents, and thus to reduce, in fact, their idea of God to nothing at all. And this they themselves were much too acute, many of them, not to perceive; as Erigena, for instance, says Deus non immerito nihili vocatur--God may be not improperly called nothing. But this did not make them hesitate, because they thought they had in pure being or essence the supreme reality, and that this being in itself, this essence, not even serving as substance, was God. And, therefore, Erigena adds that it is, per excellentiam-by reason of excellencythat God is not improperly called Nothing. Deus per excellentiam non immerito vocatur." At any rate, such things occupied the mind, and gave it full employment in the absence of other aliment-for the mysteries of theology were not to be questioned. Upon such things the intellect must not exercise itself. A revelation from God was not a proper subject for human inquisition, approval, or rejection; nor should it be. Catholicism guarded and preserved with religious care, for hundreds of years, the intellectual treasures of antiquity, to which she added from time to time. She protected nascent scientific speculation, and familiarised her adherents with the conception of law, which might have died out but for her aid in associating it with a Divine lawgiver. It was only when scientists became militant that she, in the true interests, religious and social, of Christendom, silenced scientists, or made them to recant. There seems good reason to believe that if Galileo had been less combative, less aggressive and vain, the Church would have dealt tenderly with him. However this may be, we see now that Catholicism was "wise in her generation," and did well to discountenance and retard the growth of physics. She knew her weak points, and would not permit them to be publicly made known, save at the publisher's risk and cost. Had Protestantism been in her case, she would have done the same, if she could. It is of the essence of Theologism to discourage free and bold inquiry, and stifle it where possible. When at last Catholicism perceived who her foes were, she buckled on her armour and prepared for the worst. Like the ancient Emperor, she "would die standing." But died she has not. On the contrary, she has concentrated all her forces to meet the enemy. Further, she has increased the number of her dogmas, and enforced discipline on all her believers. We know that, intellectually, she is already defeated, if not morally. We know that knowledge and science have reduced the domain of Theologism to an outlying province, and that even this province can hardly be called her own, since science is constantly encroaching upon it and absorbing it. Monotheism must yield; it is only a question of time. All the forces of man are arrayed against her, and succumb she must. But she will succumb royally. We have dwelt thus at length with the theological stage, for two reasons-first, because it is the least understood by most people; and secondly, because it is (or was) organic, and has been of incalculable benefit to the human race. This cannot be said of the succeeding Metaphysical stage, which we shall now briefly expound. Before doing so let us guard our hearers from the chance of misunderstanding Comte's three laws. The same mind may be in all three stages at once; it depends upon the nature of the physical or moral inquiries which may occupy its attention. A man may in physics be in the positive stage, and in the social physics in the theological stage-most men are. He knows that the one is subject to law; he does not know, although he could know, that the other is subject to law also. What applies to one mind applies equally to all minds. We speak of civilisation as having passed through the nomade, pastoral, hunting, agricultural, and other stages, and quite correctly. It is no objection to the truthfulness of these descriptions to urge that they all co-exist upon the planet. Of course they do; the fact is so, and confirms what we say. The rate of advance in civilisation must be taken into account, and then it will be understood why some societies have made more progress than others; what has helped and what hindered them. So likewise of Comte's law. Comte himself has explained why biology is still burthened with theological and metaphysical fictions, while physics is entirely rid of them. The more complex the phenomena are, the longer they are at arriving at positivity, and biological phenomena are vastly more complex than the physical phenomena upon which they depend. Scientific explanations of human phenomena are not so uncommon as they were, and as they prevail, law and the reign of law will be recognised everywhere. But more on this point in our next lecture. We will now pass to the transitional stage. Brief treatment of it will suffice. Of the final Positive stage we have already spoken in our introductory lecture, where we dwelt somewhat at length on Comte's seven definitions of Positivism-viz.: positive, relative, organic, precise, certain, useful, and real. Should that be an insufficient explanation, we shall have many opportunities during the remaining lectures to show how Positivism regards man and his environment, and in what way it seeks to improve both for the benefit of Humanity. Man's theory of the external order did not pass at once from the theological to the positive stage--his conceptions were not sufficiently matured, and could only become so through the metaphysical or transitional stage. He could not at one leap pass from the theory that God wills that events should occur in such and such a way, to the bare statement of the observed uniformities and resemblances in that order. Only by and through the metaphysical stage was this possible. Man in that stage attributed to phenomena certain entities, principles, and affinities. Nature, in metaphysical physics, was said to abhor a vacuum (the abhorrence ceased at an elevation of thirty feet); opium had a dormitive principle (see Molière's plays); gold an auriferous principle; certain gases, fluids or solids, had an affinity for (or united with) each other. There was a vis inertia, an immaterial principle, a life principle, or death principle, a phlogistic principle, a caloric principle, etc. And when these principles, the existence of which was unquestioned, proved unequal or insufficient as explanations, then the entity Nature was brought into account for what human ingenuity had not discovered or divined. No one who knows anything of the progress of human knowledge but is familiar with these phrases, which explain nothing, and need themselves to be explained. Mr. Max Muller says: "The phlogiston, the ether, the atoms, the animal spirits, et hoc genus omne, I classed under the head of mythology as much as dragons and chimæras; nay, when I read of natural selection and spontaneous generation, I doubt whether the virus mythologicum will ever be driven out of our intellectual constitution." Physics have not yet passed entirely out of the metaphysical stage, as is proved by the assumption of the existence of an ether to explain the phenomena of light. And yet Mr. Huxley was disingenuous enough to allege non-belief in the ether theory on the part of Comte as a proof of his scientific and philosophic incapacity! Mr. Justice Groves, who has won eminent distinction in the scientific world, rejects that theory, and tenders a hypothesis of his own to account for the passage of light. The celebrated Leonard Euler also rejected it. Are Comte, Euler, and Groves, all equally deficient in philosophic and scientific capacity? The phenomena of light can be explained without the ether theory; it has been so explained by Newton and Descartes. What is the ether but a metaphysical entity? If its existence is unproved and unprovable, how is it to help in explaining the phenomena of light? Light, it is said, can only be explained by the ether theory; therefore the existence of ether is proved by its explaining the phenomena of light. What a mere play upon words! Opium sends people to sleep because it has a dormitive principle; therefore the existence of a dormitive principle is proved because opium sends people to sleep. Metaphysical explanations are simply restatements of the original difficulty. The difficulty is put further back -not explained. They are inferior to theological explanations in simplicity and directness; and they have not yet acquired the definiteness and clearness which are the distinctive marks of positive explanations. They are characterised by all the imperfections of the transition. Bunyan's Mr. Facingbothways is an unsatisfactory character, not to say a very suspicious one. The constant tendency of scientists is to erect abstractions into concretes-to regard logical artifices as having an ob'jective reality. This gives rise to Metaphysics. It may be remarked in passing that it was the lot of some of the damned in Milton's hell to sit apart "Retired In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high, The corollary to Comte's Law of the Three Stages is his Classification of the Sciences, commencing with Mathe matics, and closing with Sociology. The rise and growth of astronomy, physics, and chemistry, as abstract sciences, which form cosmology-the external order; (Comte treats mathematics as the logic of all the physical sciences) of biology and sociology, or the human order; are traced by Comte in a way of which we can give but a faint conception. It is obvious to the reader that all knowledge can be classified as either astronomical, physical, chemical, biological, or sociological. There are no facts which cannot be placed under one or the other of these categories, rising from the simplest and most general facts about number and form to the most complex and special phenomena of social science. The sciences, as they rise in the scale, are characterised by decreasing generality and increasing dignity. The facts which form their subject-matter have these qualities. Comte shows that the sciences rose in this way, and that their historical development coincides with their dogmatical arrangement. It is also well-known that mathematics deals with the simplest problems-those of number and form; astronomy with problems of number and form no longer simple, but complicated with motion; physics with the problems of astronomy and mathematics, complicated with those peculiar to it of weights, velocities, etc. Chemistry, which treats of composition, decomposition, and re-composition, is occupied with astronomical and physical problems, complicated with those which are proper to chemistry alone; biology deals with astronomical, physical, and chemical problems rendered still more complex with the phenomena of living bodies; and sociology deals with problems which are astronomical, physical, chemical, biological, and, most complex of all, sociological also. Thus ever more and more complex do phenomena grow as they rise in the scale. And it is seen at a glance that for a man to be a competent sociologist he must have had an encyclopædic training in all the methods of the preceding sciences, that he must be a perfect master of their fundamental principles and relations. Now, the methods increase with the complexity of the sciences. In astronomy we can use observation merely. In chemistry, experiment is superadded to observation. The method of comparison has full scope in biology, while sociology reveals its own newly-discovered method of historic filiation. Sociology, or the science of the social organism, had no existence until Comte formulated it, revealed its laws, and laid its basis on all the preceding sciences. Henceforth its fundamental truths are as verifiable as those of the other sciences by those competently educated. The statical part of sociology was sketched by Aristotle, and hardly any improvement was possible in his survey of those permanent fundamental relationships comprised in the family, language, government, etc., which are implied by the existence of all societies worthy of the name. Of social dynamics, which deal with the laws of human progress, Aristotle knew nothing. Such laws could not be discovered until modern times, when human progress could be surveyed and estimated, helped by the side-lights thrown on the subject by the less complex sciences which were advancing towards completion. The first hints of sociology occurred to Condorcet, Turgot, and Kant, during the second half of the eighteenth century. At that time chemical science existed only in name; Lavoisier laid its basis. Biological science was in its initial stage, burthened with theological and metaphysical fictions which prevented its growth. Social science was then the dream or hope of a few fine spirits, who believed in a brighter future for man, and wrought ardently, if not wisely, to make it a near possibility. It was then that Bichat founded biology, encumbered, it is true, with a few metaphysical fictions, but profoundly scientific in both form and substance, and so conceived and methodised that it became possible for Comte to sketch the laws of social dynamics, or progress. Sociology, as has been said, rests upon biology, and until the laws of the individual organ had been made known it was scarcely possible to make known those of the collective organism. Comte has revealed these laws and illustrated their operations in a way and with a fulness which simply beggars description. The reader will find them in Comte's "Positive Philosophy" or "Positive Polity," where they must be studied to be duly appreciated. But, it may be objected, is it not premature thus to systematise all human knowledge? Have we facts enough, or data enough, to justify its being done? Do not scientists urge this tendency to systematise as a weakness of Positivism? And has not the objection weight and force? We reply, No; the systematisation of all knowledge is not premature if it can be done; and it has been done by Comte. But what do we mean by knowledge? Things assimilable or unassimilable? Is knowledge of any worth whatever unless it can be systematised and rendered useful to man, |