Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography

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This volume continues to explore the life and works of Auguste Comte during his so-called second career. It covers the period from the coup d’´etat of Louis Napoleon in late 1851 to Comte’s death in 1857. During these early years of the Second Empire, Comte became increasingly conservative and anxious to control his disciples. This study offers the first analysis of the tensions within his movement. Focusing on his second masterpiece, the Syst`eme de politique positive, and other important books, such as the Synth`ese subjective, Mary Pickering not only sheds light on Comte’s intellectual development but also traces the dissemination of positivism and the Religion of Humanity throughout many parts of the world. Mary Pickering is Professor of History at San Jos´e State University. The author of Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volumes I, II, and III, she has published in Journal of the History of Ideas, Journal of Women’s History, Historical Reflections, Revue philosophique, and Revue internationale de philosophie.

Auguste Comte

AUGUSTE COM TE An Intellectual Biography, Volume III

mary pickering San Jos´e State University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521119146 © Mary Pickering 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13

978-0-511-60505-5

eBook (NetLibrary)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-11914-6

Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work are correct at the time of first printing, but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.

To Nicolas, Natalia, and Michael

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Notes

page xi xiii

Introduction 1 The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences 2 Comte’s Stumblings 3 The Vicissitudes of Positivism during the Early Empire 4 Syst`eme de politique positive: Natural and Social Philosophy 5 Syst`eme de politique positive: Comte’s Philosophy of History 6 Syst`eme de politique positive: Comte’s Utopia 7 The Last Years: Politics and Propaganda 8 The Last Flurry of Activity: The Testament and Synth`ese subjective 9 The Death of the Great Priest of Humanity and His Influence Conclusion Bibliography Index

1 14 53 96 159 246 312 394 474 526 580 609 633

ix

Acknowledgments

Bringing this thirty-year enterprise to a close requires at least thirty pages of thanks. However, to spare the reader, the publisher, and myself that ordeal, I will limit my words of gratitude. I would like to thank the late Donald Fleming, my history adviser at Harvard, for first suggesting that I write a biography of Auguste Comte. Little did we know in 1978 that it would take almost my entire life to cover Comte’s. I am very grateful to all the people at the Maison d’Auguste Comte with whom I have worked: Sybil de Acevedo, Isabel PratasFrescata, Gilda Anderson, and more recently, the extremely helpful and kind Aur´elia Giusti. Bruno Gentil, the current president of the International Association of the Maison d’Auguste Comte, has also been very generous with his knowledge and support. The former president, the late Trajano Bruno de Berrˆedo Carneiro, encouraged me too. My thanks also go to the staffs of the Biblioth`eque Nationale, Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal, Archives Nationales, Archives de Paris, Archives D´epartementales du Rhˆone, Archives Municipales de Lyon, archives of the Ecole Polytechnique (especially Claudine Billoux), Bancroft Library at the University of California (especially Susan Snyder), Balliol Library at Oxford University, Bodleian Library at Oxford University, Harris Manchester College Library at Oxford University (especially Susan Killoran), British Library, British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, University of Birmingham Library, New York Public Library, and Houghton Library at Harvard University (especially Jennie Rathbun). I am grateful to these libraries for permitting me to publish material from their archives. In addition, I reworked material from an essay in the New Biography (published by University of California Press) and from articles that I published in the Journal of Women’s History, Historical Reflections, Revue internationale de philosophie, and Revue philosophique. I thank UC Press and these publications. The Comte scholars Shin Abiko, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Michel Bourdeau, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, Anastasios Brenner, Ze¨ıneb Ben Cherni-Sa¨ıd, Laurent Clauzade, Jean Dhombres, Maria Donzelli, Mike Gane, Juliette Grange, the late Oscar Haac, Johan Heilbron, Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, the late Mirella Larizza, Annie Petit, H´elgio Trindade, Jean-Claude Wartelle, and Kaat Wils have helped me a great deal. I have appreciated their insights and friendship. xi

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Acknowledgments

Moreover, I am grateful for the assistance I received from the French government and the Institut Franc¸ais de Washington, which supported my research in Paris during the academic year 1983–4. Later I was very fortunate to receive a Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which allowed me to begin writing this volume in 1991–2. I would also like to thank Pace University and especially San Jos´e State University for granting me released time from teaching. San Jos´e State has given me two sabbaticals to write this book. At every step of the way, colleagues, chairs, and deans at San Jos´e State have been remarkably supportive of my research. Both the History Department and the College of Social Sciences have given Cambridge University Press substantial subventions to facilitate the publication of this book. I am extremely grateful in particular to Jonathan Roth, George Vasquez, and Tim Hegstrom for finding ways to give me time and financial backing. In addition, my colleagues Mike Conniff, Jack Bernhardt, Margo McBane, and Diane Baker, as well as my former students Thomas Abel and Laura Laife, have aided me in innumerable ways. Outside of San Jos´e State, Jo B. Margadant, Karen Offen, Londa Schiebinger, Lorenza Sebesta, Kathleen Kete, Lynn Wardley, George Sheridan, Edward Castleton, Takashi Sugimoto, and Christine Williams have given me important insights and tips on finding letters and other sources. Naomi Andrews and Jonathan Beecher gave me outstanding advice at all stages of the writing of the manuscript. David and Nicole Manson and Jim and Sylvie Owen always graciously welcomed me to their apartments during my research trips to Paris. My editor, Frank Smith, wins kudos for waiting patiently for fifteen years for this third volume. I thank him profusely for allowing me the space to develop Comte’s story in the proper manner. He has been an exemplary editor. William H. Stoddard, Peter W. Katsirubas, and Donna Weiss were gracious and wise in polishing and preparing the manuscript for publication. Steve Siebert at Nota Bene helped with the index. Others who have been encouraging include John and Dawn Pickering, Peter and JoAnne Blasko, Hank and Betty Lauricella, Sherling Lauricella, Sheila Asher, Trish Kubal, Juana Schurman, Tony Ligamari, Edith Tobin, Lucy Gray, and David Thomson. I would also like to remember my parents, Helen and Alec Pickering, who sadly died before this biography was completed. Finally, I give a huge thanks to my husband, Hank Lauricella, who read draft after draft, and to my three children, Nicolas, Natalia, and Michael Lauricella, who grew up with Comte and never begrudged me the inordinate amount of time I spent with him. I am very grateful to the little ones – now the big ones – for their patience, kindness, and good humor, all of which helped me in more ways than they could ever know.

Abbreviations and Notes

abbreviations Although short titles have generally been used in the citations, several abbreviations warrant explanation: AN BN CG

EP MAC RO

Archives Nationales Biblioth`eque Nationale Auguste Comte: Correspondance g´en´erale et confessions. Edited by Paulo E. de Berrˆedo Carneiro, Pierre Arnaud, Paul Arbousse-Bastide, and Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti. 8 vols. Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1973– 90. Archives of the Ecole Polytechnique Archives of the Maison d’Auguste Comte, Paris La Revue Occidentale note s

The correspondence of Comte has been moved to the Biblioth`eque Nationale, where it is available on microfilm.The letters from Comte are in N.a.fr. 27092–27096. The letters to Comte are in N.a.fr. 27099– 27120. Copies of the letters are kept in the MAC. I have referred to them in the MAC, where I first consulted them in their original form in the 1980s. For pictures of Comte and his apartment, see the Web site of the Maison d’Auguste Comte: http://www.augustecomte.org. Emmanuel Lazinier, the president of the International Positivist Society, also maintains an interesting Web site: http://membres.lycos.fr/clotilde.

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Introduction

Three things at the birth of the New Age bear weighty testimony to an increased and increasing interest in human deeds: the Novel, the Trust, and the Expansion of Europe; the study of individual life and motive, the machine-like organizing of human economic effort, and the extension of all organization to the ends of the earth. Is there a fairer field than this for the Scientist? Did not the Master Comte do well to crown his scheme of knowledge with Knowledge of Men? W. E. B. Du Bois

In the second half of the nineteenth century, criticisms of religion proliferated, threatening the foundation of Western thought and society. Historians of ideas usually highlight the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859 as the watershed moment in the erosion of the Bible’s authority. However, five years before this important date, another major nineteenth-century thinker, Auguste Comte, had completed his four-volume Syst`eme de politique positive, which not only more aggressively attacked traditional religions as irrational and obsolete but offered a creative secular alternative, the Religion of Humanity. As James Livingston remarks, “While other philosophers of the period – the Hegelians, Neo-Kantians, and British idealists – attempted philosophical reconceptions, or various forms of ‘demythologisation’ of the Jewish and Christian historical revelation, Comte sought a more thoroughgoing religious revolution by rejecting any appeal to either historical revelation or metaphysical theism.”1 Comte was convinced that his religion, based on the intellectual rigor of the modern scientific age and the long lost emotional intensity of the primitive era, would provide society with cohesion and individuals with personal meaning. The radical, paradoxical nature of his humanistic religion and the political reconstruction that it entailed constitute the main focus of this third volume of Comte’s intellectual biography. The first volume of this biography covered Comte’s life from 1798 to 1842. This period is considered to be his “first career,” when he established the scientific basis of his positive philosophy. This first volume explored his upbringing in Montpellier by his royalist, 1

James Livingston, “Sceptical Challenges to Faith,” in The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1870–1945, ed. Thomas Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 322.

1

2

Introduction

Catholic parents, Louis Comte and Rosalie Boyer. After his mother died in 1837, his sickly, unmarried sister, Alix Comte took care of their father. Comte’s relations with Louis and Alix Comte were always strained. He deeply felt the absence of a warm family life, often blaming his years as a boarder at the lyc´ee in Montpellier and at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris for having deprived him of a loving home experience. From the start, he recognized human beings’ deep need for affection. He knew that the role of the emotions in their lives was as important as that of the intellect. He himself was often driven by his passions, which led him to rebel against society as a young man. After his expulsion from the Ecole Polytechnique for insubordination in 1816, Comte worked for the reformer Henri de Saint-Simon and grew close to him, personally and intellectually. Comte learned from Saint-Simon the importance of constructing a new unified system of knowledge for the modern industrial era. This philosophical system had to be based on “positive,” that is, scientific, ideas. It also had to be devoted to the common good, the importance of which was also espoused by Comte’s beloved teacher Daniel Encontre at his lyc´ee and by his professors at the Ecole Polytechnique who upheld the republican, reformist ideals of the French Revolution. In 1824, Comte broke with Saint-Simon because he worried that his mentor was stealing his ideas. The following year, shortly after Saint-Simon’s death, he began writing articles for Le Producteur, a journal launched by the SaintSimonians, but he tried to keep his distance from his mentor’s disciples. He was more concerned about preparing a course on positive philosophy. In 1826, he started giving his lectures but after the third session experienced a severe attack of mental illness, which sent him to an asylum for eight months. Helped by his wife, Caroline Massin, he gradually recovered. Nevertheless, for the rest of his life, he struggled with what seems to have been bipolar disorder. A manic depressive, he often became delusional about his mission to regenerate society. In 1838, paranoia pushed him to adopt a regime of “cerebral hygiene,” where he refused to read contemporaries’ books, newspapers, or journals, chiefly to preserve his “originality” and to spare himself the pain of reading bad reviews of his works. His difficult personality drove away those close to him. His wife finally left him with great sadness in 1842, after he continually accused her of having affairs and not appreciating him. For the rest of his life, he gave her an allowance to help her survive. By this point, he had landed a job as an admissions officer and r´ep´etiteur (tutor) at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he applied repeatedly and without success for a prestigious chair in analysis. A few weeks before Massin left him in 1842, Comte finished his first great masterpiece, the Cours de philosophie positive, published in six volumes beginning in 1830. It presented his new philosophy of positivism as the key to eliminating the social, political, and moral

Introduction

3

anarchy stemming from the French Revolution. Having learned the importance of blueprints in his engineering school, the Ecole Polytechnique, Comte argued in the Cours de philosophie positive that, because theory always precedes practice, the reconstruction of the post-revolutionary world could be realized only by extending the scientific, or “positive,” method to the study of politics and society, the last stronghold of theologians and metaphysical philosophers. The positive method entailed observing concrete phenomena, usually with the help of a provisional hypothesis, and then using these factual observations to construct scientific laws. Abstraction and the use of the imagination were essential in the process, for pure empiricism was to be avoided. But it was also important to reject theological dogmas and metaphysical speculations. Scientific laws, which were based on both induction and deduction, had to pertain ultimately to something concrete and observable. Comte’s famous law of three stages stated that every branch of knowledge passed through three stages: the theological, metaphysical, and positive stages. In the theological stage, people sought to explain phenomena by finding causes; in the metaphysical stage, they constructed abstract entities; in the positive stage, they created laws. Mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology had gone through these stages. Once the science of society followed their example and became positive, positivism, that is, the system of scientific knowledge, would be unified and complete because all our concepts would be scientific and homogeneous. The new science of society, which Comte called “sociology” in 1839, would unite all knowledge because it would focus people’s attention on humanity. In short, humanity would be the object of study of all the sciences. Once all knowledge was based on scientific laws, everyone would agree on the most essential intellectual principles. The new consensus would become the basis of a stable society, overcoming the divisions that had disturbed political and social life since the French Revolution of 1789. Comte’s scientific approach to reconstruction attracted the attention of many thinkers, including John Stuart Mill, who started writing to him in 1841. Yet many scholars assert that in the late 1840s, Comte rejected the scientific thrust of his “first career,” epitomized by the Cours, and became a crazed religious reformer when he launched his “second career.” The cause of this alleged sudden transformation was his unfulfilled love affair with the young Clotilde de Vaux, who died in 1846, a year after they met.2 Mill, who broke with Comte in 1847, helped spread this view of the discontinuity in his development. In Auguste Comte and Positivism (1866), Mill sadly noted that Comte’s 2

Irving M. Zeitlin, Ideology and the Development of Sociological Thought, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1990), 84.

4

Introduction

relationship with Clotilde de Vaux led to a marked “deterioration in his speculations,” causing him to erect “his philosophy into a religion.”3 Comte’s new Religion of Humanity seemed to be a deviation from his own principles. The second and third volumes of this intellectual biography, covering the years from 1842 to 1857, dispute this claim that there was an abrupt break between Comte’s “first” and “second” careers. While acknowledging and underscoring Comte’s unceasing development, which was essential to his self-image as an evolving creative thinker, these two volumes highlight the continuity in his trajectory. There was no sudden switch of direction despite the fact that Comte often took on new roles, such as frustrated lover, inspired poet, strict moralist, and dedicated religious reformer. A theatrical individual, he liked to display his multiple selves, as did many of his romantic contemporaries. Moreover, just as Mill himself attributed many of his own ideas to his beloved Harriet Taylor, Comte portrayed the woman he adored as his muse. De Vaux played a significant role in his life, often in ways that have been neglected by previous scholars. But there were other reasons for the emphasis he gave to religion, such as the interest in spiritual renewal that was evident during the romantic period and the Revolution of 1848 and the fact that he wished to appeal to women, whom he associated with religion. It is important to understand that Comte’s interest in religion was not a startling development. Although he did not believe in God and prohibited references to deities and first causes in his philosophy, he had from an early age believed in the importance of a moral system based on demonstrable principles. The roots of his secular religion can be seen in his early essays (often called “opuscules”) written for Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians, where he elaborated on the importance of creating a new spiritual power, and in the Cours, where he referred to the need to establish a Positive Church to replace the Catholic Church. An avid reader of the theocrat Joseph de Maistre, Comte believed that a solid spiritual power was crucial to political reconstruction because, throughout history, societies were ideally ruled by both a strong temporal power and an independent spiritual power. In the theological age, priests and kings (or aristocrats) represented the spiritual and temporal powers. In the metaphysical age, metaphysicians were the new spiritual power, and lawyers replaced monarchs (or aristocrats) as the temporal rulers. In the positive age, positive philosophers – generalists who had knowledge of all the sciences, especially sociology – had to be the new spiritual power to check potential abuses of the industrialists, the new temporal power. 3

John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1961), 132.

Introduction

5

The positivist clergy would also give moral direction to scientists. From the start, Comte distrusted scientists because he found them self-absorbed and greedy for power and money. Once the sciences reached the positive stage, they could not be cultivated for their own sakes; they needed a moral and political agenda, one that would help society. Comte was not so naive as to think that the sciences were “value-free.” As part of society, they were affected by the moral, political, and economic forces that shaped it. Comte anticipated the problem posed by a new age dominated by science, democracy, and big money: where would the legitimate basis of spiritual authority be located?4 A careful student of history, he maintained that the spiritual power would not disappear in the future. Indeed, one of his most interesting insights was that in the future, people would become more, not less, religious. Picking up on the importance afforded to spiritual matters in the 1840s, Comte renamed his secular, positivist belief-system a “religion” and made his positive philosophers the new spiritual power. They would be a legitimate directing force because their principles would be based on scientific laws whose truth could be demonstrated, unlike religious principles in the past. The second volume of this intellectual biography covered Comte’s life from 1842 to approximately 1852. This was the period when he started creating his religious and political movement to rejuvenate the social world, an aim he had embraced since his youth. He was much affected by the social unrest of the 1840s, which led him to address the concerns of workers and women. He was convinced that the dignity of work had to be recognized and that women should no longer be seen as the root of all evil. These two groups were vital to his plans to renovate society. Since 1831, he had given a free public course in astronomy that attracted many workers who became his disciples. They gave him insights into their poor working and living conditions. Comte responded to their yearning for knowledge by composing works devoted to popular education. In 1843, he published the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, a mathematics textbook. In 1844, he wrote the Discours sur l’esprit positif, which consisted of the philosophical introduction to his astronomy course and summed up positivist principles. With these books, he hoped to obtain a wide following among workers. He obtained further insights into the condition of women because of his relationship to the young Clotilde de Vaux. Abandoned by her husband, she tried to launch a career as a writer but died of tuberculosis as she was reaching her goal. Her travails in earning a living and 4

Walter L. Adamson, Embattled Avant-Gardes: Modernism’s Resistance to Commodity Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 5.

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Introduction

gaining independence from her family deeply affected Comte, but his relationship with her was not the only factor influencing his development, although some scholars adopt this reductionist approach.5 He also became attuned to women’s issues thanks to his friendships with Mill and Sarah Austin, an English bluestocking. Convinced of the importance of the emotions and eager to appeal to workers and women, he launched in 1847, his Religion of Humanity and soon added another science to his scientific hierarchy, morality. These innovations constituted his response to the religious fervor of the day, so evident in the Revolution of 1848, when socialists and other revolutionaries made frequent references to Jesus Christ and Christian values. Like these reformers, he worried about the rampant individualism of his age that was threatening social harmony. Supporting the Revolution of 1848 and partaking in the optimism of the times, he made his positivist system into a religion by insisting that all our ideas, feelings, and activities be directed toward society, the subject of sociology. Social harmony came not only from intellectual consensus but from emotional solidarity. He wished to revive the emotional intensity that he thought existed during the primitive fetishist age. Assuming that humans were distinguished by their minds and hearts, Comte wanted to inspire their intellectual development by means of education, especially in the sciences, and encourage their emotional evolution by having them cultivate love for their families, members of their “intendancies” (small positivist republics), and humanity as a whole. People’s activities to improve their social conditions and their natural environment also encouraged their emotional and intellectual development, making them more cooperative, altruistic beings. Humans’ moral improvement helped stabilize and advance society. Order and progress were Comte’s watchwords. Devoted to constructing the Religion of Humanity, he sought a myriad of ways to foster sociability. He often used the tools of the new visual culture of the nineteenth century to reinforce his message. Both Napoleon I and Napoleon III were adept at devising iconographic codes to popularize their regimes. As soon as Napoleon III took over, he had his bust installed in every city hall in France. Displays of prominent individuals and festivals reinforcing them became more salient as the century advanced.6 As Walter Adamson has noted, in the “new, culturally more democratic world” of the late nineteenth century, “the pace of life quickened amid compressions of time and 5

6

Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, trans. Richard Howard and Helen Weaver, 2 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1965; Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1968) 1:124. R´emi Dalisson, Les Trois Couleurs, Marianne et l’Empereur. Fˆetes lib´erales et politiques symboliques en France 1815–1870 (Paris: La Boutique de l’Histoire, 2004), 260–61.

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space, . . . audiences fragmented as they expanded, . . . and a common cultural vocabulary could no longer be assumed.” The result was that the “visual image” would “become the favored means of cultural and political communication.”7 This prediction of the importance of visual culture was one forecast Comte got right. He spent much time getting his portraits done, designing flags for his movement, and especially determining the right image for Humanity, who was to be depicted as a mother with a child. This image of Humanity that replaced the male God of traditional religions emphasized family ties, the origin of each individual’s feelings of sociability. Comte drew up elaborate plans for temples dedicated to Humanity and for a series of sacraments to replace those of Catholicism. He created a Positivist Calendar, a chart of the functions of the mind that highlighted altruism, and a Positivist Library of 150 great books. All of these measures were to reinforce the cult of Humanity. One of the aims of this cult was to ensure “subjective” or immaterial immorality, where people who had made contributions to society would survive in the hearts and minds of others. Collective memory would play an important integrating role in the positivist era. The cult of Humanity would also include a cult of Woman. Insisting that everyone worship important women in their lives, Comte claimed to have three “guardian angels”: his mother, Rosalie Boyer; his beloved muse, Clotilde de Vaux; and his dedicated maid, Sophie Bliaux. Women would have a crucial role in the positive era because, as agents of morality and specialists in love, they could help unite society. Thanks to enthusiasm generated by the Revolution of 1848 and the ensuing growth of civil society, Comte also created the Positivist Society, which represented the kernel of his political movement and the prototype of his spiritual power. Before establishing this political club, Comte had attracted many followers, including the writers George Henry Lewes and Emile Littr´e and the scientists Alexander Williamson and Charles Robin. Now, confronted with the proliferation of political clubs in Paris, Comte attempted a more organized approach to his movement. The Positivist Society met weekly and obtained eventually approximately fifty members. It issued policy papers on the crises confronting the Second Republic. To propagate positivist religious and political principles, especially among workers and women, Comte wrote Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme (1848), which later constituted the first volume of the Syst`eme de politique positive. It condemned political extremism, especially on the right; called for the incorporation of proletarians into society by improving their job opportunities and education; outlined his idea of a ruling positivist triumvirate pulled initially from the working class; and 7

Adamson, Embattled Avant-Gardes, 2.

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Introduction

introduced his new cult of Humanity. But Comte’s optimism about imminent change was soon tempered. Having dismissed Napoleon as a reactionary tyrant, he did not approve of the election of his nephew, Louis, as president of the Second Republic. Comte found this new regime to be unproductive. He became annoyed when the regime shut down for a few months his popular new course on the history of Humanity. Unfortunately, partly because of all the time he spent on preparing his lectures, writing his works, and spreading positivism, he was derelict in fulfilling his duties at the Ecole Polytechnique. He lost his job as admissions examiner in 1844 and his teaching assistantship in 1851. To provide Comte with financial support, Emile Littr´e created the Positivist Subsidy, funded by people who were enthusiastic about his ideas. Free from his teaching duties and supported financially by his disciples, Comte was eager to continue writing and shaping his religious and political movement. This third volume explores the last years of Comte’s life from late 1851 to 1857. It focuses on his religious and moral system, especially as outlined in his famous Syst`eme de politique positive, and his erratic political views. To adapt to the new empire of Napoleon III, which he supported with reservations, Comte experienced a “conservative turn.” It was reminiscent of his strange appeal to Comte Joseph de Vill`ele (the right-wing minister of finance) and the ultras in 1824, when he was anxious to find support among members of this politically dominant party after his rupture with Saint-Simon.8 Now in the 1850s, once again the right was in control, and Comte moved to toady to it, while keeping his options open on the left. His desperate attempt to appeal to both sides of the political spectrum alienated many leftists and conservatives. The latter remained put off by his criticisms of traditional religion and his references to his own planned revolutionary government. Nevertheless, he continued to be an influential thinker with a notable following. Based on thirty years of archival work, especially at the Maison d’Auguste Comte and the Biblioth`eque Nationale, which hold most of his correspondence, this volume, like the previous one, explores for the first time Comte’s close connections with his disciples. These include Joseph Lonchampt, Georges Audiffrent, Auguste Hadery, Charles de Capellen, and Jean-Franc¸ois-Eug`ene Robinet. Comte’s disciples came not only from France but from Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. Giving these men and women personal, professional, and spiritual advice, Comte reveled in the role of mentor and spiritual father. 8

Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 252–54.

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Chapters one through three cover Comte’s change of tactics and the growth of positivism during the early Second Empire. Eager to launch the transitional period to positivism, he initially supported Louis Napoleon’s takeover in the belief that he could convert the new emperor to positivism. Many disciples did not approve of Comte’s authoritarian approach and left the Positivist Society. Among them were two of Comte’s most important followers, Charles Robin and Emile Littr´e. Disciples defected because they were displeased not only with Comte’s swerve to the right but his increased stress on religion and the emotions, which reflected romantic impulses of the day but seemed to betray the original scientific thrust of his thought. Faced with an increase of defectors, many of whom had helped him financially, Comte began to campaign more widely for supporters. In 1852, he wrote the Cat´echisme positiviste, targeting women. After he became disillusioned with Napoleon III for setting up another empire and restricting various freedoms, such as liberty of the press, which was an essential condition for the spread of positivism, he wrote letters to Tsar Nicholas I and the Grand Vizir Mustafa Reshid Pasha to convert them to positivism. These letters proved an embarrassment to the positivist cause, especially after France became involved in the Crimean War. Nevertheless, Comte held out positivism as the key to reconciling the East and West. Indeed, dismayed by the bourgeois material trends permeating Paris thanks to Baron Georges Haussmann, Comte, like his contemporaries Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire, and G´erard de Nerval, became increasingly fascinated by the “Orient.” Eventually, spurred by the universalist aspirations of the French under the Second Empire, he asserted that positivism would spread throughout the world. In his mind, Constantinople, not Paris, would be the capital of the positivist globe because it could most easily blend the East and West.9 Again, Comte seemed as eager as he had been in his youth to find the middle ground, but his efforts almost always came up against insurmountable obstacles. After his appeal to conservatives and autocrats failed, he turned again to the left and attempted to curry favor with Pierre Proudhon, Armand Barb`es, and Auguste Blanqui, all renowned revolutionaries. He seemed desperate to convert leaders from any camp, assuming that they would bring more followers in their wake. But Comte grew irritable as some disciples, such as George Henry Lewes, interpreted his intellectual trajectory in ways that made him seem obliged to the socialist tradition. Like Littr´e, Lewes left the movement after experiencing Comte’s ire. 9

Roger Celestin and Eliane DalMolin, France from 1851 to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 12–13, 61.

10

Introduction

New members, such as C´elestin de Bligni`eres and C´esar Lefort, joined the Positivist Society. However, sometimes they added to the infighting. Disciples became jealous of each other, and their rivalry to gain Comte’s attention damaged the movement while annoying him no end. Another problem was that copies of the Cours, had become scarce. English readers were gratified when the well-known writer Harriet Martineau published in 1853 her two-volume free translation of the masterpiece, a translation that would soon become a masterpiece in its own right. Comte thought so highly of it that he recommended that people read her book rather than his. Although Martineau was moved to tears by the grandeur of the Cours, she never showed any interest in joining the Positivist Society. Nevertheless, she was in many ways the woman colleague that he had always been seeking. For Comte, their partnership represented the ideal partnership of the rational male who had learned to become sympathetic and the emotional female who had been well educated. By shortening the Cours and taking out its infelicitous phrases, Martineau revitalized this intellectual enterprise, putting his difficult doctrine into a form that more people could understand. Chapters four through six examine Comte’s second masterpiece, the Syst`eme de politique positive, which appeared in four volumes between 1851 and 1854. It introduced his political philosophy, especially his plans to reconstruct the world to make it harmonious and peaceful. Having covered in the Cours the importance of intellectual agreement as a factor in social unity, he now addressed the second condition of social harmony, that of sociability or “altruism,” a word he coined in 1850. He began by introducing his “subjective method.” It complemented the “objective method” that dominated the Cours. The subjective method encouraged looking at everything from a human viewpoint. This kind of focus ensured the “subjective synthesis,” that is, the unity of knowledge grounded in the social point of view. Such unity could not derive from scientific laws promoted by the objective method, which centered on the world. In the first volume of the Syst`eme, Comte reviewed the sciences from the social perspective of sociology. In the second and third volumes, he reexamined sociology itself, tackling its two divisions of social statics and social dynamics. In terms of social statics or the study of social harmony, he explained his Religion of Humanity; introduced a new, seventh science, that of morality, which dealt with the individual; and discussed the interrelationships between work, family life, language, and the arts on the one hand and the development of the emotions and the community on the other.10 When he turned to social dynamics or the study of 10

W. E. B. Du Bois criticized Comte for not realizing the importance of establishing a science dealing with “knowledge of Men.” Perhaps Du Bois had not read the Syst`eme de

Introduction

11

progress, he maintained that each period of history contributed to the positivist era’s triumph in terms of sentiment, intelligence, and activity. He focused on the development of sociability (especially as reflected in religious and artistic changes), the sciences, and industrialization. Unlike most historians, Comte spent a great deal of time charting the waxing and waning of women’s influence in the past because of their moralizing function. He also made it clear that the positivist era represented a return to the era of fetishism, when love was strong and the concrete and spontaneous were important. As for the future, the subject of volume four Comte detailed the contours of the positivist society, going so far as to explain the salaries of the professions, the subjects that would be taught in the schools, and the specific functions of women, workers, industrialists, and positivist priests in creating a harmonious, peaceful society. Chapters seven and eight chart Comte’s continuing effort to enlarge his audience and control his disciples. In 1855, he wrote Appel aux Conservateurs, which was aimed at moderate conservatives, especially statesmen, who could accelerate the transition to the positivist era. But he still seemed to seek disciples in a wide variety of venues in a confusing fashion. While attempting to distance himself more from extreme revolutionaries, he still nourished hopes of converting renowned leftists such as Proudhon, Blanqui, and Barb`es to his cause. He also sought to differentiate himself from reactionaries but called on Napoleon III to name the legitimist pretender, the Comte de Chambord, as his successor. In addition, Comte wanted an alliance with the Jesuits and catered to English aristocrats. In terms of his discipleship, the British were the most enthusiastic about his philosophy. Others who sought his guidance included men tormented by sexual problems. These disciples told him of their visits to prostitutes and recourse to masturbation to release their sexual desires. They appreciated Comte’s candor on similar issues and his command to practice restraint and chastity. Comte’s assumption of the role of a priest hearing confessions and granting absolution was of great comfort to these men who felt alienated from traditional religious authority. Yet he could not find a successor among them. Increasingly worried about who was to take over his role as supreme pontiff of the Religion of Humanity after his death, Comte wrote in 1855 his testament, which was published in 1884. Besides his will, the Testament contained his correspondence with de Vaux and other politique positive, where Comte acknowledged that sociology’s explanation of social life was inadequate and that it was imperative to create morality, a science of individual men, which would better take into account the fact that humans were unpredictable free agents. Comte would agree with Du Bois’s conclusion that sociology was “the Science that seeks the limits of Chance in human conduct.” W. E. B. Du Bois, “Sociology Hesitant,” boundary 2 27 (Fall 2000): 44.

12

Introduction

material relating to her. Pondering his death, he thought increasingly about his “subjective” or immaterial existence. In 1856, he wrote his last work, the Synth`ese subjective. Contrary to those who see Comte as rejecting science at the end of his life, it is significant that he consecrated a huge tome of almost eight hundred pages to the science of mathematics to which he had devoted his life. This book demonstrated the unifying properties of the emotions and their effects even on the abstract science of mathematics. Perhaps Comte’s focus on mathematics at this time is not so strange as is it might first appear. In The First Moderns, William Everdell argued that according to Giambattista Vico, a thinker whom Comte greatly admired, “mathematics is the most completely nonnatural, man-made thing in the world” because numbers are our mind’s creations. From this point of view, mathematics is more of a humanity than a science. In addition, according to Everdell, mathematics takes the lead in our culture’s paradigm shifts.11 Comte may have felt likewise. He hoped that by showing the social dimensions of mathematics, he would encourage people to consider the social aspects of everything they encountered. This habit would lead to the “subjective synthesis,” mentioned in the title of the book. The subjective synthesis was not based on a natural law, such as the law of gravity, but on social understanding: everything had to be united on the basis of the human point of view, and humans were innately social. This synthesis was encouraged not only by our emotions but also by our reason and activities, all of which were interrelated. In his eagerness to find connections, Comte lessened the boundaries between science and religion and blurred the line between science and the arts. Everything was subsumed within religion because the new sacred center of life was Humanity, an abstract but nevertheless real entity. Humanity was both the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. Chapter nine portrays Comte’s death throes and considers his legacy. In 1857, he began to suffer from swelling in his stomach and legs. His physical pain was aggravated by emotional disturbances. He lost one of his oldest supporters and friends, Narcisse Vieillard, who died in May 1857. A month later Comte was distraught when one of his disciples, C´elestin de Bligni`eres, published a summary of positivism without his permission. Comte always sought control. His arrogance proved to be his own undoing because he would not allow doctors, even those who were positivists, to help him once he became ill. He died from stomach cancer on September 5, 1857. After his death, his disciples fought for decades with his wife over 11

William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 352.

Introduction

13

his will and his claim that she was a prostitute. Despite this dramatic sideshow, positivism became a significant force in academics – especially philosophy, sociology, and historiography – and in politics not only in France but around the world. It continued to take on many different meanings just as it did during Comte’s lifetime.

Chapter 1

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

The unexpected coming of a true temporal dictatorship alters very happily our republican situation and consequently the entire Occidental situation. Auguste Comte to Benedetto Profumo, December 26, 1851

coup d’etat and the second empire Like many others in France, Comte seemed to be increasingly worried about the political situation as chaos worsened after the Revolution of 1848 and the elections for the Assembly and the presidency approached in 1852.1 He imagined that the increasing anarchy weakened the central power, while the Assembly became more omnipotent as it governed by legislative committees. He hoped that the Parisian workers would be disabused of their “last metaphysical illusion,” that of the importance of representative government, and that they would dismiss the Assembly with the “tacit approval of the provinces.”2 Positivism could profit by presenting itself as the “unique refuge” of people worried about the family and property, which were “menaced by all the metaphysical tendencies” and “compromised by theological obstructions.”3 To be ready for power being dropped in the positivists’ laps, Comte began to plan how they should rule France. He developed his ideas during meetings of the Positivist Society. In 1850, he asked Emile Littr´e to head a committee composed of himself, Pierre Laffitte, and Jean-Fabien Magnin to write another position paper to encapsulate these ideas. Littr´e, a famous scholar and journalist, was Comte’s leading French disciple. Laffitte was a young mathematician and one of Comte’s closest companions. Magnin was Comte’s principal working-class disciple. The three men’s work was interrupted by the coup d’´etat at the end of the year. Nevertheless, Laffitte drew up 1

2 3

Comte to Barbot de Chement, August 23, 1850, CG, 5:182; Comte to Laffitte, September 22, 1851, Auguste Comte: Correspondance g´en´erale et confessions, ed. Paulo E. de Berrˆedo Carneiro, Pierre Arnaud, Paul Arbousse-Bastide, and Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, 8 vols. (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1973–90), 6:169. Hereafter, the work will be cited as CG. Comte to Auguste Hadery, May 9, 1851, CG, 6:81–2. Comte to Antoine-Horace de Mont`egre, September 21, 1850, CG, 5:199.

14

Coup d’Etat and the Second Empire

15

the report, entitled “Organisation du gouvernment de transition.” The title is significant. Reflecting the more conservative tenor of the times, Comte thought it safer to call his government the “government of transition,” rather than the “revolutionary” government as he used to do.4 Comte’s conception of the French government had evolved thanks to the changing political context and his religious interests. Many debates had taken place from 1848 to 1849 on how the constitution of the Second Republic should be written and how the country should be administered.5 Showing his respect for tradition and “historical memories,” Comte sought to revive the old provinces and their festivals. But at the same time, he liked the departments, which were created during the Revolution and functioned well as administrative units. In September 1849, he decided to combine the old and new ways of governing France. Explaining that the Girondins’ push for decentralization during the French Revolution had been premature and misguided, he envisioned France in the future as broken up into sixteen provinces or intendancies, each of which would contain five or six departments.6 The intendancies’ objective would be “to oversee decentralization in everything that is legitimate.”7 From September 1849 to December 1851, he made four different versions of this plan to create intendancies. The first three, done in 1848, 1850, and early 1851, emphasized the creation of sixteen intendancies. The 4

5

6

7

The report is in Pierre Laffitte, ed., “Bibliographie positiviste: Second document pour servir a` l’histoire des vues politiques d’Auguste Comte,” Revue Occidentale [hereafter RO], 2d ser., 1 ( January 1890): 76–84. See also ibid., 73, Comte to Laffitte, September 12, 1851, CG, 6:160–61; Comte to C´elestin de Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:209; Comte to Hadery, September 17, 1852, CG, 6:371; Comte to Georges Audiffrent, November 22, 1850, CG, 5:219; Littr´e to Comte, March 30, 1851, Archives of the Maison d’Auguste Comte, Paris [hereafter MAC]. On the activities in 1851, see Pierre Laffitte, “Document pour servir a` l’histoire des vues politiques d’Auguste Comte,” RO, 23 ( July 1889): 86. Laffitte says that the special committee met at Littr´e’s house, which was located at the corner of rue Vavin and rue d’Assas, across the street from Jules Michelet’s. Mirella Larizza-Lolli, “Archaisme et modernit´e dans la conception de l’intendance d’Auguste Comte,” Du Provincialisme au R´egionalisme, XVIII e –XX e si`ecle: Actes du Festival d’Histoire de Montbrison de 1988 (France, no publisher, 1989), 407. Comte to Laffitte, September 19, 1849, CG, 5:83, 84; Comte to Charles de Capellen, September 19, 1852, CG, 5:382. Comte maintained that the Girondins had been correct about the need for decentralization but mistaken about the timing. France could not be divided into intendancies until the revolution had been secured; the government had been centralized by the heirs of the Jacobins, who thereby ensured progress; and the problem of intellectual anarchy (the true source of chaos) had been resolved. This process took several more decades to complete. Moreover, the process of decomposition had to be voluntary and peaceful. Comte to Hadery, November 25, 1853, CG, 7:13; Auguste Comte, Syst`eme de politique positive ou Trait´e du sociologie instituant la religion de l’Humanit´e, 4 vols. (Paris, 1851–4; 5th ed., identical to the first, Paris: Au Si´ege de la Soci´et´e Positiviste, 1929) [hereafter, this work will be cited as Syst`eme], 4:420, 465, 481. Laffitte, Magnin, and Littr´e, “Organisation du gouvernement de transition,” 79.

16

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

one he did on December 24, 1851, was the first that envisioned seventeen intendancies. Although Paris had not appeared on the first list, he now combined it with the Seine and the Seine et Oise and made it the first intendancy. Lyon and the Rhˆone area became the second.8 Whereas Comte previously had been an advocate of political centralization and the domination of Paris, he now seemed to recognize the need for a more decentralized state in the future. As the importance of his new Religion of Humanity grew in his mind, he was convinced that it could unite people on a deeper level than a political system could. Because the spiritual power in the positive era could guarantee “intellectual and moral unity,” especially through education, one could “without danger” lessen the concentration of authority in the “material” realm.9 Comte’s predilections also reflect the culture of the time. Many nineteenth-century French republicans, including PierreJoseph Proudhon, favored federalism despite their Jacobin loyalties; they wished to foster peace and social solidarity and to express their opposition to an overweening state that threatened civic life. Comte was likewise concerned about popular welfare, social solidarity, and repression. He insisted that there be two hundred functionaries in charge of these intendancies and departments and that they come from the working class. Presumably they would counterbalance the bourgeoisie, who would dominate the positivist Assembly. Comte hoped that his schema would also satisfy people’s demand for greater participation in government. Sudhir Hazareesingh has cogently argued that decentralization continued to be an important issue during the Second Empire, reflecting individuals’ desire to participate in a vibrant public sphere.10 Comte would include his plan for intendancies in the fourth volume of the Syst`eme de politique positive, published in 1854. Comte had more specific rules regarding the election of the governing triumvirate, which he often suggested should be composed of workers, at least in the beginning.11 These three men would be named by a Parisian elector and six other electors, who had to have lived in Paris for at least six months. These electors would be picked by seventeen electors chosen in seventeen electoral colleges. Each electoral college would be composed of citizens from an intendancy 8

9 10

11

See “Intendances franc¸aises,” Manuscripts, MAC. Comte suggested that if sixteen “secondary capitals” had more importance, the “holy metropolis” of Paris would experience a decrease in administrative burdens while keeping its “just social ascendance.” Comte to Etienne Jacquemin, October 30, 1849, CG, 5:105; Comte to Audiffrent, November 22, 1850, CG, 5:219. Comte to Audiffrent, November 22, 1850, CG, 5:219. Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 306. See also ibid., 282–5, 291, 310. Comte still wanted this government to include Littr´e, the most eminent positivist theoretician (besides himself), and Magnin, the best practician.

Coup d’Etat and the Second Empire

17

who lived in Paris. The three governors, who were chosen by the seven electors, would have to be approved of by at least ten of the seventeen capitals of the intendancies. Comte sought some checks on the power of Paris, which was generally more leftist than the rest of the country. Eager to spread his new religion, he seemed sensitive to people living in the provinces who complained about the predominance of Paris. Perhaps he envisioned positivism spreading to the capitals of the intendancies, whence it could go out into the countryside.12 After all, he knew that positivism was growing in Lyon. However, considering that the three governors named the intendants and the electors of the governors were people who lived in Paris, it is obvious that he still harbored a deep distrust of the provinces, which had voted for Louis Napoleon in 1849. He also still disliked direct elections. Later in the Revue Occidentale, Laffitte lamented that Comte’s plan for decentralization was unclear and poorly conceived. Not sufficiently informed in political matters, Comte was a naive “dupe of the very retrograde forces” that he sought “to combat.”13 Comte also thought more about how to eliminate lawyers, university faculties, prisons, fines, and state subsidies to churches, in order to make his government less oppressive and more humane.14 In particular, he wished to do away with the Catholic system of charity. He believed that nuns who tended the sick were reactionary, unkind, stupid, and “hypocritical.”15 Hospitals should welcome the help of women (traditionally “grandes dames”) who were “stimulated by true charity” but not enthusiastic about joining religious orders, which supported the “arbitrary,” “mean,” and “humiliating” Catholic system of charity. Thinking of women as naturally nurturing as many nineteenth-century men did, he maintained that taking care of patients was something women liked to do and had done well years before, especially during the Middle Ages. He was recently struck by their expertise in this regard doing the recent outbreak of cholera in France.16 He had also spent many hours with de Vaux’s mother, who had written Proposition d’une association religieuse et perp´etuelle des femmes, pour travailler au soulagement des malheureux et a` l’extirpation de la 12 13

14 15

16

Larizza-Lolli, “Archaisme,” 409. Laffitte, ed., “Bibliographie positiviste: Second document pour servir a` l’histoire des vues politiques d’Auguste Comte,” 74. See also Dr. [ Jean Franc¸ois Eug`ene] Robinet, M. Littr´e et le Positivisme (Paris, 1871), 7. Comte to Laffitte, September 17 and September 19, 1849, CG, 5:85, 88. Alix Comte, Comte’s sister, also referred to the good that Catholicism had done in helping with the sick. See Alix Comte to Comte, July 28, 1849, in “Lettres d’Alex Comte a` son fr`ere Auguste Comte,” ed. Laffitte, 145. Perhaps his hatred of her led him to this singular diatribe against nuns, which he repeated in the fourth volume of the Syst`eme. Syst`eme, 4:429. Alix mentioned a cholera epidemic in 1849 Alix Comte to Comte, July 28, 1849 in “Lettres d’Alix Comte a` son fr`ere Auguste Comte,” ed. Laffitte, 145.

18

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

mendicit´e, where she called women the “priestesses of Christian charity.”17 As if responding to the idea of woman as naturally caregivers, Florence Nightingale launched nursing as a respectable profession for women in the 1850s. Comte believed that women excelled as caregivers because they took into account the affective side of medicine, which doctors ignored in their preoccupation with the physical state of the patient. Although he had many doctors as disciples, he hated the arrogance of men, who had been trying to take exclusive control of the medical profession for centuries. Eliminating advanced educational degrees was on his agenda as a way of lessening their power. The “medical class” was “destined to blend into the sacerdotal corporation, where woman . . . [was] indispensable.”18 Like lawyers, doctors would eventually disappear. Understanding the relationship between the heart and mind, positive philosophers would be experts in medicine and hygiene. Comte was tired of the grande bourgeoisie’s dominance not only in the professions but cultural life. After the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien changed its name to the Th´eaˆ tre Italien, experienced difficulties, and switched directors, he came up with a plan to subsidize the theater in general to make it less of a bourgeois institution. In Paris and in the sixteen capitals of the intendancies, the state would set up “Occidental theaters” that would function all year, giving musical performances (especially operas) and putting on plays five times a week.19 Half the seats would be given to workers without charge, a measure that derived from a similar action taken by the provisional 17

18

19

Marie, Mme , n´ee du Ficquelment, Proposition d’une association religieuse et perp´etuelle des femmes, pour travailler au soulagement des malheureux et a` l’extirpation de la mendicit´e (Paris, 1835), 1. Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:88–9; Comte to Audiffrent, March 9, 1851, CG, 6:34. Comte also criticized doctors for being too interested in money, reflecting his fights with F´elix Pinel-Grandchamp. Syst`eme, 4:427. See also Laffitte to Comte, September 29, 1849, CG, 5:241. Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:87. Comte grew increasingly critical of the theater. He worried that it might distract people from his religious festivities and clubs, which were more “efficacious resources” for “positivist propaganda.” He dissuaded Benedetto Profumo, an Italian positivist, from becoming an actor because he believed this profession was an “ill-fated qualification for the propagator of a new doctrine.” Comte figured that as people read and enjoyed books more, they would study plays on their own and would understand them on a deep level. There would be a decrease in the need for dramatic productions. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Comte was also very critical of actresses. He found it aberrant that they might be impure and greedy and and yet claim to portray the delicate characters in works by Shakespeare, Calder´on, or Corneille. Their talent and prestige were also damaging because they made worthless plays seem noteworthy. In short, he found the theatrical profession to be suitable only to the transitional period to positivism, not to the positive era itself. Comte to Profumo, May 17, 1851, CG, 6:85, 86.

Coup d’Etat and the Second Empire

19

government in 1848.20 Comte’s plan reflects his own predicament. He decided not to renew his subscription to the Th´eaˆ tre Italien for the 1849-50 season because of his own financial “misery” and an altercation with the management, which, after the Revolution of 1848, shut down the performances but still insisted he resubscribe early. The “reign of M. Verdi” in opera also displeased him.21 While telling his disciples his ideas about how to reform France and various institutions, Comte was caught off guard when Louis Napoleon, frustrated at being forbidden by the constitution to run for a second term of office, seized power on December 2, 1851. Only the republicans offered armed resistance. Workers in Paris and other towns inevitably set up barricades, while peasants put up a fight in communes in the provinces. Alix Comte, Auguste’s sister, reported on the “horrors” the reds were committing in the H´erault, especially in B´eziers and B´edarieux. In the latter, the reds incinerated men, women, and children in an army barracks. One child who escaped was then “thrown in the flames.” She concluded, “I can understand being a republican, but I cannot conceive of being a red.”22 Because Louis Napoleon already had control over the army and the government, he easily crushed the opposition. He had almost 30,000 democraticsocialists arrested. Many people, who had been alarmed by the rising social unrest, which had been aggravated by the economic crisis of the past few years, were pleased by the apparent restoration of order. Students from the Ecole Polytechnique, who had already turned against the workers in June 1848, also endorsed the coup.23 Like the Ecole Polytechnique students, Comte was generally supportive of Louis Napoleon’s seizure of power. He did not care much for the usurper himself but was pleased by the possibilities that this historical transformation meant for him. He believed that during this interlude, public opinion could mature, that is, turn toward him.24 His distaste for joining the republican opposition against Louis Napoleon was similar to that of a sizable number of Parisian workers; they did not rally to defend the Assembly, which was dominated by monarchists, 20 21

22

23

24

Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:89. Comte to Audiffrent, April 7, 1851, CG, 6:53; Comte to the Director of the Th´eaˆ tre Italien, January 14, 1849, CG, 5:5; letter from Emile Martin, administrator at Th´eaˆ tre Italien, to Comte, January 15, 1849, MAC; record of his subscriptions at the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien (Th´eaˆ tre Italien), Documents, MAC. Alix Comte to Comte, December 11, 1850, in “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte (Suite),” ed. Pierre Laffitte, RO, 3d ser. 2 ( July 1 and September 1, 1910): 201–2. Roger Price, Napoleon III and the Second Empire (London: Routledge, 1997), 17–22; Terry Shinn, L’Ecole Polytechnique, 1794–1914 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation National des Sciences Politiques, 1980), 62. Annie Petit, “La R´evolution occidentale selon Auguste Comte: Entre l’Histoire et l’utopie,” Revue de Synth`ese, 112 ( January–March 1991), 37.

20

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

who had recently disenfranchised many of them.25 Comte believed that Louis Napoleon’s victory discredited the metaphysicians who had naively placed their faith in the Assembly, which he thought had become too dominant and irresponsible. All power was “finally concentrated in a single man.”26 Thanks to this “temporal dictatorship,” the French now could return to the centralized system of government that was part of their tradition.27 All of Comte’s recent talk about the need for decentralization now seemed incongruous. Though not particularly intelligent or deep, Louis Napoleon was, in Comte’s eyes, energetic, prudent, and persevering. Indeed, Comte declared in late January 1852 that the new dictator was a better man that he had figured in the beginning.28 Through his friend Narcisse Vieillard, who was close to the dictator, Comte might have ascertained that Louis Napoleon thought of himself as a man of destiny who would depoliticize the government, modernize the country, and satisfy the needs of the people. Former Saint-Simonian sympathizers such as Vieillard and Michel Chevalier were tied to the new regime and may have encouraged this direction. Louis Napoleon’s goals and Comte’s were not very different. And their political behavior, which consisted of appeals to the left and right while proclaiming to be above political parties, was similar as well.29 Indeed, one historian has recently argued that Napoleon III was not a right-wing ideologue as some have maintained. Bonapartism tried to effect a “compromise between Revolution and Counter-Revolution, values of the left and values of the right; it was surely the first, a centrism.”30 Thus like Comte, Napoleon III was a synthesizer, who attempted to achieve national unity after the French Revolution had destroyed political legitimacy and left the country in a destabilized state. However, Louis Napoleon’s coup d’´etat was the only large social upheaval of his lifetime that did not make Comte “overexcited.”31 He had reservations. The problem with it, in his eyes, was that it was “too brusque and especially too empirical” in its use of force.32 He worried 25 27 28 29

30 31 32

Price, Napoleon III, 19. 26 Comte to Laurent, January 2, 1852, CG, 6:205. Comte to Profumo, December 26, 1851, CG, 6:198. Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:228. See also Auguste Comte, Cat´echisme positiviste [hereafter Cat´echisme] (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), 31. The dictator would use his power to get the support of the right in the 1850s and then appeal to the left in the 1860s. Dominique Barjot, Jean-Pierre Chaline, and Andr´e Encr´eve, La France au XIXe si´ecle, 2d. ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), 410; Price, Napoleon III, 25. Fabrice Bouthillon, L’Ill´egitimit´e de la Republique: Consid´erations sur l’histoire politique de la France au XIXe si`ecle (1851–1914) (Paris: Plon, 2005), 28. Comte to Fisher, November 8, 1855, CG, 8:143. Comte to Antoine Etex, January 18, 1852, CG, 6:221. See also Pierre Laffitte, “Commemoration fun`ebre de M. Auguste Hadery,” RO, 13 (1884): 271.

Coup d’Etat and the Second Empire

21

most of all that the new government might be too reactionary and lose the support of the people; France would then have to prepare itself for another wave of repression and upheaval. Comte counted on Vieillard, who was a member of the advisory committee, to show Louis Napoleon the correct path to a truly “progressive” republican form of government, one that would allow freedom of expression and renounce warlike behavior.33 When the new constitution, which increased the role of the head of state, came out in January 1852, Comte greeted it as “the best” of the ten that had come out since 1789; he found it “sufficiently progressive” to open the way to a positivist regime.34 He was trying to make the best of a deplorable situation, one that was leading other reformers to despair.35 As Annie Petit has pointed out, Comte remained “always faithful” to his revolutionary, republican ideals. The dictatorship was only an “obligatory passage,” one that he provisionally accepted as a means of ushering in a positivist government.36 Napoleon III’s dictatorship was palatable because his politics were nonideological in that they stressed most of all good management in the interest of social harmony.37 Through his relations with Vieillard, Comte sought to use Napoleon to further his own agenda.38 Comte believed that all he had to do was to “convert” this one dictator to positivism, and the dictatorial phase of the positivist republic could begin.39 Soon afterwards, there would be a final transfer to Comte’s positivist triumvirate, which would be run by proletarians, who would make sure it was pure, that is, uninvolved in regulating the spiritual realm.40 In terms reminiscent of Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach,” Comte wrote, “Whatever happens, in effect, the reign of talkers is essentially finished; that of doers and 33 34

35

36

37 38

39 40

Comte to Profumo, December 26, 1851, CG, 6:198–9. Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:228. The constitution reduced the power of the legislature. The ministers, the new Senate, and the new legislative body were the tools of the head of state. Universal male suffrage was retained, but elections were held only every six years and were subject to government control. See Barjot et al., La France, 411n1, 416–18. Juliette Grange correctly points out that the period of 1848–52 marked a violent break, separating the nineteenth century into two halves. Comte’s Syst`eme (1851–4) reflects this time of despair. Juliette Grange, introduction to Politique d’Auguste Comte (Paris: Payot, 1996), i. Annie Petit, “La Fin positiviste de la R´evolution,” La L´egende de la R´evolution, Acts du colloque international de Clermont-Ferrand (juin 1986), ed. Christian Croisille and Jean Ehrard (Clermont-Ferrand: Adosa, 1989), 525. Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, 38–9. Pierre Laffitte, “Commemoration fun`ebre de M. Auguste Hadery,” RO, 13 (1884): 271. On Vieillard, see Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 432–3. Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:228. See also Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:212; Comte to Laurent, January 2, 1852, CG, 6:205. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:210.

22

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

thinkers is beginning and will last.”41 The doer in the immediate future would be Louis Napoleon, and he would give Comte, the thinker, the task of reconstructing the moral and intellectual order. Just as Charles Fourier pinned his hopes on a generous bourgeois, who would give him money for a phalanstery, Comte imagined that the new dictator would come to him for aid, especially through Vieillard, because positivism offered the only solid bulwark against the main enemy of the regime, communists, who were motivated by pride, envy, cupidity, and a misplaced faith in pure individualism and equality.42 The proclivities of both Comte and Bonapartism were toward order, hierarchy, and authority.43 On February 28, Comte wrote to Vieillard, laying out his program of moral and intellectual regeneration in the hope that the older gentleman, who had been recently named senator, would persuade Louis Napoleon and his chief minister to read it. In this letter, whose tenor was deliberately nonthreatening, Comte emphasized the importance of first improving the educational and moral conditions in France before tackling the “material” problem of the organization of labor.44 The course on the history of humanity that he intended to begin in April would be “a true event for the Occident.”45 Thus Comte believed everything was set for him to become the grand adviser to the secular government and the agent bringing in the new era.46 His hopes now were even higher than they had been in 1848. Vieillard, whom Comte called “the oldest adherent” of positivism,” voiced his approval of the “positivist manifesto” but conveniently claimed that illness prevented him from seeing the dictator.47 Whereas, in 1848, Comte endeavored to acquire the support of the revolutionaries, now he openly transferred his attention to conservatives, perhaps to show Louis Napoleon his qualifications to fight leftists. In early 1852, he wrote to one disciple, Instead of forming a party of progress, positivism should become . . . the head of the party of order, by a direct and true competition with Catholicism for intellectual and moral reorganization. In short, I am going to address myself henceforth specifically to true conservatives, 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:227. Comte to Deullin, September 20, 1853, CG, 7:124. Comte believed that there would one day be a “final struggle” between these two new systems of communism and positivism. Comte to Profumo, December 26, 1851, CG, 6:202. Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, 35. Comte to Vieillard, February 28, 1852, CG, 6:244. Comte to Audiffrent, March 4, 1852, CG, 6:254. See also Comte to Vieillard, February 28, 1852, CG, 6:240–54. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:212–13. Comte to Alexandre Laurent, March 25, 1852, CG, 6:258. See also Comte to Audiffrent, March 18, 1852, CG, 6:255.

Coup d’Etat and the Second Empire

23

after having proved during the last three years positivism’s aptitude to convert pure revolutionaries, which has been recently proved by the Lyonnais communists.48

He was convinced that positivists had sufficiently established themselves as the “spiritual leaders” of the “true party of progress.”49 Just as in his youth he read Condorcet and then Joseph de Maistre, now in his old age he was proud of his “success” in having gained the support of numerous leftists and as a result felt obliged to turn to the right, that is, to the “true party of order.”50 The “synthetic” nature of his enterprise was, after all, at stake.51 He boasted that one of the strengths of his doctrine was that its “relative character” and “historical spirit” had “partial affinities with all contemporary schools” or parties.52 Indeed, he was not entirely off the mark in appealing to Napoleon III, because there was a progressive strain in Bonapartism, even though it was known for being a party of order. One Bonapartist declared that he sought a “moral revolution brought about by progress.”53 Such sentiments echoed Comte’s. To disseminate his ideas, Comte tried to launch the Revue Occidentale. Although the new laws on the press were among the most restrictive of the century, he assumed that the “dictatorial situation” was more conducive to a “serious” journal than a parliamentary regime, which encouraged precipitous action and superficial discussion.54 He figured his disciples Georges Audiffrent, C´esar Lefort, Laffitte, and Littr´e would be the principal collaborators. To facilitate the funding of the journal, which needed an annual subsidy of ten thousand francs for three years, he decided not to take a salary and to have the journal published every trimester instead of monthly. He sent to his disciples a modified prospectus, which called for one hundred subscribers instead of three hundred as the previous version of 1848 did.55 He hoped that “rich conservatives” in the United States would come to his rescue.56 But after two months, only ten people 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:228. Comte to Audiffrent, March 4, 1852, CG, 6:253. Comte to Vieillard, February 28, 1852, CG, 6:243; Comte to Audiffrent, March 4, 1852, CG, 6:253. Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:228. Comte, “Deuxi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” March 24, 1851, CG, 6:49. Paul David, La Commune rurale (Toulouse: Savey, 1863), ix, quoted in Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, 36. Comte to Audiffrent, March 18, 1852, CG, 6:256. See also Comte to Audiffrent, April 15, 1852, CG, 6:262. Comte, handwritten prospectus, Revue Occidentale, April 1, 1852, MAC. Each subscriber would pay one hundred francs a year. Comte to A. Ribet, July 15, 1852, CG, 6:316. Curiously, people from the United States constituted the third most generous contributors, after the French and Dutch. See packet, “Positivist Subsidy,” MAC.

24

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

promised to subscribe, whereas in 1848, he had managed to find eighty such supporters.57 By the summer of 1852, he decided it was absurd to launch a periodical for a doctrine that intended to do away with journalism for fomenting anarchy.58 His project thus failed for the third time, forcing him to use the prefaces to his books to discuss topics better suited to a journal. In addition, he felt compelled to write short works of propaganda, like the Cat´echisme positiviste and Appel aux Conservateurs.59 the afte rmath of the seizure of powe r : the disciple s’ reactions As reflected in his desire to join the press wars, Comte did not approve of censorship or repression, particularly when it was directed against his movement. After the takeover of Louis Napoleon, Arthur Bertrand, who lived in northern France and had written favorable articles on positivism in local periodicals, was deprived of his governmental post.60 Other positivists were persecuted by the government. Eug`ene Deullin, for example, lost his position as president of the tribunal of commerce and was put under police surveillance.61 Adolphe de Ribbentrop was arrested for spreading seditious writings. He wrote to the prefect of police, protesting that he had “distributed so little of anything” that he must be a “victim of an error.” Yet he admitted that he was not a Bonapartist and believed that Napoleon’s III takeover was “one of the greatest political crimes” in history. He insisted, however, that his protests were legal. His daughter forced her way into Comte’s apartment to complain about her father’s treatment. Comte tried to get Vieillard to secure his release from prison; the senator complained that Ribbentrop was making matters worse by writing inflammatory letters to high officials. Perhaps these problems with the police were the cause of Ribbentrop’s departure from the Positivist Society. Nevertheless, he remained a positivist and prided himself on maintaining friendly terms with Comte.62 57

58 59 60 61 62

Comte to Audiffrent, June 10, 1852, CG, 6:297. By mid-October, there were only sixteen subscribers. Comte was ashamed. Comte to Hadery, September 17, 1852, CG, 6:372; Comte to John Ingram and George Allman, October 16, 1852, CG, 6:408. Syst`eme, 4:xi. Comte to Eug`ene Deullin, September 5, 1852, CG, 6:352; Syst`eme, 3:xv. Mont`egre to Comte, June 27, 1852, MAC. Bertrand was a friend of Dr. Horace de Mont´egre, a close disciple of Comte’s. Hippolyte Phil´emon Deroisin, Notes sur Auguste Comte par un de ses disciples (Paris, G. Cr`es, 1909), 52. Ribbentrop to the prefect of Police, June 17, 1853, copied in letter to Comte, July 24, 1853, MAC; Ribbentrop to Laffitte, April 12, 1859, MAC. See also Vieillard to Comte, July 12, 1853, MAC.

The Aftermath of the Seizure of Power

25

Comte was especially incensed that Louis Napoleon’s government harassed his disciples in Lyon, the site of many anti-government protests.63 Immediately after the coup d’´etat of December 2, JeanJoseph Razuret was arrested for plotting against the state, although a careful search of his papers and apartment yielded nothing incriminating.64 Jean-Louis Olivier Naudet was arrested as well.65 At 8:00 am on December 10, 1851, a police superintendent, under orders from the prefect, searched Jean-Victor Lucas’s home in his absence and took the letters Comte had written to him as well as Comte’s letters to Audiffrent, who had left them with the pharmacist when he visited Lyon. Shortly afterwards, Lucas, the head of the positivists in Lyon, was arrested. Alexandre-Pierre Laurent, another important Lyonnais positivist, was also arrested for political crimes, though he spent much of the time in the city hospital, where he was treated for a chronic ailment.66 According to him, there was no reason for their arrest.67 But apparently, in this atmosphere of rumors of plots and incendiary activities, Comte’s movement was deemed dangerous, as Laffitte had implied in one of his letters from the southwest. Indeed, it turns out that several religious fanatics went to the authorities to accuse Lucas of indulging in demagoguery and threatening the church and state.68 They maintained that positivism was “the most dangerous socialism.”69 Lucas told Comte that he had simply criticized Louis Napoleon for being too violent and destructive.70 During the police interrogation, Lucas told the authorities that he figured he was arrested because he tried “to moralize individuals in the Croix Rousse who appeared to be the most dangerous in terms of revolutionary maxims.” He had given “two or three lectures” 63 64

65

66

67 68 69 70

Price, Napoleon III, 22. Police Superintendent of the Croix-Rousse, Louis Fabre, “Proc`es verbal constatant l’arrestation du Razuret Jean-Joseph,” December 5, 1851, Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I054, Item #32. See also Head Guard, “Maison de Correction de Lyon: Etat nominatif des d´etenus politiques arrˆet´es dans la journ´ee du 4 d´ecembre 1851 et enferm´e dans la maison de correction de Lyon le 5 dudit mois de d´ecembre,” Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I041, item # 157. See Registre d’Ecrou Table Alphabetique Affaire du 2 decembre 1852 (sic). The real date was 1851. The names Victor Lucas, Alexandre Laurent, and Jean-Louis Olivier Naudet are listed in this prison registry. The registry is in the Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0004I037. “Etat nominatif des d´etenus politiques d´etenus a` la maison de correction a` la date du 20 decembre 1851,” Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I041, item #160; Comte to Vieillard, December 15, 1851, 1851, CG, 6:193. Laurent to Comte, December 14, 1851, MAC. Lucas to Comte, December 21, 1851, April 8, 1852, MAC. Lucas to Comte, April 8, 1852, MAC. Lucas to Comte, April 8, 1852, MAC. In general, Lucas approved of the coup d’´etat because he hated the Assembly, which he believed only added to the anarchical situation in which everyone found themselves. Yet he wished that there was a different dictator.

26

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

without authorization. Then he met with the prefect who finally gave him his verbal authorization but told him to write a formal request, which he then submitted on November 3. Lucas asked for authorization to give a course on “positive philosophy whose moral maxims tend to deter people from revolutionary insurrections.” Yet because of the coup d’´etat, he never received a reply.71 The police interrogator finally recommended that Lucas be liberated because he seemed “sweet and intelligent.”72 Prodded by Lucas, Comte then asked Vieillard to intervene.73 Like Lucas, Comte put on his conservative face and explained that Lucas and Laurent were not working to undermine the government but to preserve order by deterring the people from political agitation.74 Vieillard, who had already succeeded in releasing “seven or eight” leftist colleagues in Paris, wrote immediately to General Boniface de Castellane in Lyon.75 Considered a leader of the positivist movement, Lucas was not released, however, until January 11, 1852.76 Lucas used his time in prison to proselytize his faith, which he presented as a new version of communism.77 After his release, he prudently refrained for a little while from political activism and focused on helping Laurent. Laurent left prison in late January or shortly thereafter.78 In the wake of government repression, the Lyonnais positivists had dispersed. Lucas gradually began his organizational efforts anew. When Lefort visited Lyon in the summer of 1852, he noted that there were many positivist meetings, which took place in different houses, with twenty to thirty men, women, and children in attendance.79 71

72

73 74 75 76

77 78

79

Testimony of Lucas in Commissaire de Police du 1er Arrondissement, “Interrogatoire du sieur Lucas Jean Victor d´etenu a` la maison de correction et mis a` la disposition du Monsieur le Pr´efet N◦ 270,” December 24, 1851, in Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I53, Dossier N◦ 2143, entitled “Lucas.” Commissaire de Police du 1er Arrondissement, “Interrogatoire du sieur Lucas Jean Victor d´etenu a` la maison de correction et mis a` la disposition du Monsieur le Pr´efet N◦ 270,” December 24, 1851, in Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I53, Dossier N◦ 2143, entitled “Lucas.” Lucas to Comte, December 13, 1851, MAC. Comte to Vieillard, December 15, 1851, CG, 6:193. Vieillard to Comte, December 16, 1851, CG, 6:197. Laurent to Comte, December 19, 1851, MAC; Lucas to Comte, January 11, 1852, MAC. Audiffrent’s letters were returned by the police four months later. Audiffrent to Comte, April 4, 1852, MAC. Lucas to Comte, April 8, 1852, MAC; Audiffrent to Comte, February 6, 1852, MAC. One source says that Pierre Alexandre Laurent was released on January 30, 1852. Head Guard, “Maison de Correction. Mouvement du 30 janvier 1852,” January 31, 1852, Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I041, item #292. The other source says that Alexandre Laurent was condemned January 30. See Registre d’Ecrou Table Alphabetique Affaire du 2 decembre 1852 (sic); Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0004I037. Lefort to Comte, March 26, 1853, MAC; Charles Jundzill to Comte, September 20, 1853, MAC.

The Aftermath of the Seizure of Power

27

Lefort told Comte, “Le Croix Rousse, I assure you, belongs to you.” This area was the “more favorable than any other in Europe to the largest growth” of positivism.80 But by October 1852, Lucas was again under police surveillance. On October 25, 1852, the prefect of the Rhˆone ordered a special police superintendent to find out more about the “course on positivism” that Lucas was secretly giving – a course in which he developed the “most absurd propositions.”81 The prefect was concerned that Lucas was disseminating positivist propaganda and inciting the people to rebel. The police superintendent replied in a very sarcastic manner: Since Mr. Lucas has endured the inconvenience of an arrest, he is no longer involved in politics. He is, it is true, a fervent disciple of Mr. Comte, author of the doctrine of Positivism; he is in a correspondence with him, and at this moment, he is waiting for a catechism which Mr. Comte will publish and will bring joy and happiness to his followers. If you put Mr. Lucas on the road of Positivism, he will certainly unravel for you some sublime theories. In a circle of . . . close friends he will have much trouble if he does not open several interesting chapters of the regenerating system [Comte’s book], but from there to giving a clandestine course, there is a difference, and we can, I believe, make sure that Lucas does not give this course.82

Undaunted, Lucas published in early1853 an article in the Journal du M´edecine intended to spread positivism. He continued to preach, but limited his audience to twelve to fifteen people in order not to attract the attention of the police.83 He tried to speak every Sunday. An announcement of a meeting of positivists in Lyon was even published in 1854 in an American newspaper.84 Lyon appeared to be the true center of religious positivism. 80

81

82 83

84

Lefort to Comte, July 30, 1852, MAC. Lefort also assured Comte that there were as many disciples in Montpellier as there were in Lyon. Comte was so excited about the popularity of his doctrine in Lyon that he quoted Lefort in his letters. Comte to Laffitte, September 7, 1852, CG, 6:356. Prefect of the Rhˆone (Baron Louis Charles Marie de Vincent) to the Special Superintendant [of the Political Police] M. Bergeret, October 25, 1852, in Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I53, Dossier N◦ 2143, entitled “Lucas.” Bergeret to the Prefect of the Rhˆone, November 4, 1852, Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I53, Dossier N. 2143, entitled “Lucas.” Lucas to Comte, November 8, 1852, January 28, 1853, MAC; Comte to Deullin, September 5, 1852, CG, 6:353. By the end of the year, after having witnessed the conversion of many Lyonnais communists, Comte decided that the communists whom he really feared were not those of the cities, who were motivated by generosity, but those in the countryside, who were led by local teachers in a campaign to take over property. As usual, Comte insisted that the people in the countryside should be led by inhabitants of the cities. Lefort to Comte, January 20, 1854, MAC; Edger to Comte, November 2, 1854, MAC; Comte to Henry Edger, November 24, CG, 7:275.

28

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

Comte pressed him for details regarding his following. Lucas asserted that there were a hundred workers in the Croix Rousse who were leaning toward positivism. There were another hundred more educated people in Lyon who seemed enthusiastic about the doctrine, especially after reading Littr´e’s long reviews of Comte’s books. These men included doctors, industrialists, and draughtsmen (dessinateurs). A surgeon who headed the principal hospital of Lyon was the leader of the Fourierists, and Lucas hoped to convert him to positivism. Intending to speak at one of their meetings, Lucas was certain the whole sect would then come over to Comte’s side.85 Yet the police were watching him. Though he suspended his lectures, he was arrested at least twice again, in December 1853 and September 1854. The police referred to him as “the head of the positivists.”86 Persecuted by the new regime, Lucas did not care for Louis Napoleon. Like many republicans, liberals, and intellectuals, who hated Louis Napoleon, most of Comte’s disciples voiced their disapproval of the regime. Many thought Comte was misinformed about Louis Napoleon’s intentions.87 Auguste Hadery, for example, blamed the regime for terrorizing the local population into voting in favor of revising the constitution in the plebiscite that occurred in late 1851. To him, the “brutal,” demagogic state was a parody of an empire.88 Yet Comte stood firm in insisting that the republic was not dead; it had simply entered a new dictatorial phase. He maintained his distance from the other leftists in hopes that he would not be tainted by their “shameful defeat.”89 But fears of arrest and Comte’s stance in favor of Louis Napoleon led five members of the Positivist Society to resign. He dismissed them as “incurable revolutionaries,” who blindly promoted “parliamentary anarchy.” Their departure constituted a “spontaneous purge” that Comte believed benefited the organization because there was greater fraternity among the remaining members, who did not question him.90 Apparently there were some “women of the elite” who encouraged the development of closer ties among the remaining members of the Society, but their names remain a mystery.91 85 86

87 88 89 90 91

Lefort to Comte, March 26, 1853, MAC. The surgeon might have been Desgranges, who was treating Laurent. Police Register, n.d., Archives Municipales de Lyon, 0002I063, item #592. Under Lucas are the dates December 20, 1853 to January 9, 1854 and September 16, 1854. See also Lucas’s complaints about police surveillance, October 24, 1853, MAC. Comte, “Septi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 28, 1852, CG, 6:283. See also Barjot et al., La France, 415. Hadery to Comte, January 16, 1852, MAC. Comte, “Septi`eme Confession Annuelle,” May 28, 1852, CG, 6:283. Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:225–6. See also Comte to Audiffrent, September 21, 1852, CG, 6:392; Comte to Papot, January 9, 1854, CG, 7:270. Comte to Hadery, January 17, 1854, CG, 7:172.

The Aftermath of the Seizure of Power

29

Although he was pleased that the Positivist Society now was imbued with a proper spirit of veneration and although he boasted that he would launch further purges if necessary, Comte was disappointed that there were only forty-three disciples in January 1852, a month after the take-over. Another member dropped out by September. Dr. Arnault Costallat resigned in December 1852 after complaining that he could not support Comte’s ideas of eternal widowhood and the rule that “man must nourish woman.”92 Dr. Charles Robin was another positivist who left. The defection of such a close, important disciple frustrated Comte. Robin was, after all, a source of inspiration for others. One of Robin’s friends, F. Verdeil, who was an organic chemist, began to take a great interest in positivism. Robin even helped Comte when he had health problems.93 Comte wrote to Laffitte in 1849 after having consulted him, “He is assuredly one of the men who understands most profoundly . . . the fundamental principle of the new religion regarding the voluntary subordination of the mind toward the heart. He . . . appreciated the intellectual efficacity of this . . . discipline.”94 In the first volume of the Syst`eme, which had come out in July 1851, Comte had numbered him among the elite biologists of the day.95 Now he erased his works from the second edition of the Positivist Library.96 The circumstances of Robin’s departure are not clear. Although Robin’s biographer Victor Genty stated that Comte’s religion repelled him, the contrary seems true.97 In October 1851, Robin still referred to his “attachment” to Comte and helped an American devotee find a way to give the Positivist Subsidy three hundred francs.98 In the last letter that we have of his, dated January 6, 1852, Robin could not contain his feelings of gratitude for all that Comte had taught him. “Since I left my mother, only positivism has had a moral and intellectual influence on me.” He proclaimed himself Comte’s “devoted student.”99 Yet something was amiss. Some scholars suggest that Robin opposed the new government and thus found Comte’s politics 92

93

94 96 97 98 99

Costallat to Comte, December 20, 1852, MAC. He did, however, remain loyal to the “general bases of Positivism.” See also Comte to Audiffrent, March 4, 1852, CG, 6:254; Comte, “Cinqui`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 22, 1854, CG, 7:183; Comte to C´elestin de Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:209. Comte to Antoine Etex, September (?), 1852. Comte said that Etex was the forty-third member of the Positivist Society. George Henry Lewes refers to Verdeil as a disciple. See George Henry Lewes, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences: Being an Exposition of the Principles of the “Cours de philosophie positive” of Auguste Comte (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), v. Comte to Laffitte, September 4, 1849, CG, 5:66. 95 Syst`eme, 1:666. Comte to Deullin, September 17, 1853, CG, 7:122. Victor Genty, Un Grand Biologiste: Charles Robin (1821–1885), sa vie, ses amiti´es philosophiques et litt´eraires (Lyon: A. Rey, 1931), 95. Robin to Comte, October 13, 1851, and October 28, 1851, MAC. Robin to Comte, January 6, 1852, MAC.

30

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

intolerable. Indeed, after receiving a letter from Laurent, Robin informed Comte in mid-December 1851, “The terror is the same in Lyon as it is in Paris, for I never go into a house without finding people in mourning because either some relatives have been arrested or they fear that what has happened to those close to them will be done to them.”100 Perhaps Comte’s refusal to challenge the new regime eventually alienated Robin just as it was a factor in the estrangement of Littr´e. The two disciples were indeed friends and colleagues. In Comte’s opinion, Robin defected because of the degenerate academic milieu in which he found himself and his personal ambition. Comte accused Robin of having “seduced” him and used positivism to enhance his own reputation.101 It may be that because Comte’s support for Louis Napoleon was controversial at best and because his doctrine was often ridiculed, Robin now found his association with him to be detrimental to his career. While finishing a book on microscopes in 1849, Robin had quoted extensively from several pages of the Cours that referred to the different sections of biology. His publisher refused to print the book unless Robin took out the pages referring to such a discredited author. Robin finally consented.102 But he evidently did not do enough to cut his ties with Comte. In 1889, J. Renaut wrote Trait´e d’Histologie pratique, where he mocked Robin, calling him a simple-minded positivist who acknowledged “as positive only facts that he believed he alone had determined.”103 Yet Robin seemed proud to be a devoted positivist. He continued to give money to Comte until he died.104 Robin declared openly that he was a positivist when he was being considered in the 1860s for admittance into the Academy of Sciences; he contributed frequently to the Philosophie positive, the journal established by Littr´e and Gr´egoire Nicolae Cevitch Wyrouboff in 1867;105 and in 1871 he launched with Littr´e the Soci´et´e de Sociologie, which promoted the 100 101 102 103 104

105

Robin to Comte, December 17, 1851, MAC. See also Rey, Littr´e, 96, 103. Comte to Deullin, September 17, 1853, CG, 7:122. See also Comte to Edger, March 12, 1855, CG, 8:36. Georges Pouchet, Charles Robin: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: F´elix Alcan, 1887), vi. J. Renaut, Trait´e d’Histologie pratique (Paris, 1889), x, quoted in Genty, Robin, 2n3. See November 8, 1855 in notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, 1854, 1855, 1856,” MAC, and March 15, 1857, in notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, 1857,” MAC. Robin gave Comte fifty francs. Born in Moscow in 1843, Wyrouboff was initiated into positivism by his French teacher, Louis Edmond Pommier, who taught at the Lyc´ee Tsarskoe Selo beginning in 1859. Wyrouboff earned a medical degree and a doctorate in physical sciences and came to Paris in 1864. He became an ardent positivist and introduced himself to Massin, who then presented him to Littr´e. He helped Littr´e write a work against John Stuart Mill after the latter wrote a devastating critique of Comte. This work was Auguste Comte et Stuart Mill, published in 1867. Massin then urged Littr´e and Wyrouboff to found the journal Philosophie positive. Annie Petit, “L’H´eritage du positivisme dans la cr´eation de la chaire d’histoire g´en´erale des sciences au Coll`ege de France,” Revue d’histoire des sciences

The Aftermath of the Seizure of Power

31

application of the positive method to social questions. After Littr´e’s death, Robin coedited the Philosophie positive with Wyrouboff for two years until it finally ceased publication in 1883. A lifelong advocate of Comte’s scientific ideas, he was certainly supported by the positivist milieu. Caroline Massin, who was adept at academic politics, helped his career, welcoming him into the circle that she and Littr´e maintained.106 She prevailed upon Pierre Franc¸ois Olivier Rayer, who was Napoleon III’s doctor and a former professor of Littr´e, to arrange for a chair in anatomy to be created at the Ecole de M´edecine.107 Littr´e supported the endeavor with a letter to the minister of public instruction. In 1862, Robin was finally appointed the first professor of histology. Massin later persuaded Robin to apply to the Academy of Sciences.108 The close relationship between Massin and Robin may have alienated Comte. Indeed, Robin was supportive of Littr´e’s advocacy of Caroline Massin whenever Comte sought to lower his payments to her.109 With Robin gone and the number of adherents rapidly dwindling, Comte found it impossible to take action, though the time seemed to him ripe for advancing his cause. He took out his frustration on his remaining adherents, whom he accused of tepidness; his special Sunday meetings with close disciples had “long ceased to exist” because hardly anyone attended.110 By May 1852, there were only nine people at the regular Wednesday meetings of the Positivist Society. Whereas there had been six new members in 1849, seven in 1850, and five in 1851, there were only two in 1852.111 Laffitte, who often offended Comte by not attending meetings, thought the association should

106

107 108 109 111

48 (1995): 548–9; Genty, Robin, 98; James H. Billington, “The Intelligentsia and the Religion of Humanity,” American Historical Review 65 ( July 1960): 813n17. Genty, Robin, 45, 51, 74. Pouchet, Robin, vi, clvi. In the MAC, there are two letters from Massin to Robin that were written after Comte’s death. In one letter of April 14, 1876, she begged him to visit as he used to and reminded him for some mysterious reason that she had never been religious. In another undated letter, she demonstrated her enthusiasm about Littr´e’s intention to write a biography of Comte, which would show “that the man was not always bad,” an opinion that she assumed Robin shared. She urged Robin to drop certain names from a letter about Comte that was to be inserted into the appendix because she did not want to bring up her husband’s association with these individuals. She did not say who these people were. See letters from Madame Auguste Comte to Charles Robin, April 14, 1876 and no date, MAC. Rayer gave one hundred francs to the Positivist Subsidy in 1852. See packet, “Positivist Subsidy,” MAC. Genty, Robin, 35–8; Jean Hamburger, Monsieur Littr´e (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), 43; Pouchet, Robin, vi. Genty, Robin, 95. 110 Comte to Jacquemin, January 9, 1852, CG, 6:219. See “Liste Chronologique,” CG, 4:307–8. In 1849, three of the new members were workers: Auguste Magnin (the brother of Fabien Magnin), Xavier Imbert (an artisan), and Oppert (a mechanic). The other new members included Bligni`eres and LouisEdmond Pommier as well as H. Lef e` vre, a young man from Strasbourg. In 1850, the

32

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dissolve because it lacked fraternity.112 Comte began to consider his suggestion seriously but then decided that he would never disband the organization. Often he read aloud enthusiastic letters written to him at the meetings in order to inspire more zeal from the members.113 In the meantime, he increasingly pinned his hopes on the Lyonnais proletariat. Assuring him that Lucas planned to convert all the workers in the Croix-Rousse, who were avid for convictions, unlike the disrespectful Parisian workers, Georges Audiffrent wrote, “I believe, my dear master, that it [Lyon] is the true foyer of positivism. It is there that you must take your word.”114 Fourteen to fifteen hundred people in the Croix-Rousse had heard of positivism and were ripe for conversion.115 After hearing of the defection of many Parisian positivists, Audiffrent went so far as to warn Comte, “Lucas is surrounded by far more veneration in his Lyonnais milieu than you.” There seemed to be “more heart” among “the former communists of the Croix-Rouge . . . than among the . . . positivists of Paris.”116 Yet it turns out that Lucas was misleading Audiffrent and Comte. In November, 1852, Laurent reported to Comte that Lucas’s estimation that there were fourteen hundred positivists in Lyon was a gross exaggeration. Lucas came up with this number because he had twenty democratic leaders on the positivist side and assumed they controlled that many people. Laurent argued to the contrary that most of these former violent revolutionaries were still very much attached to their old dogma of equality. It was hard to gauge their real adhesion to positivism because most of them could not understand Comte’s works, their fear of the police prevented them from

112 113 114 115 116

new members included three more workers: Lablanche (a woodworker), AlexandreLaurent Pi´eton (jewelry maker), and Egret. The last in particular was pleased that Comte showed a way out of the political crisis that engulfed France. Lablanche was one of the intermediaries between Comte and the revolutionary Armand Barb`es and was enthusiastic about Comte’s religion, despite the fact that he had to avoid showing his allegiance to positivism around his wife, who hated it. Pi´eton’s wife, however, was present at many positivist ceremonies. See Egret to Comte, May 5, 1851, MAC; Lablanche to Comte, November 18, 1852; December 3, 1854; April 14, 1856, MAC; H. Lef e` vre to Comte, July 9, 1850, MAC; Comte, register entitled “Mariages positivistes,” MAC. The other new members in 1850 were Auguste de Lanneau (a merchant), Hadery, A. Papot, and Joseph Lonchampt. In 1851, the new members were one worker (Amed´ee Hanneton, who was a friend of Imbert’s) and four doctors (Antoine Edouard Foley, Jean-Franc¸oisEug`ene Robinet, Jean S´eraphin Bazalgette, and Audiffrent). The new members in 1852 were Dr. Ren´e Cousin and Lefort. See also Larizza, Bandiera verde, 409–10, 443; Madame Hanneton to Comte, October 15, 1855, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1852, CG, 6:269. Comte to Papot, January 10, 1856, CG, 8:183. Audiffrent to Comte, February 6, 1852, MAC. See also Audiffrent to Laffitte, February 17, 1852, MAC. Audiffrent to Comte, February 22, 1852, MAC. Audiffrent to Comte, May 13, 1852, MAC.

Littr´e’s Defection

33

gathering to talk about his ideas, and they failed to give to the Positivist Subsidy. He concluded that in reality there were at most 150 real positivists in Lyon. Disillusioned, Comte sadly noted that Laurent was “the only true Lyonnais positivist.”117 Laurent was so discouraged that he moved to Marseille to try to convert workers there. Yet he found proselytizing in that environment difficult because outsiders were regarded with suspicion and he did not speak the local dialect. He gradually lost his enthusiasm. He became more involved in his work, found innumerable pleasures, and did not feel the misery that he did in Lyon – the misery that led him to positivism in the first place. As he no longer formed part of a positivist coterie, there was less incentive to keep up with Comte. They did not correspond for five years.118 littr e´ ’s de fection As recently as 1849, Comte called his main collaborator on the left the “principal positivist apostle.”119 One of his happiest experiences since the death of Clotilde de Vaux was dining with four other positivists of different classes, national backgrounds, and interests at Littr´e’s country house near Paris in September 1849. He was grateful to Littr´e for organizing such an evening, which brought together “proletarians” and “philosophers.”120 One of the positivist proletarians was Nicolas Belpaume, who had rescued Littr´e from a violent crowd during the June Days of 1848.121 Littr´e befriended him and a number of other positivists, including Robin, Peyronnet, Pommier, and Leblais, all of whom were at one time or another his collaborators in various projects.122 Each New Year Littr´e led a group of positivists to wish Comte well, a treat that meant a great deal to him. Comte frequently 117 118 119 120 121

122

Comte to Audiffrent, September 18, 1856, CG, 8:304. See also Laurent to Comte, June 7, September 7, November 2, 1852, MAC. Laurent to Comte, November 2, 1852, February 14, 1856, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:89. See also Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, CG, 7:19. Comte, “Cinqui`eme Confession annuelle,” May 27, 1850, CG, 5:155. See also Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:87. Born in 1814, Belpaume was an ardent positivist. He urged Comte to launch the Revue Occidentale and to put up posters in offices of various workers’ associations with which he was connected. Belpaume seemed especially close to workers in the shoe industry. See Belpaume to Comte, May 27 and November 1, 1850; January 21 and March 28, 1851, MAC. See also Alain Rey, Littr´e: L’Humaniste et les mots (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 91; Mirella Larizza, Bandiera verde contro bandiera rossa: Auguste Comte e gli inizi della Soci´et´e positiviste (1848–1852) (Bologna: II Mulino, 1999), 130n41. The other positivists at the dinner were Capellen, Jos´e Segundo Fl´orez, and Magnin. Rey, Littr´e, 109.

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praised Littr´e’s “beautiful soul,” which he found worthy of his “rare talent.”123 Comte often sought his sanction for different aspects of his system and cited his approval to others for added legitimacy.124 Littr´e, an arch-republican and erudite man with a scientific background, should have been a perfect positivist collaborator. Indeed, in 1850, Massin told Comte that “Mr. Littr´e now cannot write four lines without their having the positivist cachet.”125 But tensions between him and Comte had been building up for a long time, especially regarding intellectual matters. Although generally enthusiastic about the scientific program of the Cours, Littr´e did not agree with Comte’s condemnation of sidereal astronomy or his Tableau C´er´ebral. He found Franz Gall’s theories to be “ruinous,” and he believed more attention should be paid to political economy. In addition, he was somewhat unsure of the Religion of Humanity. Yet Comte boasted that Littr´e had overcome his misgivings and was “installed at the fully religious point of view” right after it was instituted. Indeed, after Comte’s death, Littr´e wrote that he did support the worship of Humanity from the very beginning and commended him for having established it. Love for Humanity was “noble.” However, there were signs that his adherence was incomplete and diminishing. He disapproved of Comte’s notion of eternal widowhood and feared that the rites, protocols, and clergy of the new church might go too far.126 After assuming the role of the first positivist godfather in the baptism of Andr´e-Auguste and P´elagie Francelles’ baby, which in itself indicates at least some allegiance to the Religion of Humanity, Littr´e wrote to Comte in December 1850, I agree with you that societies need an ideal, and that this ideal can henceforth only be humanity; from there, there is a whole complex of ideas and institutions that you have tried to systematize. In this complex, I understand . . . that marriage and birth can be consecrated by our little community in the name of the new ideal. As for the rest, my judgment is completely suspended.127

He recommended that councils decide on important questions, as in the early days of Christianity. But Comte was too authoritarian to accept that suggestion. 123 124 125 126

127

Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849 and October 2, 1849, CG, 5:87. See for example, Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:94. Massin to Comte, April 1, 1850, CG, 5:255. Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1851, CG, 6:69; Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, CG, 7:17; Hamburger, Monsieur Littr´e, 120, 232, 254; Emile Littr´e, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive (2d ed. Paris, 1864), 524, 675. Littr´e to Comte, December 3, 1850, MAC.

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35

In addition, Comte’s political ideas were wanting. In 1851, when Comte read aloud from the first volume of the Syst`eme, Littr´e felt disappointed. I listened with avid attention. . . . I expected something as new and enlightening for politics as positive philosophy had been for me ten years before. . . . Nothing from all that happened to me from this reading; after having heard it, I remained cold; no light went on in my mind; words touched my ear, but the evidence [for them] did not follow them.

Littr´e was dismayed by the subjective method that infused the Syst`eme. This method seemed metaphysical, sanctioning the wanderings of the imagination without worrying about verification.128 Comte used it to prove the weakness of representative government, but Littr´e did not think that he had succeeded. Littr´e was also annoyed because he favored this kind of government.129 More to the left than Comte, Littr´e did not endorse his plan to allow only Parisians to vote for the three governors of the positivist state.130 In addition, he rejected Comte’s idea of allowing wealthy industrialists to accumulate more capital and his notion of inheritance.131 From time to time, Comte complained about Littr´e’s “negative,” “Voltairian,” and “revolutionary prejudices.”132 Nevertheless, the two men seemed to work out a political modus vivendi; Comte offered and Littr´e accepted the post of triumvir in the future positivist state.133 Yet other disagreements relating to strategy soon emerged. In 1851, Comte wanted to announce that Littr´e and Magnin would be the heads of the future positivist government. Both men were upset. Magnin begged Comte not to publicize his decision, for he believed he lacked the credentials and experience to be a “member of the revolutionary government,” a position that was beyond his abilities.134 Littr´e upbraided Comte for being too optimistic about the coming of positivism.135 Its influence, I judge to be already real; I follow it attentively. But it seems to me that it still extends far too little and is not sufficiently systematized . . . I see many positivist bits already floating in the social milieu; some take one, while some take another, but the public has 128 130 131 132

133 134 135

Littr´e, Comte, 527–8, 534. 129 Littr´e to Comte, August 5, 1848, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, October 18, 1849, CG, 5:99. Hadery to Magnin, February 23, 1865, MAC; Littr´e to Comte, October 17, 1850, MAC. Comte, “Cinqui`eme Confession annuelle,” May 27, 1850, CG, 5:155; Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1851, CG, 6:68. Another area of disagreement was Algeria. Littr´e favored the French takeover. Laffitte to Allou, February 11, 1870, MAC. Magnin to Comte, October 5, 1851, MAC. Littr´e to Comte, October 17, 1850, MAC.

36

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences not yet taken anything systematic. As long as it remains this way, it is necessary that we limit ourselves to our role as teachers and propagators. To go beyond that would be an illusion. This seems evident for the philosophical foundation; but, even for the politics of transition, the elaboration that must prepare people’s minds is far from being accomplished . . . The present crisis is not ours . . . Our role cannot be yet active. I know you have a different idea and that in your opinion the coming of positivism is nearer.

Insisting that they must wait and perhaps secretly wishing not to appear foolish, Littr´e preferred to maintain his present role, that of being a “firm adherent of the positivist philosophy and a propagator.”136 Not to be overlooked as a cause of tension in their relationship was the clash of personalities. Littr´e tended to be more reserved and self-controlled than Comte, who had trouble relating to such a distant figure. For example, Comte could not determine if Littr´e understood the “profound sentimentality” of the Discours of 1848 or de Vaux’s effect on him.137 It seemed to him that Littr´e had a tendency to take always “the mind for the heart.”138 He only liked to stress certain aspects of positivism, especially the primacy given to intellectual reform and the role of the sciences in education. In a way, Littr´e was too much of a pedant for Comte, who found dealing with him frustrating.139 Comte complained to Laffitte, “His profoundly conscientious nature and the spontaneous rectitude of his intelligence lead him almost always to my systematic opinion; but this occurs only a long time after . . . a close examination.”140 Even one of Littr´e’s leading biographers depicted him as indecisive, skeptical, and fearful of taking on responsibilities.141 Always very prudent, Littr´e endeavored to persuade Comte to abide by social conventions – something Comte hated to do. When Comte applied for the chair of analysis at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1851, Littr´e urged him to seek help from important people: “Without making the career of a solicitor a habit, I think that it would also be good if you visited several people upon whom the thing depends. It is a mark of a certain deference that men rarely overlook.”142 He knew, of course, that Comte hated deferring to others. Comte may have also been jealous of the way Littr´e grabbed the spotlight. Once Comte publicly reprimanded Littr´e for using sociological laws of history to predict future political changes. Comte 136 137 138 140 142

Littr´e to Comte, August 25, 1851, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:87. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, 209. 139 Rey, Littr´e, 95, 242. Comte to Laffitte, October 2, 1849, CG, 5:93. 141 Rey, Littr´e, 89. Littr´e to Comte, February 7, 1851, MAC.

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37

maintained that because the laws were not yet proven, Littr´e was acting in a rash, unscientific manner that risked discrediting positivism. One witness found the lesson “harsh” and “harshly given.”143 The circumstances of this debate might be related to the eleven articles on the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme (called “Application de la philosophie positive au gouvernement des soci´et´es et en particulier a` la crise actuelle”) that Littr´e wrote for Le National between July and October 1849 or his twenty articles appearing in Le National from June 1850 to October 1851, which were entitled “Des Progr`es du socialisme.” In this last series of articles, written in his habitual clear prose, Littr´e hailed Comte’s notion of Humanity as the “last word of socialism” because Humanity’s advance throughout the ages helped abolish war, developed industry, inspired art, revived science, and purified morality.144 Commending Littr´e’s opuscules as helpful, Lucas at one point in late November 1851 begged Comte to write a short brochure to propagate positivism as well.145 Though pleased to have an effective agent spreading his ideas, Comte was wary of Littr´e’s growing popularity and authority. Much of this personal tension was expressed through the figure of Caroline Massin, whose well-being had depended on Littr´e since 1847, when he began giving her her allowance. Since 1848, Littr´e had also regulated the Positivist Subsidy. He had written circulars to potential contributors on November 12, 1848 and January 5, 1851, explaining the necessity of encouraging and sustaining Comte’s works; they did much to eliminate anarchy by “replacing theological faith with scientific faith, which alone is capable today of bringing minds together.146 Such pleas for support were vital to maintaining not only Comte but Massin. Littr´e repeatedly urged Comte to pay her on time and to act responsibly about money. When Comte tried to give him the first volume of the Syst`eme as a gift, Littr´e refused and insisted that everyone who had enough money should pay for it to defray expenses.147 Littr´e’s insistence on penny-pinching annoyed Comte. He also knew that Littr´e believed he was too severe in his judgment of Massin.148 As mentioned previously, they had quarreled 143 144 145

146 147 148

E. Delbet, Cinquanti`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte (Paris: La Soci´et´e Positiviste Internationale, 1907), 18. Emile Littr´e, Conservation, r´evolution et positivisme (Paris, 1852), 328. This book contains many of Littr´e’s articles. Lucas to Comte, November 19, 1851, MAC. Lefort informed Comte that Littr´e’s work was so well regarded that seventy copies of one of his books were sold in three months from April to July, 1852. Lefort to Comte, July 30, 1852, MAC. Littr´e, circular, January 5, 1851, in Robinet, Littr´e, 11. Robinet included copies of both circulars, pp. 9–11. Littr´e to Comte, June 27, 1851, MAC. Comte to Peyronnet, April 17, 1851, CG, 6:55.

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over her in the spring 1851, after Littr´e criticized Comte’s denunciation of Massin during a meeting of the Positivist Society. Yet Comte claimed not to hold a grudge against Littr´e because of it. He told a young disciple that he was pleased that the “embarrassing reserve” that marred his relationship with Littr´e had dissipated and that their quarrel had brought them closer together.149 The tensions between Comte and Littr´e came to the fore in late 1851. The day after Louis Napoleon’s takeover on December 2, 1851, there was a meeting of the Positivist Society, where Comte announced his support for him. He and Littr´e had a violent political quarrel. Comte thought the republic was safe. Littr´e insisted it was dead.150 Ugly words were exchanged. Littr´e was particularly angry to learn that thanks to Vieillard, the Positivist Society would be “under the patronage” of the Emperor. Finding the situation “intolerable,” Littr´e walked out and resigned immediately from the club.151 According to the English disciple John Fisher, Littr´e sadly “carried off the greater part of the . . . adherents” to positivism when he left.152 Many agreed with him that Louis Napoleon would create an empire, something Comte vehemently denied.153 Littr´e also temporarily took out of circulation his newly printed book, Conservation, r´evolution, et positivisme. It included articles on Comte and on the progress of socialism that he had contributed to the National since 1844. Some directly attacked the government by alluding to the “decadence of Bonapartism” and the absurdity of Louis Napoleon.154 Littr´e’s friends and family feared he might be fined, imprisoned, or sent into exile for being a subversive. Respecting their wishes and needing to be prudent, he did not allow the book to go on sale.155 He did not want 149 151 152 153 154

155

Comte to Bligni`eres, May 12, 1851, CG, 6:83. 150 Deroisin, Comte, 10–11. Littr´e to Audiffrent, December 9, 1852, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 470, Biblioth`eque Nationale [hereafter BN]. Fisher to Edger, August 17,1856, MAC. Laffitte to Audiffrent, October 21, 1852, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 285, BN. Littr´e, Conservation, 208. The printing of the book was paid for by Besnard, “a positivist zealot,” who was mayor of Villers-Cotterets. Ibid., v, note 1. It was greeted warmly by the reviewer for the Westminster Review, who said that “no serious thinker” should be without it because it illuminated the thought of “the greatest of modern thinkers, Auguste Comte.” [Anonymous], “Contemporary Literature of France,” Westminster Review, n.s., 2 ( July 1852): 306. Littr´e to Audiffrent, December 9, 1852, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 470, BN; Claude Nicolet, “Littr´e et la r´epublique,” in Actes du Colloque Littr´e: Paris, 7–9 octobre 1981 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 470n17; Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, and July 6, 1852, CG, 6:272, 313; Hamburger, Monsieur Littr´e, 128; Pierre Laffitte, speech, April 6, 1884, commemoration of Magnin, in “N´ecrologie,” RO 12 (May 1884): 402; Rey, Littr´e, 98. Already experiencing severe financial problems and having experienced trouble from the authorities for his criticism of Bonapartism, Littr´e did not wish to jeopardize his family’s material wellbeing. Once it became clear the authorities were not concerned about his work, Littr´e put the book back into circulation in June 1852. The official publication date is 1852.

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39

Comte to be apprised of his action, but Laffitte and Audiffrent knew. The latter tried to talk him out of his decision, by insisting that he was the primary person in charge of popularizing Comte’s doctrine and had a duty to society to make his book available.156 It was even printed with a cover in the positivists’ color, green, which reinforced hope and renewal.157 Comte found out about Littr´e’s actions. He accused him of resigning chiefly out of fear of getting arrested and denounced his “prudence,” “cowardice,” and “radical lack of energy and sangfroid.”158 Matters only became worse as Littr´e became increasingly infuriated at Comte for reacting favorably to the coup d’´etat.159 In March 1852, Littr´e told Comte, “My judgment of the new regime remains completely opposed to yours. I remain a partisan of liberty against despotism; I prefer the constitutional and pacific regime to the military and bloody regime of Bonaparte; and I consider the coming of the imperial regime the most fatal solution that could occur.”160 A dictatorship was not reconcilable with free speech, as Comte maintained. He warned Comte that he might no longer agree to be a triumvir and urged him to look for another leader, possibly in England. Comte was incensed.161 Littr´e had other motives for resigning, which became clearer to Comte. A secular individual who prided himself on his rationalism, he did not approve of Comte’s decision to emphasize henceforth the clerical, religious, and affective side of positivism.162 According to Comte, Littr´e did not feel comfortable with this switch in direction because he did not have sufficient experience of a “woman’s saintly influence,” which was the “sole source of a lively growth of the religious sentiment.”163 Considering Littr´e’s adhesion to his religion to be “sterile” and deceptive, Comte interpreted his resignation as a sign of a lacuna in his personal development, which made him an extremely cold, overly intellectual person. Comte considered him not only the “champion” of Massin but the representative of the “academic and revolutionary” opponents of his religion.164 Comte, 156 157

158 159 160 161 162 164

Audiffrent to Comte, May 13, 1852, MAC. Annie Petit, “Comte et Littr´e: Les D´ebats autour de la sociologie positiviste,” Communications, no. 54 (1992): 24. Nicolet refers to it as “the famous ‘little green book.’” It influenced many people in the Third Republic. Nicolet, “Littr´e et la r´epublique,” 470. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:209; Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1852, CG, 6:272. Lefort to Comte, January 13, 1852, MAC. Littr´e to Comte, March 29, 1852, MAC. Littr´e, Comte, 602; Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, CG, 7:18. Rey, Littr´e, 95. 163 Comte to Hadery, January 29, 1852, CG, 6:226. Auguste Comte, Testament d’Auguste Comte avec les documents qui s’y rapportent: Pi`eces justificatives, pri`eres quotidiennes, confessions annuelles, correspondance avec Mme de Vaux, 2d ed. (Paris, 1896), 30.

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in effect, lumped him with Robin, whose defection might in fact have inspired Littr´e’s own departure. At first, Comte’s disciples were hopeful that the break was not complete because they knew that Littr´e was the most important member of the movement, besides the master himself. And they worried that Comte’s enemies would present the defection as a sign that the movement was falling apart.165 George Henry Lewes summed up their feelings when he wrote to Comte in August 1852: “I grieve to hear of the rupture between you & M. Littr´e – the more so as his aid in popularizing Positivism was valuable.”166 Lefort even wrote to Littr´e for the first time to beg for a reconciliation.167 Even Comte at first was moderate in his remarks. He told his former student C´elestin de Bligni`eres in January 1852 that Littr´e “is henceforth classified definitively for me as a very honest man and an eminent writer who will continue to be very useful to our propaganda” but could no longer be considered a triumvir.168 By May, however, Comte deplored Littr´e’s “desertion,” condemning the writer for lacking “any cerebral superiority” and “even true dignity.” He was hopeful that despite the “fall” of his “principal popularizer,” the “positivist schism” would not grow more significant.169 The “schism” refers to the fact that Peyronnet and Leblais, who worked with Littr´e on the Dictionnaire de la langue franc¸aise, as well as Robin and Belpaume had already also left the movement.170 Belpaume in particular had agreed with Littr´e’s dissident political stance and did not care for Comte’s religious direction. In addition, Dr. Charles S´edillot left for unknown reasons between 1851 and 1852; perhaps he felt sympathetic to Littr´e, with whom he was in contact.171 A few months later Littr´e figured out that Comte would have only six thousand francs to live on in 1852, instead of the seven thousand they had hoped for.172 The Positivist Subsidy would not be able to make up the difference despite the fact that Lewes offered to make 165 166 167 168 169 170

171 172

Lefort to Comte, January 13, 1852, MAC. Lewes to Comte, August 18, 1852, MAC. Lefort to Comte, January 13, 1852, MAC. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:209. Comte, “Septi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 28, 1852, CG, 6:283–4. [Jean-Franc¸ois Eug`ene] Robinet, Notice sur l’oeuvre et la vie d’Auguste Comte, 3d ed. (Paris, 1891), 239. Pommier also contributed to Littr´e’s dictionary and stopped contributing to the Positivist Society in 1853. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 196n309. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 131, 161. The two men in the 1870s created the word “microbe.” Five thousand francs would come from the Positivist Subsidy and one thousand from money the Ecole Polytechnique owed Comte. Eventually, Comte received 5,600 francs for the year 1852, which was 1,400 francs more than what he had obtained in 1851. There were at least seventy subscribers, who gave from five to five hundred francs. The average donation was eighty francs. See Comte’s “R´esum´e des souscriptions pour le subside sacerdotal en 1852,” Comte, “Quatri`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 31, 1853, CG, 7:35; Littr´e to Deullin, June 14, 1852, MAC.

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41

a public appeal in his weekly journal, The Leader, and started a fund for Comte in England. Yet one possible reason for the diminished funding was that in January 1852, the printer had refused to put out the flier advertising the Subsidy because of fears of getting into trouble with the authorities.173 There were censorship problems also in Spain and Italy. Littr´e chided Comte a bit. If Comte now wished to rely on the conservative party, he would have to face the fact that this party’s newspapers and other periodicals were closed to positivist propaganda. Littr´e wrote, “Until some accredited conservative does for the conservative party what I and others have done in the heart of the revolutionary party, there may be only a very slow development of propaganda.”174 Without propaganda, the number of subscribers to the subsidy would be limited. Another problem, in Littr´e’s eyes, was Comte’s brusque approach to subscribers even in thanking them for their support. Littr´e wrote, Your last circular of thanks has been the object of observations, both verbal and written, coming from diverse sides and especially from Holland. These observations can be summed up in this way: your circular seems to many people to be too exclusive and not sufficiently general. Let me explain: it goes only to people conceiving positivism exactly as you do and excludes those who are interested in it, although they have very different reservations.175

Littr´e begged Comte to be more flexible with regard to those individuals who did not accept the religious aspects of positivism. Perhaps Littr´e also did not approve of the sharp language Comte used to castigate his enemies. In the flier of January 5, 1852, Comte condemned the “vile passions” of theoricians who persecuted him and the “stupidity” of his enemies.176 Disregarding Littr´e’s hints on how to behave to attract more contributors, Comte concluded that the shortfall in his income was “suspicious.” He was furious because he had lost his last job and needed even more money than usual. Fearing to lose his precious apartment, Comte announced that he would simply decrease his payments to his wife. On August 8, 1852, Littr´e wrote an angry letter, which Comte took as a “declaration of war” inspired by the “satanic” Massin.177 In this letter, Littr´e argued for three pages that Comte was not authorized to reduce her allowance further. Massin was ill with back pain and gout, which made it impossible for her to work. She needed medicine and constant care from an attendant. If Comte cut her allowance, she would be ruined. Such a disaster was not warranted 173 174 176 177

Littr´e to Comte, January 16, 1852, February 18, 1852, MAC. Littr´e to Comte, March 29, 1852, MAC. 175 Littr´e to Comte, March 29, 1852. Comte, “Troisi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 5, 1852, CG, 6:215. Comte to Capellen, August 17, 1852, CG, 6:332, 334.

42

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

because she had helped him when he went mad and more recently when his course was closed. What particularly exasperated Littr´e (and Massin) was Comte’s evident desire to degrade her so that he would not feel badly about decreasing the allowance. Littr´e asked, “Is it due to the designation of unworthy that you believe you have the right to reduce her pension at your own pleasure?” Massin, understandably, could not accept that reasoning, especially because it made the allowance discretionary and satisfied Comte’s predilection for judging the behavior and character of others. Reminding Comte of his legal obligation to her, Littr´e told him to cut his own personal expenses, which would be an “honorable” sacrifice.178 He wrote, Your tranquility and the continuation of your works depend today entirely on public opinion, which is already so slow to move in favor of positivism and you. Do not alienate it again by sad quarrels. You are alone, and Madame Comte is alone; you are well, and she is sick, not simply infirm. In supposing that your budget for 1852 is only 6,000 francs, with 4,000 francs for you and 2,000 francs for her, are you going to cut back on the 2,000 francs for her to make your part fatter? All this troubles and upsets me.179

Comte’s lack of honor and his selfishness pained Littr´e, who threatened to stop soliciting contributions and campaigning for him.180 Littr´e’s hope that Comte would read the letter with “sangfroid” and without anger fell on deaf ears.181 Comte was infuriated by his “insolence” and “strange panegyric” on Massin.182 He was also surprised by Littr´e’s brief allusion to the rupture of their “political ties” at the end of the letter. Comte knew that there were serious political differences between them but did not think their political bonds had been completely disrupted by the coup d’´etat. Nevertheless, after such a “contemptible attack,” Comte announced their “irrevocable rupture” to the Positivist Society on August 11, 1852 and made sure that no one alluded any longer to their friendship.183 Littr´e was the positivist Judas.184 178 180 182

183

184

Littr´e to Comte, August 8, 1852, MAC. 179 Littr´e to Comte, August 8, 1852, MAC. Littr´e to Comte, July 29, 1852, MAC 181 Littr´e to Comte, August 8, 1852, MAC. Comte to Capellen, August 17, 1852, CG, 6:333. Comte and Laffitte also discussed Littr´e’s surprising support of Massin. Laffitte to Comte, September 3, 1852, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte (Suite),” RO, 2d ser., 37 ( January 1908):43. Comte to Capellen, August 17, 1852, CG, 6:333. Comte wrote a long letter to Lewes and Capellen, asking them to reveal his break with Littr´e so that he could not harm him by pretending to be his friend. Comte read Littr´e’s letter to the Positivist Society on August 20. He did not write any response. See also Comte to Lewes, August 12, 1852, CG, 6:328; Comte to Laffitte, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:343. Frank E. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris: Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Comte (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 267.

Littr´e’s Defection

43

To Comte, their break was ultimately caused by Littr´e’s envy of his position, his inability to venerate him, and his “personal enmity,” not by anything substantial such as their political or doctrinal differences.185 Such differences he found to be of only minor importance, or at least he represented them as minor as a way of preserving himself and those around him from doubt. Indeed, it does seem that Comte was able to overlook these significant differences. Littr´e was willing to do so as well. In 1859, he presented his views on positivism in Paroles de philosophie positive, in which he explained that to be a positivist, as he was, meant accepting that it was not only a philosophy but a multifaceted social doctrine.186 He implied that the different aspects of Comte’s work could not be separated. The only truly objectionable part of his doctrine was his plans for the construction of the “religious and social edifice of the future.” Fiddling with the “work of future generations” was not admissible in Littr´e’s opinion.187 Comte’s toadying to the government of Napoleon III; his denunciation of parliaments, democracy and constitutions; and his calling revolutionaries “pests” were “grave errors” but not the direct cause of a permanent rupture.188 Fisher likewise did not think doctrinal differences were important. He said Littr´e was “for all intents and purposes a Positivist except on two points, those of claiming more for private judgment and not accepting as fully the religion of Humanity.”189 As with John Stuart Mill, the rupture with Littr´e seemed to stem more from problems relating to money and personal disagreements that Comte exaggerated and made into character flaws. As usual, he could not tolerate anyone telling him what to do, especially someone who had a solid reputation and a career filled with honors, which made him jealous and insecure.190 Fisher believed that the main cause of the rupture was personal. He wrote, “The greatest misfortune is that the quarrel arose principally about Madame Comte: and now I must do Mr. Littr´e the justice to say that many of our confr`eres believe he was unjustly treated.”191 Littr´e indeed told Audiffrent in September 1852 that Comte was to blame for the break. Littr´e had refused to let Comte get away with reducing his allowance to Massin by needlessly debasing her and representing her as shameful. In response, Comte 185 186

187 188

189 191

Comte to Capellen, August 17, 1852, CG, 6:335. Littr´e, Paroles, 6. See also the excerpt from this work in Robinet, Littr´e, 15. In this book, Robinet accused Littr´e of eventually abandoning the social part of Comte’s doctrine and attacking the master’s subjective method. Emile Littr´e, Paroles de philosophie positive (Paris, 1859), 57. Littr´e to Audiffrent, December 9, 1852, N.a.fr. 10794, pp. 470–71, BN. Littr´e also explained that he believed England was the center of the West because it had more freedom than France and was not under the direction of an “ambitious man” who was a tool for “war and carnage.” See also Fisher to Edger, August 17,1856, MAC. Fisher to Edger, June 8, 1856, MAC. 190 Rey, Littr´e, 79. Fisher to Edger, June 8, 1856, MAC.

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broke with him.192 Fisher and Count Menno David van LimburgStirum, a Dutch enthusiast, noted that Comte’s break stemmed from what he perceived to be a lack of “discipline” in Littr´e’s behavior and the need to make him an “example” to other “insubordinate” positivists.193 Comte’s hatred of his wife now extended to Littr´e, whom he accused of being too close to her.194 By referring to his intimacy with her as shameful, he suggested that their relationship went beyond what was proper. Indeed, Fisher pointed out that Comte went so far as to call Littr´e in public “the lover of Madame Comte.”195 Fisher did not believe that Littr´e was Massin’s lover yet criticized him for interfering in Comte’s relationship with his wife.196 But given Comte’s conviction that Massin was a wanton woman, it is not surprising that he would jump to such a conclusion. Littr´e was guilty by association with this demon; his interventions in her behalf were further proof of his weakness and poor judgment.197 Telling his disciples to attribute Littr´e’s break to his “intimacy” with Massin, Comte took charge of the Positivist Subsidy in the late summer of 1852 and made arrangements for two positivists to deliver his allowance to his wife on an alternative basis every trimester.198 Stunned, other positivists besides Fisher and Limburg-Stirum tried to fathom the causes of the breakup. Jean-Franc¸ois-Eug`ene Robinet and several disciples accused Littr´e of supporting only a modified version of Comte’s philosophy and rejecting his politics and even his science of morality.199 Thinking the differences were political in nature, Audiffrent hoped the two men would end their quarrel once changes in the government occurred. He and Littr´e corresponded. Denying there was anything political in their break, the latter explained the 192 193 194 195 197 198

199

Littr´e to Audiffrent, September 25, 1852, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 472, BN. Limburg-Stirum to Comte, December 31, 1852, MAC; Fisher to Edger, June 8, 1856, MAC. Comte to Lewes, August 12, 1852, CG, 6:327. Fisher to Edger, August 17,1856, MAC. 196 Fisher to Edger, June 8, 1856, MAC. Rey, Littr´e, 98. Comte to Bligni`eres, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:338. First, Foley and Robinet delivered the pension. The latter was particularly rude, so then Laffitte and Hippolyte Phil´emon Deroisin did it. Comte later decided Deroisin was a deceitful liar and replaced him with Jacquemin, who was almost his neighbor. (He lived at 46, rue Monsieur-le-Prince.) Jacquemin later resigned from the Positivist Society in 1854. Then Foley and Laffitte gave Massin her pension until the former got into trouble. Finally, Laffitte and Lonchampt performed this task. Pierre Laffitte, Inventaire apr`es le d´ec`es de M. Auguste Comte, October 14, 1857, MAC; Laffitte to Madame Comte, December 28, 1852, MAC; Deroisin to Deullin, October 26, 1896, MAC; Comte to Laffitte, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:343; Comte to Laffitte, September 12, 1853, CG, 7:118; Comte to Deullin, June 23, 1853, CG, 7:82; notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, 1854, 1855, 1856,” MAC; Comte to Foley, September 26, 1855, CG, 8:121; “Pension” MAC; Deroisin, Comte, 60. Dr. Robinet, “Le Positivisme et M. Littr´e,” RO 7 ( July 1881): 88–90.

Littr´e’s Defection

45

argument over Massin. He did not wish to hurt Comte, but the philosopher often seemed to have “painful ruptures” with those close to him, despite all their efforts to treat him well. Littr´e still considered himself on his side, not in any opposing camp, and wanted to do all he could to help him indirectly.200 In December 1852, Audiffrent told Laffitte that Littr´e had done so much for the movement and could do so much more that positivists must work to bring about a reconciliation. “His good sentiments, which no one can deny, . . . lead him to wish for a cessation of hostility. I hope that Mr. Comte will be sufficiently generous to control his touchiness and spare all moralizing if he [Littr´e] takes the first step.”201 Although Littr´e, pushed by Massin, said he was eager for a reconciliation, Audiffrent’s efforts to act as an intermediary were in vain; the past could not be forgotten as Littr´e demanded.202 Laffitte told Audiffrent that Comte thought efforts to patch up things were “useless.”203 Nevertheless, in November 1853, Comte informed Audiffrent that he was once again negotiating with Littr´e. Two conditions had to be filled before there could be a reconciliation. Comte explained, “First you know that Mr. Littr´e claimed . . . to treat me as an equal, something I could never acknowledge. Now he has made the suitable submission. Secondly, the rupture resulted especially from his . . . denial that I could reduce the pension of a shameful wife if the state of my subsidy came to demand it.” Laffitte had persuaded Massin to agree to a reduction of her pension from two thousand to twelve hundred francs if need be. Because of these two changes, his desire to set a good example, and his gratitude for his services in the past, Comte agreed to accept a visit from Littr´e, though he did not wish to see him and would never reciprocate because friends of his wife could not be his associates. They finally met on November 3. Comte noted afterward that Littr´e still was “behind” with regard to the “dictatorial situation.”204 Littr´e tried to make amends again in 1857, but because he felt he could not apologize for sins he did not commit, a true rapprochement never occurred, despite the fact that Comte himself was 200 201 202 203 204

Littr´e to Audiffrent, September 22, 1852, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 472, BN. Audiffrent to Laffitte, December 19, 1852, MAC. Littr´e to Audiffrent, December 9, 1852, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 471, BN. Laffitte agreed with Comte’s assessment. See Laffitte to Audiffrent, January 1, 1853, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 287, BN. Comte to Audiffrent, November 10, 1853, N.a.fr. 10794, pp. 101, 102, BN. This letter is not in the CG. Their reconciliation was also never effected because Comte did not want “equivocal contacts” that were fruitless. Indeed, Comte complained in 1857 that the twenty-five-franc contribution that Littr´e continued to make to the Positivist Subsidy was painful to him because it seemed equivocal; he hoped to be able to do without it soon. See Comte, “Neuvi`eme Confession annuelle,” August 20, 1854, CG, 7:250. Audiffrent to Comte, Novmeber 19, 1853, MAC; Comte to Congreve, July 2, 1857, CG, 8:511–12.

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taken aback by his gentlemanly behavior in giving up his positivist responsibilities.205 Whereas Mill gave Comte money only for a short while and pursued other interests after his break, Littr´e remained a positivist to the end. In his “Pr´eface d’un disciple,” published in Principes de philosophie positive in 1868, he wrote, “Positive philosophy is the only one that makes known how these three things are connected: the order of immanent properties, the order of the successive constitution of the sciences, and the order of their hierarchical teaching.” It “puts man in his place in the intellectual and moral world, just as astronomy did in the material world.” In addition, it “preaches to men resignation to what is unchangeable, knowledge to discern what can be changed, and moral force to make the property of things improve their material condition and themselves.”206 Once again one can only marvel at Littr´e’s skills as a propagandist, a role he embraced for the rest of his life. Confident that he had fulfilled his various duties as head of the Positivist Subsidy and as intermediary between Comte and his wife, he could not see that he had committed any errors. He did not hate Comte, though the latter believed he did.207 He continued to give an annual contribution to the Subsidy until the master’s death, wrote kind letters declaring his support for Comte’s various projects, and devoted himself to propagating positive knowledge. He even continued visiting Comte on New Year’s Day.208 Yet Comte always accused Littr´e of trying to get back into his good graces to assure Madame Comte a pension after his death; this “impure” woman completely dominated the pathetic man, who was only an obscure, erudite, “used-up rhetorician” incapable of speaking or thinking.209 Little did Comte realize that Littr´e would further develop his talents and become a formidable force in French intellectual life. With the help of Charles Robin, he revised in 1855 Pierre Nysten’s Dictionnaire de M´edecine et de Chirurgie, which endorsed Comte’s hierarchy of the sciences and his placement of moral faculties in the brain.210 Republished regularly until 1908, this book with its materialistic twist had a large impact. Littr´e’s most important work was the four-volume Dictionnaire de la Langue franc¸aise (1863–73), which made him very 205

206 207 208 209 210

Comte to Bligni`eres, November 19, 1852, CG, 6:437; Comte to Hadery, May 3, 1857, CG, 8:454. In April 1854, Deullin told Comte that he heard through Lonchampt that Comte received Littr´e again. Deullin to Comte, April 17, 1854, MAC. Emile Littr´e, Principes de philosophie positive (Paris, 1868), 14, 29, 30. Comte to Hadery, May 18, 1857, CG, 8:467. Comte to Audiffrent, March 10, 1855, CG, 8:33; Littr´e to Comte, December 10 and December 31,1852; Rey, Littr´e, 105. Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, CG, 7:16; Comte to George Frederick Holmes, June 28, 1857, CG, 8:502. Dr. Robinet, “Le Positivisme et M. Littr´e,” RO 7 ( July 1881): 81.

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47

famous. Littr´e also became friends with Claude Bernard, the illustrious scientist, who was much influenced by positivism.211 As was his habit, Comte’s paranoid and theatrical personality led him to dramatize the situation. In late 1852, he wrote, “Having Mme Comte as his general and master Belpaume for his aide de camp, Mr. Littr´e, will try, although secretly, to incite against me the entire Institut, most of the reds, and even the debris of Saint-Simonianism, while having the strange army guided by positivist deserters.”212 There would be a “battle between true and false positivists, between those who want to become respectable conservatives and those who always want to remain revolutionaries, in short between religious and irreligious people.” Comte interpreted Littr´e’s objection to his religion as a sign that he hated all religions because like other men, he feared “a serious morality supported by an inflexible clergy.”213 His stance thus revealed his immoral nature and that of all his supporters. Indeed, Comte gave a religious twist to their rupture by claiming that Littr´e’s tendency to recognize only his own authority came from his Protestant roots.214 To reinforce the moral nature of this struggle between the true and false positivists and to give it a visual representation, Comte exploited the feminine images of good and evil, associating his side with a “dead virgin,” whom he likened to an angel, and the other side with a prostitute, whom he connected with Satan.215 He wrote that the struggle between good and bad positivists would take place “under two feminine banners, one green, the other red; between on the one hand, the positivist virgin, the angel who will never cease to be thirty years old, and on the other hand, the immodest red, the demon who just turned fifty-one.”216 His wife’s supposed sexual debauchery made her side evil, whereas de Vaux represented pure virtue because 211

212

213 214 215 216

Jean-Charles Sournia, “Littr´e a` l’Acad´emie de M´edecine,” Bulletin de l’Acad´emie Nationale de M´edecine 165 (1981): 941–6; Robinet, Littr´e, 7. Petit stresses the differences between the two men. See Annie Petit, “D’Auguste Comte a` Claude Bernard: Un Positivisme d´eplac´e,” Romantisme, no. 21–2 (1978): 45–62. Comte to Capellen, August 17, 1852, CG, 6: 334. Comte was very angry with Belpaume, whom he called a “vile intriguer capable of all black deeds.” See Comte to Hadery, August 15, 1852, CG, 6:332. Jacquemin denigrated Belpaume’s “moral life” and felt “a profound disgust for all sorts of contact with him.” He refused to have his name listed with that of Belpaume on the cover of the positivists’ 1848 report on work when it was to be republished in 1852. See Jacquemin to Comte, August 31, 1852, MAC. It is not clear what, if anything, Belpaume had done to incur Comte’s wrath. Robinet simply called him a “representative of Mme Comte, etc.” Robinet, Comte (3d ed.), 239. Mirella Larizza suggests that Comte believed that Belpaume was one of Massin’s lovers. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 131. Comte to Capellen, August 17, 1852, CG, 6:334. Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, CG, 7:18. Comte to Bligni`eres, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:337. Comte to Lewes, August 12, 1852, CG, 6:328.

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she had had no sex.217 Comte obviously altered both women’s sexual past because there is no evidence that Massin was a prostitute or de Vaux a virgin. Moreover, by stressing the ages of de Vaux and Massin, he revealed the prevailing cultural prejudice against older women as well as an awareness of his own mortality. It was, after all, this acute sense of the passing of time that had contributed to the creation of the Religion of Humanity in the first place. Comte also revealed a curious sense of male vulnerability and susceptibility. Just as he, Comte, was influenced by de Vaux, Littr´e, in his opinion, was “inspired” by Massin. Comte worried that her “satanic impulsion” could lead Littr´e to destroy him by such “vile means” as dissuading people from contributing to the subsidy or turning other important disciples, like Lewes, against him.218 Whereas he was made a more virtuous person because of de Vaux’s influence on him, Littr´e was turned into a complete scoundrel thanks to Massin. Women definitely had a large role, for better or for worse, in the world of Comte’s imagination. Paranoid as always, he even thought Massin and the “vile” Belpaume, Littr´e’s “ignoble friend,” were spreading rumors that he was having an affair with Sophie, had fathered her second son, and supported this “proletarian family” with funds from the Positivist Subsidy.219 Only vaguely informed of some estrangement among the positivists, Hadery was surprised to hear of Comte’s condemnation of Belpaume. Although Hadery felt grateful to Belpaume for having originally urged him to join the Positivist Society, he cut off relations with the worker, who by this time had left the club.220 But he told Comte he could never forget him and would indeed forgive him if he repented for whatever wrong he committed. He bitterly taunted Comte, “Christ, despite his dryness, pardoned the penitent. What should one expect in such a case from the founder of the Religion of Humanity!”221 Comte replied dryly, No evangelical boasting could ever guide my conduct. I have never admitted, for example, that the man who receives a blow should turn the other cheek. In the positivist theory of pardon, one must separate it from forgetting . . . I have always effortlessly pardoned, even my unworthy spouse, to whom I never did any ill . . . although I can never forget the private torments and ignoble outrages which derived 217

218 219 220 221

Comte referred to de Vaux as a virgin and a mother because “subjectively” she seemed sufficiently pure and had the requisite qualities of heart. Comte, “Neuvi`eme Confession annuelle,” August 20, 1854, CG, 7:248. Comte to Lewes, August 12, 1852, CG, 6:327, 329. Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, CG, 7:18. Comte also called Belpaume a “worthy agent of an old feminine demon,” Massin. Ibid. Pierre Laffitte, “Commemoration fun`ebre de M. Auguste Hadery,” RO 13 (1884): 272. Hadery to Comte, April 21, 1857, MAC.

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from her during our twenty-seven fatal years of cohabitation. Besides the fact that forgetting is never a matter of choice, it would alter the correct allocation of praise and blame. A true positivist must always pardon, but often finds himself forced to despise unless there is a total regeneration, which is almost impossible in the present case.

He explained to Hadery that Massin had started uttering “infamous calumnies” about his relations with his maid, Sophie Bliaux, in 1844. Then in 1848, when Bliaux had a second son, sixteen years after the first one, Massin went further “to compensate for her own wrongs” by insinuating that Comte was the father. “All the enemies of positivism, aided by its false disciples avidly welcomed this infamy, which they perhaps believed and propagated more insincerely than the person who invented it.” Assisted by the student Emile Pascal, who was an original member of the Positivist Society, Belpaume became the main agent of this movement to smear Comte, after Massin used her charms to flatter him and win him over in 1850. In 1851, Belpaume then added his own embellishments, pointing out that the child resembled Comte and that this similarity was common knowledge in the quartier.222 Comte blamed Littr´e for confirming such rumors by his “artificial silence.”223 Comte thus refused to allow Belpaume, Pascal, Massin, or Littr´e to come to his funeral.224 After Comte’s death, Littr´e became very close to Massin. The part she played in his life was indeed similar to de Vaux’s role in Comte’s.225 Littr´e called her “original,” intelligent, and charming.226 Lobbying on her behalf, he persuaded Marie d’Agoult to give her several hundred francs and asked Prosper M´erim´ee, who was close to the Imperial court, to find some financial assistance for Massin in her old age.227 He begged Gustave d’Eichthal, who had formerly been close to Comte, for money for her from 1858 to 1860.228 In the 1860s, Massin pushed Littr´e to write a biography of Comte (Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive),229 prepare a new edition of the Cours, write an article for the 222 223 224 226 227

228 229

Comte to Hadery, May 3, 1857, CG, 8:452-4; Deroisin, Comte, 117; Comte to Hutton, June 28, 1857, CG, 8:502–3. Comte to Hadery, May 18, 1857, CG, 8:467. Around 1857, Belpaume, who then worked in secret for the police, tried unsuccessfully to get back into Comte’s good graces. Testament (1896 ed.), 11. 225 Deroisin, Comte, 61. Emile Littr´e, “Mme Comte,” La Philosophie positive 8 (January–June, 1877): 295. D’Agoult gave two hundred francs in the late 1850s. Littr´e and M´erim´ee were able to get her two annual pensions from the ministry of war and the ministry of public instruction in consideration of her husband’s career at the Ecole Polytechnique. Littr´e also received money from Comte Walewski, another minister. Robinet, Littr´e, 29n2; Hamburger, Monsieur Littr´e, 163–5. See letters from Mill to d’Eichthal, January 25, 1859 and March 11, 1860. In Fonds d’Eichthal 13752, items 187 and 188, Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal. Robinet considered the book “Machiavellian” and full of “hate.” Dr. Robinet, “Le Positivisme et M. Littr´e,” RO 7 ( July 1881):97.

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Revue des deux mondes in response to Mill’s Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865), and launch a positivist journal.230 With the help of a young Russian, Gr´egoire Wyrouboff, who had learned about positivism in his homeland, he started a periodical called La Philosophie positive in 1867 to promulgate scientific positivism, with its technical aim of increasing knowledge of objective reality to master the universe and to solve all problems.231 Upholding the scientific method, it opposed the more sentimental version of positivism promoted by the Revue Occidentale, which was founded by Comte’s orthodox disciples after the master’s death.232 Even at the end of his life, Littr´e still spoke openly about his devotion to positivism: “Positive philosophy, which has helped me so much for thirty years and which, in giving me an ideal, the thirst for something better, a view of history, and a concern for humanity, has preserved me from being a simple negator, has loyally stayed with me in these last difficult times.”233 Although Littr´e’s militant positivism influenced many of the leading statesmen of the Third Republic, including L´eon Gambetta and Jules Ferry, it cost him a great deal, 230

231

232

233

Littr´e wrote Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive in one year, working on it from midnight to three every morning after tackling the dictionary. Published by Hachette, it appeared in 1863 and went through two more editions. He also published a new edition of the Cours in 1864. Another edition came out in 1876. One more followed. Massin had Littr´e write prefaces to the new editions and insisted that he neither criticize her husband nor mention her. Littr´e’s article criticizing Mill’s book for attacking Comte too harshly appeared in the Revue des deux mondes on August 15, 1866. It was then published separately and finally included in his Fragments de philosophie positive et de sociologie contemporaine. In both the journal and book, he dedicated the article to Massin in recognition of the ceaseless “care and services” that she gave to “her husband’s work.” Emile Littr´e, Fragments de philosophie positivie et de sociologie contemporaine (Paris, 1876), 239. See also Rey, Littr´e, 129; Littr´e, “Mme Comte,” 293–4; Walter M. Simon, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), 21. Already in 1855, Littr´e consented to be the editor of a positivist journal, which was to be based in Brussels. Laffitte, Deroisin, Lonchampt, and Foley were somehow involved. But Massin was worried about not having Comte’s consent and did not appear supportive. The journal was never published during Comte’s lifetime. Massin to Laffitte, December 25, 1855, and another letter without a date, MAC. The Revue Occidentale, founded in 1878, was directed to a large extent by Laffitte and Robinet, who were far more obscure than Littr´e. It lasted until 1914 and did not make as large an impact as Littr´e’s journal. See also Rey, Littr´e, 243, 244; Ernest Coumet, “La Philosophie positive d’E. Littr´e,” in Actes du Colloque Littr´e: Paris, 7–9 octobre 1981 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 177–214; Claude Nicolet, “Littr´e et la R´epublique,” 471n19. Littr´e, cited in Nicolet, “Littr´e et la R´epublique,” 496. For Littr´e’s ambivalence toward the “futurist pretensions” of Comte’s sociology, see Petit, “Comte et Littr´e,” 29–32. For an extended analysis of Littr´e’s disagreements with Comte, see Sudhir Hazareesingh, Intellectual Founders of the Republic: Five Studies in French Republican Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 40–45. According to Hazareesingh, Littr´e was later dismayed when the Communards were so inspired by Comte’s attacks on monuments celebrating war that they destroyed the Colonne Vendˆome during the Franco-Prussian War.

Littr´e’s Defection

51

including the respect of other academics. Having already been made a member of the Acad´emie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1839) and the Acad´emie de m´edecine (1858), he lost his bid to obtain a seat at the Acad´emie franc¸aise, where Bishop F´elix Dupanloup led a campaign against his election in 1863.234 When he was finally elected to the Acad´emie franc¸aise in 1871, a great scandal ensued, for Monseigneur F´elix Dupanloup threatened to resign from the organization as a protest against Littr´e’s so-called materialism and atheism. Once more Littr´e was in the news, increasing people’s awareness of positivism, the creed with which he was associated. Four years later Littr´e embraced another doctrine, that of freemasonry, a move that would not have delighted Comte, who found Masonic practices destructive.235 In 1871, Littr´e was elected to the National Assembly from the department of the Seine and later became a Senator. He died in 1881. His death became the subject of controversy when his daughter, who was very religious like his wife, claimed that he abandoned his notorious atheistic stance on his deathbed and converted to Catholicism. In her desire to eradicate all traces of her father’s free thinking, she burned many of his papers.236 All in all, Comte was ungrateful to the man who had clarified his doctrine for all to understand, and established his reputation, especially in France. Indeed, after the rupture, Comte’s disciples still distributed Littr´e’s works as part of their propaganda effort because they were easier to read than Comte’s.237 Both Littr´e and Mill, who were eminent nineteenth-century figures, helped make positivism an important movement. Both were very morally upright individuals who were initially attracted to a totalizing system of thought that seemed to offer the certainty of a religion and a solid program for social change. Yet in the end, they preferred the scientific cloak that this system wore in the beginning to the religious one it increasingly adopted beginning in the late 1840s. At the same time, both exaggerated the break in Comte’s intellectual evolution to escape the discredit his philosophy fell into once the rituals, prayers, and so forth became more widely known.238 After all, the moral thrust of Comte’s system and the notion of a controlling spiritual power were there from the beginning. Although positivism was meant to 234 235

236 237 238

Rey, Littr´e, 137, 238. Littr´e won the seat in 1871, and Dupanloup resigned. Comte to Audiffrent, May 20, 1855, CG, 8:54. Mirella Larizza found no evidence that Comte’s ideas penetrated freemason circles before 1848, though later they would help spread positivism. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 118. Stanislas Aquarone, The Life and Works of Emile Littr´e (1801–1881) (Leyden: A. W. Sythoff, 1958), 8. Deullin to Comte, November 15, 1852, MAC. Comte did make some criticisms of Littr´e’s works. See Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, CG, 7:19. On this point, see Rey, Littr´e, 225.

52

The Coup d’Etat and Its Consequences

subordinate scientific pursuits to social concerns, they made Comte’s doctrine into the scientistic manifesto for the industrial age – something Comte had always resisted as incomplete and superficial. What Lucien L´evy-Bruhl wrote in the Revue des deux mondes about Littr´e could apply to Mill as well; they gave positivism “a clarity, a concision, and a simplicity” that it originally lacked but this refashioning of the doctrine cost it its “profundity and beauty.”239 Jean Jaur`es, the great socialist leader and humanist, essentially agreed when he said in the Chamber of Deputies in 1895, “As for me, I have never taken a biased position of offense or disdain toward the great religious aspirations which . . . have uplifted the human spirit. At the same time, unlike many of our elders in the Republic, I do not enclose myself in this narrow positivism of Littr´e, which is only a mediocre reduction of the grand mystical positivism of Auguste Comte.”240 Yet without the championship of Littr´e and Mill, Comte might have remained in obscurity, and positivism would not have become such a potent force in modern history. 239 240

Lucas to Comte, October 5, 1852, MAC. Speech of Jean Jaur`es, Chamber of Deputies, February 11, 1895, from the Officiel, cited in RO, 2d ser., 9 (1895):24.

Chapter 2

Comte’s Stumblings

Although our religion is eminently feminine, it has remained up to now too unknown to the sex that will furnish its best support. Comte to Richard Congreve, March 26, 1857

second thoughts As Louis Napoleon became more avid for power and the number of defections from the positivist movement grew, Comte changed his opinion about the usurper. He had originally thought that Louis Napoleon’s regime would be short-lived, giving way to a positivist dictatorship. But as Laffitte pointed out, Comte’s political predictions, particularly regarding the speed of events, were often wrong.1 After Louis Napoleon took over, many liberties were curtailed. Laws restricting freedom of the press were enacted in February 1852, and laws prohibiting gatherings of more than twenty people were promulgated in March.2 According to Comte, Louis Napoleon erred in claiming spiritual power, that is, control over people’s intellectual and moral life. Comte worried that without freedom of the press and discussion, positivism could not demonstrate its philosophical superiority and its ability to solve the intellectual anarchy of the day, which to him was more important than the political disorder in causing the current Western malaise. Moreover, Comte now recognized the dictator’s imperial aspirations, which echoed his uncle’s, and there was no public figure that Comte hated more than the first Napoleon. Louis Napoleon indeed hoped to overturn the settlement of the Congress of Vienna of 1815, which had undermined his uncle’s achievements by curbing French expansionism.3 War was on the horizon. Comte was certain that the use of force could never establish anything. “Those who govern and are concerned with order and those who are governed and care about progress feel equally . . . the radical insufficiency of material 1 2 3

Laffitte, ed., “Bibliographie positiviste: Second document pour servir a` l’histoire des vues politiques d’Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d. ser., 1 (January 1890): 72. Barjot et al., La France, 418–19. Comte to Eug`ene Deullin, June 3, 1852, CG, 6:292. See also Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800–1914, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 171.

53

54

Comte’s Stumblings

expedients.”4 Accepting Hadery’s criticism of Louis Napoleon, which he had rejected in the beginning, he now agreed that the dictator was childishly creating an “imperial parody,” which complemented the “parody of the Mountain” in 1848.5 The childish empire that he insisted on establishing jeopardized progress and compromised the order he had so assiduously maintained.6 Comte himself mocked the dictatorship, which, in his opinion, was retrograde, repressive, and incompetent.7 He called Louis Napoleon, who engaged in all sorts of charades, the “true mamamouchi” of Moli`ere.8 Meaning “good for nothing,” the word “mamamouchi” was used by Moli`ere in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme to refer to an alleged Turkish dignitary.9 In sum, Comte’s support for Louis Napoleon had lasted only three months or so. By April 1852, Comte had become tired of the egoism and blindness of the regime and was eager to hurry “to preserve the dictatorship by changing the dictator.” Proclaiming his loyalty to republicanism, he wrote to Audiffrent, who disliked Louis Napoleon, Even if . . . [the dictator] today sincerely renounced his imperial whims, he can no longer inspire confidence in impartial republicans since he dared to avow them in a solemn manner. Anyway, he has not sufficient personal value in any respect. . . . The republic constitutes henceforth the first guarantee of order and the fundamental condition of an energetic concentration of power. There is no possible and durable dictatorship without a republic any more than there is a republic without a dictatorship.10

The “normal condition” of dictatorship was to promote “liberty”; otherwise, positivism could not effectively combat communism.11 Horror-struck by the possible restoration of an empire in France, Comte hoped to avoid that possibility as well as the chance there might be a new monarch. He urged everyone to gather around a new dictator, either Marc Caussidi`ere or Eug`ene Cavaignac. Comte knew, 4 5

6 7 8 9

10 11

Comte to Laurent, June 11, 1852, CG, 6:299. Comte to Audiffrent, April 15, May 6, 1852, CG, 6:263, 272. In 1855, Hadery also condemned Napoleon III’s “unhappy imperialist fantasy” and blamed him for not allowing Comte to continue his course. Hadery to Sauria, August 5, 1855, MAC Comte to Bligni`eres, February 16, 1854, CG, 7:188. Comte to Tholouze, August 26, 1852, CG, 6:348. Comte to Congreve, December 23, 1852, CG, 6:474. See also Comte to Papot, August 17, 1854, CG, 7:103. The word mamamouchi comes from the Arabic word ma menou schi. Harriet J. Bauman, “Masks, Costumes, Ceremony Life in Seventeenth Century France,” Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1986/3/86.03.02.x. html (accessed January 5, 2000). Comte to Audiffrent, April 15, 1852, CG, 6:262–3. On Audiffrent’s opinion of Napoleon, see Audiffrent to Laffitte, June 8, 1852, MAC. Comte to Deullin, September 5, 1852, CG, 6:353.

Second Thoughts

55

however, that they did not have very much support. Caussidi`ere, who was more to the left, seemed “to merit the dictatorship,” but he was “too little appreciated.”12 Cavaignac, though less worthy and less competent, could, nevertheless, do a better job guaranteeing the republic because as a general, he could conquer the “imperialist party of the army.”13 Comte predicted that Cavaignac would take over before the end of 1853 and his dictatorship would last six months; then another dictator would have to be found. Before 1860, the positivist triumvirate would surely be in place. Devising charts of recent and future events, Comte proclaimed to various disciples, “The chain of faits accomplis leads us to predict the next phases, by eliminating scientifically all personal affection, just like an astronomer with an eclipse.”14 Later, however, he admitted that predictions in social matters were not nearly as precise as astronomical ones.15 The ideal system, in his mind, was the government in Latin American countries. He wrote that, “Ever since independence rendered it republican, it passes from one dictatorship to another, without ever stopping at parliamentary phases. This will be, I hope, also our new political destiny, except that our dictators will change less often.”16 His model was Sim´on Bol´ıvar, who believed that being dictator for life was part of the republican order.17 Ironically, positivism would later become very popular in Latin America because it gave legitimacy to dictators.18 As the plebiscite approving the establishment of the Second Empire approached, Comte tried to persuade Vieillard to propose to the Senate a resolution deposing Louis Napoleon, whose imperial “masquerade” was “shameful” and “deadly.”19 Making up a medical disease, Comte used the authority of science to disqualify him. Comte’s resolution began, Considering that the President is suffering from chronic prideovanititis (“orguiello-vanitite”), which has recently reached the extreme 12 13

14 15 16

17

18 19

Comte to Audiffrent, April 15, 1852, CG, 6:263. Comte to Tholouze, August 26, 1852, CG, 6:348. According to Deroisin, Comte also seemed favorable to the idea of making Hippolyte Carnot president. Deroisin, Comte, 8–9. Comte to Hadery, September 17, 1852, CG, 6:369. Comte to Audiffrent, June 9, 1853, CG, 7:78. Comte to Audiffrent, April 15, 1852, CG, 6:263. See also Comte to Tholouze, August 26, 1852, CG, 6:348. Comte also proclaimed his admiration for Latin American dictatorship in the Syst`eme. Syst`eme, 2:xiv; 4:489–90. H´elgio Trindade, “La R´epublique positiviste chez Comte: Th´eorie et pratique,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, 1798–1998, ed. Annie Petit (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 381. Comte to Deullin, March 17, 1853, CG, 7:57; Comte to Fl´orez, March 23, 1853, CG, 7:57–8. Comte to Laurent, November 7, 1852, CG, 6:413.

56

Comte’s Stumblings condition and renders him incapable of governing and dangerous for the repose of France and the peace of the Occident, the Senate decides 1◦ Mr. Bonaparte and his entire family will be immediately transported to the United States on a frigate of the French Republic.20

Comte declared that Cavaignac should replace him. After a month, his presidency would be put to a popular vote. Comte begged Vieillard to submit the resolution or resign from the Senate. He even declared offhandedly in a meeting of the Positivist Society that Louis Napoleon deserved to be executed as Charles I did.21 Vieillard agreed to meet Comte to discuss his proposed resolution, as he too deplored Louis Napoleon’s arbitrary move to set up an empire. But his “lack of energy” in pushing the dictator to resign disappointed Comte.22 Nevertheless, Comte boasted that Vieillard was “the only senator to have voted against the Empire” in early November 1852.23 He even forgave him for never contributing to the Positivist Subsidy despite his great wealth.24 But he was less forgiving with newspapers, which continued to proclaim unfairly that Comte and the positivists had rallied to the Empire.25 Comte may not have rallied, but he still tried to be optimistic, just as he had been in 1848 and 1851. Taking his cue from drama as was his habit, he insisted that this “deplorable phase” was only a “miserable intermission” between the final death of the monarchy on August 10, 1792 and the coming of the positivist republic. The Empire was a droll “parody” with the Emperor a “ridiculous personage from the theater.” The “tyrannical dictator” seemed most interested in developing his “nature as a dandy.”26 Comte used not only the theater but satire as a frame of reference to undermine the seriousness and reality of the new regime; he could not wait for the Charivari, a popular periodical, to mock the “pacific Empire” – this “Empire without victors” – that the blustering head of state seemed bent on constructing.27 Comte was somewhat embarrassed that in using sociological laws, he had mistakenly predicted after the Revolution of 1848 that “our republican situation would never experience the least suspension.” He defended sociological laws by trying to deny the reality of the current situation. He proclaimed that positivists alone could see that the republic still “really” existed, although it was “obscured for the moment by a theatrical appearance.” The Empire could not last 20 22 23 24 26 27

Comte to Audiffrent, October 21, 1852, CG, 6:410. 21 Robinet, Comte (3d ed.), 246. Comte to Audiffrent, November 11, 1852, CG, 6:415. Comte to Papot, November 25, 1852, CG, 6:428. The vote in the Senate was eighty-five to one. Comte to Bligni`eres, August 28, 1853, CG, 7:114. 25 Robinet, Littr´e, 22. Comte to Ribet, January 15, 1853, CG, 7:12; Comte to Hadery, January 6, 1853, CG, 7:6. Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1852, CG, 6:271; Comte to Congreve, December 23, 1852, CG, 6:475.

Second Thoughts

57

long, for it absurdly tried to realize Giuseppe Mazzini’s formulate of reigning by the “grace of God and the will of the People,” a slogan that combined the two outmoded notions of divine right and popular sovereignty. Comte was so disturbed by the course of events that did not fit his mental schema that he insisted that his imaginary version was “real” and the Empire was an “illusion.”28 He sought to explain what had happened when the plebiscite occurred in November 1852: “Everything consists in the fact that the dictator has become [a] mamamouchi, who believes he acquired heredity based on the wish of the French peasants, whose decision is no more effective than if they had voted to give him two hundred years of life or exemption from gout.”29 The disappointing results of the plebiscite, like those of the elections held during the Second Republic, only reinforced Comte’s dislike of universal male suffrage. Voters were, in his eyes, illiterate, uneducated, and morally incompetent. The “chronic insurrection . . . of the country against the city” was a sign of anarchy.30 Workers in Paris were so weakened by their lack of “faith” that they could not be relied on to defend the republic.31 In short, Comte blamed the highly vaunted system of universal suffrage for having “given birth to the Empire”; as usual with voting, the problem was that everyone thought they could “decide the most important social questions” without any “serious study.”32 Republicans who were devoted to popular sovereignty and equality should be ashamed of themselves. Anticipating modern historians, who find the Empire difficult to classify as either right-wing or left-wing, Comte concluded after the plebiscite, “This regime is too reactionary to suit the proletarians . . . and too demagogic to please the rich.”33 Indeed, it encouraged poor people’s hatred of the rich, which could not please real conservatives. Yet it did not really support progress. Although he had been afraid of the reds, Comte argued in late 1852 that the fall of the Empire would not lead to anarchy as he had thought earlier.34 One 28 29 30

31 32

33 34

Comte to Jacquemin, November 8, 1852, CG, 6: 414; Comte to Audiffrent, November 11, 1852, CG, 6:420; Comte to Papot, November 25, 1852, CG, 6:428. Comte to Bligni`eres, November 29, 1852, CG, 6:439. Syst`eme, 2:xv. Comte added material to the original manuscript, showing his displeasure. See “Addition B” and “Addition C” of the manuscript, Syst`eme, 2, N.a.fr. 17911, BN. See also Joseph Lonchampt, Pr´ecis de la vie et des e´crits d’Auguste Comte (Paris, 1889), 94. Comte to Jacquemin, November 8, 1852, CG, 6: 414; Comte to Audiffrent, November 11, 1852, CG, 6:420; Comte to Papot, November 25, 1852, CG, 6:428. Comte to Laffitte, September 4, 1856, CG, 8:297; Auguste Comte, Cat´echisme positiviste, ou Sommaire exposition de la religion universelle en treize entretiens syst´ematiques entre une femme et un prˆetre de l’humanit´e [ hereafter Cat´echisme] (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), 43. Comte to Congreve, December 23, 1852, CG, 6:476. See also Barjot et al., La France, 419. Comte called the reds “the most detestable of all the present parties.” Comte to Deullin, September 5, 1852, CG, 6:353. See also Comte to Audiffrent, December 11, 1852, CG, 6:444; Comte to Bligni`eres, April 21, 1853, CG, 7:63.

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of the only wise measures the emperor had taken was to eliminate the authority of parliament. Thus neither parliamentary anarchy nor monarchical reaction was to be feared any longer.35 With order secured, positivists were in a good situation to triumph. The “million of republicans” in France should unite under the positivists’ direction to fight Louis Napoleon, the reactionary who represented their “common enemy.” Besides these “respectable revolutionaries,” “true conservatives,” afraid of the domination of either adventurers in the government or communists, should join the positivist movement.36 However, remembering the peasants’ support of Louis Napoleon as president, Comte did not desire their involvement. Peasants needed to be informed “that the subordination of the countryside toward the towns always constitutes the first law of civilization.”37 Parisians should appoint the next dictator, although their final decision should be ratified by the citizens of the sixteen capitals of the intendancies. In the meantime, Comte maintained that positivists should remain “passive” but “systematic spectators,” waiting for the imminent fall of the government.38 Meeting in groups of not more than ten people, they should avoid current events, concentrate on the religious and moral aspects of positivism, and “direct” their proselytizing “as if” they aimed only “to convert women,” who in any case would become their best adherents.39 Fearful of repression, Comte assumed that women were not politicized and were considered less dangerous by the authorities. The moral and religious issues that interested them should concern men as well and would be safer subjects to pursue. He decided to cover these issues in the Cat´echisme positiviste, which he began to write in July 1852.

cat e´ chisme po sitiviste Summing up the main tenets of his religion, the Cat´echisme positiviste was intended to be a work of propaganda. He wrote it after completing the second volume of the Syst`eme, which defined the essential components of his religion, especially the new science of morality. 35 36 37 38

39

Comte to Congreve, December 23, 1852, CG, 6:476; Comte to Hadery, January 6, 1853, CG, 7:7; Syst`eme, 2:xv. Comte to Hadery, January 6, 1853, CG, 7:7–9. Comte to de Mont`egre, November 13, 1852, CG, 6:420. See also Comte to Papot, November 25, 1852, CG, 6:428. Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6: 450; Comte to Hadery, January 6, 1853, CG, 7:9. On repression, see Pamela M. Pilbeam, Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century France, 1814–1871 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 245. Comte to de Mont`egre, November 13, 1852, CG, 6:419–20. See also Comte to Audiffrent, November 11, 1852, CG, 6:418; Comte to Hadery, January 6, 1853, CG, 7:9.

Cat´echisme positiviste

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(This volume will be discussed in chapter four.) Before describing his vision of the past and future in volumes three and four, he wished to write this book to make sure that “positivism” became “truly popular.” He realized that the “severe” positivist regime that he had described was “too antipathetic to present minds to prevail without the . . . support of women and proletarians,” the “social mass” devoid of “doctoral pretension.” Gaining the support of women, whom he considered conservative, as well as that of workers, whom he regarded as progressive, was of crucial importance to Comte. He retained some hope that Louis Napoleon’s recently established “dictatorial republic” made imminent the triumph of positivism, and he wanted to demonstrate that his philosophy appealed to all parties.40 He quickly wrote the four-hundred-page volume from July 9 to September 3, 1852, and approximately a thousand copies were printed in October.41 It went on sale for three francs, which was a fairly inexpensive price. He recommended that people spend two weeks reading it.42 Just as Comte was extending Saint-Simon’s ideas on government at the end of the second volume of the Syst`eme, the Cat´echisme was modeled to some extent on his former mentor’s work.43 Comte’s “fundamental opuscule” of 1824, the Plan des travaux scientifiques n´ecessaires pour r´eorganiser la soci´et´e, was originally published in SaintSimon’s journal, Cat´echisme des industriels. A catechism is usually a summary of religious doctrines, but as these doctrines were replaced by nonreligious ones beginning during the French Revolution, many catechisms became secular in nature. Summaries of doctrines were important, according to Comte, because “dogmatism” was the “normal state of human intelligence.”44 As the French historian Douglas Johnson suggested, Comte lived in “the age of catechisms,” when people were trying to define new belief systems. Besides SaintSimon’s catechism, there was Louis Blanc’s Cat´echisme des socialistes and 40 41

42

43 44

Cat´echisme, 35–6. See also Comte to Congreve, July 2, 1857, CG, 8:508. Cat´echisme, 43, 204. Thunot was the printer. The bookstore Carilian et Dalmont sold the volumes. Robinet offered to pay the publication costs, but his help was not needed. Comte gave copies to Cavaignac, Proudhon, Littr´e, Emile de Girardin, Barb`es, Auguste Blanqui and his mother, Sarah Austin, Caussidi`ere, Thomas Carlyle, Louis Hachette (editor of the Revue de l’instruction publique), and Duquenne (the worker editor of La Ruche populaire). Emile Corra, ed., Lettres d’Auguste Comte au Docteur Robinet (Paris: Soci´et´e Positiviste Internationale, 1926), 10; Cat´echisme, 48; folder, “Circulation des ouvrages d’Auguste Comte,” MAC. See his records of his work, in Laffitte, ed., “Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” 445–6. He advised the reader to spend two hours a day on each interview, yet to take a day off between the first and second parts and the third part and the conclusion. Cat´echisme, 300. See also Comte to Ingram and Allman, October 16, 1852, CG, 5:408. As if burdened by the knowledge that he was imitating Saint-Simon, Comte went out of his way to deny his influence in the third volume. Syst`eme, vol. 4, “Appendice,” 202. See also Arnaud, introduction to Cat´echisme, 15.

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V. Tedesco’s Cat´echisme du prol´etaire, both of which were published in 1849. Some republican catechisms published during the French Revolution, such as Cat´echisme r´epublicain de 1793, were republished in 1848. Faced with a proliferation of such texts, “Michelet, in his history of the Revolution, announces his, which he calls the historical catechism of the people.”45 Besides writing a catechism, Comte followed his mentor’s example in another way. In his Nouveau Christianisme of 1825, which introduced his new religion, Saint-Simon created a dialogue between a “renovator” of Christianity and a conservative. The point was to revive Christianity’s original emphasis on morality, which he considered more important than forms of worship or dogma. The essence of morality was fraternity; society had to improve the “moral and physical existence” of the largest, poorest class.46 Comte likewise presented his moral system, which was similar to Saint-Simon’s, in the form of a dialogue, for he believed that that format was most effective for religious instruction.47 However, unlike Saint-Simon, he claimed not to wish to revive Christianity by resurrecting its “fundamental principle” and purging it of its “superstitious and useless” beliefs and practices.48 Comte wanted to create his own religion. Nevertheless, his religion uncannily resembled Catholicism. Later, in 1868, Thomas Huxley famously remarked, “Mr. Comte’s philosophy, in practice, might be compendiously described as ‘Catholicism minus Christianity.’49 Comte also explained that after having recently constructed a theory of language for the second volume of the Syst`eme, he better understood that monologues were useful only when one was trying to conceive of new ideas. The results of one’s thought processes were best communicated through a dialogue, which was the most practical and “natural form”of expression.50 In a work of propaganda intended to attract uneducated outsiders to a movement, representing two people in a casual conversation about key points was more effective than having one interlocutor dryly explain them.51 Bernard Le Bouvier de 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

Douglas Johnson, Michelet and the French Revolution: The Zaharoff Lecture for 1989–90, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 9. Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, Nouveau Christianisme: Dialogues entire un conservateur et un novateur, in Oeuvres de Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, vol. 3 (Paris: Anthropos, 1966), 103, 113. Comte does mention in the preface that he venerated Saint-Simon, who saved him from demoralization. Yet as usual, he called him “superficial and depraved.” Cat´echisme, 44. Saint-Simon, Nouveau Christianisme, 163, 179. Thomas H. Huxley, Method and Result: Essays (New York: D. Appleton, 1901), 156. Cat´echisme, 36. The binary nature of thought was a leitmotif of the Cat´echisme. See also ibid., 152. Comte further explained that in the communication of ideas, poetry would be better than prose because it would add concision and images; however, neither he nor his audience was sufficiently mature for this improvement. He hoped that in the future, positivist catechisms could be in verse.

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Fontenelle, “one of the most eminent precursors of positivism,” had shown Comte the correct conversational technique in his “charming opuscule” where he explained the philosophical importance of astronomical theories to a woman.52 (This book was Entretiens sur la pluralit´e des mondes.) By means of these conversations that covered religion, Comte targeted women in particular, for he associated them with this topic. Indeed, he boasted that his religion was the “only religion” that treated women “in a dignified fashion.”53 For the past five hundred years, they had attempted to maintain the importance of the heart over the mind and had lost respect because of their efforts. Since the establishment of universal manhood suffrage, they were the only group that was not involved in the “public regime.” Thus they were alienated from modern life. Yet paradoxically, women could resolve the problems of modern life, especially anarchy, precisely because they best represented feeling, which could preserve the Occident and hold it together. Having been aided by both Massin and de Vaux during his periods of mental illness, Comte wrote, “Since the end of the Middle Ages, it is uniquely feminine intervention that secretly contains the moral ravages inherent in mental alienation, towards which the West, and especially its French center, increasingly tends.” The “chronic delirium” in the West was so extreme that “no social maxim” could survive the kind of “corrosive” discussions that took place all too frequently. Order was being maintained only by sentiments, and even these were corrupted because the egotistical ones were stronger than the three sympathetic penchants (attachment, goodness, and veneration). Women, who were the “moral providence of our species,” should get the support of the common people to change the status quo.54 They should use the positivist philosophy, because it made morality the highest form of knowledge and suited them perfectly.55 (As previously mentioned, in the Syst`eme, Comte was in the process of introducing morality as a science, one that united theory and practice.) Given the association of the sciences with men, Comte’s move to make women the experts in a new science was one of his ways of giving them more authority and getting them more involved in the “Occidental revolution.” He noted that “it would be absurd to claim to terminate without them the most complete of all the human revolutions,” considering that they had intervened in all the previous ones, that the current transformation involved their moral mission, and that the positivist regime would appeal to them more than the present one and would increase their influence. He wrote, “The feminine 52 54 55

Ibid.,112. 53 Comte to N´ısia Floresta Brasileira, April 18, 1857, CG, 8:442. Cat´echisme, 43, 46, 238, 298. Comte to Madame E. Delhorbe, October 23, 1857, CG, 6:183.

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revolution now must complete the proletarian one, just as the latter consolidated the bourgeois revolution, which emanated first from the philosophic revolution.” Thus a women’s “revolution” would complement the other important revolutions of the past hundred years: the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, which extended the bourgeois parliamentary regime. By putting the women’s revolution on the same level as these other revolutions, he emphasized the importance of women’s actions. Indeed, he maintained that if the revolution did not extend to women, the West would continue to oscillate between regression and anarchy. Women would help regenerate the West if they persuaded the industrialists to disengage themselves from the corrupt bourgeoisie; encouraged positivist philosophers to disassociate themselves from their scientific, literary, and intellectual colleagues; and purged the proletarian movement of its “subversive dispositions” and its “collective brutalities.”56 For example, the Icarians’ notion of raising children in common could never appeal to mothers. “Communist or socialist utopias” generally had too many “anti-feminine aberrations.”57 Nevertheless, like the socialist Flora Tristan, Comte insisted that the emancipation of women, the agents of love and morality in society, was linked with that of male workers.58 But he gave Tristan’s ideas a different twist, perhaps reflective of the misogynist influence of Proudhon among the workers whom he consulted. According to Comte, if workers were not given a decent wage, lower-class women would have to continue to labor and find themselves as usual “abandoned to a horrible alternative between misery and prostitution.” Families, which formed the basis of society, could not exist. Comte thus reiterated one of his favorite phases, “man has to nourish woman.”59 In effect, he insisted that society provide jobs and a family wage to all male workers to stabilize the proletarian family. He was repeating the socialist demands of the Revolution of 1848, while reinforcing the conservative patriarchal system, whereby the man was the sole breadwinner. Comte’s Cat´echisme was also ambivalent in its format. It contained eleven interviews between a woman, called “La Femme,” and a “priest of Humanity,” named “Le Prˆetre.”60 This dialogue reflects the close relationship that women and priests had, at least in the republican 56 58 59 60

Cat´echisme, 45–7. 57 Comte to Audiffrent, June 7, 1851, CG, 6:109. Sandra Dijkstra, Flora Tristan: Feminism in the Age of George Sand (London: Pluto Press, 1992), 179, 182–3. Cat´echisme, 47. The book was divided into introductory and concluding interviews, three interviews on the dogma of positivism, three on the cult, and three on the regime. It covered much of the material that he would discuss in the fourth volume of the Syst`eme. Comte seemed eager to get his ideas out earlier.

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imagination. Leftists often rejected extending suffrage to women because they feared that the clergy would persuade women to support conservatives, who favored the Catholic Church. In 1845, Michelet wrote Du Prˆetre, de la femme, de la famille, where he argued that “our wives and our daughters” were “brought up” and “governed” by the “enemies of the modern spirit.”61 Comte sought to take advantage of that close relationship between women and the clergy and make it work for his own benefit. Moreover, he knew that priests were seen with sympathy only by women; they were “secretly hated by patricians” and “coldly respected by proletarians.” He thus envisioned that in the positivist republic, priests and women, who represented respectively reason and sentiments, would collaborate in restraining people involved in business, who stood for activity. “The woman and the priest constitute in effect the two essential elements of the true moderating power.”62 The format of a dialogue was also important because it displayed Comte’s idea that men thought under the inspiration of women. The female protagonist in the Cat´echisme makes intelligent inquiries regarding fine points of Comte’s doctrine, including his theory of logic, which the priest resolves. This give-and-take showed how the heart stimulated the mind and had to understand the results of mental activity in order to reinforce them.63 Women, representing affection, had a place in the intellectual process. Comte’s work showed many signs of gendered thinking. He seemed to use more literary sources to argue his points, many of which were not based on science. He trotted out the great authors of the past as his authorities, especially because he associated women with literature. For example, Comte cited the last canto of Dante’s Paradiso to stress the power and generosity of women.64 Yet he also often referred to Moli`ere’s Femmes savantes, which mocked women’s intellectual pursuits.65 In addition, the Woman in the dialogue pointed out that her sex tended to exaggerate the importance of the emotions. Indeed, Comte suggested that their occasionally excessive preoccupation with the subjective life made women more susceptible to mysticism and neglectful of industrial conditions, which workers needed to remind them were terrible. Moreover, Comte seemed to undermine women when he suggested that morality was “more an art than a science” for 61 62 63 64 65

Jules Michelet, Du Prˆetre, de la femme, de la famille, 4th ed. (Paris, 1845), vi. Cat´echisme, 42, 207. He also wrote that “synthesis” and “sympathy” must work together to regulate “synergy.” Comte referred to Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues’ aphorism, “Great thoughts come from the heart.” Arnaud, Cat´echisme, 304n45. Cat´echisme, 239. See also Arnaud, ibid., 311n156. Cat´echisme, 103. Perhaps he was drawn to that play partly because through such characters as the pompous teacher Trissotin, it made fun of academics.

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the female sex, which aspired “naturally” to realize the good.66 He even wrote later in the Synth`ese subjective of 1856, “We must systematically attribute moral laws to the [positivist] clergy, although they [the laws] are spontaneously appropriate to the affective sex, because their coordination, on which depends their political efficacy, belongs as much to the contemplative class as that of the intellectual laws, which is their natural domain.”67 Reflecting the alleged feebleness of the female intellect, the Woman sometimes asked questions in a hesitating fashion.68 After all, she pointed out, women had trouble reflecting in a profound fashion because their thoughts were usually limited to the private sphere.69 But the priest reassured her with a quote from Moli`ere’s Femmes savantes: “I agree that a woman must have bright ideas about everything.”70 Indeed, in learning about the law of three stages, the Woman stated that “this dynamic law has been sufficiently confirmed by my own experience.”71 Although Comte explained that physical laws “belong spontaneously to the active sex,” he believed women could arrive at the positive stage of understanding. Comte insisted, as he had for decades, that scholars or priests, with their scientific and logical training, merely systematized the common sense of the public, which expressed itself spontaneously. Scientific theories only generalized and coordinated the public’s insights to allow them to develop. And women were part of Comte’s public. Despite being “spontaneously” drawn to morality, the Woman in the Cat´echisme recognized the need to base it on a systematic, rational foundation to eliminate its supernatural aspects and “to resist the sophism of bad passions.” She understood the importance of going from morality, which most preoccupied women and fed their meditations, to the other sciences in Comte’s hierarchy in order to appreciate the help that reason gave 66

67 68 69 70

71

Ibid., 95, 127. In addition, he stated that the philosophers were more deductive, whereas women proceeded more by induction. Philosophers thus gave women’s precepts more generality and coherence. Ibid., 101. Auguste Comte, Synth`ese subjective ou Syst`eme universel des conceptions propres a` l’´etat normal de l’humanit´e (Paris, 1856; Paris: Fayard 2000) [hereafter Synth`ese], 143. See, for example, the discussion of the limits of scientific knowledge, Cat´echisme, 90–91. Cat´echisme, 201. Ibid., 75. It is disconcerting that Comte upheld women’s intelligence by quoting Moli`ere, a renowned misogynist. Even his sister, Alix, derided Moli`ere’s views on learned women and insisted that women needed education, despite the fact that she had none. However, she also did not believe that women should devote themselves to the sciences if they neglected their responsibilities to their families and friends. Alix Comte to Comte, July 28, 1849, in “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte (Suite),” ed. Laffitte, 145. Cat´echisme, 87. Although she apologized for her ignorance of history, which made it hard for her to grasp social dynamics, she felt she could confirm the principles of social statics by looking at her own nature, whence they derived. Much of the Cat´echisme, especially the last interview, referred to history. Ibid., 124.

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to love. In effect, representing all women, she agreed to study the sciences without fearing that they might lead to dryness and pride because she grasped that they had a moral purpose. In the end, Comte introduced the principles of his entire hierarchy of the sciences to her and in doing so underscored women’s significant intellectual capabilities.72 Comte was engaged in a kind of drama or play acting. He modeled the Woman on de Vaux, while he represented the priest or p`ere (father). As her mentor, he pretended to initiate the younger de Vaux into positivism, thus fulfilling the plan that he had never been able to realize while she was alive. In preparing for this initiation, she allegedly represented the qualities of most women and “many proletarians.”73 In centering his drama around de Vaux, Comte made her not only his disciple but his “precious colleague” in popularizing positivism; they were finally collaborating.74 Indeed, having previously floated between Catholic and Voltairian tendencies, the Woman overcame her “doubts” and converted to positivism after the fourth interview and then spent the next seven asking for clarification about the best way to worship the “Goddess” Humanity.75 This stance displeased the American journalist George Frederick Holmes, who wrote on the cover of his copy of the Cat´echisme: “The woman in the Cat´echisme is very easily satisfied. She states no doubt. She performs only the function of a Greek chorus, not the part of an anxious searcher after truth. The objections of the interrogator are always from the point of view of positivism as a philosophy, not from an independent or theological point of view.”76 The priest in the dialogue, who represented Comte, was a combative crusader for positivism. He began by denouncing the dangerous, anti-progressive “slaves of God” – Catholics, Protestants, deists, and so forth. He was particularly critical of Catholicism for neglecting its Greek, Roman, and Jewish antecedents and accused its “antihistorical spirit” of being one of the chief obstacles preventing the regeneration of the West. Catholicism, was in his eyes, a “deplorable doctrine,” full of absurdities and contradictions. Modern historians, 72 73

74 75 76

Ibid., 83, 99–100, 133. Ibid., 39. Comte explained that his two other patrons were also participating in this drama: his mother Rosalie Boyer and his maid Sophie Bliaux. He gave a copy of the Cat´echisme to the latter with the following inscription: “To the only one of my three guardian angels who is still alive, my dear adoptive daughter, Madame Martin.” He had also inscribed the first volume of the Syst`eme for Bliaux. See the copies of the books in MAC. Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:42. See also Comte to Laffitte, September 7, 1852, CG, 6:355. Cat´echisme, 151. Holmes, cited by Richmond Laurin Hawkins, Auguste Comte and the United States (1816– 1853) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 112n1.

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he believed, attributed too many medieval advances to Catholicism – advances that he insisted were due to feudalism. In addition, Catholicism was the “most anti-feminist faith that ever reigned.” Fair to all previous historical periods, positivism challenged Catholicism’s depiction of woman as the “source of all evil.”77 Curiously, the Woman expressed her “profound repugnance” for Protestantism.78 It took away Catholicism’s best institutions, such as the cult of the Virgin and saints. Indeed, Comte assumed that most women were “never” Protestant “except by submission” because its metaphysical biases were contrary to their “nature.”79 However, to be fair to all epochs and to emphasize that progress was constant throughout history, he did have the Priest point out Protestantism’s encouragement of scientific and industrial developments and its destruction of oppressive systems. Holland’s revolt against a foreign tyrant and England’s rebellion against a native one were important steps forward. Comte’s hatred of Philip II and admiration for Cromwell were evident here. In addition, Comte criticized left-wing and right-wing political parties. To present his doctrine in the best light to Catholic women, who tended to be more conservative, he emphasized that people on the left were more troublesome than those on the right because they were further from the constructive impulses of the time. Positivism could offer conservatives the organic doctrine they needed to reconstruct society. Moreover, in his pursuit of Catholic women, he declared that despite the fact that he wanted them to support his stress on the importance of a demonstrated universal religion, he did not consider himself a follower of the “superficial and immoral sects emanating from Voltaire and Rousseau.”80 His system did not represent deism. It was not a civil religion set up specifically to bolster the state or a mystical religion that worshipped the supernatural. His definition of religion did not necessarily include the notion of the supernatural. Yet it did not support atheism either. His religion was a deeply moral intellectual system, one that required women’s help. The “sympathetic instincts” of women could aid his male “synthetic spirit,” especially with regard to moral and social questions.81 As for his “synthetic spirit,” Comte carefully laid out his lineage at the beginning of the book, reflecting his own reverence for the past. He maintained that intellectually his main predecessors were David Hume and Immanuel Kant, politically they were Condorcet and Maistre, and scientifically they were Marie-Franc¸ois-Xavier Bichat 77 78 80

81

Cat´echisme, 29, 34, 287. Chivalry fortunately presented a counter image of woman. Ibid., 292. 79 Comte to Audiffrent, March 9, 1851, CG, 6:33. Cat´echisme, 32. Comte claimed, however, that positivism would realize the desire of the leftists’ eighteenth-century predecessors for “a demonstrated religion directing a pacific activity.” Ibid., 31. Ibid., 77.

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and Gall. Through these six immediate predecessors, he was attached to the “three systematic fathers of the true modern philosophy, Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz.” These three philosophers in turn linked him with three medieval men: Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and Dante. Through them, he felt connected to “the eternal prince of true thinkers, the incomparable Aristotle,” whom he approached in importance.82 Comte suggested that only he could fulfill Western thinkers’ hopes for a universal religion or system.83 Comte pointed out that considering its roots in the Latin word religare, which means “to connect,” religion implied “synthesis.” All religions rested on some complex all-embracing explanation of man and the world, both of which were “naturally connected.” Each religion helped determine man’s relation to the “universal order” that dominated “human existence.”84 But religion was not only intellectual. Religion indicated “the state of complete unity that distinguishes our existence in both the personal and social sense, when all its parts – moral as much as physical – converge . . . on a common destination.”85 The eighteenth-century theosophist Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, and Napoleon had also underscored the function of religion as one of integrating people into the social order.86 Comte’s main principle was that everyone should strive to improve themselves and society in order to attain personal and social harmony. Improvements derived from behavioral modification when individuals lived in society. To lessen the conflicts that invariably arise when people live together, “domestic and civic relations tend to contain personal instincts,” which weaken from lack of use. Conversely, when people live together, they develop their benevolent instincts by using them regularly. Thus people should worship society, or Humanity, the source of their harmony and unity. Comte insisted that all thoughts, sentiments, and activities – the three areas of our existence – converge toward Humanity, an “immense and eternal being,” which we should “know, love, and serve simultaneously.” The scholar Pierre Arnaud explained that Comte grasped that the human spirit was characterized by an “instinct for universal connections” and thus created a religion that recognized the “spiritual factor” in “social unity.”87 Social connections and even more important, the social body were in themselves religious.88 In addition, Comte emphasized the necessity of subordinating oneself and society to the exterior world, whose immutable conditions helped regulate our behavior and our inner life. But resignation had to be coupled with activism. Comte believed that we could learn to modify this exterior world, for its secondary features 82 84 86 87

Ibid., 32. 83 Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:94. Cat´echisme, 62–3, 65, 68. 85 Ibid., 59. See also Pierre Arnaud, ibid., 303n27. George Chabert, Un Nouveau Pouvoir spirituel: Auguste Comte et la religion scientifique au XIXe si`ecle (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2004), 259. Cat´echisme, 64, 69, 80, 93. Arnaud, introduction to ibid.,18. 88 Arnaud, ibid., 19.

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could be changed. Unlike monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam, the Religion of Humanity celebrated useful or practical activity to modify the environment because such activity led to self-improvement and the development of the sciences. Like Fourier, Comte wished to make labor meaningful and free it from its association with a curse sent from God. He maintained that as material activities, which were at first egotistical, became more collective, they would lead to greater altruism. Indeed, traditional religions, which explained everything by supernatural principles, erred by focusing exclusively on man’s tie to God and thus leaving individuals isolated. Comte’s concern with securing a place for the individual and connecting him or her with Humanity was reflected in his creation of morality as the first science. It was “the science of the individual man.” It was “more complete,” “more useful,” “more complex,” and “more specialized” than all the other sciences.89 Comte concluded that to create harmony within both the individual and society, religion had to “regulate each individual nature and rally all individualities” around Humanity, which was composed chiefly of the dead. The Woman interjected that she was concerned about maintaining her “individuality” in such a composite being: “But I am scared of my personal nullity in front of such an existence, whose immensity effaces me more than did the majesty of a God, with whom I felt . . . a particular and direct relation.” But Comte insisted that she and all people would be regarded as important, useful, members of Humanity. In effect, women’s individuality would not lessen any more than men’s. He did not bring up any distinction between the two sexes in this regard. And he went further, stating that everyone’s sense of individuality would be greater in his religion than in previous ones, where God had no need for humans’ services and sought only “vain praises.”90 Still on the defensive, the Priest had to contend with the Woman’s demand that he respond to critics who said that the moral and social laws of positivism were “incompatible with the liberty of man.” Influenced by Thomas Hobbes, Comte maintained that “true liberty is always found inherent in and subordinated to order, whether this be human or exterior.” Liberty consisted of “following laws without obstacles. . . . When a body falls, its liberty is seen in its making its way, based on its nature, toward the center of the earth, with a speed proportional to the time unless the interposition of a fluid modifies its spontaneity.”91 It was absurd to base human liberty on the absence 89 90 91

Cat´echisme, 94. Ibid., 60, 81. On the importance of individuality, see also Syst`eme, 4:34. Cat´echisme, 122. On Hobbes, see Arnaud, ibid., 306n80.

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of laws because such a situation would prevent the establishment of “any kind of individual or collective regime.” This kind of liberty led only to extreme individualism and anarchy. The intellect and the will, like everything else, were bound by rules and dependent on discipline. By its nature, the intellect had to endeavor to become “a faithful mirror of the exterior world.” It could not reject principles based on demonstrations. Likewise, in one moral’s life, one could not choose on one’s own accord “to hate when it is necessary to love or vice versa.” Comte wrote, “Our best liberty thus consists of making good penchants prevail as much as possible over bad ones.”92 But as was obvious in the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme (1848), where he also discussed this topic, he did not favor many other aspects of liberty, such as the freedom to do what one wished to develop one’s potential if it meant going outside one’s social niche. Toward the end of the Cat´echisme, the Woman once again asked Comte to reply to the metaphysicians’ criticism of positivism for not allowing “any sort of rights.” She reminded him that rights were “fortunately forbidden to women, who were none the worse for it.” But presumably men wanted rights. Comte explained, however, that positivism considered rights to be absurd and irrational.They originated from an outdated supernatural source (the divine rights of kings) and led either to reactionary positions (originating in the rights of a leader) or anarchy (derived from the rights of the people). Moreover, rights were founded on the individual, who often neglected his or her obligations toward the species. In keeping with his emphasis on the social, Comte insisted that it was best to replace rights by duties – the duties we owed to others. The Religion of Humanity made everyone “aid each other in fulfilling his proper function.”93 As Annie Petit has remarked, Comte’s religion was not mystical, for it represented “what links and rallies men around a decidedly earthly conception of their mutual duties.”94 Comte assumed that because benevolent inclinations were innate, people were happy doing their duties.95 Besides responding several times to the Woman’s query about his authoritarianism, Comte replied to her lament that he had neglected women, especially in delineating the sacraments, three of which were forbidden to them. “My sex . . . does not seem to be to be sufficiently appreciated.” Yet she backed away from attacking him by agreeing that her “sex” needed less religious care because it was “less troubled” and did not experience as many “disturbing passions.” Comte was 92 93 94 95

Cat´echisme, 122–3. Comte inserted his Tableau c´er´ebral and explained it to the Woman to support his theory of human nature. Ibid, 138–40. Ibid., 237. Annie Petit, “Quelle Place pour la psychologie dans le positivisme?” Revue de synth`ese, 4th ser., 115 (1994): 403. Cat´echisme, 224–6.

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suggesting, in effect, that men were deeper and more complex. She and Comte then argued about the sacrament of Incorporation. She accused him of unfairly preventing women from receiving it simply because they were “correctly” prohibited from acting in the public sphere except in certain cases. Comte argued that family life, which would grow in importance and rid itself of all aspects of “primitive servitude,” offered an excellent way to serve Humanity. Domesticity was an indirect manner of participating in the public good. Comte made it clear that he would allow women to be incorporated into Humanity chiefly if they fulfilled their function of forming and improving men. Thus around and sometimes in the very tomb of the positivist man who had attained incorporation would be his wife, daughter, and other women who helped him succeed. In this way, women would achieve immortality. But betraying his ambivalent opinion of women, Comte explained that animals associated with great men would also be considered their “worthy auxiliaries.”96 Comte thought highly of animals and might have meant this comment as a compliment, but he degraded women by putting both of them at the same level. Comte focused on evaluating people’s behavior as crucial to the incorporation process. Taking up the Greek precept about the importance of self-knowledge, Comte pointed out that people should know themselves to improve their character and thus their performance on this earth. The best way to know oneself was to study others, that is, society, which one did in sociology. Moreover, sociology taught the importance of relativism, of understanding that “our noblest functions” are “always subordinated to the time and place where we live.”97 As Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein explains further, “All knowledge is relative to a knowing subject. . . . Every phenomenon presupposes a spectator because it always consists of a relation . . . between an object and an subject.”98 Comte insisted that initation into his relativistic religion should begin with dogmas, that is, explanations of Humanity (the collective subject) and the external world or milieu (the object). Positivism was thus not only a philosophy but a faith because like all faiths, it guided our relationship to the universal order that dominated us. It consisted of determining the “effective laws of diverse observable phenomena, whether they be interior or exterior.” It sought to understand in particular “relations of succession and of similitude,” which enable 96 97

98

Ibid.,182, 183, 190, 196. To support his theory, Comte quoted Voltaire, which he rarely if ever had done since his youth. He refered to the “beautiful verses of Za¨ıre: ‘I had been near the Ganges a slave of false gods,/Christian in Paris, Muslim in these places.’” Ibid., 94. Notice Comte’s interest in Islam. Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “Comte, de la nature a` l’Humanit´e,” in Philosophies de la nature, ed. Olivier Bloch (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, Paris, 2000), 265.

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us to predict what occurs to phenomena. Rejecting the search for causes, positivism insisted on explanations of “how” and not “why” events happen. Because these explanations were usually accepted by the mass of the people on the basis of the word of the authority issuing them, he felt justified in describing positivism as a “faith.”99 After learning dogmas, we should then cultivate our feelings toward the world and Humanity, especially through worship (the cult) and poetry. Finally, we must focus our actions on the world and Humanity. Our pursuit of “the true, the beautiful, and the good” must always be regulated by morality.100 Corresponding to this pursuit, there were three sorts of laws: intellectual, physical, and moral. Intellectual laws, that is, laws relating to the human understanding, brought together the moral and physical worlds. Preoccupied by logic, the subject of Mill’s work, Comte insisted that the basic law of our understanding is that man is subordinated to the world, which affects his “subjective constructions.” Comte posited that the understanding is heavily dependent on the outside world whence it gets its sensations. Praising Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz’s critique of John Locke, he did not consider, however, the mind to be completely passive. It works “spontaneously,” as Kant had shown when he explained that the mind determines the form of the matter coming from the world. Thus from within come the “subjective links of our objective impressions.” All our ideas are relative to both the spectator and the spectacle. Influenced by Hume, Comte also posited that the “outside world” always regulates the subjective, interior one; as a result, “subjective images are always less vivid and clear than the objective impressions whence they emanate.”101 Indeed, our personal memories become “clearer and more fixed when one sufficiently determines the inert milieu before placing in it the living image.”102 The point was that the mind always retains “a certain speculative liberty” because it can never completely become a “faithful mirror of the exterior world, ” although it is supposed to try to do so. Pushed by “its own inclinations, whether they be scientific or even aesthetic,” the mind makes our conceptions “more regular and even more beautiful” without diminishing their veracity. Above all, it had to avoid two dangers: mysticism, which derived from too much speculative activity, and empiricism, which came from sticking too closely to the facts. Citing Miguel de Cervantes for support, Comte associated mysticism with madness, that is, excessive subjectivity. The “dark fictions of our atheists and pantheists” reflected this 99 101

102

Cat´echisme, 65. See also Arnaud, ibid., 3303n33. 100 Cat´echisme, 71, 94. Ibid., 85, 87. Comte owned a six–volume set of Hume’s philosophical works, translated into French in 1764. See Hume’s Oeuvres philosophiques, Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Syst`eme, 1:450.

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type of madness.103 He connected empiricism with idiotism, that is, excessive objectivity. To him, “reason” consisted of the middle way between these two extremes of mysticism and empiricism. As for physical and moral laws, Comte divided positive philosophy, which he now called the “systematic knowledge of Humanity,” into two large categories, cosmology and sociology. Reflecting his eagerness to use labels of his own choosing, he envisioned the day when the term “cosmology” would be changed to “geology” and “sociology” would be changed to “anthropology.” Geology studied the planet earth, which was man or humanity’s milieu. It comprised mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry. Anthropology meant the “Study of man.” It encompassed biology (a kind of preamble treating the “vital order”), sociology proper (the analysis of the collective human order or humanity), and morality (a type of concluding study of the individual man). To help his readers, Comte made a clear chart of the various sciences, which he called the “Theoretical Hierarchy of Human Conceptions or the Synthetic Table of the Universal Order.”104 Reflecting at least some respect for the female intellect, he briefly explained the basic laws of these sciences and emphasized the need to create scientific laws of moral and social phenomena. Although he was concerned with unveiling his religious principles, it is clear that science still made up an essential part of his philosophy. Pierre Arnaud correctly pointed out that “the three interviews on dogma, which constitute the first part of the Cat´echisme” . . . are the “perfectly faithful resum´e of the positive philosophy exposed in the Cours of 1830 to 1842 . . . during the ‘first life’ . . . of Auguste Comte.”105 Comte did not want the Woman to believe in the Religion of Humanity on the basis of blind faith. His was a demonstrated religion. Besides the sciences, Comte reviewed his philosophy of history, which was to be the topic of a course in 1855 – a course that he never gave.106 His basic point was that all of history was pointing to the triumph of positivism.107 Going against those who associated positivism with materialism or secularism, he emphasized that people were becoming increasingly religious. He even went so far as to defend theocracy from those who accused it of always being degrading and oppressive. He wrote, “All these criticisms of theocracy must be regarded . . . as frivolous as the reproaches of St. Augustine to all of polytheism and the recriminations of Voltaire against Catholicism. 103 104 105 107

Cat´echisme, 85, 86, 88. Here Comte may be reflecting his own fling with atheism during his attack of madness of 1826. Ibid., 96–7. Comte was very critical of contemporary geologists who made their science into a small specialty focusing only on rocks. See Arnaud, ibid., 306n66. Arnaud, introduction to Cat´echisme, 17. 106 Synth`ese, 16. Comte included his Positivist Calendar to teach people to commemorate the past.

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No regime can merit such censure except during its decadence.”108 To him, theocracy fit the condition of human nature during the early period of history and favored progress. Again he took a historicist approach. Comte’s goal was to replace theocracy with a “true sociocracy,” a new political organization where “all human forces,” including women, would contribute to the “common regeneration.” War would end, and there would be great harmony in the world.109 The cultivation of feelings would be reconciled with the development of the mind and practical activities. The West and the East would finally share a universal religion. Noting what Comte owed to the Christian and Islamic religions and to the religious experiments of the revolutionary period (including Theophilanthropy), Arnaud has aptly pointed out, “The Religion of Humanity emerges from the religious past of Humanity without repeating it or limiting itself to summarizing it.”110 Comte’s warnings against reductionism in the sciences extended to his religion as well. The Religion of Humanity summed up and at the same time went beyond religious tradition. The Cat´echisme was an aggressive defense of the new Religion of Humanity. It was chiefly meant to convert women, the segment of the population that Comte assumed would be most resistant to his new religion because it was non-Christian. At least one woman was not pleased by Comte’s work: Jenny P. d’H´ericourt. A republican feminist, who had actively supported women’s rights in the Revolution of 1848, she wrote a very sarcastic review of Comte’s Cat´echisme. Her article was published in La Revue philosophique et religieuse, which had been founded in 1855 by Charles Fauvety, a friend of Massin’s.111 D’H´ericourt, who had studied medicine but been prevented by French law from pursuing her dream of becoming a doctor, emphasized that Comte’s work was aimed at “illiterate women.” She, d’H´ericourt, would leave the “sentimental domain” where he relegated women in order to tell him “masculinely” where she thought of his doctrine. Her rational, critical analysis of his notions of duties, liberty, and religion made a mockery of his endeavor. Making fun of Comte’s command to engage in worship for two hours a day, she warned him that he was giving his friends a “sad spectacle of a break” in his “cerebral equilibrium.” After she dismissed his ideas of 108 111

Cat´echisme, 276. 109 Ibid., 29. 110 Arnaud, introduction to Cat´echisme, 16. In the 1860s, Fauvety had a salon, which was attended by d’H´ericourt, Massin, Juliette Lamber, Eug´enie Niboyet, Elisa Lemonnier, and Cl´emence Royer. It is interesting that Massin, a strong, independent woman, was part of this feminist group. On d’H´ericourt, see Karen Offen “A Nineteenth-Century French Feminist Rediscovered: Jenny P. d’H´ericourt,” Signs 13 (Autumn 1987), 144–58; Jacques Rougerie, “1871: The Paris Commune,” in Political and Historical Encyclopedia of Women, ed. Christine Faur´e, 2d ed. (London: Francis & Taylor/Routledge, 2003), 233–34.

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men’s need for three guardian angels and their obligation to support women, she addressed Comte directly: “Be convinced that every true woman will laugh . . . at the incense with which you want to asphyxiate her; for she cares no longer about adoration; she wants respect [and] equality. . . . it is by work that woman claims to conquer her civil rights. . . . You, Sir, . . . want to annihilate woman.”112 D’H´ericourt rejected Comte’s sentimental views of women, who, she insisted, were equal in men in intelligence and activity. Her book review caused a scandal, which made her even more determined to unveil the misanthropy of the day. In 1860, she published her findings in a work that soon became famous: La Femme affranchie: R´eponse a` MM. Michelet, Proudhon, E. de Girardin, A. Comte et aux autres novateurs modernes. Fortunately for Comte, men read the Cat´echisme too. Indeed, more men than women wrote to Comte to tell them their reactions to the book. L´eonce Clark, an Englishman, wrote, “My mind acknowledged your scientific exposition but did not know how it could be recognized by women and proletarians. Your sixth interview dissipated my doubts. Your creation of our three good angels gives me Faith. I am yours.” He asked Comte to perform the sacrament of presentation for his two sons and two nephews. Comte was a little surprised that he did not ask his wife first.113 Another enthusiast was E. Tellier, a bureaucrat who headed the mayor’s office in Amiens. Born in a village near Amiens in1829, he received some education from his father, an impoverished teacher. When he was an adolescent, he launched himself into the study of history and philosophy. He soon abandoned his Catholic faith and became a nonbeliever. At age twenty, he started reading astronomy and physics. A friend introduced him to Comte’s Cours, which he said changed his life because of its demonstration of unquestionable principles.114 After then reading the Cat´echisme, he decided to write to Comte to tell him how much he appreciated this “incomparable” work. At first he feared that its religious ideas, with their stress on the feelings, would negate the scientific approach of the Cours. However, he finally saw that the addition of morality to the scientific hierarchy allowed the needs of the mind and heart to be reconciled, and this legitimation of emotion made his doctrine more appealing to the “two extreme classes” of society, the workers and women. In addition, Comte’s cult of Woman helped women more than the 112

113 114

Jenny P. d’H´ericourt, “Le Cat´echisme positiviste d’Auguste Comte,” Revue philosophique et religieuse 3, no. 1 (December 1855): 47, 48, 57, 59–60. I thank Karen Offen for generously giving me a copy of this article. Clark became friends with Bligni`eres, for they both lived in Douai. L´eonce Clark to Comte, July 4, 1853, reprinted in CG, 7:87 E. Tellier to Comte, April 15, 1853, MAC.

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“ridiculous” and “immoral” projects that were to lead to their “socalled emancipation.” Women could increase their “public influence” simply if a “new order of chivalry” was created. Besides Comte’s notions of the mind and heart, his emphasis on activities useful to progress was important to Tellier. Comte allowed for “all the liberty that is desirable”; Tellier assured him that no one need complain of his being authoritarian. Tellier excitedly told him of his devotion, “My adherence to your principles is even more complete because I have found only in your writings the conviction that my anxious spirit has searched in vain until now.”115 Having abandoned all vestiges of Catholicism in favor of this new “true and universal” religion, he became a member of the Positivist Society, contributed to the Positivist Subsidy, and boasted about being one of Comte’s “most zealous disciples.”116 Besides this bureaucrat, Comte’s Cat´echisme attracted some avowed leftists to his cause. One was Savard, who lived in the Charente and called himself a revolutionary. After Napoleon III’s coup d’´etat, he lost his teaching position and was sent without a trial to T´ebessa in Algeria for two years. After his return, he met by chance the positivist Dr. Julien Penard, who was busy proselytizing in Rochefort after having moved there from another place in the Charente, where he could find no one interested in positivism. Penard’s aim was to lead a campaign against “the reactionary bourgeoisie and the purely revolutionary . . . proletarians” who use “dangerous” and “powerless” methods.117 Every Sunday afternoon, Penard and several workers met for three hours to read the Cat´echisme. Someone put him in touch with Savard, and he urged him first to read Littr´e’s work and Comte’s Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme. Afterwards, Savard felt he was “a whole other man.” He appreciated Comte’s stress on order and progress and living for others, which were fine guides to morality. He wrote, ‘It seemed to me that I saw disappear forever the crater of bloody revolutions that stain the most beautiful pages of our history, and immediately I ran to put myself under the banner of Positivism.’”118 After meeting with Penard’s friend Dr. Mont`egre, Savard decided to begin his positivist education. He and three friends met at his house on Thursdays and Sundays to read a chapter of the Cat´echisme. Sometimes Savard went to meetings at Penard’s house. But in January 1856 Savard was arrested and sent from Rochefort to Paris, for having written the statutes of a secret society called the Misitante. Penard told Comte he must have written them before he 115 116 117 118

Tellier to Comte, February 8, March 9, and April 15, 1853, MAC. Tellier to Comte, March 9, April 15, 1853, MAC. Penard to Comte, September 4, 1854, MAC. Savard to Comte, April 1, 1856, MAC. See also Penard to Comte, July 30, 1856, MAC.

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became familiar with positivism.119 He begged Comte to have Vieillard free him. When nothing happened, Penard, obviously frustrated, apparently ceased writing to Comte and died in December 1856.120 It is unclear what happened to Savard. Other people were not as enthusiastic about the book. Alexander Ellis, a Scottish enthusiast of positivism, liked the Cat´echisme but lamented that it failed as a work of propaganda. Even if it were translated into English, as Comte hoped, few Britons would read it because they equated positivism with materialism. Ellis also relayed to Comte different people’s criticisms of it. Calling Comte’s approach to madness too metaphysical, one woman reader rejected his use of phrenology to explain it. Another woman reader criticized the Cat´echisme for its negative, destructive attitude toward society. Insisting on the need to appeal to the hearts of women and uneducated members of the lower class, Ellis wrote, “We need an even simpler and less systematic manual, which is not the Cat´echisme.” Comte could, for example, write a book summarizing the life and significance of each individual featured in the Calendrier Positiviste, which would be more “interesting and useful to a young positivist” than the Cat´echisme.121 Lucas also berated Comte for his naivete in thinking that workers could read the Cat´echisme, which was far too long for them. They could absorb only “general maxims.”122 Pointing out that the Parisian proletariat had no problems with the work, Comte testily replied that if workers in Lyon were so retarded that they could not read four hundred pages, he did not care if they deserted him and went back to the “books of Mr. Cabet,” the communist.123 Yet another disciple, the Irishman Henry Dix Hutton, tended to agree with Lucas. He wrote, I have often felt that your Catechism was as a whole hardly a book to give to anyone as an introduction to positivism, partly because I think a previous familiarity with the intellectual results of positivism is necessary as preparation, both mental and moral; and partly because it contains many passages likely to mislead those who are not so prepared as to your real moral views and aims.124

He hoped in future editions, Comte would give fuller explanations of his points, especially his notion of religion. As one “hostile” reviewer quite rightly remarked, Comte’s “definition of religion (as consisting in unity) does not answer to the popular meaning, which should of 119 121 122 123 124

Penard to Comte, July 30, 1856, MAC. 120 Larizza, Bandiera verde, 158n152. Alexander Ellis to Comte, August 7, 1856, MAC. Lucas to Comte, September 10, 1852, MAC. See also Lucas to Comte, July 6, 1853, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, October 1, 1852, CG, 6:401. Hutton to Comte, July 11, 1854, MAC.

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course be respected, especially in such a matter.” Unity pertained only to the “abstract character of religion.” To Hutton, the real definition of religion consisted of “the awakened and constant feeling of our dependence on a superior power.”125 This feeling of dependence was what Comte should emphasize in the future. Comte did not respond. But these criticisms from his disciples and others were telling. The book did not do well. A little over five hundred copies were sold during Comte’s life.126 a look to the east Unable to attract masses of workers and women to his movement and disappointed with Napoleon III, Comte persisted in his campaign to convert some dictator as the first step in setting up the positivist regime. Guiding those in power was more important than actually having power.127 Moreover, after having erected the Positivist Calendar, he was acutely aware of the power one individual could have.128 In late 1852, he decided to try to extend positivism’s sphere of influence to the “monotheistic Orient.”129 This attempt was an offshoot of his growing interest in other parts of the globe. He hoped positivism would triumph everywhere in “two or three centuries” and 100,000 positivist priests would be spread throughout the world to manage spiritual affairs.130 To begin the “universal propagation” of his philosophy, Comte targeted Russia and Turkey because its leaders seemed to him to be progressive in their approach to society, amenable to his advice, and open to improvement. To demonstrate his efficacy among “true conservatives,” he expressed the hope of publishing his letters to them and distributing them, but his printer, E. Thunot, thought they might incur the ire of censors and refused to comply with Comte’s wishes, although later he allowed them to be appended to the preface to volume three of the Syst`eme.131 Little did Comte anticipate that the two countries would soon be at odds in the Crimean War. 125 126 127 128 129 130 131

Hutton to Comte, July 23, 1854, MAC. See the folder, “Circulation des ouvrages d’Auguste Comte,” MAC. Laurent Fedi, Comte (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004), 133. Petit, “La Fin positiviste,” 527. Comte to Audiffrent, September 21, 1852, CG, 6:391. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:463–4. Comte to A. Papot, July 6, 1854, CG, 7:228. Thunot often refused to comply with Comte’s requests for fear of government reprisal. This time he was worried that he would lose his publishing license if Comte’s insistence on republicanism in part of the letter to the tsar outraged the new French government. Comte to Laffitte, August 20, 1853, CG, 7:109; Comte to Audiffrent, August 25, 1853, CG, 7:111; Comte to Laffitte, September 12, 1853, CG, 7:118; Thunot to Comte, February 25, 1853, MAC.

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Comte constructed a complementary view of the West and East, where the former represented progress and the latter order.132 Yet at the same time, he believed that in the West, most of the heads of state now were reactionary and unworthy of his attention. He thought he could address more directly and effectively leaders in the East, who, despite their concerns about order, were at the moment “wisely progressive.” Positivism could show them the road to progress that was best adapted to their national characteristics so that their development could be systematic, rapid, and trouble-free. Comte advised the leaders to appreciate “their national advantages” and to avoid the “servile imitation” of the West, whose anarchic ideas had no “social objective” and whose progress had become disorderly. Nevertheless, Comte was not totally opposed to globalization, for he hoped his European republicanism and Religion of Humanity would be implanted everywhere in the future. He assumed that one day “the diverse retarded populations” of the world would reach “the normal level of the West.” Yet he carefully did not promote his new institutions too strongly for fear of alienating foreign leaders. He advertised his doctrine as a way for “Oriental leaders” to maintain the order and peace they desired.133 But in Comte’s eyes, this order could be more progressive than static. Comte first decided to send the two volumes of the Syst`eme and the Cat´echisme to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia in the hope of attracting his support. In 1836, Comte had had two long conversations with Count Nicholas Romanzof, a former chancellor of Russia, who had scientific interests. His openness to Comte’s ideas and the tsar’s own scientific education suggested that Russians must be good candidates for conversion to positivism. Nicholas I had some interest in the freedom of the serfs – an interest that Comte found very promising.134 But because he did not read newspapers or periodicals, Comte was ignorant of Nicholas’s autocratic nature and his politically stagnant regime. Comte’s cerebral hygiene made him look foolish, especially because relations between France and Russia were tense as both countries sought to acquire influence in the area dominated by the declining Ottoman Empire. Russia wanted control over the Straits of the Dardanelles to obtain access to the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, whereas Napoleon III wanted to upset the balance of power and to boost French prestige and his standing with the Catholics. 132 133 134

Syst`eme, 4:10. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:463, 467–9. See also Comte to Audiffrent, October 1, 1852, CG, 6:401. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:454, 471. See also Deroisin, Comte, 48.

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Both countries used the pretext of protecting religious minorities to gain influence. Russia claimed to maintain the interests of the Greek Orthodox Christians living under the Sultan, whereas France demanded that the Sultan give it protection over the Latin, that is, Roman, Catholics in his territories. These Roman Catholics were theoretically under the Latin patriarch in Jerusalem. Napoleon III wanted the Sultan to transfer the key to the Holy Places of Jerusalem from the Greek Orthodox hierarchy to the Roman Catholic clergy. The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire tended to support France to take revenge on Russia. He gave some concessions to the French in November 1852, humiliating the tsar.135 One month later Comte wrote his letter to Nicholas I. Although he did not allude directly to the tension between the countries, he suggested that if the tsar adopted positivism, the friction between them would end because his philosophy promoted international peace. In his very long letter of December 20, 1852, Comte began, “A philosopher who has always been a republican is sending to the most absolute of contemporary kings a systematic exposition of human regeneration in both its social and intellectual aspects.”136 Comte tried to establish his own reactionary credentials by boasting of his opposition to popular sovereignty and equality and apologizing for the “revolutionary color” of some of his declarations, which he claimed was necessary because he had to address the lower classes in the West owing to the “ineptitude” of the upper classes and the mediocrity of leaders. He congratulated the tsar for preserving Russia from the “chronic alienation” and agitation of the West.137 Comte, in effect, encouraged him not to adopt a system of parliamentary government, which he viewed as a source of instability in the West. Comte covered the main points of his doctrine, from its scientific basis to the recent religious guise that it had assumed. He mentioned de Vaux’s influence on him, his theory of the three guardian angels, and the necessity to worship our ancestors and Humanity. He also discussed his hatred of the monarchy and his plans for a proletarian triumvirate to rule France. Yet Comte told the tsar not to fear positivism, which would take a long time to triumph in Russia. Indeed, Nicholas might find positivism useful. If he adopted it, it could help pacify and unite his vast empire. After all, the Religion of Humanity was more universal than the three religions currently dividing 135 136

137

Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 172. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:451. Comte’s letter is twenty-two pages in the Correspondance g´en´erale. See Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:451–73. He spent four or five days writing it and later read it to the Positivist Society. Comte to Audiffrent, December 30, 1852, CG, 6:479; Syst`eme, 3:xiv. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:451.

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Russia: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Moreover, positivism would give the tsar the chance to choose his own successor, as the Roman emperors used to do. Finally, positivism could help Russian leaders proceed peacefully through the inevitable stages of progress, such as the disintegration of the empire, the abolition of serfdom, and the growth of industry.138 Comte begged the tsar to protect “organic doctrines,” such as positivism, praising him as the “natural leader of European conservatives,” and “the only true statesman of the nineteenth century.”139 Nicholas could do for positivism what Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great did for eighteenth-century philosophy. Comte hoped to include his own letter as well as Nicholas’s reply in the third volume of the Syst`eme. His letter, he boasted, was the “principal manifesto” of positivism for conservatives, the people to whom he felt increasingly eager to attract to his movement.140 Yet Nicholas never responded.141 However, at least one recent scholar, James Billington, thought that Comte was not so foolish in trying to convince the tsar that the very insularity and backwardness of Russia, particularly in terms of not having a liberal government, could help it leapfrog over the West and get around its present problems. Many Russians at the time thought likewise. Billington adds, “Few will deny an element of prophecy to Comte’s perception that the maintenance of religion and social discipline in Russia made that country better equipped than any in Western Europe to transform society suddenly and in accord with rational ‘sociocratic’ principles.”142 138

139 140

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Comte supported the separatist movement in Poland because he believed that this area was “truly Occidental” and thus different from the rest of Russia. Yet he believed Poland should also be split into different sections. He wrote, “Instead of putting all of ancient Poland back under the reactionary yoke of an unworthy aristocracy, positivism will recommend dividing this imperfect nationality sufficiently so that all its diverse peoples cannot create a European-wide disturbance.” Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:471. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:471. Comte to Audiffrent, December 30, 1852, CG, 6:479. Comte included his letter to Nicholas in the Syst`eme but obviously could not include a reply, which was never written. Comte seemed to have a lot of difficulty getting the letter to the tsar. At first a Russian by the name of Volonski promised to act as intermediary. Presumably he did not do it. Then Charles Jundzill, a Polish aristocrat and positivist, was supposed to act as intermediary. Finally in April 1853, as these various intermediaries proved unreliable, Comte asked Capellen to give the letter and packet to the head of the Russian delegation in Paris, who was a friend of his. Yet then he learned that the tsar would first have to authorize such a delivery. Comte wrote another letter on April 14, 1853, asking this authorization from the tsar, but he never responded. In the end, Comte decided to print the manifesto in the Syst`eme even if he could not send it directly to the tsar. See Comte to Audiffrent, May 19 and July 14, 1853, CG, 7:75, 86; Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:166; Syst`eme, 3, xiii; 4: xvii. Billington, “The Intelligentsia,” 807–8.

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Next Comte turned his attention to Turkey, which appeared promising because it was an Islamic country, free from “metaphysicians and even lawyers.”143 Comte considered it a part of “Oriental Europe,” not “Occidental Asia.”144 He intended to send his works to the Grand Vizier Mustafa Reshid Pasha, who introduced Western reforms into the Ottoman Empire.145 But then Audiffrent, who was responsible for finding a way to get the Grand Vizier the letter, informed him that he had been disgraced, and his successor was a reactionary.146 Nevertheless, on February 4, 1853, Comte wrote to Reshid Pasha, but he did not put forth the same effort as to did with Nicholas. Only a couple of pages long, the letter congratulated the former Grand Vizier for helping to suppress the slave trade and polygamy and invited him to read works on positivism, which aimed to fulfill “needs common to all civilized peoples.”147 The “white race” in the East and West had felt for centuries a need for a common monotheistic religion, but this wish was never realized because the Roman world had been divided into Catholicism and Islam, which had “neutralized” each other and never rallied the whole human population. This division was understandable considering that these religions rested on vague and undemonstrable principles. Although the East and West diverged on matters of religion, they converged in their interest in cultivating the sciences. Comte thus believed his “positive faith” could satisfy the needs for a universal religion in both regions of the world. Indeed, according to him, the “Islamic genius” was more open to the positivist religion because it “tended more toward reality due to its simpler beliefs and more practical direction.”148 Moreover, the Islamic people were ripe for the positivist regime because they had been preserved from “revolutionary corruption” (stemming especially from Protestantism and deism) and were restrained in practicing the hereditary principle. Like fervent Catholics, Muslims could proceed directly from their religion to positivism without incurring the ravages of metaphysics. If they 143 144 145

146 147

148

Comte to Audiffrent, September 21, 1852, CG, 6-391. Syst`eme, 4:508. Responsible for finding out more about this Grand Vizier, Audiffrent informed Comte that he suppressed the slave trade in Constantinople and favored monogamy. See Audiffrent to Comte, September 25, 1852, MAC. Audiffrent to Comte, November 6, 1852, MAC. Comte to Reshid Pasha, February 4, 1853, CG, 7:39. The letter was finally sent in the summer. One of Comte’s former students, Noureddin Bey, whom he tutored in the mid-1830s, was in charge of getting the letter to the ex–Grand Vizier. Noureddin Bey was Egyptian but lived in Constantinople with his brother, Osman Pacha, a former Egyptian admiral. Comte figured that he was “well placed in the large Ottoman world” and could thus be useful for propaganda purposes. Comte to Audiffrent, July 14, 1853, CG, 7:85. Comte to Reshid Pasha, February 4, 1853, CG, 7:39–40.

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became positivists, Turks would realize the plans of the “incomparable Mohammed,” who, Comte declared, understood the need for the separation of temporal and spiritual powers and the cult of Humanity. By adopting positivism, which recommended small temporal territories, Turkey would find it “normal” that its empire was disintegrating, and it would not need to fear invasions from other powers, namely Russia. Uniformity of opinions and customs, one of the objects of Islam, could be better achieved by spiritual unity achieved under positivism than by a shaky political unity. Comte’s words fell on deaf ears. Like Nicholas I, Reshid Pasha did not respond to Comte’s proposition.149 (He was most likely preoccupied by the war between Turkey and Russia, which finally broke out in July 1853.) Yet later the Young Turks (especially Ahmed Reza), who established modern Turkey and used “Union and Progress” as their motto, were influenced by Comte to set up a secular republic that separated church and state.150 As we have seen in his approach to the coup d’´etat of 1851, Comte’s commentary on contemporary events was not always sound. Upon the entry of France and Britain into the Crimean War in March 1854, Comte was embarrassed and made excuses for the tsar’s aggressiveness, which he called simply an “aberration.” It was caused by the tsar’s inability to stand up to the “bad suggestions of the German crowd” that pushed for the conquest of the Ottoman Empire to gain property.151 The man Comte targeted without naming was Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, the Russian statesman of German descent who was directing foreign policy and wanted war, unlike the Muscovite nobles.152 With characteristic optimism, Comte assured his followers that the conflict would soon die down because modern wars were just “passing” accidents.153 Not since the Crusades had the European nations worked together so closely without self-interest. The Crimean War heralded the consolidation of Western Europe, the “transformation of armies into police forces,” and an end to war in general.154 The 149

150 151

152 153 154

Comte later sent Reshid Pasha the last two volumes of the Syst`eme and his Appel aux Conservateurs. Audiffrent was again an important intermediary. Comte also sent a copy of the Appel to the Turkish ambassador, who turned out to be Reshid Pasha’s son. See Comte to Audiffrent, November 15, 1855, CG, 8:147; Comte to Audiffrent, December 4, 1855, CG, 8:155. Michel Bourdeau, “La R´eception du positivisme (1843–1928),” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines 8 (2003): 3. Comte asserted that these bad advisors had become entrenched in Russia since the “vicious empiricism” of Peter the Great. Comte to Hadery, March 9, 1854, CG, 7:193– 4; Syst`eme, 3:xiv. See also Comte to Audiffrent, February 16, 1855, CG, 8:27. Comte to Audiffrent, November 1, 1855, CG, 8:135. Comte to Hutton, April 13, 1854, CG, 7:203; Comte to Hadery, March 9, 1854, CG, 7:194; Comte to Papot, July 6, 1854, CG, 7:228. See also Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” xxii.

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war also served to discredit Christianity, or, at least, Greek Orthodox Christianity because all of the West supported the Ottoman Empire and thus Islam against it.155 Comte had far more respect for Islam than for the Eastern Orthodox Church, which he found backward.156 He was also irked that the French were still engaged in their “monstrous occupation” of another Muslim country, Algeria, which seemed completely “contradictory.”157 Wars pitting Christians against Christians should make people recognize that only positivism could reconcile the East and West and bring about peace. Comte soon learned that his tactics had backfired; London newspapers, including the Times, disseminated the notion that he favored tyranny.158 Robinet, who was a fervent republican, also informed Comte of the “false” interpretations people were making after reading his “manifesto to the tsar” in volume three of the Syst`eme and a paragraph in the Cat´echisme (1852), where he celebrated the head of Russia as “the only truly eminent temporal chief” of the nineteenth century.159 It was already shocking that Comte had endeavored to make contact with an autocrat, one whom Robinet considered worse than Napoleon. Now that Russia was France’s enemy, Comte’s favorable letters became even more detrimental to the cause of positivism. Robinet hoped that Comte would publish his analysis of Russia separately in the fourth volume of the Syst`eme to allay the public’s suspicions. Yet Comte refused, condemning the “calumnies of the revolutionaries,” who he felt unjustly criticized him.160 Nevertheless, although he claimed to be happy that his manifesto “proved” how free he was from “revolutionary prejudices and habits,” he did acknowledge in the preface to the fourth volume of the Syst`eme his mistaken appreciation of the tsar in the previous volume. He expressed his “regret” at having proclaimed “the inferiority of Occidental statesmen.”161 He even praised Napoleon III for leading in a worthy fashion the alliance of France and England in order “to maintain universal peace” in the face of backward “Oriental troublemakers,” who were trying to extend their empires in an anachronistic 155 156

157 158 159 160 161

Comte was critical of the Eastern Orthodox Church for being socially less effective than either Roman Catholicism or Islam. Syst`eme, 4: xix. See his critical comments on the Greeks in the Syst`eme. He maintained that Western countries, pushed by their love of the classical world, had erred in supporting the Greek rebellion against the Turks in the 1820s. According to him, these same countries were redeeming themselves by now aiding the Turks against the Russians. Syst`eme, 4:xxi. Comte to Hadery, March 9, 1854, CG, 7:194. Hutton to Comte, April 24, 1854, MAC. Cat´echisme, 30; Robinet to Comte, July 7, 1854, MAC. Comte to Robinet, July 13, 1854, CG, 7:230. Nevertheless, in volume three of the Syst`eme, Comte criticized Russia for unwisely intervening in this region. Syst`eme, 3:609. Syst`eme, 4:xvii, xxiii.

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manner.162 The tsar’s aggressive foreign policy also upset the modus vivendi that the various religions had worked out centuries before.163 Yet Comte did not completely spare the West. Commenting on the strange alliances that were being built, Comte added, “The coalition of Catholics and Protestants to protect the Muslims from the Byzantine invasion . . . shows that . . . the Occident is obeying purely terrestrial impulses, leaving celestial motives to backward peoples.”164 He suggested that nationalism was the only creed that inspired Westerners’ enthusiasm. Their abandonment of traditional religious beliefs only underscored the need for a universal religion such as his own. As the war continued, Comte became increasingly critical of the West. In Appel aux Conservateurs, published in 1855, he explained that although he approved of the initial involvement of the West, which had acted defensively to put an end to the disturbance, he did not like the Western countries’ aggressive strategy to destroy Sebastopol, guarantee Turkish independence, and break up Russia.165 The French and English should let the vast Russian Empire fragment on its own rather than attack it and thereby give it a moral justification for its actions.166 The West risked losing its moral authority in the region and aggravating the situation. European harmony itself was threatened.167 162

163

164 165

166

167

Comte to Hutton, April 13, 1854, CG, 7:204. Comte hoped that Napoleon III would become as “progressive” in internal affairs as he was in external ones. See Comte to Tholouze, July 13, 1854, CG, 7:232. See a similar comment in the preface to the fourth volume of the Syst`eme, where Comte remarked that now that Napoleon III had regenerated his foreign affairs perhaps he would do likewise with domestic matters. Syst`eme, 4:xix. Syst`eme, 4: xviii. Comte commented on the religious divisions that existed between Catholicism and Protestantism on the one hand and Christianity and Islam on the other. He explained that these various religions had learned to coexist. Only positivism could in the end overcome their different points of view and bring all creeds together. But in the meantime, the tsar was ruining what harmony existed. Comte warned the tsar that it was a shame to ruin his reputation, which was built on his twenty-five-year effort to improve domestic conditions. The tsar needed to remove from his entourage the “Germanic adventurers” who were pushing “the Russian nation toward a conquest destined especially to procure for them emoluments in the south that are more advantageous than their domains in the north.” Ibid., xviii, xx–xxi. Ibid., 4:xxii. Auguste Comte, Appel aux Conservateurs (Paris, 1855), xix. Comte was very critical of Russian diplomacy. He even pointed out the folly of Alexander I, who based his Holy Alliance on old-fashioned religious ideas. Ibid., xx–xi, Comte to Audiffrent, March 10, 1855, CG, 8:33. Comte to Hutton, January 12, 1855, CG, 8:8. Comte was critical of the English press’s jingoistic attitude. He was particularly opposed to the “ridiculous” Western blockade of the Baltic and opposed the destructive siege of Sebastopol as unnecessary to guarantee Turkish independence. The only reason, according to Comte, that the French supported the war was that they feared alienating the British. Comte to Audiffrent, January 29, 1855, CG, 8:22; Comte to Hutton, April 1, 1855, CG, 8:45; Comte to Allman, May 18, 1855, CG, 8:51. Appel, xviii.

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Only the Religion of Humanity could resolve global problems and ensure peace by uniting everyone on earth. When Tsar Nicholas died in 1855, Comte believed his death derived from cerebral confusion resulting from the contradiction between his dreams of empire and his previous embrace of the nonaggressive principles underlying the Holy Alliance.168 All in all, Comte seemed disappointed that during the two-year period when the Crimean War occupied people’s attention, the movement of the “progressists” toward social regeneration was suspended.169 a strange appeal to the le ft After appealing unsuccessfully to conservative women and political leaders, noting that Louis Napoleon’s reign was a reactionary “political charivari,” and breaking with the republican Littr´e, Comte decided to seek support once again on the left.170 Disciples assured him about the progress of positivism in this quarter.171 He now hoped to show that the positivist synthesis could attract support from both the extreme right (i.e., the “autocrat” Tsar Nicholas) and the extreme left (the “reds”) – “worthy conservatives and worthy revolutionaries.”172 Just as he had targeted Napoleon III, Tsar Nicholas I, and Reshid Pasha, Comte appealed to specific individuals. Although he recognized that revolutionaries were no longer in his favor, especially after his letter to the tsar, Comte nevertheless hoped that their influential leaders would bring their followers into the positivist camp.173 In 1852, Comte targeted Proudhon, Auguste Blanqui, and Armand Barb`es, whom Lefort thought would make good triumvirs in the positivist government. Proudhon was the great defender of equality, liberty, and anarchy. His Qu’est-ce que la propri´et´e? of 1840 had established his reputation as a revolutionary. He had attended Comte’s 168 169 170

171 172 173

Comte to Harriet Martineau, April 6, 1854, CG, 7:202. See also Comte to Audiffrent, March 10, 1855, CG, 8:33. Comte to Congreve, June 12, 1856, CG, 8:265. Comte to Deullin, September 5, 1852, CG, 6:354. Comte told Jacquemin that Louis Napoleon’s authoritarian regime gave him new impetus “to convert the best revolutionaries” to positivism. Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:450. See also Syst`eme, 4:xix. Audiffrent to Comte, September 13, 1852, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, September 17, 1852, CG, 6:366; Comte to Hadery, January 6, 1853, CG, 7:9. Comte to Audiffrent, May 2, 1854, CG, 7:208. Comte was aghast that the “revolutionaries” maintained that his manifesto to the tsar was meant to be the dedication of the third volume of the Syst`eme. However, the fact that his printer, Thunot, refused to allow him to insert Barb`es’s letter to offset the missive to the tsar lent the book a very conservative flavor. Syst`eme, 4:xvi.

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course on the history of humanity in January 1848. Blanqui was a conspirator, whose efforts to create a socialist republic headed by proletarians had led to his frequent incarceration. He was often linked with Barb`es, who came from a wealthy Creole family. Although their relationship was very troubled, Blanqui and Barb`es had headed an unsuccessful coup in 1839 and tried to turn the Revolution of 1848 in a more radical direction. Their role in the insurrection of May 15, 1848, which was aimed against the Constituent Assembly, had landed them in jail.174 Although he had earlier condemned these leaders of the “reds,” Comte in late 1852 perhaps recognized the justice of Laffitte’s remark that “anarchists” were more open to direction and criticism than reactionaries.175 Conservatives tended to remain tied to the old doctrines whose ineffectiveness was a leading cause of anarchy in the first place. Now that the conservatives proved to be indifferent and ungenerous, Comte saw the importance of maintaining ties with revolutionaries, who provided him with most of his support. Lefort encouraged Comte to try to convert Proudhon and even wanted him to give the anarchist the post of finance minister in the positivist government.176 Proudhon, however, was suspicious of positivism. After going to one of Comte’s public lectures on social reorganization on January 30, 1848, Proudhon noted in his private journal that he agreed with “some things” but in general found the lecture to be full of “contradictions” and “blabbering.”Although Comte seemed eager to help the proletariat, he formulated a simplistic notion of reform consisting of making the affections dominate the mind. In addition, he insisted only on fraternity, not equality, and used for support the fact that “dogs” are “UNEQUAL.” Proudhon wrote, “How stupid is this! – An old fool, as crazy as Leroux.” In addition, Comte’s ideas reeked of Catholicism, with all its moralizing. Instead of allowing workers savings banks or reorganizing their property, he offered them “in compensation the wealth of moral dignity.” Public opinion or “public morality” was to be their weapon of choice, but Proudhon insisted that it was far too weak to limit centralized authority, which Comte wanted to be very strong.177 Comte, of course, was not familiar with the anarchist’s critique of his position. Although he was not sure that he could appoint Proudhon to a post, Comte had a bookstore in the summer of 1852 send him the first two volumes of the Syst`eme de Politique Positive as 174 175 176 177

Pilbeam, Republicanism, 131, 133, 178–82, 211–13; Maurice Agulhon, 1848 ou l’Apprentissage de la r´epublique 1848–1852 (Paris: Seuil, 1973), 63–4. Laffitte to Comte, October 12, 1851, in “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte,” 215. Lefort to Comte, July 30, September 26, 1852, MAC. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Carnets de P.J. Proudhon, ed. Pierre Haubtmann, vol. 2, 1847–48 (Paris: Marcel Rivi`ere, 1961), 359–60.

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well as the Calendrier Positiviste. Proudhon, who had been recently released from prison, where he had languished for three years, was taken aback; he was not certain whether Comte or the bookseller had taken the initiative. He was “flattered” but also critical of Comte’s effrontery. Responding to Comte’s allegation in the Syst`eme that contemporaries had stolen his ideas, Proudhon mocked his well-known cerebral hygiene and defended himself. If you had been able to give a quarter hour to the list of my publications, you would know that in 1842, at a time when I had no knowledge of your name – please excuse my ignorance –, I published a book of criticism in which your fundamental division of the phases of the human mind, theology, philosophy or metaphysics, and Science, were clearly and categorically established; you would finally know, Sir, that later in a second edition I hurried to recognize your right of priority, which I had never for one instant usurped except by ignorance.178

As a “true adventurer of thought,” Proudhon boasted of his own originality, proclaiming his intention of making political economy a science with the certitude of mathematics. He severely upbraided Comte for overlooking the merits of this subject, a criticism that Mill had made long ago. Political economy, in fact, had the same goal as Comte’s sociology. Proudhon wrote, “For you, Sociology still demands a drawn-out accumulation of facts; for me Sociology (I mean, Economy) exists as a completed whole and is entirely viable: all my efforts consist of rendering it intelligible.”179 In effect, Proudhon was declaring his superiority to Comte, a dangerous stance. Comte told Laffitte that he felt obliged to respond as Proudhon’s “spiritual leader, though with a true cordiality.”180 Comte admitted to Proudhon that not being able to read his works was inconvenient. However, he assured him that his positivist disciples and friends had given him enough information to enable him to conclude that the anarchist was superior to the other “revolutionary doctors” because of his “talent” and “probity.” Comte respected his intelligence and the “purity of his heart” but bemoaned the fact that Proudhon did not have the scientific background that was crucial to constructing 178

179 180

Proudhon to Comte, July 30, 1852, MAC. Proudhon’s letters to Comte are reproduced in CG, 7:314–18. Proudhon seems to be referring to his De la Cr´eation de l’ordre dans l’Humanit´e, published in 1843. It discussed three periods: the religious and philosophical periods in the past and the period of science in the future. See Oeuvres de P.-J. Proudhon, nouvelle e´dition: De la Cr´eation de l’ordre dans l’Humanit´e, ed. C. Bougl´e, A. Cuvillier, E. Jung, and H. Trinquier, 2 vols. (Antony, France: Editions Tops, 2000). Proudhon to Comte, July 30, 1852, MAC. See also Hadery to Magnin, February 23, 1865, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:342.

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valid social theories. Although it was too late for him to study the sciences and it was unlikely that he would become a complete positivist, Comte hoped he would use his influence to persuade young people to study positivism as the “only faith capable of terminating the Occidental revolution.” Proudhon was wrong to focus on political economy, which was an inane, “ontological” doctrine, not a distinct science. Material existence could not be studied apart from intellectual and moral life. The study of political economy was thus a component of sociology. Comte insisted, “The science of humanity and of man constitute a completely indivisible whole.”181 He told Proudhon to come and see him so that he could discuss the proper way to regenerate society. In response to such condescension, Proudhon made up an excuse about going on vacation with his family in order not to visit Comte right away. Perhaps needling him for supporting the coup d’´etat, he sent Comte the second edition of his latest work La R´evolution sociale d´emontr´ee par le coup d’´etat du 2 d´ecembre, which contained his thoughts on the events of December. It was, in his words, “a cry of war” against the right. He told Comte, “Society, as you well know, does not live only on ideas and knowledge; it lives also on acts, especially on virtues. I thought I would do a highly moral act by expressing myself . . . on the contemporary period.” But having attended some of Comte’s lectures and perused parts of his works since 1840, he knew the man who practiced cerebral hygiene would not read his book. Proudhon, however, intended to read the two volumes of the Syst`eme. He wrote, As you say, it is not very probable that I will become a positivist, not because I have the least inclination to mysticism, but because I’m afraid that I believe in certain things that are very positive but not yet demonstrated, and that as a result, you would not acknowledge them as such. I am busy with the expression and the scientific construction of these things. If I fail, I’m with you.

Eager to apply the “system of numeration” to social matters and to generalize accounting principles, Proudhon was certain that he was going “to complete” Comte’s work, which to him was not sufficiently scientific. But Proudhon’s approach was very vague. He told Comte that there was “a whole side of positivism that escapes you, something that can affect you, since the positive, like nature and humanity, is infinity.” Positivism had “no right” to deny the validity of what 181

Comte to P.-J. Proudhon, August 5, 1852, reprinted in Pierre Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, 66 (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1980), 184– 5, 194, 287–9. Curiously, this letter as well as that of August 7 is not in the CG. Haubtmann found both of these letters from Comte in Proudhon’s archives. But he did not have Proudhon’s letters to Comte.

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derived from the “evidence of the senses, reason, and history.”182 He proclaimed that both he and Comte should stop criticizing each other and simply work on educating the public to become more scientific. Comte told Laffitte that Proudhon’s letter was “fairly” satisfying. In the midst of Proudhon’s “extravagances,” Comte saw “a tacit acceptance” of his own superiority, which pleased him.183 He told Proudhon to read the Cat´echisme, which would soon be published and would direct “our propaganda.” He also said he appreciated Proudhon’s “spontaneity,” “verve,” and “originality.” He promised that if Proudhon accepted his influence, he would help him develop. If Proudhon discovered new truths, positivism would be able to “incorporate them” without taking away from his “independence.” Comte promised to acknowledge him just as he did Charles Dunoyer, whose “direction and even nature” were not as “likable” as Proudhon’s.184 Such flattery was meant to make Proudhon his disciple and spokesperson, but Comte’s arrogance was off-putting. Comte, as Proudhon guessed, would not read the La R´evolution sociale d´emontr´ee par le coup d’´etat, but he did ask Lefort to do so. Lefort found it anarchical and “primitive” and doubted Proudhon would ever convert to positivism.185 Jos´e Fl´orez, the Spanish positivist, attacked it in a journal, calling Proudhon the last representative of the negative revolution. Agreeing with his disciples that Proudhon’s support of individualism and anarchism was excessive, Comte concluded, “I do not count on exercising a really decisive influence on this famous adventurer of thought, especially because of the exorbitant pride that dominates him.”186 Despite his pessimism, Comte sent him the third volume of the Syst`eme the following year.187 Proudhon chided Comte for the difficulty of his work, which he felt was inaccessible to most people. After reading the first two volumes in last August and September 1852, he had already written to a friend that Comte was not original, except for his “intolerable style.” His philosophy smacked completely of “humanism” in the dry, materialistic style of d’Alembert.188 In his journal, Proudhon complained that Comte’s notion of the Great-Being, 182 183 184 185 186 187

188

Proudhon to Comte, August 6, 1852, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:342. Comte to Proudhon, August 7, 1852, reprinted in Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, 187. Lefort to Comte, March 15, 1853, MAC. See also Laffitte to Comte, August 16, 1852, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Come (Suite),” 101. Comte to Laffitte, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:342. See also Comte to Tholouze, August 26, 1852, CG, 6:346. In Proudhon’s library can be found many other works of Comte, including the Cat´echisme and Appel aux Conservateurs. See Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, 287n11. Proudhon to Boutteville, August 29, 1852 , Correspondance P.-J. Proudhon, 14 vols. (Paris: Lacroix, 1875), 4:339. Proudhon also likened Comte to Saint-Simon and Fourier and

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though a “great idea,” was similar to “the Humanity of Feuerbach, of Hegel, with less poetry and grandeur.”189 Proudhon said to another friend, “The reading of this animal Auguste Comte, the most pedantic of scholars, the poorest of philosophers, the dullest of socialists, the most intolerable of writers, riles me.”190 He could never call himself a “positivist” because the word was so “stupid” and reality was far less fixed than Comte believed.191 The Revolution must not fall into Comte’s hands, for he demonstrated “continual obsequiousity” towards the reigning authorities. Moreover, Comte dared to declare “war on socialism in the name of sociology.”192 His attacks on leftists helped the forces of reaction and showed that he did not know what he was doing. Nevertheless, Proudhon thought the Syst`eme was worth reading and intended to peruse it again. To show his own intellectual worth, he may have sent him his Philosophie du progr`es: Programme, which Comte noted that he received on October 19, 1853.193 Proudhon also sent Comte his Manuel du sp´eculateur a` la Bourse, a satirical work which he had trouble publishing in Paris. Proudhon had to be careful because he had already been imprisoned once by the new government. He remained bitter about Comte’s support of Louis Napoleon. He ended his letter of October 1853 with these words: Let me express my regret, Monsieur, that you believed it was necessary to applaud in 1852 the coup d’´etat of 2 December and to demand in 1852 the protection of the Tsar. These are acts which many people, who are otherwise full of esteem for your genius, cannot pardon with the same facility as your very devoted P. J. Proudhon.194

Comte responded, but his letter is lost. At this point, the rapprochement between two great nineteenth-century French thinkers ended.

189

190 191 192

193

194

found him “as inconsequential” and “unreasonable as Cabet.” Proudhon, Carnets Intimes, vol. 9, September 4–19, 1852, copie dactylographi´e, 4-IMPR-890 (9), 697, 699. BN. Proudhon, Carnets Intimes, vol. 9, copie dactylographi´e, September 4–19, 1852 , 4IMPR-890 (9), 698, BN. Proudhon said to a friend, “I affirm HUMANITY as a substitute for the supreme Being.” Proudhon to Tissot, December 22, 1853, Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon, 5:299. Proudhon to M. Darimon, September 3, 1852, Correspondance de P.J. Proudhon, 5:7. Proudhon to Tissot, December 22, 1853, Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon, 5:298. Proudhon, Carnets Intimes, vol. 9, copie dactylographi´e, September 4–19, 1852, 4-IMPR890 (9), 697–8, BN. See also Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, 188, 289n16. It is not clear if Proudhon or someone else sent it to Comte. The copy of Proudhon’s book in Comte’s library has been read, because its pages are cut. There appear to be pencil markings on some pages. Perhaps Comte read it. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Proudhon to Comte, October 19, 1853, MAC. This letter is also published in RO, 2d ser., 35 (March 1907): 220–21. The editors published it earlier but omitted parts of it. See RO 7 (July 1, 1884): 220.

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Although far more to the left than Comte, Proudhon definitely respected the positivist agenda. Despite his dislike for the term, at least in one letter to Michelet in 1855, Proudhon referred to himself as “a positivist,” indirectly acknowledging Comte’s influence.195 Like Comte, he disliked traditional religion but also hated to be called an atheist. In addition, he shared Comte’s moralistic republicanism, concern for the working class, and desire to create a society where there was more cooperation and solidarity among its members.196 He agreed with Comte’s stance that women should stay at home and make men more moral.197 However, it is clear that Proudhon did not really understand the nature of the scientific method, though he wished to found all knowledge on it. Comte found many of his statements nonsensical and full of conceit. Another problem was that Proudhon was very supportive of individualism and the rights of man, both of which Comte abhorred. Critical of Comte for arrogating to himself the right to organize and judge others, Proudhon maintained that he sacrificed the individual to an object, Humanity, which was obscure, mechanical, slavish, and transcendental.198 Like Mill and Thomas Huxley, Proudhon also found him too Catholic and too enamored of the Middle Ages in particular.199 Basically, the two giant egos could not work together. Indeed, when Proudhon mentioned modern philosophers in De la Justice dans la r´evolution et dans l‘Eglise, which was published a year after Comte’s death, he purposefully praised Littr´e and mocked Comte. Comte had fallen into metaphysical and theological thinking without knowing it, especially when he created a “collective absolute” that dominated the individual. Comte was more the “victim” of his religion than its pope.200 Comte then sought contact with Barb`es and Blanqui, both of whom he had met in 1835, when all three of them were involved in the famous trial of republicans that took place in April of that 195 196

197

198

199 200

Proudhon to Jules Michelet, April 9, 1855, Correspondance de P.J. Proudhon, 14:180. Steven K. Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 4, 6, 7; Patrick Cingolani, “‘Un Insupportable Ecrivain’: A. Comte et P.-J. Proudhon,” in Proudhon et ses contemporains: Actes du Colloque de la Soci´et´e P.-J. Proudhon, Paris, 20–21 novembre 1992, ed. Pierre Ansart et al. (Paris: Soci´et´e P.-J. Proudhon-E.H.E.S.S., 1993), 10. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, De la Justice dans la R´evolution et dans l’Eglise, 4 vols. (1860; Paris: Arth`eme Fayard, 1990), 4:2132–3. Showing his knowledge of Comte’s work, Proudhon even mentions the Utopia of the Virgin-Mother. Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale, 66, 184–5, 194; Pierre Haubtmann, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: Sa Vie et sa pens´ee 1849–1865, 2 vols. (Paris: Descl´ee de Brouwer, 1988), 1:297, 330; Cingolani, “‘Un Insupportable Ecrivain,’”18. Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, 192. Proudhon, De la Justice, 3:1160, 1170–71. Lieutenant Willem Anne Baron de ConstantRebecque noted that Proudhon and Littr´e shared contempt for those who submitted to a religion. Constant-Rebecque to Laffitte, May 31 and July 1, 1858, MAC.

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year.201 But in 1852 both revolutionaries were in prison at Belle-Isle. Comte tried unsuccessfully to send Blanqui the first two volumes of the Syst`eme and the Cat´echisme positiviste in 1852 and finally wrote to Blanqui’s mother to ask her to help deliver the books to her “noble and unhappy son.”202 When she could not succeed, Comte asked Vieillard to intervene with the chief of police.203 Lefort urged Comte to keep trying in order to make him the positivist triumvir in charge of domestic affairs. “Of all the popular leaders in Europe, Blanqui is the only one who is capable of understanding the mission of a political chief in the middle of the social revolution that is occurring.”204 Indeed, Blanqui seems to have been one of the few republicans who did not extol universal suffrage and parliamentary government because he feared the ignorance and gullibility of the masses.205 Thus he was the “most eminent” of current revolutionaries.206 Comte though highly of Blanqui in terms of his intelligence and morality, but it is not clear whether he ever reached him.207 Barb`es wrote to Comte after learning that he was having difficulty sending him the first two volumes of the Syst`eme.208 Unlike Proudhon, who wished to promote his own ideas, Barb`es said he was eager to “reread” Comte’s works because he was certain that scientific knowledge was crucial to reforming the nation. He told Comte, “You are one of the most illustrious masters of the science that I would like to acquire.”209 Aware of Comte’s unhappiness, he wished him well. Obviously touched, Comte lamented, “ I would willingly give myself the task of converting such a revolutionary if I could communicate sufficiently with him.”210 He decided to try to write him a very 201 202

203 204

205 206 207 208 209 210

See Pickering, Comte, 1:456. Comte to Madame Blanqui, October 2, 1852, reproduced in “Auguste Comte e la Tradizione Giacobina,” by Mirella Larizza, in Il Pensiero Politico, 22 (September– December 1989): 429–430n52. This letter is not in CG. Larizza found the letter in Papiers Blanqui, N.A.Fr.-9581 225, n. 10, BN. It seems that Comte even met with this woman. Lefort to Comte, October 24, 1852, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, November 11, 1852, CG, 6:415. Lefort to Comte, October 24, 1852, MAC. Lefort regretted having distanced himself from Blanqui when the latter found himself in trouble. Lefort to Comte, February 6, 1853, MAC. Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, 248. Lefort reassured Comte that Blanqui did not believe in God or in political assemblies. Lefort to Comte, February 6, 1853, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, October 29, 1854, CG, 7:268. Deroisin claimed Comte visited Blanqui in jail. Deroisin, Comte, 88. Comte also asked Vieillard to intervene to allow Barb`es to receive his works. Comte to Audiffrent, November 11, 1852, CG, 6:415. Comte to Papot, April 28, 1853, CG, 7:70 Comte to Laffitte, September 7, 1852, CG, 6:356. Comte wanted to publish Barb`es’s letter as well as the missive he hoped to receive from the tsar in the next volume of

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flattering letter. He called him a “noble character” and praised his “moral qualities,” which made him the only worthy popular leader in France. If he converted to positivism, many other revolutionaries would follow his example. Having judged Caussidi`ere’s adherence to positivism as inadequate and dealt with Littr´e’s defection in 1852, Comte also had high hopes that Barb`es could become the minister of foreign affairs in the triumvirate in charge of the transitional stage to positivism. Yet to share the temporal power, Barb`es would have to convert to the Religion of Humanity and undergo a “complete theological and metaphysical emancipation,” which meant giving up whatever beliefs he had in God and in the equality and sovereignty of the people. Moreover, Barb`es would have to recognize the importance of order. Comte told him, “Of all parties today, that of pure revolutionaries is basically the most backward because it misunderstands . . . the principal need of the century for reconstruction, following a century of demolition. . . . There is no political future except for honest and judicious conservatives who are capable of preserving the social foundation while changing its form.” But offsetting this somewhat undiplomatic remark, Comte’s defense of order now included a new insistence on the need for freedom, which he embraced to some extent already in the Discours of 1848 and Cat´echisme. Explaining to Barb`es his concept of the separation of powers, he condemned theoricians who claimed practical power and practicians who sought to “usurp” theoretical power. Both groups were too often driven “to repress liberty,” which Comte praised as “the necessary basis of modern order and the principal guarantee of any kind of progress.” Everyone should live openly. “No measure, even a personal one, can be taken, except in an emergency situation, without having been sufficiently submitted to the free consultation of anyone who wishes to examine it.”211 Only if the practicians and theoricians kept to their separate spheres of authority and the army were suppressed could there be true freedom and thus real progress. Barb`es may have been impressed by Comte’s defense of freedom but was not about to give up the revolutionary fight for equality and popular sovereignty. Lefort, who was always outspoken, berated Comte for not being sufficiently clear about the positivist insistence on a collective, Paris-based dictatorship, not a personal one.212 Whatever the

211 212

the Syst`eme. They would form a “remarkable contrast.” See Comte to Laffitte, September 17, 1852, CG, 6:366. Yet Thunot objected, complaining that publishing Barb`es’s letter at the beginning of the next volume of the Syst`eme would cause grave difficulties to him and to the author himself. Barb`es’s name horrified people, for it was “a synonym of the Republic imposed by an armed minority against a passive majority.” Thunot to Comte, August 5, 1853, MAC. Comte to Armand Barb`es, September 12, 1852, CG, 6:359–60. Lefort to Comte, September 26, 1852, MAC.

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reason, it appears that the relationship between Comte and Barb`es did not develop beyond this single exchange of letters. Nevertheless, what is significant is that Comte still sought to find support from the left even at a time when he felt more alienated from the “reds” than ever before. He figured, perhaps naively, that if decent revolutionaries, such as the “pure,” disinterested Barb`es, publicly announced their adherence to positivism, “honest” and “sensible” conservatives would not be scared to join him.213 Comte’s eagerness to connect with all sides reflects an inability to find a place for himself in the political spectrum of mid-nineteenth-century France. Louis Napoleon’s authoritarian regime clearly disturbed him as much as the excesses of the left. Examples of concrete abuses of power forced his political views to change. Confronted with this autocrat, Comte developed a new appreciation that a republican dictatorship could not be progressive unless there was “a scrupulous respect for liberty” of assembly, the press, and discussion.214 Censorship, for example, should be limited to demanding that authors sign their books and articles; all other intervention was “tyrannical.”215 Moreover, a true positivist dictator should have no monarchical or imperial tendencies.216 Comte developed a particular strategy. Etienne Jacquemin, a worker, requested in December 1852 that Comte write a book simplifying positivist principles for the masses. Comte replied, “You forget . . . that positivism must now be preached only to the souls of the elite, who are . . . proportionally less rare among the proletarians than among the rich and well-educated.”217 Having no hope of persuading “the multitude” to adopt positivism, especially because mass assemblies were forbidden and his positivist doctrine was difficult, he sought to convert on an individual basis “only one thousand well-chosen personages, coming from all classes, especially the proletariat.”218 Indeed, he hoped exceptional workers would make up the majority of this “chosen nucleus.”219 Comte described this elite in almost Nietzschean terms as consisting of people who were superior in terms of their minds, emotions, or character and who were pulled down by inferior men, especially demagogues. If two hundred of these superior people were energetic and interested in politics, they could easily seize power and become the core of the transitional government because no one else had any convictions. After all, according 213 214 215 216 217 218 219

Comte to Audiffrent, September 20, 1852, CG, 6:385. See also Comte to Audiffrent, May 2, 1854, CG, 7:208. Comte to Audiffrent, December 11, 1852, CG, 6:444. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:471. Syst`eme, 2:xvii. Comte also condemned constitutional monarchies. Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:446. Comte to Bligni`eres, November 29, 1852, CG, 6:439–40. Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:446.

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to Comte, the republicans were far less numerous in 1789 and even 1793 and yet they controlled the government. Georges Danton was Comte’s model. According to him, Danton had an elite party of only twenty members of the Convention, who were supported by at most two or three hundred people, and they orchestrated the overthrow of the government on August 10, 1792, saved the Revolution, and imprinted their character on the Republic.220 With about three hundred people interested in positivism throughout the West, Comte took inspiration from his example.221 He believed that after positivism took over the direction of the state, it would attain “social ascendancy,” for the elite would convert others to positivism and “public opinion” would necessarily support a successful movement.222 Thus, in a sense, Comte seems to have been influenced by Blanqui in that he sought to create a primarily working-class elite to seize political power. Yet Comte was not interested only in the class struggle, for he would include in his elite “worthy souls”from “any class whatsoever.” But he would not have welcomed Bonapartists too warmly, for one of the first actions of the positivist government would be to work for the “demonetization of the retrograde hero [Napoleon].”223 220

221 222 223

Comte to Laffitte, August 20, 1853, CG, 7:107. Comte believed that in essence the republic had existed since the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. See Comte to Papot, July 6, 1854, CG, 7:228. Comte defended Danton against charges that he sold himself and was a traitor. Magnin to Robinet, November 29, 1879, “Lettres de Fabien Magnin,” RO, 3d ser., 5 (November 1913): 306. Bligni`eres claimed that there were three hundred positivists in the world in 1853. See Bligni`eres to Comte, August 20, 1853, MAC. Comte to Bligni`eres, November 29, 1852, CG, 6:440; Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:446. Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:446, 450–51.

Chapter 3

The Vicissitudes of Positivism during the Early Empire

A single dissidence suffices for the mind to render sterile the greatest conformity of opinions, whereas the heart easily overcomes serious divergences because of the existence of a similar sentiment pushing toward a common goal. Comte, “Deuxi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” March 24, 1851

new disciple s during the empire Under the Empire, the Positivist Society suffered from defections and slow growth. Meetings were dull because only Comte spoke for fear of being contradicted. Robinet and Magnin, who were among Comte’s most loyal disciples, were adversaries of the Empire and tried to be diplomatic. No one felt free to discuss anything.1 Dr. Ren´e Cousin and Lefort were the only new members in 1852.2 There were two new members in 1853, one in 1854, three in 1855, and one in 1856.3 The new members under the Empire came from all walks of life, from professions such as law and medicine to the artisanal workforce.4 But it would be a mistake to judge the success of positivism solely by the membership of the Positivist Society. Positivism continued to attract numerous sympathizers with various degrees of adherence to 1 2

3

4

Deroisin, Comte, 74–5; Corra, Lettres, 14. A forty-year-old resident of La Fert´e-Gaucher in the Seine et Marne, Dr. Cousin delighted in the manner in which Comte’s “magnificent work,” the Cours, seemed to offer light in the darkness of the “intellectual chaos” that marked the mid-nineteenth century. He found Comte’s vision of a “brilliant” future to be a source of consolation, especially after his wife died. Grateful to Comte for having made him experience a “resurrection,” he became a generous supporter of the Positivist Subsidy. Cousin to Comte, March 6, 1850, December 19, 1856, MAC. In 1853 the new members were E. Tellier, a bureaucrat in Amiens, and Claude Carr´e, Comte’s forty-one-year-old doctor in Paris. In 1854, the new member was Hutton, an Irish lawyer. In 1855, the new members were an English chemist who would become a doctor ( John Fisher), a Parisian chef (Henry), and an inspector of finances (Alexis-J.Armand Mieulet de Lombrail). In 1856, only one man, a landowner (Rethor´e), joined. See “Liste Chronologique,” CG, 4:308–9; Comte to Hutton, April 1, 1855, CG, 8:45; Comte to Hadery, July 1, 1856, CG, 8:275. Comte wanted to give an engraved medal to disciples who were inscribed in a “universal” positivist register. He also wished to put them in touch with one another. Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:167.

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all its principles. Indeed, the number of contributors to the Positivist Subsidy began to rise. Its subscribers included some workers, who after laboring for fifteen to sixteen hours a day, had barely enough money to feed their own families.5 A few women also gave to the Subsidy.6 In 1853, the fund finally reached the minimum amount Comte had counted on receiving, that is, seven thousand francs, a sizable sum of money. In fact, the final amount came to 7,400 francs, as opposed to 5,600 francs in 1852. The number of subscribers had risen from seventy to ninety-one. Each gave an average of eighty-one francs.7 Comte noticed that there were more anonymous contributors and that he did not know most of them. Apparently, many individuals were worried about being tainted by their association with positivism. Ribbentrop asserted that many subscribers were not adherents of the religion but simply wanted to make sure that “the great thinker of the epoch” was free from “misery.” He complained that Comte seemed not to know that “the majority of the members of the Positivist Society as well as 19/20 of his auditors at the Palais Royal” supported the scientific aspects of his doctrine but refused “to follow him on the terrain of its religious applications.”8 Because of the reluctance or financial inability of many individuals to give to the Subsidy and to join the Positivist Society and the variability of people’s support for Comte, it is impossible to gauge the precise number of adherents to his movement. Laffitte was optimistic about the future. He wrote to his uncle in June 1853, “Positivism is still in slow, but continual ascendancy. Every day we acquire a serious and honest supporter from among people who reflect and study.”9 It is clear that because of the wide scope of Comte’s project, people were attracted to it for a variety of reasons. Some liked Littr´e’s works or were intrigued by parts of the Cours; these people appreciated Comte’s scientific program and wished to study his system in depth to improve their minds. Others joined Comte’s movement because of the Religion of Humanity, which seemed to fulfill their spiritual needs, especially if they were discontented with Catholicism or felt unfulfilled or even disgusted by atheism. Jacquemin, for example, criticized people who freed themselves “from what they call religious prejudices” and then gave themselves over to “amassing for themselves the greatest material well-being possible.” Criticizing such people for thinking only of themselves and their financial security, he wrote, “These beings hunt, fish, claim to have big interests, and deceive girls and husbands; they 5 6 7 8 9

Lefort to Comte, September 26, 1852, MAC. Comte to Martineau, January 19, 1854, CG, 7:177. Comte did not mention their names. Comte, “Cinqui`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 22, 1854, CG, 7:185. Ribbentrop to Littr´e, February 28, 1852, MAC. He sent Comte a copy of this letter. Pierre Laffitte to his uncle, Marcellin Laffitte, June 28, 1853, MAC.

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are often mayors or deputy mayors and form a kind of little fiefdom that is more terrible and shameless than the one that existed in the past. The local priests do not have sufficient strength to dare condemn these scourges of the times.”10 Positivism gave Jacquemin the sense that he was superior to his contemporaries.11 Comte’s emphasis on morality suited an age preoccupied by principles and honor. Just as when he was a young man, he had been inspired by Benjamin Franklin to better his conduct, many of his disciples were encouraged by his doctrine to improve their lives. They felt he gave their lives direction and purpose. For example, Mont`egre wrote, “Since I have voluntarily submitted myself to this favorable discipline [of positivism], I feel that I have gained morally and even maybe intellectually. . . . I feel more than ever that it is not possible to change others without having acted profoundly on oneself.”12 In addition, Comte’s plan for social regeneration without further upheaval gave many individuals hope that the political chaos surrounding them could be resolved. Still others joined Comte after reading about his personal travails, which spoke to their own sense of social marginality or their own grief after the death of a loved one. He gave these lost souls a sense of kinship and allowed them to express their own feelings. It was his role as a kind of priest addressing people’s personal needs that perhaps gave Comte the greatest sense of satisfaction, especially because he no longer had any close friends and had more free time. He wrote to one adherent in June 1852, My letters, like my conversations, will be always at your disposal in order to help you as much as possible in the great task of your personal, domestic, and social improvement. Do not fear to have recourse to them freely any time that you feel the need. This private influence . . . has always seemed to me to make up as much a part of my social service as my diverse public teachings. Not reading any periodicals whatsoever . . . nor any other books except the great Occidental poems . . . , I have naturally an availability that our vicious habits refuse today to more settled people. . . . These details will inspire in you, I hope, the trust to address your questions and outpourings to me without scruples.13

Such emotional displays were crucial to one’s “moral improvement.”14 Jacquemin wrote, “[Positivism] taught me not to blush from the sentiments that made me cry many tears because for twenty years 10 11 12 13 14

Jacquemin to Comte, October 19, 1852, MAC. Jacquemin to Comte, December 8, 1852, MAC. Mont`egre to Comte, December 31, 1851, MAC. Comte to Deullin, June 12, 1852, CG, 6:301. Comte to Deullin, November 18, 1852, CG, 6:423.

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I have been deprived of a mother.”15 Positivism, a doctrine rooted in the sciences, paradoxically legitimized his sentimentalism. Another example of the wide-ranging appeal of Comte’s message stems from a young man, Monsieur Pascal, one of eight positivists in Aix-enProvence; he found consolation in positivism because he was blind and Comte stressed the importance of the subjective life, that is, the inner life of the imagination.16 Comte’s appeal to the upper classes had some success, although often these wealthy individuals tended not to be conservatives eager to contribute to the Subsidy, as he hoped they would be.17 After reading Littr´e’s synopsis of Comte’s Syst`eme and finding himself won over to the intellectual side of positivism, Jean-Baptiste Foucart, a lawyer in Valenciennes in northern France, perused the Cat´echisme, which he liked a great deal. The moral side of Comte’s doctrine held great appeal to him, especially because it gave him some guidance in bringing up his son. He decided to use the Positivist Calendar and the Positivist Library to enrich his son’s education.18 He began meeting with Comte in 1854, and after initially resisting conversion, he became a positivist in 1856. Yet he refused to contribute to the Positivist Subsidy.19 After reading Littr´e’s Conservation, r´evolution, et positivisme as soon as it was published, Eug`ene Deullin, a young, rich banker in Epernay in Champagne, wrote to Comte in June 1852. He had been in prison for three months for his leftist, democratic activities in journalism and had to be careful in his correspondence because he was being watched. Nevertheless, he told Comte of his interest in his scientific system and sociology. In particular, he found consolation in sociology’s depiction of the future, which meant to him that progress was not “a vain word.” He was also delighted to abandon his “Voltairian ideas” and the “desolating dryness of atheism” in order to embrace the Religion of Humanity, although he expressed some doubts as to its validity.20 He believed that Comte was personally at the level of his social mission because of the way he shared details of his private life with “noble simplicity.”21 Though not a conservative, he pleased Comte enormously by offering to pay two thousand francs for the 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

Jacquemin to Comte, December 8, 1852, MAC. Audiffrent to Comte, November 6, 1852, MAC. Comte was pleased that Lucas was able to begin convert Lyonnais aristocrats to positivism, and he hoped Italian ones would also be drawn to the doctrine. Comte to Mont`egre, June 28, 1852, CG, 6:309. J. B. Foucart to Comte, March 28, 1854, MAC. Foucart was a good friend of the famous painter and sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who did portraits of members of his family. Bligni`eres to Comte, January 30, 1856, MAC; Comte to Bligni`eres, January 31, 1856, CG, 8:219; Comte to Audiffrent, October 20, 1856, CG, 8:323. Eug`ene Deullin to Comte, June 1, 1852, MAC. Deullin used the Positivist Calendar. Eug`ene Deullin to Comte, June 4, 1852, MAC.

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republication of the first volume of the Cours, which he wanted to read but could not find because it was out of print. In late 1852, Comte made him one of his triumvirs, along with Hadery and Magnin, after Barb`es seemed uninterested in becoming a positivist leader.22 Deullin turned out to be an effective positivist because he was able to persuade others to join the sect. He made Champagne an important positivist center, like Lyon and Provence. One of Deullin’s converts was Laurent Hanin, a former employee of the prefecture of the Marne and the editor and owner of three democratic newspapers of the Marne, La Verit´e, Le Messager, and Le Progr`es. He had been under police surveillance since the coup d’´etat of December 1851.23 Other converts included Mr. Poterlet, an artist with a democratic and revolutionary background, who later produced the “first graphic symbolization of the true Great-Being”24 ; Mr. Vagny, an architect, who was an ardent republican; Eug`ene Cordier, a carpenter who became an architect; Mr. Gondrecourt-Robinet, who was an ex-proletarian wine merchant with republican sympathies; Mr. Ducognon, a republican druggist, who was under police surveillance; and Mr. Auguste Paris, who came from a legitimist family but was introduced to republicanism through his connections with freemasonry. Indeed, having taken an active part in republican politics, Paris was Deullin’s prison partner after the December coup. After he read Littr´e’s writings and part of Comte’s Astronomie populaire and Cat´echisme, Paris became a “complete” positivist in 1853. Deullin was also able to persuade Mr. D’Herbecourt, a lawyer with Voltairian predilections, to give to the Positivist Subsidy, despite his dislike of the positivist religion. This “incomplete” positivist was the son-in-law of Bachelier, Comte’s former editor.25 In 1853, Hadery put Comte into contact with Wladimir Gagneur, the son of a rich bourgeois politician.26 Born in Poligny in 1807, Gagneur had personally known Fourier, whose ideas of association 22

23

24 25 26

Deullin would be minister of foreign affairs, Hadery would be minister of the interior, and Magnin would be minister of finance and public works. Lefort encouraged the choice of Hadery. But Comte insisted that Hadery had to prepare for this position by studying history, Italian, and Spanish. Learning these languages was essential to make him feel more of a southern European. Comte was convinced that southerners were well developed from a moral and aesthetic viewpoint. Lefort to Comte, September 26, 1852, MAC; Comte to Hadery, September 17, 1852, CG, 6:370; Comte to Hadery, January 25, 1856, CG, 8:213; Hadery to Comte, December 13, 1852, CG, 7:309; Comte to Deullin, June 12, 1852, CG, 6:302; See note, “Le Triumvirat: Magnin, Hadery, Deullin,” CG, 7:290. Deullin to Comte, November 15, 1852, MAC. Laurent Hanin persuaded Ernest Lafourme, the son of one of his employers at a commercial firm, to join the positivist sect. Deullin to Comte, December 5, 1853, MAC. Comte to Deullin, April 4, 1855, CG, 8:46. Deullin to Comte, March 13, October 12, November 11, December 5, 1853; April 17, 1854, MAC. By this time, Bachelier was deceased. His father had been a deputy under the Restoration.

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he particularly admired. A fervent republican, he and Hadery met in 1848 through a common friend. But then Hadery fell away from Fourierism, disgusted that this “hallucinating utopian,” Fourier, had “completely subjugated” Gagneur. Hadery tried to disabuse Gagneur of his illusions by taking him to Comte’s course in 1850. But despite this initiation into positivism, Gagneur’s attention was drawn elsewhere. He led the movement of armed resistance in the Jura against the coup of December 1851. He was incarcerated for a short time and then went into exile for a year to Belgium. While in Brussels, he began to evince doubts about Fourierist ideas, substituting the positivist notion of subjective immortality for the Fourierist concept of metempsychosis.27 Despite Hadery’s optimism that he would convert, Gagneur’s political activities distanced him from positivism; although he gave to the Positivist Subsidy in 1854 and 1856 and visited Comte from time to time when he came to Paris, he remained a fervent Fourierist. Hadery’s disgruntlement at their disagreement took on a personal tone in 1855, when he reacted with disgust to the news that the aging Gagneur had married Marie-Louise Mignerot, who was twenty-five years younger than he. To Hadery, Gagneur had carried his allegiance too far; he was marrying this leftist writer simply because she was a “bas-bleu phalast´erienne,” that is, a bluestocking follower of Fourierist ideas. Hadery was certain that this woman would not make a good wife and would squander Gagneur’s fortune. What made the situation even more deplorable in Hadery’s eyes was that Gagneur had had an affair with the woman’s mother and had a child with her. Indeed, the mother had converted Gagneur to Fourierism in the first place.28 Despite his disapproval of Gagneur’s lifestyle, Hadery remained friends with him.29 Comte’s doctrine began to attract support in Ireland. In late 1852, George Johnston Allman and John K. Ingram, professors at Trinity College, Dublin, eagerly offered to help propagate positivism. The latter was a friend of John Milne, the lawyer from Aberdeen. Like many other enthusiasts, Ingram believed Comte’s religion offered a “new unity” that was unattainable by the “negativism” and “chronic skepticism” of the times. Positivism also offered an alternative to fruitless political agitation and “democratic anarchy.”30 Ingram, Allman, and several other young men began to give regularly to the positivist 27 28

29 30

Hadery to Comte, August 14, 1853, MAC. Hadery also made one of his friends, Chavard, into a supporter of positivism. Hadery to Comte, November 18, 1855, MAC. On the Gagneurs, see P. Faure, “Gagneur ( JUST-CHARLES-Wladimir)” and “Gagneur (MARIE-LOUISE MIGNEROT, Mme WLADIMIR),” Dictionnaire de Biographie Franc¸aise, ed. J. Balteau et al. (Paris: Letouzey et An´e, 1933–), 15:48–9. Their daughter, Marguerite Syamour, became a noted sculptor. I thank Jonathan Beecher for this reference. Hadery to Laffitte, November 30, 1857, MAC. Ingram to Comte, January 29, 1857, MAC.

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movement.31 Comte greeted their adhesion warmly, proclaiming positivism’s ability to “direct the indispensable emancipation of Ireland” from a smug England.32 By 1854, Comte considered Ireland and Holland the two principal centers of positivism besides France.33 One of the most supportive Irish adherents was Henry Dix Hutton. After graduating from Trinity College in 1845, he started practicing law in Dublin, his native city.34 Struck by Mill’s praise of Comte in the System of Logic, he began to read the Cours in the late 1840s. He later recalled, “It interested me deeply by its general principles, their historical applications, and the hopes they held out of a profound social regeneration.”35 He wrote a review of positivism for a monthly journal, which attracted Ingram’s attention. Brought up a Unitarian, Hutton resisted Comte’s religious construction until he read the Syst`eme, which he claimed infused Comte’s doctrine with an exciting “social and moral vitality.”36 Now he felt he had the possibility of an intense “spiritual culture” and “a rule of life.”37 He particularly liked the commemorative aspects of Comte’s religion and sent him a copy of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam,” which, he said, had “a significance in connection with our religion, as being an effort to consecrate human memories, and to realize our subjective life.”38 Hutton visited Comte in 1854, 1855, and 1856. He described him in these terms: Simply attired, and not striking in bodily presence, he possessed much natural dignity. . . . Always kindly, at times cheerful and even playful, free from display or theatrical effect, Comte was accessible and ready to converse on general topics . . . He did not obtrude his opinions, 31

32 33

34

35 37

They chiefly contributed to the fund for the Revue Occidentale. Other contributors included George F. Shaw (Queen’s College, London), W. Neilson Hancock (University of Cork), and Hutton. In 1854, Allman was appointed to the chair of mathematics at Queen’s College, Galway. Comte considered him the best of his Irish disciples. Hancock was a friend of Hutton’s and Ingram’s. Shaw sent Comte reading material on the sciences. See Allman and Ingram to Comte, October 12, 1852; Allman to Comte, December 15, 1852 and June 15, 1854, MAC; Comte to Fisher, September 24, 1855, CG, 8:121; Comte to Fisher, Janaury 3, 1856, CG, 8:177; Constant-Rebecque to Comte, June 28, 1857; George F. Shaw to Comte, May 21, 1853, MAC. Comte to Ingram and Allman, October 16, 1852, CG, 6:407. He believed that England had too many isolated adherents, even though his works were most warmly welcomed there. Comte was disappointed that southern France had only “three secondary foyers,” which were important chiefly because of their leaders. He remained hopeful that positivism would become popular in southern Europe. Syst`eme, 4:xii, xv. Hutton was born in 1824. Later, he became a member of the London Tribunal of Commerce, which he quit in 1856 after disagreeing with its chairman. J. S., “N´ecrologie,” RO, 2d. ser., 37 ( January 1908): 96; Hutton to Comte, October 19, 1856, MAC. Hutton, Comte, 8. 36 Hutton to Comte, November 5, 1853, MAC. Hutton, Comte, 8. 38 Hutton to Comte, July 23, 1854, MAC.

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or display any sacerdotal pretensions. But, when invited, he willingly expounded his views . . . Our Master impressed me as a man thoroughly sincere and deeply in earnest, convinced that he had, by his genius and lifelong labours, reached the central truths of Morals and Religion. I found in him a teacher, possessing . . . two main qualifications of a spiritual guide, good sense and seriousness; inspiring also confidence by the constant effort to correct his own faults and to perfect his own nature.39

Impressed by Comte’s self-composure and certitude, Hutton felt called upon to better himself. By early 1854, Comte was begging him to prepare to become a positivist priest. Hutton refused, claiming his prospects as a lawyer were good. Nevertheless, he became a member of the Positivist Society in late 1854.40 But he was a critical member, who objected to Comte’s negative view of Protestantism and his Festival of Outcasts in the Positivist Calendar.41 In addition, Hutton hounded Comte for more explanations of his doctrines and defended himself when attacked.42 Comte told him to learn self-discipline, warning him that his career as a lawyer disposed him “to revolt” instead of “to submit.”43 Comte repeated the argument that he had made to Henri de Tholouze, a state prosecutor, that lawyers should only accept cases that seemed “good” in order not to soil themselves or their profession.44 Hutton disagreed. Comte’s position struck him as both impractical and naive. He wrote, “Justice is seldom if ever wholly on one side and facts generally come out which could not be anticipated.”45 Hutton also disagreed with Comte’s course of preparation for the clergy. Comte had recommended in particular Joseph-Louis Lagrange’s Th´eorie des fonctions, Claude-Louis Berthollet’s Statique chimique, and Marie-Franc¸ois-Xavier Bichat’s Anatomie g´en´erale. These three “masterpieces of theoretical genius” were essential for giving one a profound sense of natural philosophy.46 But Hutton found 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

Henry Dix Hutton, Comte, the Man and the Founder: Personal Recollections (London: Reeves & Turner, 1891), 12–13. Comte to Hutton, October 14, December 1, 1854, CG, 7:267. He was able to persuade one of his friends, Dr. Radford of Sidmouth, England, to send Comte a contribution to the Positivist Subsidy. Comte finally removed the festival. Comte to Hutton, February 23, April 13, 1854, CG, 7:192, 203. On Protestantism, see Hutton to Comte, July 10, 1857, MAC. Comte to Hutton, January 12, 1855, CG, 8:9. Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:168. He also thought professors should limit themselves to improving their teaching and not add propaganda. Hutton to Comte, January 29, 1854, MAC. Comte to Hutton, December 27, 1853, CG, 7:157–8. For mathematics, Comte also recommended Alexis de Clairaut’s Alg`ebre and G´eom´etrie. It is interesting to note that he did not suggest any works on physics, a subject he knew little about. Moreover, he did

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Berthollet’s and Bichat’s works outdated and insufficiently informative on the philosophy of chemistry and biology.47 When he asked for more recent scientific books, Comte insulted him by complaining about his inability to understand general concepts and his inclination to follow the latest fashion.48 But the truth is that Comte could not recommend more current books. After all, he had not read deeply about the sciences since 1838, when he started his regime of cerebral hygiene. Comte’s mockery of Urbain Le Verrier, who predicted the existence of Neptune in 1846, also shocked Hutton. In volume one of the Syst`eme, Comte derided “our avid recruiters of insignificant and even fictive planets.” Even if the “so-called discovery” of Neptune was real, the new planet would interest only “the inhabitants of Uranus.”49 Surprised by Comte’s refusal to recognize Neptune, Hutton pointed out that Le Verrier had shown “genuine scientific foresight” in his prediction of the planet’s existence and that a Cambridge astronomer, John Couch Adams, upheld the hypothesis.50 Comte simply wrote, “Your naive question about an academic charlatan, whose idiocy now is as recognized as his servility, shows you to be too inclined to trust scholars and even their sciences, despite their actual state of retrograde anarchy, which my philosophical judgment has in no way exaggerated.”51 Le Verrier was mentally and morally inferior.52 Hutton thought Le Verrier’s character was irrelevant.53 He evidently did not know that Le Verrier was Arago’s prot´eg´e and had helped reorganize the Ecole Polytechnique in a more practical direction in the early 1850s, which led to a decrease in the school’s influence on the sciences in France and to Comte’s dismissal.54 Although his opinion of Le Verrier did not interest Comte, Hutton proved to be an important source of information. He knew the background of George Lewes, Harriet Martineau, John Chapman, and other English writers, like Thomas Carlyle. He was friendly with Mrs. Austin’s granddaughters and knew Parker Pillsbury, the American

47 48 50 51 52

53 54

not recommend any works on astronomy. Presumably, Hutton would read Comte’s Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire. Hutton to Comte, February 12, 1854, MAC. Comte to Hutton, February 23, 1854, CG, 7:191. 49 Syst`eme, 1:511. Hutton to Comte, January 29, 1854, MAC. Comte to Hutton, February 9, 1854, CG, 7:186. Comte to Hutton, February 23, 1854, CG, 7:191. Comte believed that Le Verrier was irrational in seeking to prove the existence of Neptune on the basis of disturbances in the nearby planet of Uranus. Such a demonstration had already been attempted by “one of the stupidest astronomers,” Alexis Bouvard. Comte to Hutton, February 23, 1854, CG, 7:192. Hutton to Comte, February 12, 1854, MAC. Bruno Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie: l’Ecole Polytechnique et ses e´l`eves de la R´evolution au Second Empire (Paris: Belin, 2003), 103–4.

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abolitionist and feminist, although he himself did not approve of women’s rights.55 Comte entered into many discussions with Hutton and other disciples about American movements and concluded that the United States was extremely “anarchical,” more so than any other state in the West, especially because it lacked traditions, was populated by people who were persecuted or in revolt in other countries, and contained many “simpletons” eager to follow swindlers.56 His correspondents tended to reinforce these impressions. One American, George Frederick Holmes, mentioned to Comte the “wild extravaganzas of table-turning” and other such “commotion” in the northern United States.57 Deullin also informed Comte of the religious “extravagance” emerging in the United States, especially with the proliferation of new sects like the Mormons. In addition, he mocked the influx of Fourierists, such as Victor Considerant. Deullin accused the latter of sharing in the “madness of spirit-rappers,” of planning to publish a book that stole positivist ideas, such as the cult of the dead, and of mixing these ideas with his own spiritualist beliefs. Deullin hoped people would find clarity in Comte’s positivism.58 Because he thought that Catholics were the only theists who would support positivism, Comte was disappointed to learn of the strength of American sectarians, who did not seem to be a source of disciples. Comte complained that with the traditional clergy’s loss of authority and discipline, spiritualists, deists, pantheists, Protestants, and other religious types not only in the United States but also in Europe felt free to imagine whatever they wanted. Protestants in particular were to blame for not supporting the separation of powers. Neither they 55

56 57 58

Hutton to Comte, May 24, 1855, MAC; Hutton to Laffitte, February 7, 1888, MAC. Hutton was impressed by but did not seem to agree with Pillsbury’s view that moral education could solve the problem of slavery, this “dreadful anomaly.” Pillsbury was a friend of Martineau’s and told Hutton he was eager to read her translation of the Cours. Hutton to Comte, May 24, 1855, MAC. On women’s rights, see Hutton to Comte, April 13, 1856, MAC. Comte agreed that a political solution was preferable but thought that the abolitionists were simply reflecting the “universal prejudices against legal remedies.” Comte to Hutton, May 29, 1856, CG, 8:259. Comte, “Septi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1856, CG, 8:200; Comte to Deullin, September 20, 1853, CG, 7:124. See also Comte to Edger, March 16, 1854, CG, 7:197. Holmes to Comte, September 21, 1853, Comte, ed. Hawkins, 136. Deullin to Comte, September 18, 1853, MAC. In addition, Deullin ridiculed the Fourierist Victor Hennequin, who had written some “ridiculous letter” that caused a stir in the United States. Deullin’s accusation against Considerant was unjust. According to Jonathan Beecher, Considerant was critical of Fourierists who were involved in spiritualism and table turning and urged them to work harder to establish a Fourierist community in Texas. On February 12, 1854, he wrote to Allyre Bureau: “Instead of making tables turn, you would be better off bringing together six or eight practical minds . . . to discuss seriously the question of what conditions to offer investors in Texas.” Archives Nationales, 10 AS 28 (9). I thank Jonathan Beecher for this reference.

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nor deists understood the importance of a well-organized clergy and rites of worship as essential elements of any religion.59 Comte was particularly disturbed by Mormons, who, he said, would no more convert to positivism than the Saint-Simonians and Fourierists who were “infesting” America.60 Their polygamous practices were “a pure monstrosity like colonial slavery.” Whereas wealthy primitive individuals tended to practice polygamy to support women, these “miserable anarchists” in America liked the system because it justified their increasing the work of women and decreasing their own labor. In effect, it led to the slavery of women. Familiar with the role of women in the abolitionist movement, Comte hoped American women would step into the public sphere on this issue as well and urge their government to repress polygamy.61 One person who became familiar with many American sects before joining positivism was Henry Edger, an English lawyer who was born in 1820. Disillusioned by the intellectual and moral inconsistencies in Protestantism, Edger had abandoned Christianity for socialism with its promise of “fraternal reorganization.” By 1846, he upheld “the wildest doctrines of the anarchical school,” for he hated any notion of social order based on religion and was upset by the egoism of the age.62 He was drawn to the working classes because they did not seem “absorbed in a boundless mercenary selfishness” as everyone else in society was. For a long time, he was under the influence of the socialist-leaning George Sand, “the goddess of my sincere and profound devotion.” Her writings (Valentine, Jacques, and L´elia) offered him an escape from his unhappy domestic life. In 1848, he even named his first daughter Lelia. Inspired by the example of Sand, who created her own path to self-fulfillment, he left his job as an attorney in London and moved in 1851, when he was thirty-one years old, to the United States, where he intended to restart his life.63 All sorts of “utopian schemes of social reorganization” caught his fancy. First, he corresponded with the communist Etienne Cabet and was 59 60

61 62 63

Comte to Metcalf, August 18, 1856, CG, 8:294; Comte, “Septi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1856, CG, 8:192; Comte to Holmes, October 15, 1853, CG, 7:136. Comte to Deullin, September 20, 1853, CG, 7:124. Comte had met Thomas Leiper Kane, who in the early 1840s had lived in Paris as part of the American legation. He later became a friend of Brigham Young’s and helped advance the Mormon cause. Mark Metzler Sawin, “A Sentinel for the Saints: Thomas Leiper Kane and the Mormon Migration,” http:// mormonhistoricsitesfoundation.org/publications/nj_spring1998/NJ10.1_Sawin.pdf [accessed September 22, 2007]. Comte to Deullin, September 25, 1853, CG, 7:128. Henry Edger to Comte, February 16, 1854, MAC. He had a small income amounting in French money to a thousand francs a year from his father-in-law, who was an English farmer. Edger also had a son born in 1844. See also Richmond Laurin Hawkins, Positivism in the United States (1853–1861) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938), 129n1.

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in contact with the French Icarians at Nauvoo, Illinois. However, instead of joining them, as he had planned, he became a member of the Fourierist North American Phalanx, in New Jersey. He stayed five months. After residing in Tinton Falls, another village in New Jersey, he settled in the spring of 1854 on Long Island in New York. He lived in an inland village four miles from Great South Bay called Modern Times (present-day Brentwood), which had sixty to eighty inhabitants. Unlike many of the other model communities that were established in the United States around this time, Modern Times was a secular village. It was founded in 1851 by two anarchists, Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews, who wanted individuals to be able to do as they pleased even in terms of choosing whether to worship or not.64 Warren had been a member of the Owenite commune of New Harmony, Indiana; after its failure he decided to embrace the sovereignty of the individual rather than that of the community. Andrews was a supporter of free love.65 According to Edger, the early members of Modern Times represented “the debris of many communistic and associative enterprizes [sic].” Most of this “debris” consisted of ex-Fourierists. The self-reliant community of Modern Times was founded on “equity,” especially in industrial and commercial relations, and on a simple common doctrine, which they hoped would bind the members together. Disliking organization of any sort, they opposed democratic republicanism, elections, and parliamentary government. In addition, they rejected the socialist “illusion” of basing social reorganization on associations founded completely on equality. Nevertheless, most members of this libertarian community were supportive of Fourier’s theory of the passions and his disregard for marriage, which he considered nothing more than a “civil contract.” In addition, Edger wrote, “Large numbers of women, with a good position in Society, rally around the standard of ‘Woman’s Rights,’ claiming political and industrial equality with men, demanding freedom of divorce, etc.” Their interest in “free love” made them particularly resistant to the sexual austerity inherent in positivism.66 Indeed, 64

65 66

For information on Modern Times, see Roger Wunderlich, Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times New York (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 1. He points out that the village grew to about one hundred and fifty people and covered ninety acres. It lasted thirteen years. See also Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 166, 363. Hawkins, Positivism, 111, 117. Andrews became involved in a debate on marriage with Henry James and Horace Greeley. Edger to Comte, February 16 and July 21, 1854, February 15, 1855, MAC; Wunderlich, Low Living, 25–7. The following are in the MAC: Official Record of the “Positive Community” at Modern Times, 1864–7; six volumes of Henry Edger’s personal journals from 1854 to 1885; three volumes of the “Mission Journal” from 1880 to 1887; letters on behalf of the American Mission of the Positive Council, August 1869 to November 1869; and music for Positivist worship used at the Modern Times Chapel of Humanity.

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Modern Times began to acquire a reputation for scandal and eccentricity because many members of the community did not respect marriage.67 Edger came across positivism while reading Lewes’s articles in The Leader, published in 1852, and he wrote to the Englishman to thank him for introducing him to positivism.68 He became a “complete” positivist in 1853. Comte’s “grand scientific renovation” and its systematization of the concept of “Human” were very attractive to Edger, who thought current political and legal approaches to the “Social Problem” were bankrupt. Democracy in particular was inherently corrupt and useless. Demonstrating scientifically that morality had to be supreme, Comte’s doctrine was the true “Religion of the Future,” one that could substantially help the working classes. Edger was pleased by Comte’s strict moralism, which ran against the anarchical tendencies of the various movements with which he had been connected. He even approved of Comte’s rituals. After reading about Comte’s private worship of three women, especially de Vaux, he too decided to set up a “Domestic Altar.” He happily announced to Comte in one of his first letters of 1854 that his positivist faith had “at last produced a sympathy and harmony between myself and my wife which for the eight long dreary years of my metaphysical aberration were wholly wanting.” His conversion was proof “that the most anarchical doctrines . . . have to give way before the combined force of a real intellectual demonstration and a lofty morality.” Edger gave ten francs to the first “Pontiff of Humanity” and started to preach to the ex-Fourierists, reading to them and circulating excerpts from the works of Comte, Lewes, and Littr´e.69 He also wrote articles on positivism for the New York Weekly Leader. Comte was deeply touched by Edger’s letters, which revealed an “energetic, intelligent, and tender soul.”70 He was particularly delighted that positivism brought him marital harmony, which proved that the positivist “synthesis” could eliminate the “most intimate evils of modern society.” Men required “feminine influence,” and Edger in particular would need the cooperation of his wife to become an effective positivist preacher. Comte wrote, “Most of the households that surround you are probably troubled as much as yours was by the aberrations of the masculine spirit. You can usefully invoke against them [the aberrations] the feminine sentiment, which modifies them in silence.”71 Even with all this female influence, however, Edger 67 68 69

70 71

Wunderlich, Low Living, 26. The letter is written from Tinton Falls. Hawkins, Positivism, 126. Edger to Comte, February 16, 1854, July 21, 1854, November 2, 1854, MAC. See also Hawkins, Positivism, 126–7. Hawkins published part of the Comte-Edger correspondence in Positivism, 128–98. Comte to Henry Edger, March 16, 1854, CG, 7:197. Comte to Edger, August 4, 1854, CG, 7:237.

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could not become a positivist priest because of his narrow education and his legal background, which bred skepticism.72 Edger’s confession that he had been a Protestant and socialist challenged Comte, who increasingly looked to conservatives for support. Nevertheless, he figured that Edger must be similar to other lost souls, who despite their metaphysical, anarchical wanderings had preserved a capacity for “veneration” and a “sincere and profound respect for liberty.” Whereas the proliferation of sects and the “deregulated” environment seemed dangerous in the United States, Comte now recognized that the country had at least a “spontaneous liberty” and openness that could be conducive to positivism.73 Indeed, the instability and divisions of the country might make a consistent, strong doctrine such as positivism seem attractive. Partly because it lacked a king, army, and a legal clergy, the United States was more aware than European nations that the “Occidental revolution” needed a religious, not a political, solution.74 In 1854, Comte declared that Paris and the United States were the only places where positivism could be openly practiced.75 By late 1854, Edger had found two or three “earnest” students of positivism and “a still greater number more or less interested in it.” His main rival was “a strange fanaticism known as Spiritualism,” which favored “absolute Individualism” and encouraged dealings with mediums and spirit rapping on tables. Much to Edger’s dismay, spiritualism attracted many women, who were “indifferent or hostile” to positivism.76 To attract more women, Comte advised him to stress that “moral merit” counted more than “intellectual conditions.”77 After seeing Edger’s work in support of positivism, Comte eventually decided that the gaps in Edger’s knowledge of the sciences were “still reparable,” and he could become a positivist priest after all.78 By the mid-1850s, he was the head of the “American Church.”79 72

73

74 75 76 77 78

79

Comte to Fisher, September 24, 1855, November 6, 1856, CG, 8:120, 334; Comte, “Septi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1856, CG, 8:200; Comte to Edger, March 27, 1856, CG, 8:238. Comte to Henry Edger, March 16, 1854, CG, 7:197. In mid-1854, after hearing of the interest ex-Fourierists in the United States might take in positivism, he wrote, “One must consider as incurable only men without heart and without character.” Comte to Henry Edger, August 4, 1854, CG, 7:237. Comte to Edger, November 20, 1856, CG, 8:338. Comte to Henry Edger, March 16, 1854, CG, 7:197. Edger to Comte, November 2, 1854, February 15, 1855, MAC. Comte to Edger, November 20, 1856, CG, 8:338. Comte to Congreve, March 26, 1857, CG, 8:418. See also Comte to Edger, May 21, 1857, CG, 8:472. In preparation for the priesthood, Edger performed the sacrament of presentation for two girls in a positivist oratory that he had set up in his home. Comte to Winstanley, July 16, 1857, CG, 8:526. Comte, “Septi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1856, CG, 8:200.

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One of the patterns in Comte’s life consists of frequent breakups with those close to him. Henri de Saint-Simon, Franc¸ois Guizot, John Stuart Mill, Pierre Valat, Emile Tabari´e, d’Eichthal, Massin, his family, the de Vaux family, Lenoir, Henri Ducrotay de Blainville, and Littr´e are only some of the people whom he alienated. De Vaux escaped perhaps because of her sudden death. Comte’s interpersonal problems continued to the end of his own life. His efforts to fuse science and religion, to appeal to both men and women, and to continue to gain the support of “conservatives” in the United States and radical workers in Lyon were bound to cause conflicts.80 Some relationships never went far. In January 1853, an American diplomat, Nicholas Philip Trist, began to send Comte money to support his work.81 He first heard of Comte in the early 1820s. Comte had sent Thomas Jefferson the fundamental opuscule of 1824. By the time the package arrived in the United States, Jefferson had died, and Trist, who worked in his law office and married Jefferson’s granddaughter, opened it.82 Trist described the effect the fundamental opuscule made on him: “I was possessed then, and afterwards, more than once; and the estimate formed by me of the writer was such, that it was a pleasure, and no surprise, to have the name recalled to me many years after, by the honorable mention made of it by Mill in his Logic.”83 Having recently been impressed by the first two volumes of the Syst`eme, Trist wondered if Comte could teach and board his son and nephew. When Comte refused, Trist asked him for advice about their education, defended Robert Owen, and argued with him about the value of Protestantism, which he believed had more of a sense of duty than did Catholicism.84 Their correspondence ended soon afterwards.85 Another American taken with Comte was William Mitchell Gillespie. After graduating from Columbia College, he headed to Paris to study at the Ecole des Ponts et Chauss´ees in the late 1830s, 80 81 82 83 84

85

Comte, “Troisi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 5, 1852, CG, 6:216. Trist boasted about having negotiated the peace treaty between the United States and Mexico in 1848. J. Fred Rippy, “Trist, Nicholas Philip,” in Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Dumas Malone, 20 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928–37), 18:645–6. Nicholas P. Trist to Comte, January 11, 1853, MAC. Trist to Comte, January 28, 1853, MAC. Trist persuaded another American, Mr. Tellweger, to send Comte money. See Trist to Comte, April 9, 1853, MAC. Comte rejected the vegetarian diet that Trist recommended to him to improve his health. See Comte to Hadery, August 18, 1853, CG, 7:105. Travelling in England in early 1853, he had hoped to visit Comte in April but then claimed he had to return immediately to the United States. Their relationship then ended. Trist to Comte, April 4, 1853, MAC.

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when he may have come into contact with Comte’s ideas. He then taught mathematics and engineering at Union College in Schenectady, New York and visited Comte twice. Most importantly, he translated the first volume of the Cours, which he called The Philosophy of Mathematics.86 He sent a copy to Comte when it was published in 1851.87 Yet Gillespie’s publisher, Harper Brothers in New York, omitted the first two philosophical chapters out of fear that they were too radical for an American audience. Gillespie agreed to this omission because he was worried about losing his job. Although scornful of the American “barbarians” and critical of Gillespie’s excessive “circumspection” and the Protestantism of the press, Comte regarded him as “more of a positivist” than his timid work suggested.88 However, to the end, Gillespie resisted Comte’s new religion, which he claimed not to understand.89 Gillespie’s translation propelled Seba Smith to write to Comte.90 Smith was a teacher and newspaper editor. He was fascinated by Comte’s work in the sciences.91 In 1851, he sent Comte his New Elements of Geometry (1850), which showed how to recreate geometry based on the thickness of lines and surfaces. Noting Smith’s limited mathematical education, Comte believed that his attack on traditional geometry exemplified the anarchy besetting America.92 Comte criticized his ignorance, discouraging the continuation of their correspondence.93 He did not reply to his third letter. Smith seemed taken 86

87 88

89 90 91

92

93

Interested in the meaning of numbers, especially the number eight, Edger wrote to Gillespie, who did not seem to respond with great enthusiasm to his ideas. But Gillespie told Edger that a Mr. John Miller of Utica was “wholly devoted to positivism.” Edger to Comte, November 2, 1855, MAC. See also Edger to Comte, May 3, 1857, MAC; Charles D. Cashdollar, The Transformation of Theology, 1830–1890: Positivism and Protestant Thought in Britain and America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 112. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Usuel, I, MAC. Comte to Deullin, June 23, 1853, CG, 7: 80; Comte to Edger, November 2, 1855, CG, 8:139. See also Comte to Edger, March 27, 1856, CG, 8:240; Gillespie to Comte, May 3, 1855, MAC. Gillespie visited Comte on May 3, 1855. See Comte’s collection of calling cards, MAC. W. Gillespie to Henry Edger, January 12, 1856, MAC. Gillespie had a picture of Comte in his study. See also Fisher to Edger, April 6 and June 8, 1856. Seba Smith to Comte, May 20, 1851, MAC. See Seba Smith, “Autobiography,” no date, in Seba Smith Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Smith was born in 1792 in Maine and attended Bowdoin. He was the editor of the Portland Courier as well as other newspapers. Then he moved to New York in 1842. He died in 1868 on Long Island. Seba Smith to Comte, May 20, 1851 and January 23, 1852, MAC; Comte to Holmes, October 15, 1853, CG, 7:137. Smith informed Comte not only of Gillespie’s translation but also of Holmes’s review of the Cours in the Methodist Quarterly Review. Rough draft, letter from Seba Smith to Comte, June 30, 1852, Seba Smith Papers, The New York Public Library; Comte to Seba Smith (letter translated by Smith into English), August 1, 1851, and March 2, 1852, CG, 6:123, 250–52.

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aback by Comte’s insults and, to get revenge, gave the correspondence between Comte and himself to the National Intelligencer. This well-regarded periodical, based in Washington, D.C., published the letters on May 5, 1854, after having already devoted two long articles to a critique of positivism in February and March 1854.94 Smith added an addendum poking fun at Comte for being “out at sea and lost in a fog” on different mathematical points.95 He admitted to the editors that he wished to challenge Comte’s “colossal reputation” and demonstrate that the philosopher’s “present productions” revealed a decline in his mental faculties.96 Unlike Trist, Gillespie, and Smith, Henri de Tholouze was a longtime correspondent, who felt close to Comte. Comte’s performance as a spiritual guide, together with his own openness about his relationship with de Vaux in his published works, letters, and conversations, encouraged him, as it did others, to share his innermost thoughts and pains. In October 1850, Tholouze wrote, You are, Sir, the only man with whom I can . . . tell a secret that is so private . . . My private life is empty of affection, at least of this sympathetic, warm, and truly living affection that you found in the worthy companion for whom you cry . . . My wife understands nothing, neither my ideas nor my sentiments. I find . . . not this intimate affection which, following the ingenious remark of Balzac, is in moral life what inhalation and breathing are in physical life. . . . I am thus alone, but married.97

Tholouze regarded Comte as a soulmate, someone who felt similar solitude.Yet he could not accept the religious turn in positivism. As an established magistrate, he was not intimidated by the master’s authority and confronted Comte directly: I must admit to you that I have not yet succeeded in comprehending this doctrine as a religion. I only understand it as a science. I understand systematic morality, based on clear and precise facts, not religious and sentimental morality. In pausing my thought on the cult of humanity and the notion of the Great-Being, I feel myself falling again in this vague mysticism, where I had plunged for a time – a mysticism which intoxicated me and troubled my reading and which I seemed to leave behind by studying positive doctrine.98 94

95 96 97

The article of February 23, 1854 dealt with Martineau’s translation of the Cours, and Lewes’s book on Comte. The article of March 2, 1854 covered positive philosophy. The anonymous author did not think that Comte had succeeded in creating a science of society because such a science could never be exact. Hawkins, Positivism, 58–60. Smith, “Original Correspondence – Discussion on the Philosophy of Geometry,” National Intelligencer, May 5, 1854, excerpt in Hawkins, Auguste Comte, 36. Seba Smith to Messers Gales and Seaton, who ran the National Intelligencer, April 24, 1854, Seba Smith Papers, The New York Public Library. Levy-Bruhl, cited in Rey, Littr´e, 226. 98 Tholouze to Comte, October 13, 1850, MAC.

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Tholouze insisted that the Religion of Humanity was mystical, not positivist. “The conception of humanity” was at most only “a useful scientific artifice, destined to represent the close liaison of each person to everyone.” The only real phenomenon was the “individual living for himself in humanity.” If the individual became absorbed by humanity, neither would be intelligible.99 Comte dismissed Tholouze’s criticisms, denying there was anything mystical at all about Humanity. No one “would dare” to qualify other collective “perpetual” beings like the Family and the Nation as imaginary. In addition, people were devoted to small entities like Savoie or Auvergne, which were scarcely chimeras or scientific artifices. Humanity was simply “the universal fatherland.” It was “real,” like the patrie, while “the individual” was only an indispensable “abstraction.”100 Tholouze must learn to feel more and think in a less critical, materialistic fashion. A dose of altruism might even improve his health. Later Laffitte also tried persuading Tholouze to see that Humanity was a “living being” because of its organicism – the “solidarity” between its parts – and its “continual renovation.”101 Besides objecting to Comte’s religion, Tholouze questioned his politics, but from a conservative standpoint. In 1851, he criticized Comte’s concept of a revolutionary government as dangerous and called him delusional and unhistorical in predicting the imminent triumph of positivism. He urged Comte to gain wider acceptance for positivism by having more people work on elaborating it.102 Comte rebuffed such criticism, for he believed he could found a new religion by himself just as Paul did. In 1851, he boasted that he had “already written a mass of philosophical and social epistles, which, if printed, would be equivalent to that of Saint Paul.”103 It was obvious to him that Tholouze was mentally unstable, overly zealous of order, and too close to the bourgeoisie and the royalists.104 Feeling rejected, Tholouze henceforth rarely wrote to Comte.105 Their quarrels show the extent to which Comte sought to protect himself from controversy. He resisted not only criticisms of his doctrine but alternate readings of his intellectual trajectory. Both 99 100

101 102 103 104 105

Tholouze to Comte, August 18, 1852, MAC. Comte to Tholouze, August 26, 1852, CG, 6:345; E. Perry, “A Morning with Auguste Comte,” Nineteenth Century 9 (November 1877): 627. Reflecting his new conservative spirit, Comte pointed to the aristocrats’ habit of worshipping their ancestors as another sign of the reality of groups. Laffitte to Comte, September 14, 1852, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte (Suite),” RO, 2d ser., 37 ( January 1908), 45. Tholouze to Comte, August 4, 1851, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, September 1, 1851, CG, 6:147. Comte to Laffitte, September 22, 1851, CG, 6:170. For example, in April, 1853, Tholouze highly praised Littr´e’s book, Conservation, r´evolution, et positivisme, which he found very good propaganda for the positivist movement. He lamented the estrangement between Littr´e and Comte.

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Lewes, the leader of the British positivists, and Holmes, the American historian and educator, asserted that Comte owed a great deal to Saint-Simon.106 Comte lashed out that his alleged debt to SaintSimon was a “fable imagined . . . by the envious coteries of Pierre Leroux, Jean Reynaud, Buchez, etc.” in an effort to hurt him.107 He recognized no affiliation between his own ideas and Saint-Simon’s, despite the fact that both he and his mentor embarked on a new religious construction based on love at the end of their lives, after having created a philosophical doctrine, founded on the sciences, to reform society. After being upbraided, Holmes replied defensively, All that I fancied was, that you had pursued in your own way the direction which was originated by his impulse, and that the traces of his peculiar views, especially of social questions, might be occasionally recognized in the details of your own works . . . Your declaration is amply sufficient to convince me that you are wholly unconscious of any affinity between positivism and Saint-Simonism, and will induce me to re-examine with minuteness and care . . . the question of the alleged filiation, to discover whether it is equally certain that there is no unperceived dependence.108

Comte shot back, “I have never used a single idea, big or small that came to me . . . from this source.”109 Several months after his exchanges with Lewes and Holmes, he began writing the third volume of the Syst`eme, where he publicly refuted the allegations of “several writers” who spread the rumor that Saint-Simon had been a formative influence in his life. He claimed to owe “nothing” to this “vague and superficial writer.” An uneducated charlatan, who reflected other people’s ideas, Saint-Simon had “seduced” him at a young age, and in his enthusiasm he had mistakenly attributed some 106

107

108 109

For example, Holmes had surmised from the “language” of Comte’s prefaces that positivism depended on Saint-Simon’s “loose ideas.” Holmes to Comte, October 30, 1852, Comte, ed. Hawkins, 119. Holmes wrote articles on Comte for the Methodist Quarterly Review between 1851 and 1854. He probably wrote the “anonymous” review of William Gillespie’s translation of the first volume of the Cours, which appeared in July 1851. He also wrote “Auguste Comte and Positivism,” North British Review 21 (May 1854), 247–95. See The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 90n2. Comte to Lewes, August 12, 1852, CG, 6:329. Taking into account this warning from Comte about Saint-Simon, Lewes stated in his Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, published the next year: “The coincidence in their point of view, viz., the necessity of a Social Renovation based upon a Mental Revolution, brought them together; and the charm and personal ascendancy of St. Simon seems to have subjugated Comte, who considers, however, that their intercourse only troubled and interrupted the genuine course of his own speculations, by directing them towards futile attempts at direct political action.” Lewes, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, 3. See also Comte to J. McClintock, August 7, 1852, CG, 6:324. Holmes to Comte, October 30, 1852, in Hawkins, 118–19. Comte to Holmes, November 28, 1852, CG, 6:430, 433.

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of his own ideas to the “depraved trickster,” who had in truth hindered his development. Comte claimed that his real “spiritual father” was Condorcet; Comte sought to fulfill the philosophe’s project of subordinating politics to history and extending the scientific method to the study of society.110 Comte emphasized this version of his intellectual development in order to separate himself more clearly from the leftists, who carried on the Saint-Simonian tradition. Holmes dared to proclaim Giambattista Vico to have been of greater importance to Comte’s development than Condorcet, and he placed Francis Bacon above Ren´e Descartes. Furious, Comte replied, “I cannot permit the kind of control that you seem to want to exercise over me. Never having in principle acknowledged equality, I cannot accept the kind of equivalence that you claim to establish between your opinions and mine.” As usual, he asserted that Holmes’s inability to recognize his authority was a function of his “backward” Protestantism. Moreover, Comte explained that he read Vico’s Scienza Nuova in 1843, after having founded his philosophy; he always considered Condorcet his real predecessor; and he found Bacon, “the god of vague and literary thinkers,” to be greatly inferior to Descartes.111 Finally, he berated Holmes for having suggested in an article that an old cerebral crisis might be responsible for his eccentricity. Comte knew that his insulting letter to Holmes might signal the end of their relationship and hurt the chances of his success in the United States. But the Great Priest of Humanity did not care. Holmes, surprised by Comte’s “harsh and unjust estimation” of his “feelings and remarks,” replied with an apology. He wrote, “I close [my letter] with the confession of my offenses, so far as I may have been unintentionally guilty.” He did not mean to show disrespect to “the most illustrious philosopher of the day” or presume to “control” Comte’s “opinions.112 Whereas Holmes maintained his correspondence with Comte after enduring his insults, Lewes did not. Comte accused him of not being a true believer and of exploiting his doctrine to gain “immediate success.”113 He complained bitterly to others about the “superficial” and “frivolous” Englishman who had no scientific background and thus made erroneous interpretations.114 Comte also felt Lewes was not supportive enough of him after learning of his rupture with Littr´e. 110 111 112 113 114

Syst`eme, 3:xv, xvi. Comte also called Saint-Simon a “depraved and superficial charlatan” in a letter to Holmes, September 18, 1852, CG, 6:378. Comte to Holmes, November 28, 1852, CG, 6:430, 433. Holmes to Comte, February 5, 1853, in Hawkins, Comte, 125, 127. Comte to Hutton, December 8, 1853, CG, 7:147. Comte preferred to link his intellectual development to Condorcet, Diderot, Hume, Frederick the Great, Descartes, and Fontenelle. Comte to George Frederick Holmes, September 18, 1852, CG, 6:376–7. On Condorcet, see also Syst`eme, 3:614.

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Many tensions were apparent in their relationship that might explain at least partially this lack of enthusiasm. In 1852, Thomas Carlyle teased Lewes, asking him if anyone bothered to read his articles on the Cours in the Leader, of which he was the chief editor.115 Carlyle explained that he had looked into Comte and would have nothing to do with him because he was “one of those creatures that bind the universe into bundles, and set them all in a row like stooks in a field – one of those fellows who go up in a balloon with a lantern to examine the stars.”116 Lewes defensively claimed that enthusiasm for positivism was spreading in universities, especially at Oxford, but his confidence may have been shaken. To make matters worse, when Lewes sent his own articles to Comte, the master refused to read them until they were republished as a book because he did not want to set eyes on the “pretentious silly remarks” of Louis Blanc and others who wrote for this periodical.117 Lewes was not only disappointed that Comte did not appreciate his work but annoyed that the master taunted him about the Positivist Subsidy. Lewes had sent Comte 650 francs from a collective fund in England with a warning not to expect any more support in the future.118 Comte replied with the same insulting tone that he had used years before with Mill; he told Lewes that the paucity of English aid reflected the “egoism and empiricism that degrade souls more in Britain than anywhere else in all the Occident.”119 To make matters worse, Lewes contributed nothing, which angered Comte, who thought he was well off. Comte concluded that Lewes demonstrated “grave lacunae in his heart, mind, and character.”120 Lewes sensed Comte’s dissatisfaction and began to withdraw from the movement. He did not bother to visit the Dutch positivist Charles de Capellen, who tried to contact him in London in September 1852.121 In addition, Lewes did not write to Comte for a year. In 1853, Henry George Bohn, the editor of the Scientific Library, republished Lewes’ articles in The Leader as a book entitled Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences: Being an Exposition of the Principles of the “Cours de philosophie positive” of Auguste Comte. Lewes added three new 115

116 117 118

119 120 121

The dozen or so articles appeared from April to August 1852 and were sent to Comte. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. On Carlyle, see Hock Guan Tjoa, George Henry Lewes: A Victorian Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 9. Carlyle, quoted in Thomas S. Baynes, “An Evening with Carlyle,” Athenaeum, April 2, 1887, 450. Comte to Mont`egre, June 28, 1852, CG, 6:308. Lewes wanted Comte to give the articles eventually to Mont`egre. Lewes to Comte, August 17, 1852, in The Letters of George Henry Lewes ed. William Baker, 2 vols. (Victoria: University of Victoria Press, 1995), 1:205. See also Lewes to Comte, October 5, 1852, in ibid., 206–207. Comte to Lewes, October 7, 1852, CG, 6:404. See also Comte to Deullin, September 17, 1853, CG, 7:122. Comte to Capellen, September 19, 1852, CG, 6:378. Capellen to Comte, September 27, 1852, MAC.

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chapters on the Cours as well as a biographical sketch and an introduction to Comte’s approach to the social sciences.122 Calling Comte the “greatest thinker of modern times,” Lewes was generally favorable to his new religious aims. However, considering that Humanity could be the Supreme Being of only “our world,” not the entire universe, Lewes found Comte’s religion incapable of embracing the Infinite, which would always be an object of our thoughts. He was also critical of Comte’s attempt to reorganize society, which he deemed hasty.123 Nevertheless, Lewes sent the volume to Comte in October so that he could appreciate “what I have done in the way of popularizing Positivism in England.” He added, “It is calculated the book will have a large sale, and when Miss Martineau’s more elaborate and ample analysis appears our public will be in a condition to form a correct idea of the only true system of thought.”124 Lewes was so pleased with the book that he inscribed a copy to give to George Eliot, who had first come across Comte’s ideas in 1839.125 However, Comte was “very displeased” because it did not seem faithful to his doctrine. He agreed with one disciple that it displayed a vague deist undercurrent, and Comte held deists in great contempt. One could not be both a positivist and believer in God. The English positivist Frederic Harrison later concurred that although Lewes was sympathetic to “the religious center of our faith,” he could not adhere completely to the “religious organization of positivism.”126 In addition, Comte maintained that Lewes’s work was “rapidly composed to make the first move [in positive propaganda] before the forthcoming book of Miss Martineau.”127 He believed that both Lewes and Mill had used him to advance their own careers and that their Protestantism and revolutionary habits led to their abandonment of him. His relationship with Lewes basically terminated in 1853. Nevertheless, when Lewes later wrote a preface to the Biographical History of Philosophy in 1870, he stated, “I adhered to the Positive Philosophy in 1845, and I adhere to it still.”128 Indeed, 122 123

124 125

126 127 128

Lewes also discussed Comte’s view of altruism, thus perhaps first introducing the term to the English. Lewes, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, 217. Lewes, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, 1. 339, 342; T. R. Wright, The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 55. Lewes to Comte, October 1853, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:229. Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:138n4; Thakur Guru Prasad, Comtism in the Novels of George Eliot (Lucknow: Hindustani Book Depot, 1968), 40. According to Gordon Haight, Martineau read the proofs of Lewes’s book on Comte and eagerly promoted it after it was published. Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 136. Frederic Harrison, “N´ecrologie: Georges-Henry Lewes,” RO 12 (1879): 280. Comte to Hutton, November 13, 1853, CG, 7:141. See also Hutton to Comte, November 5, 1853, MAC. George Henry Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy (1870), as cited in David Williams, Mr. George Eliot: A Biography of George Henry Lewes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983), 43.

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according to T. R. Wright, “there can be no doubt that . . . [Lewes] was widely read, not only at the universities but by working men such as those celebrated by George Eliot, who met together on a Sunday to discuss his work . . . and even. . . . by backwoodsmen in the United States.”129 Despite criticisms of his religion, social planning, subjective method, and cerebral theory, Lewes was loyal to Comte until he died.130 George Eliot was so marked by Comte’s ideas that her female protagonists frequently displayed the positivist theory that individuals must serve larger, social purposes.131 In 1864, Lewes and George Eliot had Sophie Bliaux show them around Comte’s old apartment. George Eliot remarked at one point, “Such places, that knew the great dead, always move me deeply.”132 After Littr´e’s and Lewes’s defections, Comte began to cultivate a talented young man, C´elestin de Bligni`eres. Born in 1823, he was one of Comte’s “best students” at the Institut Laville and the Ecole Polytechnique.133 After graduating, he became an artillery officer, stationed in Douai. He joined the Positivist Society in October 1849, intending to devote his “entire life” to demonstrating his “feelings for the positive doctrine and its founder.”134 Comte gave him strict instructions on his studies, which he called his “novitiate”; Bligni`eres was to study his master’s works as well as books on history to give “more precision” to his “sociological meditations.” To counter the dryness inherent in the sciences and to improve his morality, he was to read daily the Imitation of Christ, learn to appreciate the arts by means of Italian and Spanish literary masterpieces, and mingle frequently 129 130 131

132 133

134

Wright, Religion of Humanity, 60–61. Lewes did not agree with Comte’s animus against psychology. Rick Rylance, Victorian Psychology and British Culture, 1850–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 271. David Maria Hesse, George Eliot and Auguste Comte: The Influence of Comtean Philosophy on the Novels of George Eliot (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), 15, 53–5. George Eliot’s interest in Comte predated her affair with Lewes. Later she talked a great deal about Comte’s religion with his disciple Richard Congreve and his wife, Maria, who were their neighbors in 1859. Indeed, she approved of Comte’s religion more than Lewes did. Eliot, as cited by Williams, Mr. George Eliot, 224. See also Wright, Religion of Humanity, 56–9. Comte to Madame Veuve Dussaussoy, January 25, 1851, CG, 6:13. Curiously, Comte never examined Bligni`eres at the Ecole Polytechnique but had simply heard about him. He praised Bligni`eres for his intelligence, good heart, and fine character. It seems that he wished Madame Dussaussoy, the wife of one of his late admirers, to help his disciple get settled in the town in which she lived. She had a daughter who might be a potential bride. Comte also sent her his Discours, hoping she would like his theory on women. Bligni`eres seemed to be a friend of another graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, Maximilien Marie. Bligni`eres told Comte in 1853 that de Vaux’s brother was a captain in Africa. See Bligni`eres to Comte, August 20, 1853, MAC; Comte to Bligni`eres, June 27, 1857, CG, 8:494. Bligni`eres to Comte, November 2, 1849; December 29, 1850, MAC.

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with the “affective sex.”135 Impressed by his intelligence, character (including his perseverance), and “tenderness,” Comte told him, “In hearing your most private secrets . . . I have better appreciated your moral value. . . . I do not hesitate to inspire in you a . . . confidence in the noble future that awaits for you in the fundamental service of Humanity.”136 Bligni`eres decided in December 1851 to become a positivist theoretician and priest. He hoped to become part of a nucleus of six to ten “apostles,” who would convert 30,000 men to the new religion. Yet he thought that it was hard to maneuver at the moment because of the new political regime of Louis Napoleon. Promoting a position of flexibility, he maintained that according to the times they lived in, they should represent “a scientific and philosophical school, a political party, and an always active and devoted religious sect.”137 Comte thought it more important to combine these three roles rather then emphasize them according to the needs of the moment.138 He also disagreed with Bligni`eres’s insistence that during the coup of 1851 Louis Napoleon had acted as an “ambitious vulgarian” and “tyrant.”139 Although Comte himself was extremely critical of Louis Napoleon, he seemed to consider his former student’s attacks to be presumptuous. He explained to Bligni`eres that all dictators would be demagogic reactionaries until the advent of positivism.140 Despite their disagreements, Comte welcomed Bligni`eres’s enthusiasm, especially because of Littr´e’s defection. Bligni`eres was, however, a less gifted person, who suffered from inferiority complexes, especially vis-`a-vis Lefort.141 In 1852, he told Comte not to pit him 135

136 137 138 139 140 141

Since January 1, 1848, Comte had read a canto of Dante’s Divine Comedy every evening without finding it tiresome. He also read a chapter from the Imitation every morning and thus the entire book three times a year. He read it first in the original, then in Corneille’s translation. He considered it “the best book of Catholicism,” for “no other philosopher has known or described so well true human nature until the coming of positivism.” He advised Bligni`eres to substitute Humanity for God in order to enjoy it more. Comte seemed frustrated that Bligni`eres seemed to prefer Madame de Lambert’s book of advice to the Divine Comedy because it was less religious. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 2, 1851, CG, 6:4–5; March 11, 1851, CG, 6:38; and February 16, 1854, CG, 7:190. See also Comte to Louis Comte, January 26, 1857, CG, 8:39; Comte to Laurent, March 25, 1852, CG, 6:258; Bligni`eres to Comte, February 11, 1854, MAC; Comte to Audiffrent, May 19, 1853, CG, 7:75; Comte to Allman, June 22, 1854, CG, 7:220; Comte to Hutton, July 20, 1854, CG, 7:234. On the importance of history to the “encyclopedic preparation” of a positivist, see Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1855, CG, 8:3. Comte to Bligni`eres, March 11, 1851, CG, 6:36. Bligni`eres to Comte, December 30, 1851, MAC. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1852, CG, 6:212. Bligni`eres to Comte, February 11, 1854, MAC. Comte, “Huiti`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1857, CG, 8:373. Hadery mentions that the two men were great rivals. See Hadery to Comte, April 27, 1857, MAC.

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against Lefort for the coveted spot as the master’s appointed successor. He secretly hoped to secure his place as Comte’s “favorite” by denigrating Lefort, whom he called “incompetent,” “intellectually superficial,” and cavalier.142 According to Bligni`eres, Lefort hoped to become a positivist priest to make money. For his part, Lefort accused Bligni`eres of being “the most skeptical” of Comte’s disciples and could not believe that Comte considered him the model follower.143 Involved in these squabbles, Comte did not like being accused of fomenting competition and tired of Bligni`eres’s critical comments of Lefort. He grew disappointed with Bligni`eres, who sought to maintain a certain distance from him. By July 1852, he complained that the young man rarely wrote to him, and when he did, he did not express his deepest sentiments.144 Finding him melancholy and touchy, Comte repeatedly told him to find a woman who could help him develop his affections.145 But then when Bligni`eres expressed interest in marrying Victorine de Capellen, the daughter of the wealthy Dutch positivist couple, Comte was taken aback and unsupportive.146 In addition, the young man complained about the impossibility of working full time and trying to acquire an encyclopedic education at the same time.147 He did not defect from the movement, but there were clear signs of trouble. Whereas Bligni`eres’s star slowly began to descend, that of Lefort started to rise. In 1852, Comte thought so highly of Lefort that he hoped that he would become a positivist priest, joining Bligni`eres, Audiffrent, and Antoine Edouard Foley, a former student, as the nucleus of the new clergy. These men had received or were undergoing an encyclopedic course of study, which included training in the sciences and the arts. Such preparation was crucial in order to make sure that literary types, eager to write worthless proclamations, did not constitute the new clergy.148 As one of these literary types, Lefort felt 142 143 144 145 146 147

148

Bligni`eres to Comte, November 24, 1852, MAC. Lefort to Comte, February 9, 1852, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, July 6, 1852, CG, 6:310. Comte to Bligni`eres, January 4, 1855, CG, 8:3. Comte to Bligni`eres, August 28, 1853, CG, 7:113. The Capellens and Bligni`eres often ate together. See Charles de Capellen to Laffitte, May 27, 1854, MAC. Bligni`eres to Comte, December 7, 1853, MAC. Bligni`eres also did not seem sufficiently enthusiastic about mathematics, which Comte continued to consider a basic part of the preparation for the positivist priesthood in order to be able to resist attacks from scientists. Comte to Robinet, June 22, 1854, CG, 7:222; Comte to Edger, November 24, 1854, CG, 7:274; Comte to Bligni`eres, June 27, 1857, CG, 8:495. But at one point Comte complained that he had studied mathematics and astronomy excessively. Comte to Bligni`eres, April 24, 1856, CG, 8:250. Comte to Capellen, September 19, 1852, CG, 6:381; Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:447. In 1854, Comte began to propose that Robinet also become a

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obliged to deepen his study of mathematics and the sciences in order to become a positivist priest. In the spring of 1852, he went to live with Audiffrent, who, pressured by Comte, agreed to tutor him.149 Soon Audiffrent felt that he was competing with Lefort, just as Bligni`eres had.150 Audiffrent complained to Laffitte and others about Lefort’s poor intellectual abilities, “deplorable” leftist habits, and weak commitment to positivism.151 The two men had a falling out in the fall of 1853, and Lefort moved out of Audiffrent’s house. Audiffrent complained bitterly to Comte about Lefort.152 Thinking that the two men separated simply because of their “rivalry,” Comte wanted Audiffrent to stop impugning Lefort’s character.153 But Audiffrent delighted in telling Comte details about Lefort’s machinations to demonstrate that he was a “false” positivist and a tartuffe.154 According to Audiffrent, Lefort had treated his mother and the servants poorly and had an affair with one of her friends, a wealthy older widow, who was staying in the house. This woman, Madame Van der Malen, had converted to positivism. Although in love with someone else, Lefort intended to propose marriage to her to ensure his material existence. Denying the charges, Lefort told Comte that Audiffrent was simply looking for a pretext to kick him out of the house and wanted to discredit him morally, as he had already done intellectually, in order to be named the master’s successor.155

149

150 151 152 153 154 155

positivist priest. But Robinet had mental and physical problems. Comte warned him not to commit suicide. Comte to Robinet, June 8, 1854, CG, 7:218. Bligni`eres visited Lefort in Brussels and advised him to pursue such studies. It seems that Bligni`eres was the scientific type, whereas Lefort was more interested in the sentimental side of positivism. Comte did worry about Lefort’s scientific abilities. He judged his appreciation of the second volume of the Syst`eme insufficiently profound. Lefort liked the last chapter, but Comte thought he should have admired the first one. Comte to Audiffrent, July 6, 1852, CG, 6:310. Lefort to Comte, November 11, 1851, MAC; Comte to Audiffrent, January 8, 1852 and Lefort to Comte, January 7, 1852, in “Alcune Lettere in´edite di Auguste Comte,” by Mirella Larizza, Il Pensiero Politico 26 (September– December, 1993): 414–15. Audiffrent to Comte, April 1, 1853, MAC. Audiffrent to Laffitte, September 9, 1853, MAC. See also Audiffrent to Laffitte, May 14, 1853, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, October 17, 1853, N.a.fr. 10794, pp. 95, 96, BN. This letter and others dealing with the squabble between the two men are is not in the CG. Comte to Audiffrent, October 28, 1853, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 99, BN. This letter is not in the CG. See Audiffrent to Comte, September 29, 1853, MAC; Comte to Bligni`eres, December 9, 1853, CG, 7:151. Lefort found Audiffrent to be a spoiled only child, still pampered by his mother. He accused him of being cold, controlling, and listless. Lefort was pleased that at least the positivists Lapierre, Goulin, Bligni`eres, and Lucas supported him. The successor issue weighed on the Positivist Society. Comte found Laffitte too lethargic to be his successor. Comte was also disappointed by Profumo, who was intellectually inadequate, and Hadery, whom he found lacking in self-confidence and overly pessimistic about the triumph of

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As Lefort was one of his favorite disciples, Comte resented Audiffrent for spreading rumors about him. He reserved the right to judge Lefort, made up excuses for him, and said he would forgive him if need be. He even made inquiries and found out that neither Lefort nor Madame Van der Malen had marriage plans.156 After hearing Lefort’s attacks on his own behavior, Audiffrent insisted on having Comte appoint a positivist commission to determine who was telling the truth, but Comte thought it would be harmful to set one up. The result was that altercations regarding Lefort’s true character and the question of whether he should be expelled were the main topics of meetings of the Positivist Society in late 1853. Although he noted that his other disciples shared Audiffrent’s hatred for Lefort, whom they found domineering and arrogant like Maximilien Robespierre, Comte repeatedly refused to admit that his conduct was wanting.157 Instead, Comte scolded Audiffrent for being “touchy” and “irritable.”158 Audiffrent sent Comte a big financial contribution to make amends for the trouble his gossiping had caused, but he continued for an entire year to remind the master that Lefort was “harmful” to the success of positivism.159 Comte tried to skirt the issue. To flatter Audiffrent, he called him the “first imitator” of Horace Binney Wallace, his rich American patron who had died.160 In the meantime, Lefort, after leaving Audiffrent, worked for another positivist, Dr. Meynier, who was a republican activist in Marseille and a former assistant of Raspail. Meynier hired Lefort to teach his adolescent son mathematics and languages.161 Yet Lefort complained of being under government surveillance, especially because Meynier was always being watched.162 Frustrated by living in

156 157

158 159

160 161 162

positivism under the Empire. Comte to Hadery, January 6, 1853, CG, 7:5, 10. Lefort to Comte, October 15, November 24, 1853, MAC. See also Comte to Hadery, May 18, 1857, CG, 8:469; Audiffrent to Corra, April 9, 1883, MAC; Comte to Capellen, September 19, 1852, CG, 6:379; Fisher to Edger, July 11, 1857, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, November 10, and November 27, 1853, N.a.fr. 10794, pp. 101, 102, 103, BN. These two letters are not in the CG. Audiffrent to Comte, April 1, 1853, MAC. Hadery, however, said that Lefort had reason to be disdainful of arithmetic because he had done so well in the literary circles in Paris. Hadery to Comte, August 14, 1853, MAC. Audiffrent to Comte, December 1, December 12, 1853, MAC; Deroisin, Comte, 109. Comte to Audiffrent, December 4, 1853, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 106, BN. This letter is not in the CG. Audiffrent to Comte, August 13, 1854, MAC. See also April 9, 1854, MAC. The Positivist Society seemed to be afflicted by much infighting. Audiffrent was also at odds with Lucas. See Audiffrent to Comte, August 13, 1854, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, June 23, N.a.fr. 10794, p. 149, BN. This letter is not in the CG. See also Comte to Audiffrent, August 17, 1854, CG, 7: 243. Lefort to Comte, December 30, 1853, MAC. Audiffrent eventually accused Lefort of treating Meynier badly. Audiffrent to Comte, August 13, August 25, 1854, MAC. Lefort to Comte, July 3, 1854, MAC. Meynier even fled at one point.

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fear, Lefort finally left the south and returned to Paris in the summer of 1854 to begin a career in industry.163 But Lefort rarely saw Comte and ran into financial difficulties. A year later, Comte decided that Lefort was only a vain man of letters and could not be a positivist priest because of his irregular existence.164 He unhappily told him that he would no longer consider him his successor.165 In May 1856, Comte “exiled” him for a year from the Positivist Society. He hoped that this trial would purify him and that he would be able to repay his “diverse” financial “debts.”166 Comte alienated others as well, often because of his severity. Louis Auguste Segond became a member of the Faculty of Medicine in 1853, but Comte feared that he would become mediocre like Alexander Williamson and Robin after they assumed “official positions” in institutions that absorbed them.167 Segond’s thesis was already far more superficial than it should have been, according to Comte. Eventually, Segond decided he had no future as a professor and went to Italy and England to sing in various operas, claiming that positivism’s emphasis on the imagination had encouraged him.168 Thinking that singing would free Segond from “academic tendencies,” Comte asked him to prepare for the positivist priesthood. But Segond eventually returned to medicine. In the end, Comte did not think he had the intellectual capabilities to become a synthetic, that is, religious, thinker.169 Mont`egre was also a disappointment. Inclined toward socialism, he became less interested in positivism in 1853 after hearing Comte repeatedly imply that he had “the most profound disdain” for his contemporaries. Such scorn did not seem worthy of a great man, and emotionally Mont`egre found little solace in the system, though he appreciated it intellectually. The Religion of Humanity’s inability to attract a following seemed to substantiate his unease. He decided to reduce his communication with Comte.170 In 163 164 165 166 167 168

169 170

Lefort to Comte, June 10, 1854, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1852, CG, 273. The “L” is Lefort. See the original letter in N.a.fr. 10794, p. 106, BN. Comte to Hadery, August 30, 1855, CG, 8:108. Lefort agreed that he did suffer from vanity. Lefort to Comte, February 6, 1853, MAC. Comte, “Dixi`eme Confession annuelle,” August 19, 1855, CG, 8:99. Comte to Hadery, October 27, 1856, CG, 8:329. Comte to Laffitte, August 20, 1853, CG, 7:110. Comte commended Segond in the Syst`eme. See Syst`eme, 1:666. Audiffrent to Comte, March 22, 1857, MAC; Comte to Audiffrent, May 7, 1857, CG, 8:457; Segond to Comte, April 30, 1856; May 11, 1857, September 30, 1857, MAC. Segond also went to Brazil, but it is not clear whether he sang there. He reported that students from the naval school in Rio were studying the Cours de philosophie positive. Segond ordered the Syst`eme for the library of the provincial assembly of Rio. Comte to Audiffrent, May 7 and May 28, 1857, CG, 8:457, 458, 479. See also Larizza, Bandiera verde, 168–9. Mont`egre to Comte, March 18, 1857.

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addition, Alfred Ribet, though for reasons that are unclear, stopped corresponding with Comte in 1853.171 Hippolyte Phil´emon Deroisin, a young positivist lawyer, also had problems. He had heard about Comte from his father, who was a friend of Vieillard’s, and he went in 1845 to his public course on astronomy, which “conquered” him. In 1849, he met Comte, whose greeting without any sort of handshake was off-putting. Yet once conversation began, Comte told jokes and anecdotes, which won over Deroisin. They seemed to get along. Deroisin attended his course on the history of humanity for three years, and prepared his notes for publication. However, differences arose because Deroisin did not approve of Comte’s support of Napoleon III’s “sinister” coup d’´etat or his treatment of Littr´e.172 He did not join the Positivist Society. Nevertheless, in late 1852, Comte called him “one of the most commendable young people” whom he had ever met. He wanted him to become a positivist expert in theory. But disliking the sciences, Deroisin balked. Comte became abusive, accusing him of being a “liar.”173 Deroisin did not know what he had done wrong. Comte attacked him for being too vain, an accusation that he made all too frequently. He secretly told Lucas that Deroisin had explained positivism to some people in a very self-important manner that repelled them.174 Comte demanded as a kind of punishment that Deroisin separate from his family, which was supporting him with an annual pension of three thousand francs. Deroisin refused and in March 1853 would no longer have anything to do with Comte. Lonchampt intervened and smoothed the way to a reconciliation in 1854. Comte let him visit every so often but did not trust him.175 Deroisin remained hurt and mystified. An older friend who was turned away was Modeste-Etienne Claudel. He was one of Comte’s most fervent admirers, going so far as to sign his letters “with love.”176 Thinking about Comte’s sorrows, he coined the term “positivist virgin” to refer to de Vaux. This descriptive phrase arose from his passion for Joan of Arc, our “national virgin” and the “great heroine” who was loved by the people.177 Claudel lived in Vaucouleurs, where Joan of Arc went in 1428 to 171

172 173 174 176 177

Laffitte talked to Ribet in 1855 and told Comte that he found him to be still a positivist. Ribet claimed that he did not write to Comte for years because he had married a mean, imperious woman – a reason that seems spurious. See Laffitte to Comte, October 1, 1855, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte (Suite),” 65; Ribet to Comte, January 28, 1857, MAC. Deroisin, Comte, 3, 70, 75. Comte to Deullin, June 28, November 20,1852, CG, 6:309, 425; June 23, 1853, CG, 7:82. Deroisin, Comte, 118. 175 Comte to Deullin, March 30, 1854, CG, 7:198. See Claudel to Comte, August 6, 1848, MAC. Claudel to Comte, April 26, 1848, MAC; Claudel to Comte, August 24, 1846, MAC; Claudel to Comte, May 2, 1848, MAC; Claudel to Comte, July 1, 1845, MAC.

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implore Robert de Baudricourt to help her meet King Charles VII at Chinon.178 Claudel helped spark Comte’s interest in Joan of Arc, whom he celebrated in his course on astronomy in 1846 and made into the antithesis of the egotistical Napoleon. He exclaimed, “I hope that the glorification of this noble heroine will come to compensate in France for the shameful apotheosis of Bonaparte.”179 Gros-Jean, a mechanic’s helper and former prisoner of the English, began to applaud.180 Then everyone in the lecture hall followed suit. In leaving the building, Comte remarked, “My public is more advanced than I thought. I expected rather to hear murmurs of protest.”181 He was grateful to Claudel for inspiring him, but dismayed by the demands that this disciple made of him. Claudel preferred to know Comte’s ideas by reading his letters rather than his long works.182 He demanded explanations of Comte’s ideas, criticized the Positivist Calendar, harassed him about reading the books on mathematics that he wrote in his spare time, begged him to create a positivist almanac for workers and peasants, and claimed he was too poor to give to the Positivist Subsidy. Moreover, he considered Comte’s excessively harsh treatment of Massin an indication of his fear of her power; Comte, he insisted, should forgive her just as he had Franc¸ois Arago.183 Claudel wrote, “I suffer for your wife. Maybe there was in her love such a sacred respect for you that she feared to develop her tenderness because she did not believe it was yet sufficiently worthy of you.”184 Comte did not respond kindly to such criticisms. Frustrated by his behavior, Claudel resigned from the Positivist Society in the summer of 1850. Comte stopped writing to him that fall.185 Nevertheless, 178

179

180 181

182 183 184 185

A statue was erected in Vaucouleurs in honor of this “moral savior of our France” on May 9, 1843. Claudel to Comte, March 22, 1846, MAC. The Conseil Municipal de Montigny-L`es-Vaucouleurs even asked Comte for financial help to realize a route in the town that would show off the monument it raised to Joan of Arc. See Conseil Municipal de Montigny-L`es-Vaucouleurs to Comte, August 2, 1846, MAC. Comte, quoted by Laffitte, in Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886):192. Claudel sent a copy of a journal called the Jeanne d’Arc to Comte. Michelet also spoke highly of Joan of Arc in his History of France, and published a separate book on her with material from the fifth volume. He made her into a nationalist heroine too, writing that the French nation was “born from the heart of a woman, from her tenderness and her tears, from the blood that she gave to us.” Jules Michelet, Jeanne d’Arc (Paris, 1853), viii. Fabien Magnin, speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” RO 1 (1878):661. Comte, quoted by Magnin in Fabien Magnin, speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingtet-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” RO 1 (1878): 661. Comte would again celebrate Joan of Arc in the Discour sur l’ensemble du positivisme. Indeed, Claudel sent Comte more material on Jeanne d’Arc on February 1, 1848, MAC. Claudel to Comte, July 6, 1850, MAC. See Claudel to Comte, April 10, April 21,1849, June 8, 1850, MAC. Claude to Comte, March 16, 1848, MAC. Claudel to Comte, July 6, 1850. Comte’s last letter was in September 1850.

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Claudel persisted in writing to Comte.186 After three years, he finally asked Littr´e for news.187 Littr´e rather clinically told him of Comte’s loss of employment and encouraged Claudel to contribute to his well-being. He also informed him of their own rupture and added, “I am as much as a positivist as ever before, and I do as much as I can for him.”188 Claudel then sent Littr´e’s reply to Comte, who read it to the entire Positivist Society. Claudel also forwarded to Comte a copy of his answer to Littr´e, where he referred to his having been Comte’s “intimate confidant” for six years. Despite Comte’s disaffection for him, Claudel considered him the “real Eucharist.”189 In July 1853, after Claudel was reassigned by the public works department to Digne, Comte warned Audiffrent to resist his possible advances, for he was a proud revolutionary, eager to take control.190 Comte also felt irritated by Alphonse Leblais, a rotund mathematics teacher, who was proud of his poverty. One of the first members of the Positivist Society, he assisted Littr´e from time to time with his dictionary. Deroisin respected him a great deal. But he sinned by beginning to doubt the law of three stages.191 He soon left the Positivist Society. Another defector was Antoine Etex, who was angry for political and financial reasons. Politically, he was insulted that positivists called him a revolutionary. He wrote, If by this word you mean a spirit incapable of submitting to the pain and discipline imposed by virtue and by talent, I do not accept this name . . . for since I first existed, I have asked for only one thing, to obey what I loved and admired. It is thus not my fault that each time that I am approached by men whom I believed . . . to be sublime beings, I have found within them only little passions full of meanness!!192

This statement points to his disillusionment with Comte. Moreover, he was furious that a colleague, Louis-Eug`ene Signol, who had done a lithograph of the portrait of Comte with his three angels under the 186

187 188 189 190 191 192

Condemning Comte’s theory of marriage, especially the positivist law of eternal widowhood, Claudel remarked, “Considering your wife is without a dowry, the public’s good sense today has not been favorable to you.” Claudel to Comte, November 1, 1850. Like Massin and Alix Comte, Claudel also expressed his frustration with Comte’s paranoia when he wrote, “Too often you see in my letters something completely different from my devotion for you and your work.” Claudel to Comte, April 3, 1851, MAC. Claudel to Comte, June 15, 1853, MAC. Littr´e to Claudel, June 15, 1853; copy made by Comte, MAC. Claudel to Littr´e, June 15, 1853; copied by Comte, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, July 14, 1853, CG, 7:86–7. Comte to Hutton, January 21, 1855, CG 8:19. Etex to Comte and the Positivists, May 23, 1853, MAC.

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eyes of Etex himself, had not received any payment for his work.193 Comte curtly replied that the Positivist Society had made no commitment to such a project and that the print was in any case terrible.194 (By all accounts, Signol’s lithograph reversed Comte’s image, making him look left-handed.195 ) Although he preferred Etex’s picture of him, Comte spoke highly to others of J.-H. Hoffmeister, who painted his portrait without ever seeing him.196 Irritated by this slight and finding that the Religion of Humanity left him “empty,” Etex resigned in disgust from the Positivist Society in June 1853. In his memoirs, he explained that Comte’s “religion without God seemed to me impossible.” He also wrote, “I found that, put to the test, in several decisive circumstances, the friends of humanity , whose main motto was to live for others, were more concerned with living for themselves. [This] includes the master.”197 He decided to go back to Catholicism, for he believed in Comte’s principle that every society needed religion. With some sarcasm, he wrote, “You yourself, Sir, are of this religion [Catholicism]; only you do not practice it – something you will do one day, I hope, as I will soon do also. You see, Sir, how revolutionary I am.”198 Comte always accused him of revolting against authority. He believed that Etex suffered from a acute, chronic case of the same Western illness that afflicted Louis Napoleon,“prideovanititis” (“orgueillo-vanitite”), that is, pride and vanity.199 Angry at Etex, Comte removed his Cours de dessin from the Positivist Library. Yet in the preface to the fourth volume of the Syst`eme, where he spoke at length about the social role of artists, Comte seemed to be more forgiving. He maintained that Etex was “dominated by synthetic and sympathetic dispositions which pushed him at first toward positivism.” His “disorder,” that is, his vanity and pride, had to be 193

194

195 196 197 198 199

Born in 1809 in Lille, Signol was a student of Franc¸ois Picot. Signol had printed one hundred copies and was supposed to be paid five hundred francs. He had been able to sell only nine prints. Etex to Comte and the Positivists, May 23, 1853, MAC. It seems that Etex returned to positivism in February 1854, but Comte was still dissatisfied with his “insufficient” adherence. Comte, “Neuvi`eme Confession annuelle,” August 20, 1854, CG, 7:251. See also Raflan, “Vari´et´es (fin),” 401; Paul Foucart, “N´ecrologie: Antoine Etex,” RO 21 (September 1888): 210. Indeed, Comte blamed the poor quality of the print for the lack of copies sold. Comte to Etex, May 26, 1853, CG, 7:76–7. Comte was also miffed at Etex for not promptly returning the copy of Don Quixote that he had lent him. Comte to Etex, March 27, 1853, CG, 7:58–9. Most images of Comte derive from those of Hoffmeister, Signol, Etex, or F´elix Bracquemond. Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:97. Antoine Etex, Les Souvenirs d’un artiste (Paris, E. Dentu, 1877), 266. Etex to Comte, December 21, 1853, MAC. See also Etex to Comte, June 20, 1853, MAC. Comte to Hadery, August 18, 1853, CG, 7:103. See also Comte to Audiffrent, July 14, 1853, CG, 7:86.

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“excused” because he was an artist, and artists tended to become carried away.200 In 1854, Comte even recommended Etex to Vieillard, and the artist met with Napoleon III at Saint-Cloud. In gratitude for the commissions that he hoped to receive from the emperor, Etex painted an oval portrait of de Vaux, based on an original belonging to her parents, and he gave it to Comte, who was extremely touched.201 As for his part, Etex wrote in the preface to his memoirs that he was inspired by Comte to be open about his life and his service to others, wherein lay “true nobility.”202 Comte believed that Etex’s illness had reached epidemic proportions in the West. He gave it a religious interpretation, which reflected his own biases. The disease, he said, originated in the Protestant tendency of rejecting authority, which amounted to the “revolt of the individual against the species.” Such questioning began with the mind but then extended to the sentiments. It bred all kinds of disorder.203 Comte believed, in effect, that anyone who challenged his ideas suffered from this disorder. The problem was that his system was so expansive that it was inevitable that people would find parts that they could not accept. Arguments among positivists became increasingly fierce. Hadery wrote in despair after the defection of Etex, “What is happening then, Sir, to our little positivist Church? Pride and Vanity are causing terrible internal losses.”204 According to Deroisin, the closure of Comte’s course and the dwindling number of members in the Positivist Society meant that he had fewer “contacts with the public,” which had checked his tendencies toward madness, or at least megalomania. More time was spent on personal questions, and Comte was eager to impose his authority.205 Disciples were not pleased. Comte had a big confrontation with Lucas because of his alleged disrespect. After visiting Lyon in the summer of 1852, Lefort warned Comte that Lucas, in part pressured by positivists of the region and in part impelled by his own ambition, was flirting with the idea of performing the sacraments of presentation and marriage.206 Shortly afterwards, as Lefort predicted, Lucas failed to ask Comte’s permission 200

201

202 203

204 206

Syst`eme, 4:xvii. Etex seemed mollified, for he invited Comte to the marriage of his daughter on December 22, 1855. See Etex’s invitation in the folder entitled “Faire-Parts de Marriage,” MAC. Comte to Robinet, June 8, 1854, CG, 7:217; Comte to Etex, June 8, 1854, CG, 7:219; Comte to Hutton, June 29, 1854, CG, 7:224; Raflan, “Vari´et´es (fin),” 395. The portrait is now in the Maison d’Auguste Comte. It is featured on the cover of the second volume of Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography. Etex, Souvenirs, i–ii. Comte to Hadery, August 18, 1853, CG, 7:104. Curiously, although of different religious inclinations, Etex and Barbot de Chement became acquaintances at some point. Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, April 27, 1857, MAC. Hadery to Comte, August 14, 1853, MAC. 205 Deroisin, Comte, 55. Lefort to Comte, July 30 and September 26, 1852, MAC.

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to arrange for the sacrament of presentation to be performed for a family that had recently converted from communism to positivism. Lucas was even more at fault because as the godfather to this girl, called Clotilde, he could not actually officiate and so chose the former head of the communist club, Mr. Raymond, to perform the ceremony as a positivist priest without consulting Comte.207 Lucas had not only initiated a sacrament but appointed a priest without authorization. In late 1852, Comte annulled the ceremony and condemned Lucas for having tried to usurp the power of the Great Priest of Humanity. He feared that Lucas might set up a papacy in Lyon and separate from the Positivist Church in Paris. Having just censured Littr´e for his irreverence and deviations, he felt obliged to squash Lucas’s “schismatic tendency” immediately.208 Also, he wished to make sure that former communists became accustomed to obeying their superiors. Comte wondered if Lucas had been correct in relating to him the number of Lyonnais communists who had converted. After all, Comte said, hardly any of them communicated with him or gave him money.209 Control was ever important to Comte, especially because he did not want positivism to suffer from the same anarchical divisions that plagued contemporary intellectual, political, and social systems. To him, revolutionaries, following the Protestant concept, recognized only their own authority; in other words, they were not inclined to venerate him.210 Although he complained that Comte had “exaggerated” the importance of what he had done and had scolded him too harshly, Lucas apologized.211 He admitted to having inflated the number of positivists in Lyon, but he insisted that there were a “considerable” number of people interested in becoming positivists.212 Lefort, recognizing Lucas’s importance to the movement, begged Comte to “treat him in a more paternal manner” as soon as he appeared “to conform” to what was demanded of him.213 Yet the two men never made amends. Lucas added to his wrongs by questioning Comte’s theory of the soul and the suitability of the Cat´echisme and by not being able to give to the Positivist Subsidy.214 He also criticized the private cult of guardian angels, arguing that proletarian positivists should not take as models their old-fashioned relatives, who were too theological 207 208

209 210 211 212 213 214

Lucas to Comte, September 10, 1852, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, September 17, 1852, CG, 6:366–7. See also Capellen to Comte, September 27, 1852, MAC. Capellen also referred to the problems stemming from Lucas’s zealotry. Comte to Capellen, September 19, 1852, CG, 6:382. Comte to Mont`egre, December 31, 1852, CG, 6:480. Lucas to Comte, October 5, 1852, MAC; Comte to Laurent, October 14, 1852, 406–7. Lefort to Comte, March 26, 1853, MAC. Lefort to Comte, September 26, 1852, MAC. Lucas to Comte, January 28, 1853, MAC; July 6, 1853, January 20, 1854, MAC.

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and metaphysical.215 When Comte demanded to know sordid details of his private life, he admitted that he had an illegitimate child with a married woman.216 This confession, uttered in 1854, seemed to put a complete stop to their correspondence. Comte concluded that Lucas was “radically incapable and maybe shameful.”217 Thanks to these run-ins with Holmes, Lucas, and other disciples, Comte revisited the problem of defining a positivist and insisted increasingly on maintaining a “spiritual hierarchy.”218 In October 1852, Comte announced that a “true” positivist had to subscribe to the tenets of his latest book, the Cat´echisme, besides giving to the Sacerdotal Subsidy (the Positivist Subsidy). Turning to his own account the language of Catholicism, he explained that such contributions served “to support the faith by works.” He also decided that there should be three levels of positivist clergymen. All candidates for the positivist priesthood would have to read his long, difficult books, cultivate the arts, and study the sciences, especially mathematics, the foundation of an encyclopedic education. Nonpriests would also be in a hierarchy. The majority of positivists would be simple lay believers, who were at the bottom of this hierarchy. The next “class” would be practicing positivists, who would engage in ritualistic worship by daily adoring their “own angels” and receiving at least one of the “social sacraments.” The final, most devoted “class” would be composed of apostles committed to converting others to positivism.219 The apostolate was open to anyone who had “sufficient zeal and talent” but did not aspire to the priesthood and thus did not undergo a course of reading to prepare for it.220 All of these degrees of adherence to positivism were an extension of Comte’s obsession with making sure that everyone had a clear, definite place in society. This frenzy of rule-making could not hide the fact that Comte was despondent about being unable to keep friends. He had lost many in the early 1850s. In his “Eighth Annual Confession” to de Vaux, written in 1853, he lamented his isolation, that is, “the growing impossibility of finding . . . sufficient sympathies.” He wrote, I hoped for a long time to be able to make my best disciples into true friends, who could welcome in a worthy fashion the fullness of my 215 216

217 218 219 220

Laurent to Comte, May 10, 1852, MAC. Lefort to Comte, January 20, 1854, MAC. In an effort to improve himself and compensate for his bad behavior in the past, Lucas decided to help the daughter of a worker. He supported her and raised her child. Perhaps he had had an affair with this woman and her child was his. The circumstances are unclear. Some letters from Lucas to Comte seem to have disappeared. See Lefort to Comte, September 9, 1853, MAC. Comte to Laurent, February 16, 1857, CG, 8:402. Edger to Comte, November 2, 1854, MAC. Comte to Laurent, October 14, 1852, 406–7. See also Comte to Audiffrent, May 19, 1853, CG, 7:75. Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:447.

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habitual outpourings. But I have sadly recognized that the nature of these relations, which is more intellectual than moral, together with the inequality of our ages, contributes to forbidding me such a satisfaction. After having excessively altered my normal paternity for a futile fraternity, I sense that the growth of my appropriate authority must make me renounce establishing sentiments other than an enthusiastic veneration.221

Even the satisfaction he derived from Sophie Bliaux was insufficient because of the differences in their education and socioeconomic situation. Now that he continually likened himself to Aristotle, no other living human being could meet his standards. Frustrated by those around him, he counted on the growth of his relationship with de Vaux, despite her absence. Referring to the growing intensity of his image of her, he renounced “all other intimacy.” Her “subjective union” with him was all that mattered. Subjectively, that is, in his imagination, he created a “domestic existence” with her and a fictive “eternal family.” He substituted Condorcet for his own “unworthy father” but kept Rosalie Boyer as his mother.222 De Vaux was his wife. Instead of Alix, Virginie Chardoillet (Robinet’s kind, deceased mother) was his sister.223 He kept Adolphe as his brother but added the American Horace Binney Wallace as another brother. The only person still alive besides himself in this imaginary family was Sophie Bliaux.224 When he married the Segonds in a positivist religious ceremony in 1850, he proclaimed her to be his adoptive daughter.225 Comte told her all his secrets and considered her the “most eminent woman” – after de Vaux – whom he had ever met. He hoped her name would be as “inseparable” from his own as de Vaux’s would be.226 Though illiterate, she had very astute judgments about people – judgments that were not prejudiced by monetary or intellectual biases.227 He secretly hoped that her youngest son would become his successor.228 Comte seemed to be living increasingly in another world filled with idealized individuals who could not disturb his tranquility. Yet he claimed that developing his subjective life in this manner enhanced the construction of his religion, made him happy, and helped him write the last volume of the Syst`eme, which was devoted to the emotions. 221 222 223

224 225 227 228

Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:93. Ibid., 94–5, 200. Comte became acquainted with Robinet’s mother while she was dying and admired her courage and tenderness. He called her “the fourth complete woman of whom I have acquired a sufficient appreciation.” The other three were Rosalie Boyer, de Vaux, and Bliaux. See Comte to Madame Veuve Robinet, February 5, 1852, CG, 5:233. Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:100. Testament (1896 ed.), 12. 226 Comte to Audiffrent, January 2, 1857, CG, 8:361. Comte to Fisher, March 27, 1856, CG, 8:241 Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:100.

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Even while writing the Syst`eme, Comte defended the value of the Cours. He wrote to Vieillard, “Sentiments, despite their growing alteration, alone support present society; they are essentially troubled only after the perturbation of ideas. Considering that the malady is first and foremost intellectual, I had to commence by constructing, with the scientific basis resulting from the modern preparation, a philosophy capable of leading the Occident back to systematic convictions.”229 However, he also knew that compared especially with his opuscules, which he had carefully composed, the Cours was badly written; the chapters were frankly mere rough drafts. After reading the opuscules in the appendix to the last volume of the Syst`eme, Tholouze wrote, “Should I admit [this] to you? I deeply regretted that your main treatise was not written in this language, which is so clear, so elegant, and so expressive.” The Cours “would have certainly obtained in this way a popularity which it lacks.”230 The problem, according to Comte, was that writing the Cours properly would have taken an additional five or six years, which would have had a nefarious effect on his “second life ” because he would not have been influenced by de Vaux in the same opportune manner.231 Yet like Tholouze, more and more people seemed interested in the Cours as Comte struggled to write the Syst`eme. In 1849, Charles Robin took two friends, Monsieurs Le Bedt and Lemaˆıtre, to Bachelier’s establishment to buy Comte’s “great work.”232 Bachelier was the primary publisher of the Cours. Disappointed to discover that the first volume was sold out, Robin went to his own bookstore, run by the publisher Bailli`ere. Before he could ask directly about the Cours, Bailli`ere remarked, “Look, a book that everyone is asking for a lot at this moment . . . is the great work of Mr. A. Comte. The first volume is sold out, and for several months we have been forced to send back requests for it from America and England; that is annoying because the requests are multiplying.”233 A year later, a young engineer, Charles Decomberouse, read the Discours sur l’esprit positif and Littr´e’s articles and wanted to know the basis of Comte’s thought, as revealed in the Cours, but he could not find the volumes anywhere. He complained to Comte, “None of the public libraries except for the Biblioth`eque Nationale has your book because you are considered 229 230 231 232 233

Comte to Vieillard, February 28, 1852, CG, 6:246. Tholouze to Comte, January 2, 1856, MAC. Comte to Tholouze, January 4, 1856, CG, 8:181. Robin to Comte, May 4, 1851, MAC. Bailli`ere, quoted in Robin to Comte, May 14, 1851, MAC.

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a socialist and put on the Index as such.”234 He begged him to publish a new inexpensive edition. Comte had not bothered to ask Bachelier for three years about the sales of the Cours.235 Hearing from others that his work was almost sold out, Comte gradually realized that Bachelier must owe him something. The contract of 1833 had stated that Bachelier would pay him 750 francs as soon as 750 copies of the Cours had been sold. He assumed that Bachelier had made “considerable” money from the enterprise and could well afford to pay him.236 Comte wrote him on July 4, 1850, and Bachelier refused to respond.237 After Comte threatened him with legal action as he had done in 1842, Bachelier finally sent him at the end of August the money he owed him.238 But he avoided the other request that Comte had made, that is, a record of what remained of each volume.239 Finally, in November 1850, he gave Comte a detailed report, showing that he still had 11 copies of volume one; 158 of volume two; 178 of volume three; 284 of volume four; 340 of volume five; and 397 of volume six.240 (Originally, there were approximately 1,000 copies of each volume.) Curiously, the volumes on his new science of sociology had done the least well. Volume six, the most important one, had not done well at all, a fact that did not escape Comte.241 Many of his readers had not felt sufficiently satisfied by his first volumes to complete their sets. Yet, although the Cours was not a best-seller, it was still a work a few people wanted; since 1847, the last time Comte had received such a report, approximately 150 sets of the six volumes had been sold. Thus about 50 sets a year were finding buyers. 234 235

236 237 238 239 240

241

Charles Decomberousse to Comte, October 26, 1850, MAC. At that point, in December 1847, Bachelier had 153 copies of volume one; 301 copies of volume two; 329 copies of volume three; 431 copies of volume four; 502 copies of volume five; and 549 copies of volume six. See Bachelier to Comte, December 8, 1847, MAC. See also Comte to Bacheler, November 12, 1847, CG, 4:127. Comte to Bachelier, August 7, 1850, CG, 5:178. Comte to Bachelier, July 4, 1850, CG, 5:167. Comte to Laffitte, September 4, 1850, CG, 5:188. Comte wondered if Bachelier had sold all the volumes, in which case, he owed Comte another 750 francs. Comte to Bachelier, November 11, 1850, MAC. Bachelier, “Nombre d’exemplaires de chaque volume du Cours restant au magasin le 11 november 1850,” MAC. Around this time, Comte worried that all the publications of the Positivist Society were sold out. He began to harrass the bookseller L. Mathias, who became exasperated by Comte’s demands and could not see why there was a “misunderstanding” about the number of copies that remained in his store. In fact, his records show that only fifteen to twenty copies of each of the various reports put out by the Positivist Society had been sold. By 1851, Mathias had sold thirty-nine copies of the Positivist Calendar. L. Mathias to Comte, July 22, 1849; November 13, 1850; January 22, 1851, MAC. By 1852, Comte had broken with this publisher. See Comte to Deullin, July 29, 1852, CG, 6:322. Comte to Bachelier, December 17, 1850, CG, 5:221.

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Despite the fact that many volumes remained, Comte asserted in late December 1850 that at least volume one of the Cours was probably sold out by that time and thus in effect the entire Cours was sold out because the contract had stated that Bachelier had to sell all six volumes together. Bachelier had broken the terms of the contract by selling individual copies. Thus the individual volumes that existed outside a complete set did not technically count. Moreover, Bachelier had raised the price of the six volumes from fifty to eighty or ninety francs, without compensating Comte.242 Not surprisingly, Comte insisted on being paid the last 750 francs that were owed to him. Bachelier stalled.243 Littr´e spoke to a publisher, who explained that Bachelier might have a case for his actions because the fact that the publication of the Cours took twelve years meant that the sale of the last volumes would be less than the first ones.244 Comte disregarded the argument and after not hearing anything from Bachelier started legal action against him in June 1851.245 The Tribunal of Commerce ruled in favor of Comte, forcing Bachelier to hand over the final 750 francs owed to him.246 Comte was amazed but delighted. His legal relationship with Bachelier was finally at an end.247 But he remained bitter that in twenty-one years, he had earned only three thousand francs from the six thousand volumes of the Cours that had been printed. He hoped to find someone to finance a second edition of the Cours that would be more lucrative for him.248 The English and Americans who were frustrated in their pursuit of copies were finally saved by the famous Victorian social critic Harriet Martineau, who translated Comte’s work in 1853. Born into a 242 243 244

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Ibid., 221–2; Comte to Richard Congreve, December 23, 1852, CG, 6:474. Comte to Bachelier, March 13, 1851, CG, 5:40–41. Littr´e to Comte, December 9, 1850, MAC. Littr´e begged Comte to try to understand Bachelier’s point of view and treat him more fairly. Several months later, he advised Comte on how to sell the Syst`eme. See Littr´e to Comte, December 13, 1850; March 21, 1851, MAC. Comte to Mont`egre, June 16, 1851, CG, 6:111. Comte to Deullin, June 3, 1852, CG, 6:289. See also the entries of August 1850 and February 1851, notebook “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, mai 1838–septembre 1857,” MAC. See the note signed by a bailiff, June 27, 1851, MAC, the note signed Comte, July 4, 1851, MAC. Bachelier later added up his costs of publishing the five volumes of the Cours: 19,413.04 francs. This sum included the 3,000 francs he paid to Comte: 1,500 in 1833 (when the contract was signed), 750 in 1850, and 750 in 1851. (Another editor had published the first one.) See Bachelier, “Compte d’impression d´ebours´e,” n.d., MAC. There is no mention of how much he made. But Comte did point out that Bachelier sold the first volume at ten francs, and the others at eight francs. Thus an entire set cost fifty francs. Because Bachelier sold six hundred sets as well as many single volumes, he made thirty to forty thousand francs. Perhaps Comte was justified in calling him “avid.” Comte to Deullin, June 12, 1852, CG, 6:302. Comte to Deullin, June 3, 1852, CG, 6:290.

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Unitarian,249 manufacturing family in 1802, Martineau was related to Sarah Austin and acquainted with several English people that Comte knew: George and Harriet Grote, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, and George Henry Lewes.250 Having written over a hundred articles for the Unitarian Monthly Repository and other periodicals, she was well respected for her journalistic talents, except by Mill and his wife, who regarded her as a narrow-minded ideologue.251 George Eliot, who was assistant editor of the Westminister Review, wrote in 1852 that Martineau was “the only English woman that possesses thoroughly the art of writing.”252 In her articles, Martineau addressed such subjects as literature, religion, political economy, the importance of creating a moral science to guide human behavior, scientific epistemology, and the need for women’s education and the abolition of slavery. Science and social theory were of key interest to her. Indeed, in 1830, Gustave d’Eichthal was in England visiting William Fox, the editor of the Monthly Repository and a friend of Martineau’s. D’Eichthal met Martineau and introduced her to the work of Saint-Simon, whose faith in progress, theory of history, and desire for an organic society based on the sciences and industry deeply impressed her. In 1851, Martineau joined Henry George Atkinson in writing Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, which explored the possibilities of applying the scientific method to society. To her, science and theology should be rigidly separated, and the former should be the basis of both philosophy and society. Although religious in her youth, she now publicly embraced agnosticism.253 Her views were similar to Comte’s. 249

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Martineau’s Unitarianism, with its orientation toward rationalism and science, was one source of her interest in positivism. See Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, Harriet Martineau:First Woman Sociologist (Oxford: Berg, 1992), 91n7. According to R. K. Webb, Martineau’s connection to Comte caused some tension with Lewes’s mistress, George Eliot, who admired him as well. R. K. Webb, Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 14. See also Alexander Bain, Autobiography (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904), 240. Taylor thought Martineau was “insufferable.” See her diary excerpt from July 1837 in Jo Ellen Jacobs, The Voice of Harriet Taylor Mill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 76. Apparently, Martineau gossiped a great deal about Mill and Harriet Taylor, a habit that did not endear her to them. On Mill and Harriet Taylor’s poor opinion of Martineau, see also ibid., 43; Nicholas Capaldi, John Stuart Mill: A Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 127; Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (London: Secker and Warburg, 1954), 236, 321. George Eliot to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray and Sara Sophia Hennell, June 2, 1852, in The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight, 9 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954–5), 2:32. Valerie Sanders, Reason over Passion: Harriet Martineau and the Victorian Novel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 106–7; Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, “Harriet Martineau,”in The Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, ed. George Ritzer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Hoecker-Drysdale, Harriet Martineau, 2, 28.64–6, 86; Webb, Martineau, 294. In 1831, Martineau’s brother mentioned in a letter that “Harriet is full of St. Simonism”

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Martineau became interested in studying Comte after talking about him with a male Bostonian friend, who was reading the Cours in 1850 while visiting her in Yorkshire. (Martineau had made American friends when she visited the United States in the 1830s.)254 She had heard Comte’s name for years but knew little about him. She then read Lewes’s essay on him in the Biographical History of Philosophy as well as Littr´e’s French summary of positive philosophy.255 Reading French did not present problems. Of Huguenot origins, her Unitarian family was proud of its French heritage, and Martineau had learned the language when she was a child. After having completed several projects, including a History of England during the Thirty Years’ Peace, 1816–1846, she took advantage of a lull in her work and bought the Cours in April 1851. This “great work” proved to be of “singular enjoyment” to her. Two days after beginning it, she began to “‘dream’ of translating it.”256 On April 18, 1851, she wrote to the publisher John Chapman, “My reason for asking about Comte was that I cannot account for his being so little known (or understood) in England – even my brother James making an enormous mistake about his philosophy at the outset of his magnificent article – ‘The Battle of the Churches.’ The temptation is strong to bring him and the English mind into contact.”257 Reflecting her interest in establishing a scientific basis for social theory, which was evident in the book she had recently written with Atkinson, she hailed the Cours as “one of the chief honours of the century.”258 Comte’s approach to science and history impressed her. According to the scholar Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, Martineau saw “the potential of Comtean positivism to systematize science and perhaps knowledge in general.” Committed to “science as the source of new knowledge,” she appreciated Comte’s hierarchy of the sciences.259 Yet R. K. Webb, her biographer, pointed out that Martineau was “a true disciple of the

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and urged him to convert others to it. James Martineau to unknown recipient, March 24, 1831, MS. J. Martineau 1, Archives of the Harris Manchester College Library, Oxford University. I thank Laura Laife and Susan Killoran for their help in procuring this information. Martineau discussed Comte briefly with Atkinson. See Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, ed. Marian Weston Chapman, 2 vols. (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1877), 2:51, 57. Webb, Martineau, 303. In her Autobiography, Martineau explained that she read Lewes’s material in Charles Knight’s Weekly Volumes. The Biographical History of Philosophy was part of that series. Martineau, Autobiography, 2:57. See also Vera Wheatley, The Life and Work of Harriet Martineau (Fair Lawn, New Jersey: Essential Books, 1957), 315; John Cranstoun Nevill, Harriet Martineau (Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1973), 101. Harriet Martineau to John Chapman, April 18, 1851, Harriet Martineau Papers, BANC MSS 92/754Z, Box 1, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Martineau, preface to The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (London: John Chapman, 1853), 2 vols., 1:vi.

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great positivist” chiefly in “her historical views.”260 She embraced the three stages of history, which she used to explain her own evolution from theologian to metaphysician to positivist.261 Comte had proved that social evolution was inevitable – an idea that greatly appealed to this woman observer of society.262 Indeed, Alice Rossi called her the “first woman sociologist.”263 Aghast at how sociology and Comte’s doctrine in general had been misinterpreted, Martineau explained in her Autobiography that she decided to translate the Cours because she wanted to “put a stop to the mischievous, though ludicrous mistakes about Comte’s doctrine and work put forth by men who assumed, and might be expected, to know better.264 She maintained that Comte’s ideas had permeated the sciences and now the truths that he revealed “represented all that is systematic in our knowledge.” It was unjust that intellectuals did not acknowledge his influence for “fear of offending the prejudices of the society in which they live.”265 Besides wanting to show his impact on both scholars and popular opinion, she may have wished to add to the discussion of social sciences that was stimulated by her own recent book and by Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics; or The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified and the First of Them Developed, published in 1851.266 In addition, Martineau imagined herself to be a public educator concerned about reaching the common people. Comte’s public courses and his Cat´echisme revealed that he shared the same goal. To her, the “multitude” needed and wanted more instruction in the sciences.267 In one of her letters to Comte, she wrote My hope is in the educated and thinking portion of the working classes, who, released from theological bonds, are anxiously sounding for some anchorage of principle, and are, while engaged in the search, occupying themselves with physical science in a desultory manner. You and I may live to see the eagerness and joy with which that class of men will accept our philosophy and repose upon it their perplexed minds and worn hearts.268 259 261 262 263 264 266 267

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Hoecker-Drysdale, “Martineau,” 53, 69. 260 Webb, Martineau, 281. Frederic Harrison, introduction to The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, ed. Harriet Martineau (London, 1896), 1: xiii. Henry Sussman, Harriet Martineau (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985), 73. Alice Rossi, ed. The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1973), 118. Martineau, Autobiography, 2:73. 265 Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, v. Sussman, Martineau, 73. Martineau, Autobiography, 2:59. See also Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, 1:vii; Gayle Graham Yates, Harriet Martineau on Women (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1985), 15. Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC.

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Martineau was certain workers would study the Cours, but in its present state, it was too wordy and tedious to read in any language. Martineau figured that if she could simplify, shorten, and translate it into English, she could help spread the gospel of science; she could disseminate Comte’s idea that knowledge should be limited to phenomena that could be observed together with their laws.269 The mind and society in general would then evolve to a higher plane.270 In particular, the Cours would give the English people ammunition against the uncertainties of their age of “social turmoil.”271 Like Comte, she worried that her contemporaries suffered from “a vast amount of wandering, . . . unsound speculation, . . . listless or reckless doubt, and . . . moral uncertainty and depression.” She felt a “deep conviction of our need for this book in my own country” because Comte’s work represented “unquestionably the greatest single effort that has been made to obviate” the state of fluctuation in which people lived. Presenting a system of solid facts established on empirical observation of nature and human behavior, the Cours constituted a “rallying-point” for people’s “scattered speculations,” a solid basis for their intellectual and moral convictions, and a “principle of action.” Like many of her contemporaries, Martineau found comfort in Comte’s declaration that a new science of society would replace theology and that its firm foundation in knowledge would resolve contemporary conflicts arising from terrible clashes of opinions.272 To her, the Cours held the key to intellectual, social, and moral progress.273 Her final aim was to rebuke those who attacked the Cours for its anti-religious stance. She wrote, The preachers and teachers, of all sects and schools, who keep to the ancient practice, once inevitable, of contemplating and judging of the universe from the point of view of their own minds . . . must necessarily think ill of a work which exposes the futility of their method, and the worthlessness of the results to which it leads. As M. Comte treats of theology and metaphysics as destined to pass away, theologians and metaphysicians must necessarily abhor, read, and despise his work.

She and others who had gone beyond theology and metaphysics found, on the contrary, the “moral charm” of the Cours “as impressive as its intellectual satisfactions.” Pointing out that Comte made people 269 270 271 272 273

Hoecker-Drysdale, “Harriet Martineau,” 53, 65; Martineau, Autobiography, 2:73, 75. Webb, Martineau, 305. Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC; Martineau, Autobiography, 2:73. Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, 1:vii, viii, ix; Martineau, Autobiography, 2:73. See also Hoecker-Drysdale, “Martineau,” 53. Elisabeth Sanders Arbuckle, ed., Harriet Martineau in the London Daily News (New York: Garland, 1994), 217; Webb, Martineau, 307.

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see they were part of the universe, instead of its oppressed objects, Martineau wrote, We find ourselves living, not under capricious and arbitrary conditions, unconnected with the constitution and movements of the whole, but under great, general, invariable laws, which operate on us as part of the whole. Certainly, I can conceive of no instruction so favourable to aspiration as that which shows us how great are our faculties, how small our knowledge, how sublime the heights which we may hope to attain, and how boundless an infinity may be assumed to spread out beyond.

It was clear to her that theology and metaphysics bred “low aims,” “selfish passions,” and “proud ignorance,” all of which led to the evils of their times. Grounding people in reality and instilling in them greater self-discipline, positive philosophy, on the contrary, led to “sweet serenity, lofty courage, and noble resignation.” Because it revealed the boundless prospects offered by progress, it filled life with “worthy occupations and elevating pleasures” and raised “human hope and human effort to the highest attainable point.” Theologians and metaphysicians thus erred in speaking “evil of a philosophy which is too lofty and too simple, too humble and too generous, for the habit of their minds.”274 Martineau’s support for positivism could not have been more eloquent or more effusive. The job of translating and condensing six volumes of Comte’s turgid prose into two volumes was formidable. A male friend suggested that she avoid the “toil of translating six volumes in a style like Comte’s” by giving an abstract of it in one or two volumes. An excellent writer, Martineau agreed and decided to do a free translation to set down Comte’s “meaning in the briefest and simplest way” she could.275 She made the book easier to read by eliminating extraneous words and redundancies that came from its origins as a series of public lectures. She also added subheadings throughout the text to help the reader follow at a glance the direction of Comte’s thought. While doing the translation, she studied the sciences on her own in order to abridge the text in the most effective manner. She bought a scientific dictionary and William Gillespie’s translation of the volume on mathematics. She also paid ten pounds to secure the services of her friend John Pringle Nichol, who was a professor of astronomy at the University of Glasgow and also a close colleague of Mill.276 In the first 274 275 276

Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, 1:xiii–xv. Martineau, Autobiography, 2:58, 72. Mill had once told Nichol that the Cours was “one of the most profound books ever written on the philosophy of the sciences.” See Mill to John Pringle Nichol, December 21, 1837, The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812–1848, ed. Francis E. Mineka, 2 vols. [vols. 12 and 13 of The Collected Works], 12:363. Nichol’s wife was Elizabeth Pease, a

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two parts, Nichol found no mistakes in her translation and insisted on adding only a “few notes and observations.”277 When Comte insisted that scientists were ignorant about the timing of the rotations of the planets, Nichol added a footnote, saying “The rotations of some of the satellites are known. They all follow the law of the moon’s rotations, namely, the time corresponds with the orbital periods.”278 He urged her in particular to omit Comte’s section on the mathematical proof of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s cosmogony.279 Nichol also advised her to cut back on the weakest part of the book, the section on physics, especially because there had been many advances in that field since 1835, when Comte wrote on it. With some trepidation, Martineau followed Nichol’s advice. She later told Comte that she felt “great . . . anxiety” about doing the Cours justice and worried about hurting his reputation.280 However, she curiously kept her distance from Comte and never wrote to him to seek his permission or his counsel. Perhaps she was a bit wary because various individuals had told her he was insane, and they insulted her for becoming involved in disseminating his ideas. Her good friend Maria Chapman made inquiries in Paris among her “gay entourage” and heard that he was a “poor worthless lecturer to about five hundred of the raggedest vagabonds in France.”281 Martineau vehemently defended herself, but her friends’ disdainful criticisms may have left their mark. It took her two years to complete the task of shortening and translating the Cours.282 In her Autobiography, she described the “rapture”

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Quaker philanthropist and an anti-slavery advocate, like Martineau. Webb, Martineau, 304. On Martineau’s expenses, see “Account of Money received from Mr. Lombe and expended by Harriet Martineau, 1851–53,” n.d., HM 1114, Harriet Martineau Papers, Special Collections, Library of the University of Birmingham. Martineau, Autobiography, 2:73. Martineau mentioned in Nichol in her letter to Fanny Wedgwood, April 11, 1853, in Harriet Martineau: Selected Letters, ed. Valerie Sanders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 124. John Pringle Nichol, Martineau, The Positive Philosophy, 1:162n. For other examples of Nichol’s critical remarks about Comte’s scientific conclusions, which were chiefly in regard to astronomy and physics, see ibid., 206n, 209n, 210n, 214n,230n, 240n, 282n, 284, 287n. Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, 1:xii. See Nichol’s critical remarks about Comte’s mathematical verification, ibid., 212–13n. One person who seemed to appreciate Comte’s verification of Laplace’s nebular theory was Edgar Allen Poe, who mentioned it in 1848 in his Eureka: A Prose Poem: An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe. See Hawkins, Auguste Comte, 27. Harriet Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC. Maria Chapman, “Memorials of Harriet Martineau,” in Martineau, Autobiography, 2:420. Martineau also wrote short stories for Household Words, articles for the Daily News and the Westminster Review, and part of a novel from 1851 to 1853. In addition, she continued to welcome guests and visit her friends for long stretches, while endeavoring to work on the Cours. In mid-1851 she stayed a fortnight with some Swedenborgians,

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she experienced while engaged in this “labour of love.” In effect, she had a conversion experience. She wrote, I often said . . . in the course of it, that I should never enjoy anything so much again. And I believe that if I were now to live and work for twenty years, I could never enjoy any thing more. The vast range of knowledge, through which one is carried so easily, is a prodigious treat; and yet more, the clear enunciation, and incessant application of principles. . . . I became ‘strengthened, established, settled’ on many a great point; I learned much that I should never otherwise have known, . . . and the subdued enthusiasm of my author, his philosophical sensibility, and honest earnestness, and evident enjoyment of his own wide range of views and deep human sympathy, kept the mind of his pupil in a perpetual and delightful glow. Many a passage of my version did I write with tears falling into my lap; and many a time did I feel almost stifled for want of the presence of some genial disciple of my instructor, to whom I might speak of his achievement, with some chance of being understood.

The work left her “much exhausted,” but “the gain was well worth the toil.”283 When considering her life’s work in her Autobiography, Martineau considered this translation to be the best indication of her influence and direction.284 Comte learned of the imminent publication of the translation of the Cours in late July 1853, perhaps through Henry Dix Hutton, who was an acquaintance of Martineau’s. Comte was delighted to hear that the

283

whose curiosity about Comte “distressed her” because she believed that it was “not in the power of the most elastic mind to entertain at once Swedenborg and Comte.” Martineau, Autobiography, 2:58. But curiously, at the trial concerning the ownership of Comte’s property after his death, a lawyer brought up the case of Swedenborg to prove that Comte was not any more insane than the famous religious sectarian. See Allou’s speech in Emile Littr´e, “Proc`es de Mme Comte contre les ex´ecuteurs testamentaires de son mari,” La Philosophie Positive 3 (March–April 1870): 371. Martineau started the actual work of translation in June 1852. By January 1853, she had completed the section on astronomy. In late April, she finished the part on biology. The next three volumes were easier to translate because they were about sociology, not the natural sciences. She worked until October to complete the manuscript, translating twenty to thirty pages a day on average. She wrote the preface on October 9, a day before she sent the manuscript to her publisher. Like Comte, she did not believe in revising her work. She did not want to “run the risk of spoiling the freshness” of what she had done with so much pleasure. Thus the book “came out precisely” as she “wrote it, day by day.” Martineau, Autobiography, 2:70–75. See also Nevill, Martineau, 102, 105; Wheatley, Martineau, 321, 332. Linda Peterson argues that Martineau considered this method of writing lucidly from the start, without revision, to be the masculine approach, one that would give her “credibility and authority.” Linda H. Peterson, “Harriet Martineau, Masculine Discourse, Female Sage,” Victorian Sages and Cultural Discourse: Renegotiating Gender and Power, ed. Tha¨ıs Morgan (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 174. Martineau, Autobiography, 2: 71–2, 90. 284 Hoecker-Drysdale, “Martineau,” 53.

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work was being done by a “celebrated woman whose heart does not stand in contrast to her mind.”285 He knew of Martineau’s Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development. He commended her for daring to reject “expressly” belief in God in England, “the very center of the system of hypocrisy.” Her “irreproachable conduct,” due in part to her semi-invalid condition, helped her battle the recriminations of the “Anglican orthodoxy,” which could not accuse her of sexual misbehavior to discredit her.286 Thinking perhaps of Wollstonecraft, whose love affairs hurt her legacy, Comte believed that to be endorsed by a woman with “a great reputation” would surely validate his work, especially in the eyes of other women.287 He could not help but be struck by the fact that yet another famous English person was coming out in favor of his doctrine. He put her on a par with Mill and Lewes. Martineau’s abridgment and translation appeared as a book in early November 1853.288 It was called The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. Martineau was sufficiently well regarded that the volumes were published by John Chapman, the famous owner and editor of the Westminster Review, who had recently published Spencer’s Social Statics, and, according to Hutton, was also responsible for the works of Cardinal John Henry Newman and other English “Deists.”289 285

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Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:82. It is unclear who told Comte originally of Martineau’s plan. It might have been Henry Dix Hutton. But there are no letters from him in the MAC that date from before October 1853. In October, Hutton gave Comte details of the progress Martineau was making. He was in correspondence with Martineau, with whom he was “slightly acquainted.” He pointed out that she had been originally a Unitarian like himself. Hutton thought highly of her brother, who was a well-known Unitarian minister – “a man of great worth and sincere piety.” Hutton to Comte, October 26, November 5, 1853,and December 11, 1853, January 1, 1854, MAC; Comte to Hutton, October 27, 1853, CG, 7:138. Comte to Deullin, September 20, 1853, CG, 7:126. Martineau had suffered from poor health since her youth. Comte to Deullin, September 13, 1853, CG, 7:121. Baker is wrong in saying that Martineau’s work appeared in The Leader. The articles in The Leader that appeared from April to August 1852 were written by Lewes, who published them as Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences in 1853. Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:90n1. Martineau later claimed the book came out in December 1853: copy of Martineau to Nicholas Tr¨ubner, October 16, 1874, Harriet Martineau Papers, HM 922, University of Birmingham. Yet another letter written in November 1853 refers to its imminent publication. Martineau to George Holyoake, November 4, 1853, Positivist Papers, Vol. I, Add. MS. 42726, p. 11, The British Library. Hutton to Comte, November 5, 1853, MAC. Chapman had been interested in translating the Cours since 1851. He has asked Mill’s advice. Mill had responded that he did not “think that a translation or an abridgement of it is likely to be either useful or successful.” Mill to John Chapman, September 29, 1851, Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 14: 77. But there were rumors that Mill was interested in doing the translation. Indeed, before starting, Martineau made inquiries to make sure that they were false. She discovered that Mill aimed to “publish a book on sociology according much with Comte’s views.”

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Chapman used his periodical to stimulate intellectual debate in England because he was convinced that the West was entering a new phase of history.290 To fulfill her dream of propagation, especially to the working class, Martineau insisted that the volumes be “extremely cheap.”291 She wanted only enough money to pay the expenses involved in her work. Expenses were also kept down because John Chapman persuaded a friend, Edward Lombe, to contribute five hundred pounds to the project.292 Lombe was a country gentleman and former High Sheriff from Norfolk, who now resided in Florence. He proclaimed himself “one of the earliest subscribers to the publication of Comte’s lectures.” Having been a disciple of Comte for years, he had pondered doing the translation himself. Ill health, ignorance, and laziness prevented him from doing so.293 When he heard from his friend Chapman in the spring of 1851 about Martineau’s project, he gave her five hundred pounds to allow her to do what he regarded as a duty to humanity.294 Martineau was delighted because the gift made it possible for her to make “the work as cheap as possible.”295 Lombe was particularly insistent on Martineau’s finding assistance for the first three volumes, which he regarded as “the most important part of the work.” These were the parts on mathematics, astronomy, and physics and were in the first volume of her translation. (This volume covered the first five sciences.) Offering her money to cover the expenses involved in tackling these sections, Lombe wrote, “I am anxious they should not merely be well done – but faultless.”296 Martineau was happy 290 291 292

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Martineau to Holyoake, October 6, 1851, Positivist Papers, Vol. I, Add. MS. 42726, p. 2, British Library. Cashdollar, The Transformation, 70–71. Harriet Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC. The project cost over 1,030 pounds. See “Account of money received from Mr. Lombe and expended by Harriet Martineau, 1851–53,” n.d., HM 1114, Harriet Martineau Papers, University of Birmingham. Mill thought that Lombe had wasted his money because Comte’s “opinions on social matters are very bad,” and Martineau “cannot translate the mathematics which is the principal thing in the book.” Mill to William E. Hickson, October 15, 1851, Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 14: 78. Edward Lombe to Harriet Martineau, November 27, 1851, HM 1113, Harriet Martineau Papers, University of Birmingham. She kept two hundred pounds for herself and spent the rest on paper, print, and other costs of publication. Lombe died in 1852 before the translation was completed. Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC; Hutton to Comte, October 26 and December 11, 1853, MAC.; Martineau, Autobiography, 2:66–7; Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, Nevill, Martineau, 105; Wheatley, Martineau, 319. Martineau to Holyoake, October 6, 1851, Positivist Papers, Vol. I, Add. MS. 42726, p. 2, British Library; Martineau to John Chapman, April 23, 1851, in Harriet Martineau, “On Edward Lombe, Translating Auguste Comte, and Liberal English Press: A Previously Unpublished Letter,” ed. Michael R. Hill, Sociological Origins 3 (Spring 2005): 100–101. Edward Lombe to Harriet Martineau, November 27, 1851, HM 1113, Harriet Martineau Papers, University of Birmingham.

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to be paid for this “glorious work,” which many other people were interested in doing as well.297 However, there were limits to her enthusiasm for positivism. In particular, as a liberal feminist concerned about individual rights, she did not approve of Comte’s disparaging remarks on women or his notion of a planned, hierarchical society.298 Comte’s predilection for system-making and order seemed excessive, but she acknowledged that she shared the same weakness.299 Nevertheless, Martineau carefully did not voice her disagreement in the preface of her translation 297

298

299

Martineau to Fanny Wedgwood, November 13, 1851 in Harriet Martineau’s Letters to Fanny Wedgwood, ed. Elisabeth Sanders Arbuckle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), 121. A clergyman, Wathen Mark Wilks Call, was vying for the project at the same time Martineau was. After translating the second half of the Cours, Call wrote to John Chapman in September 1851 to request that he publish the entire Cours in an abridged two-volume form. Chapman had already received a proposal from Martineau for exactly the same project. He sent a copy of Call’s letter to George Eliot, who worked under him at the Westminster Review. Although Eliot had read only some of Call’s poetry and letters, she thought he was more intelligent and better qualified than Martineau and would do a better job. Perhaps she sensed that Martineau would be a rival of Lewes in interpreting Comte’s work and wanted to avoid that scenario. Yet Chapman decided that Martineau’s style would appeal more to the common people and would thus popularize the book more effectively. Indeed, Martineau did not want to abandon the project. Once the decision was made to let Martineau continue, Eliot encouraged her to do the job and with Henry Atkinson became a trustee of the project in case Martineau could not do it. Call offered Martineau his manuscript but demanded some credit for his work in disseminating Comte’s thought. Nothing came of his bid. Call wrote to Lewes for advice about whether to tackle the Syst`eme. Lewes replied, “I do not think it desirable yet to publish a translation of the Politique Positive – There are so many things in it which lay themselves open to ridicule, & that is not desirable.” Lewes recommended another tactic. Once his own articles were completed and had laid the groundwork for positivism, Call should publish a book consisting of his analysis of the last three volumes of the Cours, and “a liberal installment” of passages on “general views” from the Syst`eme. Because it would give greater weight to the “social portions” of Comte’s doctrine, Call’s book would be “more interesting” than “Harriet’s book.” But Call could not find a publisher. He finally wrote an article with John Chapman on “The Religion of Positivism” for the Westminster Review in April 1858. The article was a review of Congreve’s translation of the Cat´echisme, which was published in 1858. Lewes to Wathen Mark Wilks Call, March-April 1852, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:137 206n4 (Baker mistakenly explains that Lewes’s friend is Congreve. However, the friend is Call), 275n2; Harriet Martineau’s Letters to Fanny Wedgwood, ed. Arbuckle, 123n14; Webb, Martineau, 303; Susan HoeckerDrysdale, Harriet Martineau, 88; Valeri Kossew Pichanick, Harriet Martineau: The Woman and Her Work, 1802–76 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), 193; Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:28; Prasad, Comtism, 41–2; Martineau to Holyoake, October 6, 1851, Positivist Papers, Vol. I, Add. MS. 42726, p. 2, British Library; [Wathen Mark Wilks Call and John Chapman], “The Religion of Positivism,” Westminster Review, n.s., 13 (April 1858), 305–50. On Martineau’s feminism, see Alexis Easley, “Harriet Martineau and the Woman Question,” in Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question, ed. Nicola Diane Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 80–98. Although Martineau might not have been the most militant of feminists, she was one of the first to insist on the need to pay women equally for equal work. Yates, Martineau on Women, 21. Martineau, Autobiography, 2:71.

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or anywhere else because she believed it would be inappropriate in a work that was designed to “present M. Comte’s first great work in a useful form for English study.” She warned her readers, however, “not to mistake my silence for assent.”300 She waited until Comte died to announce publicly her judgment of his ideas. Although Hutton surmised by the tone of her preface that she was not altogether in favor of his doctrines, Comte was blissfully unaware of any disagreement.301 Martineau sent Comte the volumes of the translation in December 1853 without any note whatsoever.302 Just as she curiously seemed to keep her distance from Comte, he was not very interested in reading every word of her translation. Referring to the rules of his “cerebral hygiene,” he read only her preface, the table of contents, and a few sections.303 That was sufficient for him to conclude that she had done an outstanding job. In the three letters that Comte wrote to her in total, he graciously expressed his profound appreciation of the work of propagation that she had done for him.304 He was effusive in praising her “wisdom” and “correctness.”305 Although she cut his work in half, “nothing essential” was omitted; the result was that “the character and connection of the conceptions” were far clearer than before.306 In effect, she had given “new life” to his “fundamental work,” which was now accessible to more people.307 He thanked her for sparing people the “painful study” of the original Cours, which in the future would be read only by a few theoricians, that is, specialists in the intellectual aspects of positivism. In effect, she had rewritten the book he knew was poorly done and had wanted for years to redo for popular consumption. She had fulfilled one of his deepest wishes. The fact that the translator was a woman undoubtedly made it easier for Comte to appreciate the book and meant that he did not find it threatening as he did with works written or proposed by men. 300 301 302 303 304

305 306

307

Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, 1:xi, xi. See also Hoecker-Drysdale, “Martineau,” 64–5. Hutton was frustrated that she did not state her differences more clearly. Hutton to Comte, December 11, 1853, MAC. Comte received the volumes December 27, 1853. See Comte to Hutton, December 27, 1853, CG, 7:158. Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:165; Comte to Martineau, January 19, 1854, CG, 7:174. Comte told Deullin that he regarded the translation as a “decisive event” for the propagation of positivism throughout the “Occident.” Comte to Deullin, December 30, 1853, CG, 7:16 Comte to Martineau, December 29, 1853, CG, 7:158–9. Comte to Bligni`eres, February 16, 1854, CG, 7:190. Harrison points out that “Miss Martineau reduced more than four thousand pages to something over one thousand.” Harrison, introduction, Positive Philosophy, ed. Martineau, 1:xviii. Comte, “Cinqui`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 22, 1854, CG, 7:183.

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So he applauded her book for being superior to Lewes’s Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, which reviewed the Cours and came out around the same time. Comte found it frivolous.308 He also announced that Martineau’s version of the Cours was better than Littr´e’s summary, which did not have the same elevated character and encyclopedic spirit.309 In general, he complained that men took a narrow approach to his work, which they saw as only intellectual. They mistook the means for the goal. However, as a woman, who displayed her sex’s characteristic wide background, understanding of the whole, and “generous liberty,” which were “almost incompatible” with the “depressing regime” of men, Martineau understood the Cours’s “social destination,” that is, its objective of instigating a “moral regeneration.”310 She knew through “feminine tact” that the Cours was simply the “intellectual foundation of a social edifice.”311 But perhaps the real reason for Comte’s effusiveness is that he did not like to see his thoughts mediated by another individual and Martineau’s work was in essence a shortened translation of his own words. Because she did not come up with anything original or criticize him, he felt secure in his masculine superiority over her. Ignorant of her feminist sentiments, he believed she endorsed his views on women by agreeing to advance the spread of positivism. At the same time, he seemed eager to proclaim his interest in women’s issues, as though to dispel any doubts she might have about him. He announced that her example should serve to silence misogynists who stated that women’s minds had no philosophical aptitude and could not become encyclopedic.312 She showed that the minds of women did not have to be held back by their hearts. Indeed, Martineau exemplified how very intelligent women developed their “affective existence” through study. Wanting to appeal to Martineau’s sentiments, Comte insisted that he wanted to place women in “first place” in the positivist society and that intellectuals and women had a close relationship because they were “equally oppressed” by “brutal activity.”313 Intellectuals should be more like women, and women should be more like intellectuals. He felt that he himself had become more feminine, that is, more loving, as evidenced by the Syst`eme, the first three volumes of which he sent to her, along with the Cat´echisme.314 308 309 310 311 312 313 314

Comte to Deullin, Decembver 30, 1853, CG, 7:161. Comte to Bligni`eres, February 16, 1854, CG, 7:190. Comte to Martineau, December 29, 1853, CG, 7:158–9; Comte to Martineau, January 19, 1854, CG, 7:174. Comte to Martineau, January 19, 1854, CG, 7:175. Comte to Papot, January 9, 1854, CG, 7:171. See also Comte, “Cinqui`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 22, 1854, CG, 7:184. Comte to Martineau, December 29, 1853, CG, 7:159–60. He assumed she would be interested in translating the Cat´echisme because it was dedicated to women. Hutton squashed Comte’s hopes: “I have reason to know . . . from herself that

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She, on the other hand, had a decided “speculative attitude” that could help her cooperate with him.315 In sum, Martineau’s service launched in Comte’s eyes “the decisive alliance of women and priests, on which depends . . . the Occidental regeneration.”316 Hutton, who knew her and took some pleasure in contradicting Comte, bluntly told him that she did not meet his expectations. “She wants tenderness and is rather noble, kind and conscientious than sympathetic or deeply tender and affectionate.”317 Nevertheless, Comte maintained that the name Martineau would henceforth be inseparable from his, especially because her work on positivism would be the only one that would remain important.318 She was, in a sense, the female colleague he had been seeking, first in Massin, then in Austin and de Vaux. Because Comte was predisposed to approve of Martineau’s decisions, her deletion of certain passages in order to cut the Cours by half seemed “judicious” instead of presumptuous as one might imagine he would say.319 He even congratulated her for having eliminated his verification of Laplace’s hypothesis about which he himself had many doubts.320 But he regretted that Martineau had not gone further in cutting out material relating to sidereal cosmogony, a field that he increasingly thought consisted of trivial matters. He had left out this field in his Trait´e sp´ecial d’astronomie populaire and would have omitted it in the second edition of the Cours if this work had been republished in French in its entirety. Nichol, however, added a footnote, where he suggested that Comte’s contemptuous attitude was erroneous because gaining information about movements beyond our solar system could be useful.321 Later, in an introduction to the 1896 edition of Martineau’s translation, the positivist Frederic Harrison pointed out another omission, one that Comte perhaps missed. Martineau did not include the last ten pages of the sixth volume, where Comte outlined his future works, expressed more directly his anti-scientism, and hinted at the religious

315 316

317 318 319

320 321

she does not contemplate this.” Comte to Hutton, February 9, 1854, CG, 7:186; Hutton to Comte, March 25, 1854, MAC. Comte to Martineau, December 29, 1853, CG, 7:160. Comte to Papot, January 9, 1854, CG, 7:171. Indeed, he referred to her launching “the holy alliance” between “the affective sex and the contemplative class.” Comte to Martineau, January 19, 1854, CG, 7:175; Comte, “Cinqui`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 22, 1854, CG, 7:184. Hutton to Comte, March 25, 1854, MAC. Comte to Deullin, December 30, 1853, CG, 7:161. Comte to Martineau, December 29, 1853, CG, 7:160. However, he was sorry that she omitted a passage concerning the mathematician Sophie Germain, whose work he felt deserved more recognition. Comte to Martineau, December 29, 1853, CG, 7:160. Nichol, in Martineau, The Positive Philosophy, 1:184.

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characteristics of the future positivist society.322 She seemed to shy away from using such expressions as a new “spiritual association.”323 In fact, throughout the text, although she occasionally used the term “spiritual power,” she preferred the phrases “speculative authority” or “theoretical authority.”324 In addition, she left out the reference to the Positive Church that Comte made in lesson fifty-seven of the Cours.325 Harrison was also astounded that in her preface, Martineau did not mention the Syst`eme, several volumes of which had already been published. (Martineau maintained that discussing Comte’s later works, like evaluating the criticism of positivism, was extraneous.326 ) It was clear to Harrison that she was not interested in the later developments of Comte’s doctrine, despite the master’s conviction that she was not simply an intellectual positivist.327 As Susan HoeckerDrysdale has pointed out, Martineau believed “that what was needed was not a positivist ‘religion of humanity’ but a humane, rational, secular philosophy of living.”328 Leaving out the parts that would segue to the Syst`eme, she thus contributed in her own way to the theory that there was a distinct break in Comte’s intellectual trajectory. Harrison concluded that her translation, though eliminating the wearisome wordiness of the Cours, was not useful to serious students who wanted to obtain every nuance of Comte’s thought, which was conveyed through the numerous adjectives, adverbs, and qualifications that she eliminated. Even when Comte was in correspondence with Martineau, Hutton tried to disabuse him of the notion that she supported his recent ideas on religion and politics. He wrote, “She is essentially an intellectual positivist only.”329 Disregarding such comments, Comte was so excited that he replaced the Cours with her version original of it in the second edition of the Biblioth`eque positiviste du proletaire du dix-neuvi`eme si`ecle (Positivist Library), which he attached to the fourth volume of the Syst`eme.330 Audiffrent explained the reason to Laffitte: 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330

Harrison translated and added the ten pages to the third edition of Martineau’s book. Wright, Religion of Humanity, 66. Cours, 2:782. Martineau, The Positive Philosophy, 2:467, 557. She did, however, sometimes write “spiritual power.” Ibid., 467. Compare Cours, 2:696 and Martineau, The Positive Philosophy, 2:495, 532–44. Martineau, preface, The Positive Philosophy, 1:xiii. Harrison, introduction to The Positive Philosophy, ed. Martineau, 1:xvi–xvii. Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, Harriet Martineau, 168. Hutton to Comte, March 25, 1854, MAC. Comte also referred to Martineau in the Syst`eme as an “eminent woman.” Comte, preface, Syst`eme, 4:vi. See the list of books, ibid., 4:561. Hutton sent Martineau a copy of the fourth volume of the Syst`eme through Chapman. Hutton to Comte, January 6, 1855. Comte was peeved that she did not acknowledge receiving it.

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Auguste Comte wanted first to give homage to this writer; he wanted then to deter the public from reading The Philosophie positive [and] to get it focused especially on The Politique positive. The condensation of Miss Martineau did not seem to him to present the same dangers as The Philosophie positive whose excessively scientific point of view, he told me, could alter the frame of mind of the disciples and the public with regard to its religious foundation.331

Hoping that people would read her version of his work, not the original, Comte claimed to look forward to the day when it would be translated into other languages, including French, but he was conflicted about this issue.332 On the one hand, he wanted the Cours to be available to more French people. On the other hand, making the English version the preferred one ensured that fewer French people would read it; he believed that Western Catholics, unlike the British and German Protestants, could skip the Cours and simply read the Syst`eme or his works of propaganda such as the Cat´echisme in order to begin instituting positivism more directly and rapidly.333 Finally, in 1871, Charles Avezac-Lavigne, a Comtean from Bordeaux, translated Martineau’s version of the Cours into French in order to make it accessible to French people who could not read her English version or could not afford, find, or plow through the six volumes of the French Cours.334 She objected, for she believed that it would be better to abridge it from the original French version.335 Yet the fact that a Frenchman translated her English translation of a French book back into French is a testament to the merit of her work.336 331 332 333

334 335 336

Audiffrent to Laffitte, August 7, 1878, MAC. Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:165. Comte to Tholouze, January 6, 1856, CG, 8:181; Comte to Hadery, November 23, 1855, CG, 8:141. Comte restrained several people from translating Martineau’s work into French. C. Avezac-Lavigne to Martineau, May 23, 1871, Harriet Martineau Papers, HM 30, pages 1–2, University of Birmingham. Chapman, “Memorials,” Martineau, Autobiography, 2:422–4. Harrison, introduction to The Positive Philosophy, ed. Martineau, 1:xiii. After Comte’s death, Jules-Emile Rigolage abridged the Cours. Rigolage complained that Comte had “an excessive need of determinatives,” that is, adjectives, adverbs, and so forth, which made reading his work “tiring.” He also had too many clich´es, invented words, and repetitions. Rigolage aimed to edit and shorten the Cours to rid it of its bothersome terms and phrases so that people could begin to explore its “richness.” He asked for Littr´e’s approval of the project. Rigolage to Littr´e, July 31, 1876, in Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Correspondance de M. E. Rigolage avec M. Littr´e et Mme Comte,” RO, 2d ser., 22 (1901): 262–6. Littr´e objected because Massin had the rights to the Cours, and there was already a fourth edition in process of being published. Littr´e figured that with the fourth edition, 4,500 copies of the Cours would be already in circulation, making Rigolage’s version superfluous. Littr´e to Rigolage, August 3, 1876, in ibid., 266–7. Massin also pointed out to Rigolage that only Comte could judge if the abridgment was faithful to the original, and the fact that

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Martineau was very gratified by all the compliments that Comte and others showered upon her. Indeed, she told him that she enjoyed working on the Cours. She wrote to him after receiving his first letter, “Your approbation now completes my happiness, and confirms my decision that the last year was the happiest of my life.337 Accolades also came from Littr´e and J. P. Nichol. Her good friend George Holyoake liked it, though he did not see why she had done such hard work except for the fact that Comte was such a original renegade that it might have been gratifying to introduce him to the staid English. In doing the translation, she did more to popularize his thought than if she herself had been an avid Comtist. He gave her work a favorable review in his journal, The Reasoner.338 Grote said, “Not only is it extremely well done, but it could not be better done.”339 Lewes agreed, insisting that it was the best abridgment in the history of philosophy.340 He made sure there was a good review in The Leader.341 The book sold well in the beginning, at least according to Hutton, and to reach an American audience, D. Appleton quickly reprinted it in 1853 in New York. Stimulating in England for the first time widespread and informed debate on positivism, it was widely reviewed in journals such as the Athenaeum, the Literary Gazette, and the Quarterly Review, all of which attacked it, and in such daily newspapers as the Times, which condemned Comte’s atheism, authoritarianism, and claims to be a prophet of some sort.342 Three American scholars attacked Martineau for her immoral, that is, godless, views

337 338 339 340 341

342

he was dead was an “insurmountable problem.” In any case, Comte had already approved of Martineau’s abridgement, and Avezac-Lavigne had already translated that work into French. Veuve Comte to Rigolage, October 8, and October 24, 1876, in ibid., 269–71. She died a year after this letter was written. Rigolage then consulted Laffitte, who gave no objection to the publication of the abridgment. The abridgment of the first three volumes of the Cours was published in 1881 and that of the last three volumes appeared in 1897. Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC. Chapman, “Memorials,” in Martineau, Autobiography, 2:424–5; Wright, Religion of Humanity, 67–8. George Grote, quoted in Harrison, introduction, The Positive Philosophy, ed. Martineau, 1:xiii. George Henry Lewes, Leader, December 3, 1855, pp. 1171–2, cited in Pichanick, Martineau, 198. Webb, Martineau, 304. Curiously, perhaps out of a sense of rivalry regarding their works on Comte, Martineau developed an intense hatred of Lewes and by extension George Eliot. See Haight, George Eliot, 167. Cashdollar, The Transformation, 53, 72; Wright, Religion of Humanity, 66–7. Martineau’s work was also reviewed in the Daily News. Hutton wrote angry letters to the Times and Daily News, complaining about the superficial and false statements in their reviews, but they did not publish his missives. On the back of his book Modern Warfare, he instead pointed to the more positive reviews in the Spectator, the Edinburgh Review, and the Economist. Hutton to Comte, December 4, 1853 and January 29, 1854, MAC.

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and her lack of femininity in order to prevent any serious consideration of Comte’s thought. The Unitarian minister, scientist, and future Harvard president Thomas Hill wrote about her translation for the Christian Examiner; Francis Bowen, another conservative Unitarian and Harvard professor, composed a piece for the North American Review; and Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater, a Princeton professor and Congregational minister, contributed an article to the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review.343 Another American Protestant, Parke Godwin, who had written a book praising Charles Fourier in 1844, was slightly more favorable to Comte. In Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, where he worked as an editor, Godwin wrote several interesting pieces in late 1853 and 1854. He defended Comte’s work as being “deeply religious” because it did not deny God’s existence and did not seek to encompass Him in man’s scientific discourse.344 He blamed the lack of attention given to this “original” and “profound” thinker on scientists, who were too specialized and too afraid of being labeled atheistic, and on philosophers, who were not interested in his nonmetaphysical approach to knowledge. Martineau was to be applauded for finally making Comte “famous.” Although commending Comte for his law of three stages and classification of the sciences, Godwin criticized him for not acknowledging the continued importance of theology and metaphysics; for insufficiently appreciating the religious nature of man; and for limiting knowledge too narrowly to observable phenomena, which made him overlook God’s importance. Comte did not understand that “the intelligible does not exhaust the real.” We believe truths that go beyond “sensible facts” that we know.345 Another vituperative review was by Herbert Spencer, who thanks to Chapman, had become a good friend of George Lewes’s and close companion of George Eliot’s. He had read Lewes’s Biographical History of Philosophy and with Eliot’s help had perused the introduction 343

344

345

See Christian Examiner, May 1854, pp. 364–72, and North American Review, July 1854, pp. 200–229; Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, January 1856, pp. 65–4. This information derives from Hawkins, Positivism, 22–6, 35–44; Cashdollar, The Transformation, 110–11. Several years later, in July 1857, another Protestant minister and professor, Oliver S. Munsell, wrote a fifty-page review of the Cours for the Quarterly Review of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in which he condemned its materialism, determinism, and impiety but commended its purely scientific tenets, such as the classification of the sciences. Hawkins, Positivism, 44–8; Cashdollar, The Transformation, 133. Parke Godwin, “Editorial Notes,” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, December 1853, 683. Godwin had bought the Cours in the early 1840s. He would later marry the daughter of William Cullen Bryant, with whom he worked at the New York Evening Post. Parke Godwin, “Editorial Notes,” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, February 1854, 224; “Comte’s Philosophy,” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, June 1854, 621–632. See also Hawkins, Positivism, 27–34.

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of the Cours in French in 1852. However, he and Eliot had difficulties discussing Comte without quarreling because she approved of the Religion of Humanity, which he disliked. In 1854 he read Martineau’s translation of the Cours and found it extremely clear. He honed in chiefly on Comte’s scientific inaccuracies in the article that he wrote for the British Quarterly Review in 1854. Attacking the positivist classification of the sciences, Spencer was very critical in part to disassociate himself entirely from Comte. Because he had casually called his book Social Statics in 1851, a time when he claimed to know nothing of positivism, people assumed he was a Comtist. His deliberately harsh review showed otherwise.346 Hoping to capitalize on Comte’s growing reputation and to publicize Martineau’s translation of the Cours, which he had published, Chapman sought reviewers for his journal, the Westminster Review. He asked Mill to treat the book for the journal, but Mill refused after consulting with his wife. He told Harriet Taylor: “I don’t like to have anything to do with the name or with any publication of H. Martineau.” He did not appreciate her gossiping about his early relationship with Taylor. Moreover, he was no longer as enthusiastic about Comte’s philosophy and knew Chapman wanted a laudatory review. He feared Chapman would not allow him to “speak freely about Comte’s atheism & I do not see how it is possible to be just to him, when there is so much to attack, without giving him praise on that point of the subject.”347 Alexander Bain also refused to write a review of Comte for the Westminster Review. Finally Thomas Huxley agreed to submit an article for the journal. Like Spencer, he criticized Comte’s scientific errors. Yet he praised Martineau’s “singular skill” in converting “six wearisome volumes of indifferent French into two of very excellent readable English”348 Richard Congreve also wrote a favorable review for the same journal, commending Martineau for 346

347 348

Nevertheless, Spencer’s paranoia about being labeled one of Comte’s disciples led him to write Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of Comte in 1864. Wright, Religion of Humanity, 164–5; Chapman, “Memorials,” in Martineau, Autobiography, 2:424–5; Herbert Spencer, “The Genesis of Science,” British Quarterly Review 20 ( July 1854): 108–62. John Stuart Mill to Harriet Mill, January 9, 1854, The Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 14:126. [Thomas Huxley], “Contemporary Literature: Science,” Westminster Review, n.s., 5 ( January 1854): 255. Eliot was displeased with Huxley’s review, which included a contemptuous reference to Lewes’s book on Comte. After reading the proofs, she asked Chapman to have the text changed, but her request was too late. Haight, George Eliot, 136. In the 1880s, Huxley heaped so much scorn on Comte’s religion, politics, and scientific views that he drove positivism from the Victorian intellectual scene. See Daniel Becquemont, “Auguste Comte et l’Angleterre,” in Trajectoires Positivistes, ed. Annie Petit, 328–31.

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her “labour of love.” He concluded with a ringing endorsement: “What Dumont did for Bentham, she has done for Comte.”349 Martineau generally found the reviewers shockingly ignorant of the book’s meaning. She was also surprised that they spoke of her with sadness and “puzzled but contemptuous compassion” because she had lost “the pleasure of theological dreaming.”350 Criticizing Comte for declaring the end of theology, the reviewers assumed she was quite immoral, a position that angered her, considering all the “pious frauds” and “open lying” that marked the religious world.351 Resentful of the poor reviews, she wrote eloquently to Comte, It is the men who do not write that are your true disciples. The book is read; and it must be by such. Down in that lowly valley, where human life goes on under the feet of the proud, the seed is sown and will flourish. You and I shall never see the gathering of the harvest, except with the eye of faith: but I am sure that is all that we desire.352

It does appear that the poor reviews did discourage buyers. In January 1856, Comte noted that the sales of the Syst`eme were rising, whereas those of the Cours were plummeting. Nicholas Tr¨ubner, who was contemplating publishing a second edition of Martineau’s Cours, cautiously noted in a letter to her in 1874, “It took about 25 years to dispose of an edition of 750 copies.”353 Nevertheless, hearing that this first edition was finally going out of print, she begged Tr¨ubner to republish her translation because she believed it could “scarcely be surpassed in importance to the present and the next generation.”354 In particular, it had to be “at the call of the working classes.” She was certain that her translation of the Cours would be “in demand for generations to come,” especially because it did not contain Comte’s 349 350 351 352 353

354

[Richard Congreve], “Comte’s Positive Philosophy,” Westminster Review, n.s., 6 ( July 1854): 194. Harriet Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC. See also Martineau, Autobiography, 2:73. Martineau to Comte, January 16, 1854, MAC. Martineau to Comte, April 1, 1854, MAC. Nicholas Tr¨ubner to Harriet Martineau, October 1, 1874, HM 917v, Harriet Martineau Papers, University of Birmingham. He wanted her to abridge it even further, a request she denied. Tr¨ubner to Martineau, September 29, 1874, Harriet Martineau Papers, HM 915; Martineau to Tr¨ubner, September 30, 1874, HM 916. Tr¨ubner published the second edition in 1875. Frederic Harrison wrote a preface to an edition published in 1896 by G. Bell in London. See copy of Harriet Martineau to Nicholas Tr¨ubner, October 9, 1874, Harriet Martineau Papers, HM 918, University of Birmingham. See also Wheatley, Martineau, 334; Pichanick, Martineau, 199; Capaldi, Mill, 128; Hawkins, Positivism, 19–20n1.

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“questionable later works.”355 Indeed, her translation is still the standard edition of Comte’s work in English.356 Optimistic about sales in the beginning, Martineau informed Comte that he, Chapman, and she would split the small profits from sales of the book, which she made “extremely cheap” (eight shillings or twenty-five francs).357 The fact that she was going to give him a share of profits equal to her own demonstrated, in his eyes, the superiority of positivist morality. Yet, to prove that even she could not threaten his independence, he refused to accept her offer of sharing the profits.358 In April, she informed him that the sales so far totalled forty-eight pounds. She was sending him sixteen “for the cause,” not for his personal upkeep.359 Comte agreed to accept the money with “profound gratitude,” which he received in September 1854 and intended to use to offset the costs of publishing the Syst`eme.360 A year later, in late December 1855, he wondered why had had not received more money and if Chapman was not cheating him.361 Hutton got a friend to contact Martineau, who declared that Chapman was completely honest and that the Crimean War was at fault in causing a decline in sales of the book. Through this friend, she gave Comte a detailed account of the sales. From July 1854 to July 1855, only twenty copies were sold.362 Herbert Spencer eventually personally delivered to Comte the few pounds owed to him. But because Spencer could not speak sufficient French, their visit was brief. Spencer took an instant dislike to Comte, as might be expected because he felt threatened by being associated with positivism.363 Martineau’s munificence was not directed toward creating a friendship with Comte. It was clear that she did not even want an epistolary relationship with him. In her first letter, after complimenting his ideas, discussing financial matters, and briefly thanking him in advance for 355 356 357

358

359 360

361 362

Harriet Martineau to Isabella Spring Brown, October 20, 1874, Harriet Martineau: Selected Letters, ed. Sanders, 233. Yates, Martineau on Women, 5. Martineau to Comte, April 1, 1854, MAC. Martineau had been secretly planning since April 1853 to give Comte a share of the profits to offset his poverty. Martineau to George Holyoake, Aprl 9, 1853, Positivist Papers, Vol. I, Add. MS. 42726, pp. 9–10, British Library. Comte to Martineau, January 19, 1854, CG, 7:177; Comte, “Cinqui`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 22, 1854, CG, 7:184. Comte had followed this practice of refusing to accept any profits from his works for the past four years. Martineau to Comte, April 1, 1854, MAC. Comte to Martineau, April 6, 1854, CG, 7:200. Later that year Comte became slightly worried about receiving the money after he heard Chapman had gone bankrupt. He needed the eighteen pounds to publish the last volume of the Syst`eme. Comte to Laffitte, August 18, 1854, CG, 7:245. Comte to Hutton, December 31, 1855, CG, 8:170. Hutton defended Chapman’s integrity. Comte to Hutton, January 29, 1856, CG, 8:216. Hutton to Comte, January 23, 1856, MAC. 363 Wright, Religion of Humanity, 165.

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the gift of his later works, she wished him well and ended the missive. When Martineau wrote him a second letter to acknowledge the receipt of his works, she hinted that she was extremely busy and had “less leisure than I could wish for study, and for higher literature.”364 She was not keen on doing any additional translation work for him. Indeed, she never wrote to him again. Comte was later puzzled by her “silence” regarding his religious construction but ascribed it to her newly diagnosed terminal illness, which Hutton had discussed with him. He worried that positivism would lose its “second truly eminent woman.”365 Indeed, thinking she was going to die, Martineau was hurriedly writing her Autobiography. Despite the fact that she turned a deaf ear to Comte’s pestering her for help, she remained devoted to positivism. In 1856, she wrote an important letter to Maria Chapman, in which she defended herself against Americans who accused her of being a religious skeptic wandering around in the darkness of doubt. All this shows so entire an unacquaintance with even the first principles and main characteristics of positive philosophy as surprises me a good deal, after the progress which I have hoped and supposed it was making in our country. By positive philosophy I mean not any particular scheme propounded by any one author but the philosophy of fact. . . . [P]ositive philosophy is at the opposite pole to scepticism, . . . it issues in the most affirmative (not dogmatical) faith in the world, and excludes unbelief as absolutely as mathematical principles do; . . . there is no ‘darkness’ in it, but all clear light, up to the well-defined line which separates knowledge from ignorance.

Proclaiming her secular faith, she emphasized that positive philosophy was “the brightest, clearest, strongest, and only irrefragable state of conviction that the human mind has ever attained.”366 However, she carefully separated the philosophy from Comte, whom she never mentioned because she wished to keep her distance from someone who was considered a dangerous atheist. Moreover, Comte’s authoritarianism and inegalitarianism were an affront to her.367 Thus she preferred to see positive philosophy as greater than this single French individual. A year later, in 1857, referring to herself as a “positive philosopher,” she begged Chapman to promote in the Westminster 364 365

366 367

Martineau to Comte, April 1, 1854, MAC. Comte to Hutton, April 1, 1855, CG, 7:43. Martineau’s illness turned out not to be terminal. See also Hutton to Comte, March 25, 1855, MAC; Comte, “Dixi`eme Confession annuelle,” August 19, 1855, CG, 7:95. Martineau to Maria Chapman, May 10, 1856, in Martineau, Autobiography, 435–6. Pichanick, Martineau, 195.

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Review Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England, which became eventually a classic in positivist historiography.368 By the time Martineau died in 1876, she had written seventy volumes, which show how hard she worked to contribute to history, journalism, and the budding field of sociology. Some scholars have indicated that because she lived in a patriarchal society that did not recognize women’s scholarly achievements, her contributions have been neglected. It seems that only recently have scholars acknowledged that she did more than simply translate Comte. Whereas the number of people who read his works was always disappointingly limited, her voluminous writings, many of which were published in periodicals, were read by thousands of people and had a major impact on the development of the science of society.369 deullin’s re publication of the cour s At least in 1853 there did seem to be renewed interest in Comte’s Cours, as reflected in other developments besides Martineau’s and Lewes’s acclaimed books. In December 1853, three days after opening a package containing Martineau’s translation, Comte received a copy of the first volume of the Cours that Deullin had paid to be reprinted. Deullin had graciously responded to Comte’s plea for financial assistance in realizing this project after realizing that the original first volume was practically out of print.370 Deullin hoped to republish the other volumes with proceeds from the sale of the first. Positivists, such as Littr´e, rejoiced that people could continue to buy the whole set of the Cours.371 However, Comte was singularly ungrateful. Despite his concern to keep the book in circulation, he seemed slightly embarrassed by it. Indeed, he told Congreve in late 1852 that he did not even have an original copy of it himself.372 Comte even complained that reprinting 368

369 370

371 372

Martineau to Chapman, July 22, 1857, MS, Eng.Lett d2, f. 199v, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. She also chided Sara Hennell for not making “positve philosophy more prominent” in her recent book. See Martineau to Hennell, March 12, 1857, Harriet Martineau Papers, BANC MSS 92/754Z Box 3, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Hoecker-Drysdale, Harriet Martineau, 1–2, 164–70. This volume contained Comte’s introductory chapters and his philosophy of mathematics. The official date of publication was 1852 – the one that appears on the title page – but No¨el-Boucart did not finish printing the one thousand three hundred copies until July 15, 1853. Bookstores started selling this volume in October 1853. Auguste Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive, 1, 2d ed. (Paris: Borrani et Drox, 1852), 504. Littr´e to Deullin, January 2, 1863, MAC. He had inadvertently found one copy in his bookshelf of discarded material and had given it to Deullin’s printer. Comte to Deullin, June 17, 1852, CG, 6:303; Comte to Congreve, December 23, 1852, CG, 6:474.

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the book had taken too much of Deullin’s time. Instead of welcoming the book, he praised Martineau’s translation, which he said would make her famous. Again, having a woman interested in his philosophy seemed to be a good public relations move. Deullin’s effort was more problematic. Comte made Deullin add a note explaining that he authorized the reimpression of the first volume but intended in the future to do a “truly new edition” containing “modifications and suitable additions.”373 Deullin was thoroughly disillusioned. He and Comte had been arguing for over a year about republishing the Cours. Comte at first insisted on using Thunot as the printer for volumes two through six because he wanted him to be forever associated with positivism in the same way Charles Joseph Panckoucke was tied to Denis Diderot’s Encyclop´edie. Deullin, however, wished to continue using a local printer in Epernay (No¨el-Boucart), who was cheaper. Comte, however, found him slow. Yet at the same time, he found negotiating with Thunot beneath him. Thus he forced Deullin, who lived far from Paris, to deal directly with Thunot. Deullin failed to reach any kind of agreement with Comte’s favorite printer. Other arguments soon ensued.374 With regard to volume two, Comte insisted on eliminating altogether the controversial lesson twenty-seven on sidereal astronomy and Laplace.375 In order not to disturb the numbering of the subsequent lessons, Deullin was to keep the title of the lesson and write awkwardly underneath “The author has finally suppressed this chapter as relating to vicious questions that true science must eliminate. He refers readers to his Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire (published in 1844) for the development of the reasons for this resolution.”376 Comte then began to vacillate about authorizing the reprinting of volume three, which was not almost out of print as 373 374

375 376

Comte, “Avis sp´ecial sur cette second edition,” July 17, 1852, Cours, 2d ed., 12. Comte to Deullin, June 17, July 22, August 19, 1852, CG, 6:303, 319–20, 335–6; Comte to Deullin, September 13, 1853, CG, 7:121–2; Comte to Ribet, December 3, 1852, CG, 6:441; Deullin to Comte, September 23, 1853, MAC. To cut costs and to maintain the original price of ten francs as Comte wanted, Deullin insisted on small type. Comte objected. He worried that people would be put off by having to pay ten francs for a four-hundred-page work. But he would not allow a price hike. Bachelier had raised the price of the other volumes by an “exorbitant” amount. Comte to Congreve, December 23, 1852, CG, 6:474. Deullin to Comte, July 30, 1852, MAC; Comte to Audiffrent, July 6, 1852, CG, 6:313. The young positivist Deroisin corrected the page proofs without being paid. Comte wanted Laffitte to replace Deroisin as the person who corrected the page proofs for volume two of the Cours. Yet the second volume was not republished. Comte to Deullin, July 19, 1852, CG, 6:317; Comte to Ribet, December 3, 1852, CG, 6:441–2. Comte to Deullin, July 19, 1852, CG, 6:317; Deullin to Comte, June 21, 1853, MAC. Comte to Deullin, September 20, 1853, CG, 8:123. A month later, Comte began to doubt whether he would permit Deullin to republish volume two. Comte to Deullin, October 16, 1853, CG, 8:137.

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volume two was. He believed he covered much of the same material in the first volume of the Syst`eme, which was not sufficiently well known. Indeed, Comte in the end did not seem interested in reprinting the last three volumes of the Cours because the Syst`eme covered similar material, and its volumes needed to be sold.377 Finally, he admitted that he feared that as it stood, the Cours gave an exaggerated impression of the scientific direction of his doctrine.378 Comte’s demands alienated Deullin, who believed he would not be able to get people to buy the first volume if they thought the rest of the set was not forthcoming. He announced to Comte that he did not have enough money to continue reprinting the other volumes, intended to resign from being director of positivism in Champagne, and wished to reduce his correspondence with him. Deullin would not even let positivists visit him.379 Supposedly his sick wife was extremely antagonistic toward positivism, and Deullin did not want to upset her. But it seems that Deullin, who had converted a number of republicans to positivism, tired of Comte’s increasing authoritarianism and ingratitude. Indeed, Comte said he had not “read two pages” of the Cours “in over twenty years” and would not read it until he himself reedited all six volumes, which he hoped to do in eight or ten years, when he retired as a writer.380 He refused to read a single page of Deullin’s edition. 377 378 379 380

Comte to Deullin, September 20, 1853, CG, 7:123. Audiffrent to Dubuisson, November 19, 1898, MAC. Deullin to Comte, December 24, 1853, MAC. Comte to Deullin, September 5, 1852, CG, 6:352; Comte to Deullin, September 20, 1853, CG, 8:123.

Chapter 4

Syst`eme de politique positive: Natural and Social Philosophy In a situation where all human conditions are simultaneously disturbed, one cannot cure anything in a radical manner except with a doctrine capable of embracing everything. Comte to Congreve, October 18, 1856

volume one: natural philo sophy In 1842, Comte had promised his readers at the end of the final volume of the Cours that his next work would treat political philosophy and would comprise four volumes. “The first will treat the sociological method, the second social statics, the third social dynamics, and the fourth the general application of such a doctrine.”1 The topics covered much of the same ground that the Cours did, but Comte did not want the Syst`eme to be a repetition of the Cours. In his mind, the Cours had established the importance of the social point of view in science and logic, whereas the Syst`eme would show how people could establish this new philosophy by changing the political order. What is interesting to note is that Comte did not rush to begin explaining his approach to political reconstruction. After completing the Cours, Comte turned to familiar scientific subjects; he wrote the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique (1843) and the Trait´e d’astronomie populaire (1844), which included his summary of positivism, Discours sur l’esprit positif. In August 1844, he began contemplating his work on political philosophy, which he imagined would appear in four or five volumes in 1848. Yet he complained to his friends Mill and Sarah Austin that his anxiety regarding the start of this project was making him physically ill. He knew from experience that whenever he embarked on an important but difficult book, he became enervated. By September 1844, he was surprised at how sick he felt; beside insomnia, he suffered from severe skin problems (including an erysipelas on his face), rheumatism, and loss of appetite. While in bed, he devoted all his energy to outlining his new work. By September 10, 1844, he had determined its organization, themes, 1

Cours, 2:789.

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and “principal details.”2 As was his wont, he had already composed the first volume in his head. It would touch on morality and the importance of cultivating sociability as the key to the reorganization of politics. Gall and the Scottish philosophers, especially Hume and Adam Smith, whom he had studied as a young man, had underscored the importance of the emotions, particularly the natural sentiment of “sympathy,” that is, sociability, which was crucial to social solidarity.3 Sociability was related to both morality and politics. In effect, Comte intended to elaborate on what he had written in 1817. In one of his articles for the third volume of Saint-Simon’s journal L’Industrie, he had explained that morality represented the “knowledge of the rules that must preside over the relations between the individual and society so that the one and the other are as happy as possible.” Politics thus was an extension of morality, for political and social institutions were only “consequences” of a people’s moral ideas.4 It was time to organize a new “system of terrestrial morality” marked by common sense.5 In another unpublished essay written two years later in 1819, Comte had concluded, “We make no difference between politics and morality, and we think that the division that has existed heretofore between these two orders of conditions must be entirely erased the moment politics becomes positive.” Once politics becomes “a branch of human knowledge,” founded on observation like the other sciences, its goals must be to seek “the most advantageous way men can combine their efforts” so that people treat each other as “brothers” and “the law of common interests” prevails over “the law of the strongest.”6 Comte had intended in October 1844 to fill in the details of this moral framework in the first part of the book, but he still felt too ill to write. Not much else was accomplished during the school year. In late May 1845, shortly after beginning his correspondence with de Vaux, Comte tried working on the Syst`eme again but soon experienced the same nervous anxiety and “intense” melancholy.” He went to bed for eight days.7 He was tackling material that he had written about already with great difficulty in 1825–6 in his fourth 2

3 4

5 6 7

Comte to Sarah Austin, September 11, 1844, Fonds Lacroix 9623, number 1511, Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal. See also Comte to Mill, October 21, 1844, CG, 2:287–8. On his illnesses, see Comte to Audiffrent, January 3, 1856, CG, 8:176. Pickering, Comte, 1:158, 310, 600–601. Comte, “Consid´erations a` l’appui des id´ees pr´esent´ees dans les articles pr´ec´edents: Troisi`eme Consid´eration sur la Morale,” article in third volume of L’Industrie in Auguste Comte, Ecrits de jeunesse, 1816–1828: Suivis du M´emoire sur la Cosmogonie de Laplace 1835, ed. Paulo E. de Berrˆedo Carneiro and Pierre Arnaud (Paris: Ecole Pratique des hautes Etudes, 1970) [hereafter this work will be cited as Ecrits de jeunesse], 91. Comte, “Prospectus annonc¸ant le troisi`eme volume de L’Industrie,” Ecrits de jeunesse, 40. Comte, “Ce que c’est que la politique positive” and “De la Division qui a exist´e jusqu’`a pr´esent entre la morale et la politique,” Ecrits de jeunesse, 469, 471. Comte to Mill, June 27, 1845, CG, 3:51.

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and fifth opuscules, which were published as articles in the SaintSimonian journal, Le Producteur.8 In these articles, he had emphasized the importance of having a strong spiritual power to counter his era’s obsession with practical, material values and to maintain social life. The stress involved in trying to write a third article on the spiritual power in a systematic manner had contributed to his mental breakdown of 1826 and to his decision to focus first on developing his positive philosophy. In a way, the Cours had sidetracked him from his original interests. Now going back to the preoccupations of his youth proved harrowing. Comte was reliving an intellectual and emotional nightmare. It was made worse by the fact that he chose to name this new work the Syst`eme de politique positive, which was the name he had given to his fundamental opuscule (Plan des travaux scientiques n´ecessaires pour r´eorganiser la soci´et´e ) after a big fight with Saint-Simon in 1824. He had also been trying to write the second part of this article when he went mad in 1826. In the summer of 1845, he kept nervously comparing his current disturbed state of mind to his mental crisis of 1826. Telling Mill his woes, he reached a breakthrough in July 1845: “This exceptional mediation has led me to see clearly that the second part of my philosophic life must differ notably from the first, especially in that sentiment must take a role . . . that is as large as that of intelligence. The great systematization reserved for our century must, in effect, comprise all sentiments as much as all ideas.”9 In his early twenties, Comte had read the Id´eologues, who had asserted that passions and ideas constituted the domain of morality, and he had hoped to create a new moral code after launching an intellectual revolution.10 Now he recognized more clearly that having successfully systematized ideas in the Cours, he had an enormous responsibility to treat feelings as an important source of morality. He told Mill that “the systematization of human sentiments” was the “necessary consequence of that of ideas and the indispensable basis of that of institutions.” A discussion of feelings invariably involved the reorganization of morality and society and laid the basis for political reorganization. The huge topic baffled him. He could see how feelings would come into play in the second and fourth volumes of the Syst`eme, which dealt with social statics and the future positivist state. The third volume on social dynamics covered history. The problem was the first volume. How could he bring feelings into that volume so that people would see that the Syst`eme was different from the Cours? To find inspiration, he began to read Augustine’s City of God and 8 9 10

These opuscules were called “Consid´erations philosophiques sur les sciences et les savants” and “Consid´erations sur le pouvoir spirtuel.” See Pickering, Comte, 1:333–54. Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:61, 63. Jan Goldstein, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 51; Pickering, Comte, 1:329.

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soon boasted to Mill that he was the successor to these “great men of the Middle Ages, taking up the task of building an ideal moral society at the point where Catholicism left it.”11 Comte’s manic depression was making him delusional. Comte finally began setting pen to paper again in August 1845. Yet his preoccupation with de Vaux, his worries about his finances, and his inability to conceptualize clearly the entire work prevented him from working on it after September 1845.12 A week after her death in April 1846, he decided to abandon much of what he had already written and start the volume again. However, not until September of that year could he bear to pick up his pen. When he did, he composed only his dedication to de Vaux.13 His combative astronomy course of 1847 inspired him to start working again. While giving the lectures, he sketched out the discourse that he planned for the beginning of the Syst`eme as well as the contents of the final volume on his utopian vision. He believed the “moral regeneration” he was experiencing thanks to de Vaux had shown him the way to a “true synthesis.” In the first six months of 1848, he finally composed the “Discours pr´eliminaire,” which he published as the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme in July 1848.14 Political distractions emanating from the Revolution of 1848 and further financial problems made it impossible for him to continue writing. His hostility to politics in general grew. In reflecting on the June Days, Comte concluded that the crisis reinforced his conviction that the “French Republic must be social, not political.”15 A republic had to be devoted to social reform and avoid political infighting in order to endure. It was difficult to address political reconstruction when he did not really have much faith in it. Nevertheless, in October 1849, Comte took up the introduction, which he quickly finished in February 1850. The entire first volume was completed on February 24, 1850. Then Comte faced the difficulty of finding a publisher and a source of funding. Economic times were difficult after the Revolution of 1848, and Comte’s reputation had no doubt suffered from his job loss and trial against Bachelier, after which he had printed two hundred copies of the judgment against the publisher in hopes of exacting 11 12

13

14 15

Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:61–2. Comte to Clotilde de Vaux, September 14, 1845, CG, 3:126. By this point, he had finished the “important introduction,” which underscored the “moral character” of the work. Comte to Mill, September 24, 1845, CG, 3:132. Syst`eme, 4:547. He wrote the dedication from September 28 to October 4, 1846. See Comte’s note on writing the Syst`eme in Laffitte, “Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” 442. Comte called volume one “sacred” because of this dedication to de Vaux. Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:99. Syst`eme, 4: “Preface,” vi, 4:267. Comte to Armand Barb`es, September 12, 1852, CG, 6:361.

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revenge.16 To attract a new publisher, Comte offered to renounce all profits from sales of the work and allow each volume to be published once it was completed, although he had at first hoped that all volumes could be published at the same time to avoid misunderstandings of his doctrine.17 One publisher, Capelle, was interested in the project, but because the publisher had represented the “Saint-Simonian coterie,” Comte did not want to work with him.18 Comte finally managed to snag his printer Thunot after Lonchampt agreed to guarantee the printing costs with an advance of two thousand francs. Thunot published the first volume of the Syst`eme in June 1851.19 Approximately 750 pages in length, this first volume offered a strange mix. It included a preface; a philosophical discourse (the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme); a large introduction; de Vaux’s short story “Lucie”; her poem “Les Pens´ees d’une fleur”; Comte’s “Lettre philosophique sur la comm´emoration sociale,” which he had written for her in 1845; and the controversial speech he had given at Blainville’s funeral. Comte seemed to go off in different directions, keen to show de Vaux’s impact on various aspects of his existence. His celebration in the preface of her influence as well as that of his mother and maid reflected the “harmony between private life and public life,” which was “the practical privilege of positivism.”20 To drive home 16 17 18 19

20

See bill from Thunot, July 26, 1843, “Documents: Factures acquitt´es,” MAC. Comte, “Deuxi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” March 24, 1851, CG, 6:49. Comte to Mont`egre, September 21, 1850, CG, 5:200. Comte, “Deuxi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” March 24, 1851, CG, 6:49; Comte to Audiffrent, April 7, 1851, and July 7, 1851, CG, 6:52, 113; Thunot’s bill, June 28, 1851, “Documents: Factures acquitt´es,” MAC. Thunot printed one thousand copies. Each copy of volume one cost eight francs, five of which went to Comte, who used the money to help repay Thunot for the printing costs. Sales of the volume furnished only a third of the expenses. Nevertheless, thanks to Lonchampt’s aid, Comte happily noted that the printing costs were paid for the following year. The books were on sale at Ladrange at 41, rue Saint Andr´e-des-Arts, Mathias at 15, quai Malaquais, and Carilian and Dalmont at 49, quai des Augustins. Comte engaged these three bookstores to sell on consignment to accelerate sales. However, by October 1853, Mathias had sold only ninety-eight copies of this first volume. Ladrange had sold forty-three copies of the first volume and eightyseven of the second and refused to hand over the proceeds of the sale to Comte, who started a suit against him. Comte also sent copies of the various volumes of the Syst`eme to different individuals, including Proudhon, Charles Dunoyer, George Henry Lewes, Sarah Austin, Caussidi`ere, Barb`es, Blanqui, Emile de Girardin, Cavaignac, Thomas Carlyle, Martineau, Alexander von Humboldt, Mazzini, and James Hamilton. See Syst`eme, 2: x; Comte to Deullin, June 6, 1852, CG, 6:294; Thunot’s bills relating to the Syst`eme in “Documents: Factures acquitt´es,” MAC; and letters from Mathias and later his widow to Comte, September 15, 1851, November 15, 1851, May 14, 1852, April 15, 1853, October 20, 1853, December 16, 1854, MAC; the folder, “Circulation des ouvrages d’Auguste Comte,” MAC. On Ladrange and the suit, see Comte to Auguste Jean, October 21, 1853, Aut. File, ∗ 63M-92, Houghton Library, Harvard University. I thank Jennie Rathbun at Houghton Library for her discovery and transmission of Comte’s letter to Jean. “Pr´eface,” Syst`eme, 1:10.

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continually the point that the private and public were intertwined, a point that he had already made in his preface to the sixth volume of the Cours, he inserted in this first volume of the Syst`eme a sentimental dedication to de Vaux and in the last volume an invocation, where he praised once again her impact, especially to inspire others to worship her.21 The scattered state of his enterprise, his constant references to his “muse,” and his procrastination regarding the composition of the Syst`eme suggest that he had grave difficulties in mustering the confidence to write this work. In truth, much of this first volume ended up repeating general themes of the Cours, such as his principle that what is more simple and general comes before that which is complex and specific.22 As if to counter the impression that he was unsystematic and confused, Comte repeatedly presented his life’s work as marked by continuity.23 He pointed out that the title Syst`eme de politique positive was the same one that he had given to his fundamental opuscule of 1824. “This spontaneous conformity indicates the full homogeneity of a long systematic career, where, from the beginning the goal was clearly indicated.”24 The goal that he had long embraced was the creation of a spiritual power. Other early works point to this objective as well. Comte stated, “My entire mission was spontaneously announced in the decisive opuscule of 1826 where I devoted my life to the foundation of the new spiritual power.”25 (The 1826 opuscule was “Consid´erations sur le pouvoir spirituel.”) To give his representation of continuity further legitimacy, Comte appended to the fourth and last volume of this work the main essays of his youth, which demonstrated his interest in a spiritual reorganization based on a new philosophy.26 These “opuscules” represented a “historic monument” 21 22 23

24 26

Comte wanted his cult of de Vaux to be universal. See Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:99. See also Cat´echisme, 89. This theme is present both in the preface to volume one and in his final invocation to de Vaux at the end of volume four. See also Comte to Martineau, January 19, 1854, CG, 7:174–75. Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” 1:1. 25 Comte to Edger, April 3, 1857, CG, 8:434. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” January 13, 1847, MAC; Syst`eme, 4:530. Comte started putting aside materials for this appendix in 1850 and burned articles and essays that he thought were irrelevant, outdated, or opposed to his present direction. See note on the original manuscript, “Separation g´en´erale des opinions et les d´esirs,” March 17, 1850, MAC. Comte made some minor modifications in the reprinting of the opuscules. For example, he omitted the part of the fifth paragraph in the “S´eparation g´en´erale” where he underscored the necessity of distinguishing between political desires and political opinions. He may have felt that he had already adequately explained this point. At the last moment, he decided to include in the Appendix the sixth opuscule, “Examen du trait´e de Broussais sur l’irritation,” perhaps because it demonstrated his interest in illness, whether it be biological or social. See Comte’s list of the five opuscules he intended to include at the end of the Syst`eme in his outline of this fourth volume, Syst`eme de politique positive, November 17, 1853, in Manuscripts, MAC.

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that characterized the “homogeneity of my total career.”27 Finally, he used a quote from Alfred de Vigny, one of the few romantic poets who met his approval: “What is a great life:/A thought of youth, realized in mature age.”28 In this way, Comte sought to represent himself as a stable individual, one who did not go through life erratically changing course. Yet in his mind, continuity did not equal stagnation. He wanted others to recognize that he had evolved intellectually despite his commitment to realizing the dreams of his youth. In his usual selfconfessional manner, Comte even referred in the preface to his “profound cerebral storm” of 1826, but the point of his admission was to underscore his creativity and depth as a thinker. The crisis he experienced was part of the process of discovering that he needed to separate his project of regeneration into two successive parts. The Cours accomplished the first, intellectual part, charting the growth of “rationality” and its triumph in the study of society. But it had also “even proclaimed . . . the preponderance of the heart over the mind as the unique source . . . of human harmony.” He thus understood love before meeting de Vaux, but she added the bit of “tenderness” that he needed to have a stronger grasp of it. Foreshadowing Nietzsche, Comte now decided that people in his era exaggerated “the efficacity of the intelligence.” Whereas the Cours revealed the superiority of positivism as a doctrine appealing to the intellect, the Syst`eme would show that this philosophy was attractive to the heart by emphasizing that love was “the only universal principle” and sentiments were “the supreme motors of human existence.” In the Syst`eme, he also intended to demonstrate that positivist philosophy, which derived from the sciences, necessarily generated the “true religion,” one that prized love and unity. To help bring together the members of society, the Syst`eme would reorganize feelings, which constituted the core of religion and went with the “modern ideas” systematized in the Cours. The creation of a “new faith” necessarily entailed the organization of a spiritual power capable of “directing the entire regeneration of opinions and customs.”29 To Comte, an admirer of Joseph de Maistre, religion was inevitably political in nature.This notion went back to his idea about the need to collapse the distinction between politics and morality. The Syst`eme was a work of political philosophy because 27 28 29

Comte to Edger, February 6, 1857, CG, 8:396. Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” 1:1. Comte admired de Vigny’s Servitude et grandeur militaires, though he had never read it. Comte to Bligni`eres, April 21, 1853, CG, 7:61. Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” 1:2–4, 14–15; 4:546; Comte to Vieillard, February 28, 1852, CG, 6:247. Comte wrote later, “We must regard as a pure chimera the hope of uniting and regulating men on the basis of a faith, no matter how complete and demonstrable it may be, if it does not lead to the installation of a true clergy . . . [The] social action [of positivists] would be essentially futile without the subordination to a universal pontiff, the unique source of the regenerating fasces.” Comte to Edger, April 3, 1857, CG, 8:434.

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it involved creating a new power and belief-system that would unite all of humanity not only intellectually but emotionally and would privilege the interests of the common people. Indeed, Comte repeatedly boasted about imitating Paul, after having emulated Aristotle by writing the Cours.30 Finally, the Syst`eme was different from the Cours in that it introduced a new logic. Like an artist, Comte enjoyed playing with perspectives. In lesson forty of the Cours, he had written, The study of man and that of the external world constitute necessarily the dual, eternal subject of all our philosophic conceptions . . . From that result two entirely different and even opposite manners of philosophizing, depending on whether one proceeds from the condition of man to that of the world, or, on the contrary, from the knowledge of the world to that of man . . . The true philosophy must . . . reconcile . . . these two antagonistic methods.31

In the Cours, Comte used the “objective method.” When one studied a phenomenon from an objective point of view, one investigated its position from the perspective of the exterior world. Using the objective method, one studied the world, then man. After exploring this external natural world, determining its laws, and then establishing the study of man, that is, sociology, Comte believed he had attained the “true universal point of view.” Now, in the Syst`eme, because his philosophy had reached maturity, he would use the “subjective method,” descending “from [the study of] man to [that of] the world.”32 When one investigated a phenomenon from a subjective point of view, one considered it from the human or social perspective.33 Humanity was both the subject and object of knowledge.34 Having evaluated the sciences from the objective point of view in the Cours, he now intended in the Syst`eme to look at them from the subjective viewpoint, especially from the point of view of the betterment of Humanity.35 Instead of searching for the source of the natural order, the sciences had to 30

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Comte to Vieillard, February 28, 1852, CG, 6:247. Comte frequently quoted Paul. See Cat´echisme, 80, 81. In his eyes, Paul had best understood how to modify Jews’ beliefs and modes of behavior to make their monotheism and morality universal. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” April 19, 1845, MAC. Cours, 1:665. 32 Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” 1:4. See also Syst`eme, 1:443; Cat´echisme, 89. Ibid., 1:420. See also “Pr´eface,” 1:191; 1:581; Arnaud, introduction to Cat´echisme, 19, 302n12. This subjective approach had originally characterized the theological and metaphysical systems, which tried to explain phenomena by referring them to humans or human-like beings, such as gods. Comte’s use of the subjective method was different because it had a scientific basis. See Cours, 1:666. Juliette Grange, introduction to Auguste Comte, Philosophie des Sciences (Paris: Gallimand, 1996), 34. This approach led to two systems of classification, based on whether one looked at phenomena from an objective or subjective point of view. The spiritual power was most general subjectively, whereas the material power was the most general objectively. Likewise, in terms of the objective world of exterior phenomena, the subject matter of

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be devoted to the task of improving “our condition and our nature.” This devotion to the social and to enhancing sociability was what united the sciences. He wrote, “If they precede and prepare for sociology, they can, in their turn, be coordinated by it.” Indeed, sociology was “the only science” that could “exert an influence equally everywhere,” for it provided the “only scientific and logical connection between our diverse real conceptions.”36 It thus offered a “subjective harmony.”37 the subjective synthe sis Comte did not believe that a synthesis of knowledge could be objective, especially because, as Kremer-Marietti has suggested, “objectivism exaggerates the independence of the real or natural order,” a view held by materialists.38 Scientists must give up their dream of finding an “absolute unity” based on a single scientific law, single method, or single science.39 As Comte’s disciple Georges Audiffrent further pointed out, “The failure of Descartes’ attempt could not leave any doubt as to the impossibility of any kind of objective synthesis. In looking for a sufficiently general principle from which all others flowed, science had in effect, to reveal its powerlessness in this regard.”40 Because objectivity had always to analyze and could not systematize, Comte concluded, “Every synthesis must be subjective.”41 All our theories derived ultimately from within us and had to relate to humans, especially the social environment. This central social point of view was what unified all knowledge.42 However, as Kremer-Marietti suggested, “If the world was purely subjective,

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sociology was the most specific. But in terms of the subjective world of our own conceptions, social phenomena stimulated thoughts that were the most general or universal. Syst`eme, 2:333–4. Syst`eme, 1:419, 446, 467, 578. Comte pointed out that the only other possible source of unification was the law of gravity, but it was limited to less “eminent” subjects. SaintSimon had once tried to unify all knowledge by Newton’s law of gravity. Comte believed that this “objective” unity was impossible to achieve because mathematical, physical, and chemical phenomena did not coincide exactly and biological phenomena could not be reduced to inorganic phenomena. Moreover, there was more contingency in the universe than we liked to imagine. Ibid., 1:512, 518, 581, 589. Ibid., 1:578. As Littr´e point out, “Subjective unity refers to all the mental conditions by which we know the true and all the general principles that guide our applications.” Littr´e, Comte, 183. Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, Le Concept de science positive: Ses Tenants et ses abouttissants dans les structures anthropologiques du positivisme (Paris: Klincksieck, 1983), 188. Cat´echisme, 82. See also Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “La Philosophie des sciences d’Auguste Comte,” in Les Philosophes et la science, ed. Pierre Wagner (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), 813. Georges Audiffrent, R´eponse a` Bertrand (Paris, 1897), 19. 41 Syst`eme, 1:581. Paul Arbousse-Bastide, La Doctrine de l’´education universelle dans la philosophie d’Auguste Comte, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), 2:394.

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it would be the emanation of our conceptions,” which would be a metaphysical idea, one held by “spiritualists.”43 Comte wished to embrace subjectivism but make it nonmetaphysical. There was a kind of circularity about positivism that was reminiscent of Vico’s spiral-concept of progress. As soon as the last stage of development was attained, the first stage came back in a revised format. Comte believed that the subjective method was important in the early intellectual development of humans because it satisfied their desire to know causes. In fetishism, for example, to explain how phenomena operated, people gave them human characteristics. From this method developed theology, which attributed human attributes to the gods who seemed to be behind all phenomena. There ensued an intense battle for centuries between the subjective and objective methods, that is, between theology and science. Comte declared that this battle was over. The triumph of the very intellectual objective method had prepared the way for positivism and discredited the subjective method of theological and metaphysical thought. Man had ceased to see himself as the center of the universe. However, now that the positivist religion was the only “normal” one, fetishism could be reevaluated, and the subjective method could be brought back in a different, scientific form. Thanks to sociology, it could be made relative and positive, and being intrinsically moral, it could help develop positivism by applying it to important issues.44 Taking off from Feuerbach, Comte wrote in the Cat´echisme that in the positivist era “our religious contemplations will be accomplished definitely in our interiors, whereas our predecessors tried vainly to see outside what existed only in themselves.”45 As Henri Gouhier points out, Comte, armed with a new subjective method, fine-tuned by sociology, decided to create a “new anthropocentrism”: The objective sciences of nature become the servants of humanity, that is, of that [science] which knows humanity; their purpose is not in themselves, but in an interest which goes beyond them and which is determined by sociology . . . The system being constituted in this way thus has as its unifying principle a subjective finality, based on the understanding that the subject is no longer the individual, but humanity.46

Kremer-Marietti neatly clarified Comte’s historical approach when she stated that “the personal subjectivity of fetishism” was replaced 43 44 45 46

Kremer-Marietti, Le Concept de science positive, 107, 188. Syst`eme, 1:445. See also Comte to Bligni`eres, March 11, 1851, CG, 6:37. Cat´echisme, 157. Henri Gouhier, “La Vie d’Auguste Comte: Esquisse,” in Auguste Comte: Qui eˆtes-vous? ed. G´erard de Fiquelmont (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1988), 77–8, 79.

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by its opposite, the “objectivity of theologism,” which was in turn rejected by the “social subjectivity of positivism, returning to the first [subjectivity] to sublimate it in Humanity.” Comte retained the imaginative capacities and “affective advantages of primitive human subjectivity”and added them to the activism inherent in his scientific agenda to create an original “systematic fetishism.”47 His interest in religious experience in all its dimensions – imaginative, ritualistic, emotional – demonstrates his keen desire to incorporate what some may have considered “primitive” into the modern rational world.48 Synthesis was the leitmotif of this first volume. Comte did not think that the synthetic nature of his thought was in evidence in the Cours.49 Thanks to the “moral resurrection” that de Vaux, his “pure angel,” had engendered in him, he now was determined to demonstrate that his new Religion of Humanity could create a synthesis among our three expressions of existence – speculation, activity, and affection – which were found respectively in philosophy (or science), politics, and poetry.50 Religion could accomplish this synthesis because it used the mind, especially in education, it regulated activity, and it appealed to feelings. To be fully developed and synthesized to a degree unknown in history, speculation, activity, and affection would be correlated with the three aspects of Comte’s religion – dogma, regime, and cult – just as they would be associated with the clergy, practicians, and women, the “three essential elements of the social order.”51 As Andrew Wernick has pointed out, Comte’s religion “expands, so that it comes to include all that is practically involved in harmonizing social, and indeed individual, life as such.”52 Using traditionally religious terms and applying his typical circular approach, Comte insisted that the Religion of Humanity was a blend of faith, that is, a system of intellectual beliefs, and love, which was moral. Positivism combined these, especially when it brought together the objective and subjective methods. The former ascended from faith to love, whereas the latter descended from love to faith.53 Most men and women, he asserted, were led spontaneously by love to faith. Once people reached faith, it had to be made systematic to strengthen and increase love.54 As Juliette Grange has pointed out, Comte’s 47 48 50 51 52 53 54

Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, “Comte et le retour a` une rh´etorique originelle,” Romantisme, no. 21–2 (1978): 96–7. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 348. 49 Appel, 12. Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” 1:8, 10. Comte discussed at length de Vaux’s character and influence on his doctrine. Cat´echisme, 125. See also Syst`eme, 4:484. Andrew Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity: The Post-Theistic Program of French Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 102. Comte to Papot, May 8, 1851, CG, 6:75. Comte further explained that in his system of education, women led the spontaneous progression, whereas priests conducted the systematic one. Cat´echisme, 152–3.

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humanistic religion stressed the importance of both knowledge and belief and, in effect, intellectualized emotion.55 Always eager to leave a mark on our conceptualizations of the world, Comte went beyond traditional religious terminology and created neologisms to refer to the components of his religion: sociology, sociolatry (sociolatrie), and sociocracy (sociocratie).56 Sociology was dogma. Representing the domain of faith and based on the sciences, it consisted of our intellectual beliefs about the external order, that is, cosmology (mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry), biology, and sociology proper. Sociolatry referred to the cult or worship. As the domain of love and morality, it truly characterized a religion. Its essence lay in poetry and the arts, which captured the beautiful. Along with good deeds, they helped develop social sentiments. Prayer in particular cultivated our best feelings and involved love, thought, and action. Sociocracy was associated with the regime or government. It included regulations affecting our activities, especially the practice of good deeds. Sociology was to serve as the basis of sociocracy (the new political organization) and sociolatry (the new religious organization). Politics and religion could be brought together if both were based on the same scientific system of knowledge, one that privileged society. Besides creating neologisms, Comte played with different forms of the word “positivism.” For the first time, he used the term “positivist” in various passages, including the following: “When the systematization of the positivist dogma . . . establishes the religion of Humanity, the regime and cult will become . . . the . . . object of all ulterior works.” His readers criticized his new terms, which they found “strange.” Yet as Comte was seeking to explain new ideas, he felt the need to create new terms. In addition, he pointed out he had been discussing “positivism” for the past thirty years and believed the time had come to create offshoots of the word. In any case, “positivist” meant more than “real [as opposed to imaginary], useful, certain [as opposed to indecisive], precise, organic [in terms of being unifying], and . . . relative”; it now also connoted “sympathetic,” thanks to de Vaux. It combined both intellectual and moral definitions. He claimed to be the only real positivist because he was the only “soul in which positive . . . [was] the equivalent of sympathetic.”57 In effect, Comte believed he was the only person who synthesized all aspects of existence. Referring to his “energy” and “perseverance,” 55 56

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Grange, Politique d’Auguste Comte, xiv. Comte explained in a footnote that because Western thinkers had already adopted the word “sociology,” he assumed they would also approve the new terms “sociolatry” and “sociocracy,” which his auditors in his course on the history of humanity had welcomed “without difficulty.” See Syst`eme 1:403n1. Syst`eme, 2:76, 4:404, 547. See also Cat´echisme, 153; Appel, 17–19; Scharff, Comte After Positivism, 87.

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he prided himself on having had “two lives” or two careers. The first was scientific and intellectual; he had transformed science into philosophy. The second was emotional and religious; he converted his philosophy into a religion. Just as science had to entail philosophy, philosophy was inevitably connected with religion.58 And religion was deeply connected with literature. Thus he believed he also had a “literary career.”59 Besides combining scientific, religious, and literary careers, he represented himself as an androgynous figure, who synthesized the characteristics typically associated with both men and women. Men were usually considered scientific and intellectual, whereas women were emotional and religious. Yet he insisted that he fused and united “feminine connections” that came from such virtues as veneration.60 In his eyes, de Vaux had made him more feminine.61 He even claimed that writing the Syst`eme was similar to giving birth because it entailed such intense physical pain.62 He was thus not only the father but the mother of positivism.63 His position made some logical sense because he believed that positivism encompassed all aspects of human life, and as the embodiment of positivism, he would have to display the whole gamut of characteristics associated with men and women. Comte was intensely aware of gender differences. The dichotomy between the masculine and feminine informed his principal works. The Cours was dedicated to two scientists, whereas the Syst`eme was dedicated to de Vaux. The Cours was lacking in literary style because it had to be written quickly in order “to terminate in time” his “immense objective task” of covering the sciences. The Syst`eme displayed Comte’s “talent for writing,” especially because it had to satisfy women, who were more aesthetic in temperament than men and were “naturally” linked to “aesthetic culture.”64 They were the chief novel readers and had to be seduced 58 61

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Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” 1:6, 14; 4:532. 59 Testament (1896 ed.), 8. 60 Syst`eme, 4:556. Comte believed that mutual love led each member of a couple to develop characteristics associated with the opposite sex. Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le marriage,” CG, 3:279. Notes de Pierre Laffitte sur les confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte, April 25, 1886, Archives of Sybil de Acevedo. Sarah Kofman, Aberrations: Le Devenir-Femme d’Auguste Comte (Paris: Aubier Flammarion, 1978), 16, 27, 29. Kofman suggests that Comte was fearful of homosexuality. Because he worried about his virility, he sought to keep women subordinate. Kofman’s argument is interesting. Yet its Freudianism goes too far; Kofman asserts that Comte designed his religion to reconcile opposites in order to make peace with his mother, whom he identified with de Vaux. Ibid., “Pr´eface,” 1:7; 4:551. Comte had received complaints about the Cours for many years. One individual complained in 1843 that the Cours was very difficult to understand. “Often your style confuses everything. There reigns in your work a profusion of spontaneity, spontaneous, and other words of the same type.” Comte used too many phrases that seemed designed only “to augment the volume” of his book. G . . . L . . . M . . . T to Comte, n.d., MAC. Comte wrote that he received the letter April 1, 1843.

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into reading him. In sum, it was necessary to develop “by the scientific way active masculine convictions” and “by the aesthetic way profound feminine sentiments.”65 Indeed, one reason he appended to his dedication de Vaux’s short story “Lucie” and her poem “Les Pens´ees d’une fleur” was to highlight women’s aesthetic sensibilities. Continuing to invent new terms and insisting that artificial devices could facilitate the repression of personal instincts and the growth of the sympathies, Comte gave the name “Great-Being” to Humanity, the phenomenon that sociology studied and people worshipped.66 The Cours had first revealed society to be a “composite and continuous existence that increasingly dominates terrestrial affairs.” Comte thus believed he began recognizing the importance of Humanity even before he met de Vaux, for he had already glimpsed its “nature” and “destiny.”67 Yet his understanding of it had deepened. Arguing against its detractors, who may have reacted negatively to his discussion of the Great-Being in the Cat´echisme, he insisted that the concept of Humanity satisfied the “two general proofs of positivity, first reality, then utility.” Though immaterial and not capable of being observed in a strictly empirical manner, the Great-Being was more real and understandable than an individual human, who could not be comprehended apart from his or her connection to the world and humanity. Indeed, it was an “irrational” and “immoral heresy” to “define humanity by man instead of relating man to humanity.” Human nature could be understood only by expanding one’s knowledge of Humanity, not by focusing on a single, lonely individual, who was, in truth, only an abstraction. Only the social, that is, the whole was “fully real.”68 Thus, the Great-Being was as real as the family or state, which prepared the way for it. It was composed of people in the past, present, and future who cooperated “to improve the universal order.”69 These people existed in our minds, hearts, and memories. So the Great-Being was certainly real to us from the 65 66 67

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Syst`eme, “D´edicace,” 1:xv. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” October 13, 1847, MAC. Syst`eme, 4:546. Determining “its collective nature demanded many previous abstractions,” that is, deductions from the main sciences that studied the elements composing it. Ibid., 1:429. Ibid., 1:567, 641, 658; 4:27. In general, Comte believed that “the spirit of the whole is more real in sociology than the spirit of detail.” Ibid., 2:364. See also ibid., 1:446; Jacques Muglioni, Auguste Comte: Un Philosophe pour notre temps (Paris: Kim´e, 1995), 18–19. Annie Petit also makes the point that Comte believed that it was necessary “to study men in groups.” Annie Petit, “Quelle Place pour la psychologie,” 403. Ibid., 4:30. Comte traces the roots of his conception of the Great-Being to the philosophies of Blaise Pascal, Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, and Condorcet. Pascal noted the convergence of the past to the present and compared collective evolution to individual development. Leibniz subordinated the future to the present. Condorcet conceived the human species as a single people.

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subjective point of view.70 It was also real in its cultural and material creations. Language, for example, was a collective enterprise that was real. The utility of the concept of Humanity lay in its ability to satisfy our desire for universality and to provide some guidance in the direction of human affairs. It could both regulate and rally people around it because maintaining and improving the Great-Being would be the focal point of everyone’s affections, thoughts, and action.71 Presumably those who did not devote themselves completely to Humanity were not part of the Great-Being. In effect, the Great-Being did not seem to represent all of society, although Comte suggested it did.72 Egoists were such pariahs that they had no social existence. Given the eminence of the people who composed it, the GreatBeing was the most superior being, certainly greater than the traditional God. Because it had the most power, intelligence, and goodness (or love), it towered in importance over Jesus Christ, who was an “insufficient fiction.”73 Moreover, unlike the Christian divinity, the Great-Being was not all-powerful or transcendent. Composed of individuals who lived in the objective world, it was a real being subject to the natural laws. It was thus subordinated to the external milieu or “theater” in which people lived.74 In addition, the Great-Being was subject to the laws regulating its “internal” conditions, that is, the laws relating to human nature and human existence. One positivist “dogma” was that the external and internal conditions giving shape to our lives constituted “fatalities,” which, though limiting, stimulated our reason and gave coherence to our thoughts. These dominant conditions also inspired activity to modify them and fixed our desires.75 To Comte, the “growing struggle of Humanity against all of the fatalities which dominate it presents . . . a better spectacle than the all-powerful, necessarily capricious God of its theological predecessor.”76 Indeed, the actions of the Great-Being could not be 70 72 73 74

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Arnaud, introduction to Cat´echisme, 19. 71 Cat´echisme, 163. Pierre Arnaud, Le “Nouveau Dieu”: Pr´eliminaires a` la politique positive (Paris: J. Vrin, 1973), 324, 362, 405. Ibid., 1:411. Comte took the word “milieu” from biology. See his discussion in ibid., 2:446. According to Braunstein, Comte took up Lamarck’s notion of the milieu thanks to Blainville’s influence. However, Lamarck spoke of milieux. Comte used the word in the singular, giving it a new significance. Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “Le Concept de milieu, de Lamarck a` Comte et aux positivismes,” in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1744–1829. Actes du 119e Congr`es National des Soci´et´es Historiques et Scientifiques, Amiens, 1994, ed. Goulven Laurent (Paris: Comit´e des Travaux Historiques et scientifiques, 1997), 557, 561. Syst`eme, 1:412-4; Cat´echisme, 69. Humans had the possibility of either resigning themselves to external conditions or intervening in them. Intervention entailed some spontaneity, as opposed to fatalism. Our intelligence pointed out the best direction to take. Comte also added that moral laws were often as inflexible as physical ones if not more so. For example, it was not possible to change many human inclinations. Cat´echisme, 69.

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considered arbitrary, for like the individuals who composed it, it was subject to the scientific laws governing the organic and inorganic worlds. Because the sciences revealed the natural laws affecting the GreatBeing and religion concerned the relations between the organism and the milieu, the sciences were necessarily religious.77 Comte defended the religious function of the sciences to remind people of their importance, despite the fact that his attention was increasingly turning toward religion per se. Besides making us appreciate the inorganic milieu on which Humanity depended and the living beings making up Humanity itself, the sciences were religious, according to Comte, because the convictions that they generated united individuals. In this way, the sciences stimulated sociability. In addition, they guided our intervention in the natural order to improve the external and internal conditions of Humanity’s existence. By encouraging such activism or advising a dignified resignation to what could not be changed, the sciences gave all activities a common destination, which also brought people together. Furthermore, the sciences cultivated sociability and our moral education because they developed a sense of human grandeur when they encouraged intervention. If, on the other hand, they advised submission to the natural order, the sciences taught valuable lessons in humility. By increasing our awareness that much could be changed in the milieu and in human nature, the sciences, moreover, revealed human misery around the globe and our need to provide assistance to others. Rejecting the common view of the sciences as dry and sterile, Comte maintained that our “most austere meditations” on the natural world and the Great-Being can engage us morally and emotionally and lead us to commit practical “acts of love,” which improve our character.78 As he did in the Cours, Comte went so far as to suggest that it was better to think of the sciences as furthering sociability and social welfare than to consider them infallible guides to reality. In a sense, Comte’s work can be seen as an effort to effect some reconciliation with reality, which he believed should be respected.79 The sciences properly speaking rested on observations about events. But Comte realized that the process of arriving at scientific laws that brought together these observations required a level of abstraction that necessarily misrepresented reality. The circumstances of particular cases and general irregularities were disregarded in order to grasp something common to all the phenomena that were being 77

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Synth`ese, 91. On Comte’s notion of religion, see Georges Canguilhem, “Histoire des religions et histoire des sciences dans la th´eorie du f´etichisme chez Auguste Comte,” in Etudes d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences (Paris: J. Vrin, 2002), 82. Syst`eme, 1:423, 435. Jean-Paul Frick, Auguste Comte ou la R´epublique positive (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1980), 12.

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observed. As Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent pointed out, Comte “never attempted” to confine “scientific statements to observable entities.” Hypotheses were accepted on the basis of three criteria: “the degree of precision in accordance with the phenomena”; “their explanatory power”; and the possibility of verification by experiment or practical experience.80 Comte asserted that many acceptable scientific theories, such as atomic theory in physics and the theory of inertia in mechanics, were “subjective constructions,” which might not be verified by direct observation and did not exactly represent “exterior reality.”81 In general, the distorting simplifications represented by scientific theories and natural laws were also often used with deductions to make predictions, which could be rife with errors. Comte concluded, “Complete generality is thus incompatible with a perfect reality.”82 He made a postmodern remark to the effect that we can never be entirely certain about the reality of our scientific laws. We can be assured only that they “represent the universal order as much as we need to know it.”83 Comte very much upheld the limits of knowledge. To him, science had to construct descriptive laws and investigate contexts of discovery; it should not overly concern itself with the questions of proof that traditionally have vexed thinkers in the Anglo-Saxon world.84 Nevertheless, like English philosophers of science, Comte had to confront the problem of method. Agreeing with Mill as opposed to William Whewell, Comte affirmed that the observations at the heart of scientific theories derived ultimately from induction, whose role in 80 81

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Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “Atomism and Positivism: A Legend about French Chemistry,” Annals of Science 56 (1999): 85. Syst`eme, 1:520. See also ibid., 1:424–5, 434–5; Cat´echisme, 90–91. Comte received in 1857 Memoir of John Dalton and History of the Atomic Theory from its author, Robert Angus Smith, the secretary of the Philosophical Society of Manchester. Smith sent it after having read Comte’s positive remarks about Dalton and his atomistic philosophy in Martineau’s translation of the Cours. Comte appreciated the information about this “illustrious theorician” but did not bother to read “the exorbitant developments concerning the history of the atomistic doctrine.” Comte to Fisher, January 2, 1857, CG, 8:365. For more on Smith see also Fisher to Comte, January 16, 1857. For the book on Dalton, see Comte’s Biblioth`eque Usuel, I, MAC. Comte was even more enthusiastic about atoms in the Syst`eme because of their explanatory potential. See the important article by BensaudeVincent, “Atomism and Positivism,” 84–5. Similarly Comte was more favorable to cell theory, which he had rejected in the Cours. He praised the recent “comparative demonstrations” of Theodor Schwann, who showed how cells functioned in both plant and animal tissue. Syst`eme,1:649. For more on Comte and cellular theory, see Ze¨ıneb Ben Sa¨ıd Cherni, “La Philosophie D’A. Comte et la biologie au XIXe si`ecle.” In La Biologia: parametro epistemological de XIX secolo, ed. Maria Donzelli (Naples: Liguori, 2003), 35–6. Braunstein points out that Comte defined life in terms of “organization” and multiple layers and thus preferred to discuss tissues rather than cells, which were too simple. See Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “Comte ‘in context’: L’Exemple de la sociologie,” in Auguste Comte aujourd’hui: Colloque de Cerisy (3–10 juillet 2001), ed. Michel Bourdeau, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, and Annie Petit (Paris: Kim´e, 2003), 307. Syst`eme, 1:427. 83 Ibid., 4:175. 84 Braunstein, “La Philosophie des sciences,” 819.

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the scientific process he seemed to stress more than he did in the Cours. In the Cours, he had written, “One can . . . say generally that science is essentially destined to dispense with all direct observation – as much as the diverse phenomena allow – by making it possible to deduce from the smallest possible number of immediate data the greatest possible number of results.”85 He seemed a little more wary about deduction when he wrote somewhat ambivalently in the Syst`eme, “For one never induces except to deduce, whereas prolonged deduction makes one often misunderstand induction, whence it always emanates.”86 Comte’s wariness might have come from his growing scorn for some geometers who mistakenly thought they used only deductions, thus forgetting that mathematical theories came ultimately from observations. In mathematics, “the indispensable inductions were almost always spontaneous” and thus often overlooked.87 Moreover, geometers, proud of their deductions, were too eager to extend their logic to nonmathematical subjects.88 Despite the fact that mathematics was the “true birthplace of positivity,” a part of most scientific enterprises, and the beginning of everyone’s education, it did not play as central a role in the Syst`eme as it did in the Cours.89 Perhaps one reason is that thanks to Mill, Comte now valued induction more than in the past, and although induction could be used in mathematics, this form of logic arose chiefly in higher studies.90 Comte wrote, “The true philosophical [e.g., positive] spirit is far more characterized by induction than by deduction. The latter . . . adapts itself indifferently to all intellectual regimes.”91 In other words, deduction was used a great deal in mathematics, but this form of logic did not characterize positivism because it operated everywhere, including metaphysical systems. He reminded his readers that ultimately, “all fundamental laws should be characterized as empirical because they can be only induced.” For example, the most important positive dogma, the “principle of the subjection of all real phenomena to invariable laws,” resulted from “an immense induction” and could not have been “deduced from any notion whatsoever.”92 Mathematicians tended to overindulge in abstraction, which led them to abuse the use of deduction and overlook the importance of observation.93 Comte maintained that deduction was contrary to the moral spirit of positivism because it 85 88 89 90

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Cours, 1:71. 86 Syst`eme, 1:532. 87 Cat´echisme, 102. Maurice Boudot, “De l’Usurpation g´eom´etrique,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’´etranger, no. 4 (1985): 399. Synth`ese, 468. Syst`eme, 4:200–202. Comte believed geometers went so far as to assert that their science was completely deductive. He insisted that mathematicians use inductive forms such as observation and experimentation. Nevertheless, it was not until physics and chemistry emerged that induction began to develop more fully. Syst`eme, 1:458, 461. Ibid., 1:517. 92 Comte to Papot, May 8, 1851, CG, 6:73. On this point, see Braunstein, “La Philosophie des sciences,” 808.

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led to dryness and arrogance; deductive thinkers believed they arrived at conceptions by their own reasoning powers and had no appreciation of the contributions of other scholars or other kinds of external assistance. Induction was morally superior because it reminded its user of an “objective source and even a certain social cooperation.”94 He even stated at one point in a letter written in the 1850s that “if deduction demands more mental force, induction necessitates more genius properly speaking.”95 Yet later in the first volume when he discussed his Tableau c´er´ebral, Comte took a different tack. Although he insisted that induction was more indispensable because it supplied the concrete data, he celebrated deductive logic as the higher, more elevated process, especially because it allowed people to make predictions, one of the hallmarks of scientific thought. Predictions were important because they guided behavior, that is, our interventions in the world around us. Thus, deduction was the endpoint of the speculative process. In the Cat´echisme, written two years after volume one of the Syst`eme, he put a gender spin on this discussion by insisting that women were better at induction, which involved bringing facts together, while men were better at deduction, which coordinated facts.96 Because he privileged men’s intellectual abilities, it seems that he preferred deduction. Reminding the reader that more specific phenomena relied on more general ones that preceded it in the natural hierarchy, he wrote, “Although each class of phenomena always has its own laws, which rely on special inductions, they would never become efficacious without deductions furnished by the previous knowledge of simpler laws.” Only in mathematics was it possible to induce without deducing first because the phenomena were simple. In effect, Comte was again pointing out, as he had in the Cours, that one cannot make inductions without first having a theory to make sense of one’s factual observations. In addition, he stressed that inductions could not be “systematized except by means of more general deductions.”97 The purpose of science was not simply to gather facts. Facts had to be connected to some general law, at least hypothetically. Comte stated that “our true knowledge consists only of facts and laws, that is, always of particular or general phenomena.”98 According to Robert Scharff, Comte was a “common sense, French Enlightenment realist”; he did not trace “all observation back to sense impressions” nor subordinate “reason to observation.” Historical epochs were, for 94 95 96 97 98

Syst`eme, 1:533. See also Comte to Bligni`eres, May 12, 1851, CG, 6:83. Comte to Papot, May 8, 1851, CG, 6:74. He also maintained that women were shrewder and less plagued by “vicious opinions” than most scholars. Cat´echisme, 142. Ibid., 89, 99. Syst`eme, 1:714–15. On the importance of the discovery of general laws, see BensaudeVincent, “Atomism and Positivism,” 83.

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example, “observable.” Comte was similar to Kant in believing that sense and reason were inseparable and always worked together.99 In the fourth volume of the Syst`eme and in the Synth`ese subjective, which treated mathematics, Comte returned to this discussion. In these works, he insisted that sciences in the hierarchy increasingly used induction as their phenomena grew more complex. The scientist’s goal was to arrive at general laws by the observation of facts and induction. Nevertheless, Comte again maintained that deduction always played a more important role in reasoning than was acknowledged, especially to prevent pure empiricism, which occurred when “reality” was “respected in a servile way.”100 As Laffitte pointed out, Comte himself used the deductive method, especially in sociology, when he employed certain facts that he had observed to deduce others that remained unknown to him.101 In short, Comte advocated using both deduction and induction, which if pursued separately were unproductive. Formulating general rules without any basis in reality led to dogmatism and illusions about the future because these rules’ predictions about the future were not necessarily correct. Yet approaching phenomena from a completely empirical, objective point of view without any effort at abstraction led to sterile erudition. Pure empiricism prevented the formation of predictions, which were at the heart of the scientific enterprise and one of the strengths of positivism.102 Only the employment of at least some abstraction leading to the sacrifice of empiricism could generate general views that were useful. In a sense, Comte was defending his notion of Humanity, which was an abstraction that some of his critics called metaphysical but he insisted was real. Further revealing his dislike of pure empiricism, Comte discussed at length the necessity of combining observation and reasoning. As Juliette Grange has pointed out, the objects of our scientific knowledge were compromises between “the real and the rational.”103 Perhaps because interest in Kant had revived in the 1850s, as evidenced by 99 100 101 102

103

Scharff, Comte after Positivism, 32–3, 88. Scharff points out that scholars err in asserting that Comte’s epistemology was sensationalist and phenomenalist. Cat´echisme, 163. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” May 10, 1846, MAC. To Comte, empiricism was as pernicious as mysticism. Empiricism came from a lack of abstraction and and incapability to generalize, while mysticism came from being excessively abstract and general. Cat´echisme, 155. For more on the difference between “empiral laws” and “rational laws” and Comte’s defense of abstract thought, see Comte to Papot, May 8, 1851, CG, 6:73. Scharff points out that Comte did not share subsequent thinkers’ preoccupation with the issue of verifying “rational” predictions. He allowed for “hypotheses that contain nonphenomenal predicates and are therefore only indirectly confirmable.” Comte thus had a “generous . . . conception of legitimate abstraction.” Scharff, Comte after Positivism, 88–9, 101n13. Juliette Grange, introduction to Auguste Comte, Philosophie des Sciences, 13.

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Antoine Augustin Cournot’s Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances (1851), Comte had this German philosopher on his mind.104 Comte suggested that our intellect, that is, our reasoning operations, which were part of the subjective world, refashioned the sensations coming from our observations of the outside world. Inversely, our observations of the outside world always involved some use of reasoning. Comte pointed out that Kant correctly argued that physical laws relating to the objective world presupposed logical laws relating to the subjective world of humans, and vice versa. Indeed, Comte tended to equate the logical with the subjective and synthetic and the scientific with the objective and analytic.105 The understanding of the subject (humans) was based on rules without which the regularity and order of the outside world could not be appreciated. There was thus harmony between the object and the subject – a harmony that was the basis of all our knowledge.106 The upshot was that each of our conceptions had both outside and internal aspects. Indeed, our constructions of the natural order never simply reflected that outer world; they always had a subjective element because our own minds were constantly engaged in constructing these ideas.107 If their observations were not clear, Comte believed that scientists should simply supplement them with material coming from their own subjectivity. Insisting on the importance of relativism, Comte came to the postmodernist conclusion that “pure objectivity” was impossible.108 Our mental make-up, our activities, and our emotions reflected the way we viewed the world. In fact, we tended to make the natural order more regular and harmonious than it really was.109 Natural laws, which expressed regularities in the universe that were not necessarily explainable, were ultimately the simplest possible hypotheses “appropriate for representing observed phenomena.”110 These “hypotheses 104 105

106

107 108

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Chabert, Un Nouveau Pouvoir spirituel, 11. Cat´echisme, 115. Comte stated that the “objective method . . . furnishes solid materials,” whereas the “subjective method . . . directs durable constructions.” Though both methods had to be used, the former was employed a great deal in the past to prepare the way for positivism, and the latter would be more prevalent in the future to strengthen this philosophy. Comte to Bligni`eres, March 11, 1851, CG, 6:37. Syst`eme, 1:441. Comte prided himself on developing Kant’s ideas in this area. Cat´echisme, 32, 66. Paul Arbousse-Bastide argues that Comte misunderstood Kant. La Doctrine de l’´education universelle, 2:392. However, Comte warned that we could not be too subjective without putting intellectual consensus at risk. Syst`eme, 2:33. See also ibid., 1:712; 2:31, 32. He claimed somewhat simplistically that Kant recognized that our minds are both active and passive at the same time and that our ideas about the natural world are both objective and subjective. Comte cited Cervantes to support his argument about the power of the emotions. Ibid., 2:32. Ibid., 1:713. See also ibid., 4:173; Cat´echisme, 88; Grange, introduction to Auguste Comte, Philosophie des Sciences, 13.

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[were] sufficiently confirmed by observation,” but our minds did not demonstrate or “verify as much as we assume.” Comte gave as an example of a hypothesis that was a useful tool of scientific exploration his own construction of the mind. He summed up his pragmatic approach to truth: “When we renounce outright the absolute, we consider truth to consist of establishing a sufficient harmony between our subjective conceptions and our objective impressions, while subordinating, moreover, such an equilibrium to our private and public needs. This accord . . . tends . . . to prefer the most simple principles that can represent facts.” Expressing once more his relativism, Comte wrote, “The direct study of any science whatsoever can only be provisional, even in regard to its own conceptions.”111 Much of the natural world, especially the phenomena studied by the “concrete sciences” of meteorology, zoology, and geology, would always remain unknown to us.112 In short, because we could have only “imperfect approximations of the exterior spectacle,” our minds had a “certain liberty” that should be applied to improve the “moral character” of our theories, to embellish them, and to represent “the exterior world” in such a way “so that our practical wisdom could improve it systematically.”113 We should even overlook facts that were “inopportune” from the practical point of view.114 Further attacking the pride of scholars, Comte reiterated his position that the “logical culture” of science was only an extension of common sense.115 “Like common sense, the true philosophic spirit consists, in effect, of knowing what is in order to predict what will be in order to improve it as much as possible.”116 In other words, the public’s common-sense approach was to search for regularities with which to make predictions and act effectively; this way of proceeding was ultimately the basis of science and the alliance that Comte wished to effect between scientists and the common people.117 Moreover, he maintained that the operations of our mind, which he equated with the brain, worked 111

112 116 117

Syst`eme, 1:475, 554; 2:33. In volume three, he reiterated his position: “Our doctrines never represent the exterior world with an entire exactitude, which . . . our [practical] needs do not require. Truth, for each case, social or personal, consists of the degree of approximation included in such a representation. For, positive logic is always reduced to constructing the simplest hypothesis that is compatible with all the information that has been obtained.” Ibid., 3:22. In the Synth`ese, he also stated that “objective speculations” regarding the physical and logical worlds were “provisional.” Synth`ese, 189. On Comte’s use of hypotheses, see Bensaude-Vincent, “Atomism and positivism,” 83. Cat´echisme, 91. 113 Syst`eme, 3:25, 97. 114 Ibid., 3:25. 115 Ibid., 1:713. Cat´echisme, 76. I thank Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent for sharing her paper “Popular Science as a Political Activity in Nineteenth-Century France,” given at Oregon State University, March 2, 2000. See also Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, L’Opinion publique et la science: A chacun son ignorance (Paris: Institut d’´edition sanofi-synthelabo, 2000), 82–7.

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similarly in scientific, aesthetic, and practical productions.118 There was no privileged field where the mind worked more effectively. Avoiding the “vain search for causes” and the “sterile study of facts,” both “theoretical” and “practical” geniuses should seek “laws, that is, relations, which alone conform to our real means and also to our true needs.”119 As Andrew Wernick suggests, the goal of knowledge was no longer the pursuit of truth but the “capacity to manipulate the phenomenal world” and dominate the world “so as to produce predictable results” that would benefit all of humanity.120 Now that the theoretical bases of knowledge were set, it was important to focus on practice, that is, the application of this knowledge. Like Marx, Comte was ultimately an activist, for since his earliest writings, he had stressed the need to change social reality.121 Indeed, according to Juliette Grange, Comte was the only philosopher of the sciences who was more interested in their social and political consequences than in their theoretical success and purely practical results.122 As mentioned previously, Comte was not obsessed by the theoretical success of the sciences because he thought they were mere artificial constructions of a partial reality, about which they offered only relative, limited truths.123 Again referring to Kant for legitimacy, Comte insisted on the interrelationships between objects being contemplated and subjects doing the contemplating.124 He wrote, “Every phenomenon presupposes a spectator.”125 The world was ultimately inseparable from Humanity, which observed it. Humanity was the most salient living entity and was the one that most depended on the world, which it also modified. The study of Humanity therefore 118

119 120 121 122 123 124 125

Comte cited the eminent woman mathematician Sophie Germain, whose Consid´erations sur l’´etat des sciences et lettres dealt with this subject and was “too little appreciated.” Syst`eme, 1:715. She maintained that all intellectual endeavor from mathematics to art was similar because it used both reason and imagination. Reason processed what was grasped by imagination. Louis Bucciarelli and Nancy Dworsky, Sophie Germain: An Essay in the History of Elasticity (Boston: D. Reidel, 1980), 112–13. Moreover, Comte added that memory and imagination were not separate elementary faculties. In effect, he argued against Bacon’s schema. Syst`eme, 1:714. On the mind as the brain, see Peter Allen Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture: Science, Art, and Society in the Victorian Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 24. Syst`eme, 1:428. Wernick, Auguste Comte, 48. Wernick also points out the ethical problems inherent in this approach to the world. Could humanity itself be ripe for domination? Pickering, Comte, 1:146–7. See also Donald Levine, Visions of the Sociological Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 166. Juliette Grange, La Philosophie d’Auguste Comte: Science, politique, religion (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), 9–41. Ibid. See also Cat´echisme, 66, where he explained that the universal order is made up of both objects and subjects. Syst`eme, 1:439.

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rested on the study of the inorganic and organic worlds, which were interdependent. To study the connections between natural phenomena, that is, the “true chain of beings,” positivist logic used both the objective and subjective methods, which provided “all the means necessary to reveal to us the truths that suit us.” The subjective method would insist on subordinating our researches to the “big picture.” Rejecting the “abstract positivity” that had hitherto prevailed, Comte wrote in the Cat´echisme that in the future “to go from the world to man without having first descended from man to the world, risks excessively prolonging inferior studies because their true theoretical goal would be lost.” We would “consume our scientific efforts on academic puerilities, which are as contrary to the mind as they are to the heart. Connections and dignity would then be sacrificed to reality and clarity.”126 Thus there were higher goals than scientific accuracy. The key to the regeneration of the subjective method was the establishment of sociology, which celebrated “the only truly universal point of view,” that is, Humanity, whose “nature was as much subjective as objective.”127 As Andrew Wernick explains, “What distinguishes sociology from other sciences is that it brings the subject of knowledge itself, finally, into the scientific frame. Even the recognition that the social can be constituted as an object for knowledge is difficult because of the inextricably subjective implication of human beings in it.” To stress the complex subjective nature of this perspective, Wernick adds, “We are in society, just as it is within us.” In a sense, we have reached the limits of science: “Science has no more worlds to conquer. The human subject itself is taken.” Thus we study society from without but, more importantly, from within.128 The combination of this synthetic, moral method and the objective, more analytical and intellectual method, which focused on details, would allow the evolution of Humanity to become more rational because each method could be used for a different purpose, making up for the weaknesses of the other. For example, the objective method satisfied our rational needs and made us consider the entire Great-Being from the point of view of its subordination to the external world. On the other hand, the subjective method fulfilled our emotional needs and made us think of Humanity before anything else. Thus the two approaches were complementary. Moreover, the objective method could become morally and emotionally effective in the same way that the subjective method could be adapted to intellectual needs, especially by dropping its search for causes. By highlighting the subjective method, Comte attempted to span the entire human experience, bringing categories of emotion and 126 128

Cat´echisme, 91–3; Syst`eme, 1:448. 127 Comte to Papot, May 8, 1851, CG, 6:74. Wernick, Auguste Comte, 32–3, 38. See also ibid., 83.

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thought together in an original fashion. He believed that in ending the struggle between the heart and the mind, positivism would create mental harmony. Clearly, Comte felt that he had finally achieved this harmony in his own life. His intellectual life was influenced by his heart, whereas his day-to-day activities were affected by his mind. In all aspects of his existence, he was devoted to the social. Using their minds and hearts, all people would be one day as committed as he was to “improving the small portion of the universal order which allows for our intervention.”129 This commitment was intellectual and morally superior to the approach embraced by theology, which celebrated only personal salvation. Despite Comte’s condemnation of atheism, the atheists who read Comte would feel vindicated in reading this introduction, which amounted to a heated defense of positivism against “the Other,” theology. a re examination of the scie nce s In much of the rest of this first volume of the Syst`eme, Comte used his new subjective method to reexamine and systematize scientific theories relating to cosmology and biology – the inorganic and organic worlds. His goal was to unify our knowledge of nature by demonstrating that the phenomena studied by cosmology and biology were related to the Great-Being. The aim of this new subjective synthesis, according to Wernick, was “to display each area of knowledge from the point of view of a subjectivity that was saturated by social feeling and in terms of the contribution each area made to the harmonious and altruistic perfecting of individual subjectivity.”130 Eschewing “the search for causes,” Comte also sought to determine “laws, that is, general facts” in order to allow for predictions that could guide the activities of the “true Supreme Being.”131 Again, he defended the religious function of the sciences, condemning those who pursued them out of ambition and without regard to social improvement. Indeed, he insisted that one had to learn the historical context of scientific discoveries because “intellectual evolution” was always subordinated to the social history of humanity.132 In reviewing the first sciences, mathematics and astronomy, which he called “celestial studies,” Comte demonstrated that they usefully 129 130 131 132

Syst`eme, 1:453. Always eager to bring in the personal, Comte explained that he too had gone from using the objective method to employing the subjective one. Ibid., 1:447. Andrew Wernick, “Comte, Auguste,” in Encyclopedia of Social Theory, ed. George Ritzer, 2 vols. (London: Sage Publications, 2005), 132–3. Syst`eme, 1:579. Synth`ese, 825. Comte repeatedly pointed out that that “every existence” was “relative,” especially because “every phenomenon” had to be considered in its milieu. For example, organs had to be studied in terms of their “inert milieu,” that is, their material conditions. Syst`eme, 1:644.

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introduced people to feelings of resignation, humility, and fatalism because their phenomena, unlike others, were not capable of being modified.133 Since this fatalism was the same for everyone, sociability was fortified. Covering simple, universal phenomena of the terrestrial milieu, such as movement and length, mathematics supplied the basic elements of positive rationality. Mathematics constructed “true deductive logic”; developed the sense of logical laws; introduced the positive “dogma” of the “invariability of real relations,” which involved physical laws; and provided a sense of universal order and harmony. It thus made rebellious minds and hearts aware of the importance of submitting to demonstrated truths.134 Astronomy was in some respects the first true science because it applied mathematics to real observable objects, that is, celestial bodies, and thus avoided the problem of the abuse of abstraction.135 It determined “our decisive initiation into the systematic knowledge of the natural order which dominates humanity. . . . We feel early on the need to appreciate this inflexible order in order to subordinate to it our entire conduct, including our public or private holidays.” The appreciation of these unmodifiable but regular phenomena led to a series of intellectual revolutions. Thanks to astrology, fetishism was transformed into polytheism. Later the establishment of mathematical laws relating to astronomy gave birth to monotheism. Finally, the discovery of the double movement of the earth led to the elimination of theology altogether. Now the understanding of the immutability of the milieu of the Great-Being “constituted the first systematic basis of the final religion, to regulate and rally not only our opinions and our actions but also our affections themselves.” Cognizance of an “external necessity” was good for human discipline; it contained “our pride,” “the wanderings of our reason,” and our desire for a “vagabond independence.” There was no flˆanerie allowed in the positivist world. As reflected in his lectures to workers, Comte also believed astronomy was essential to education. It provided the first training in observation and induction and introduced the arts of hypothesis and abstraction. Moreover, it taught that explanations “are reduced necessarily to linking diverse phenomena, by similitude or by succession, in order to predict each of them according to its relations to others.”136 This ability to make “exact, rational predictions,” which derived from the “simplicity” of celestial phenomena, was the source of the first emergence of the “true scientific spirit.”137 Comte 133 134

135 136

Syst`eme, 1:457. See also Cat´echisme, 67. Syst`eme, 1:464, 544. Once again, as in the Cours, Comte showed himself to be shortsighted in condemning the calculus of probabilities as absurd because the notion of chance went against the concept of invariable laws. Ibid., 1:469; Braunstein, “La Philosophie des sciences,” 810–11. On this point, see Braunstein, “La Philosophie des sciences,” 809. Syst`eme, 1:505. 137 Ibid., 502–5.

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ended his discussion of astronomy with a warning to astronomers to focus solely on celestial bodies within our solar system that had some relation with earth. Studying faraway stars or planets with no connection to humanity was absurd, useless, and contrary to the search for a subjective synthesis.138 Intense pragmatism, if not antiintellectualism, pervaded Comte’s approach. The next two sciences, which made up “terrestrial” studies, were physics and chemistry. They inspired energy and action, for human intervention was first possible in the phenomena that they investigated. These studies of the external conditions of existence led to the first sense of material progress.139 Physics’s logical efficacy, which was greater than chemistry’s, consisted in strengthening the spirit of induction, which it would one day combine wisely with deduction.140 (In astronomy, observation was pursued too spontaneously to provide a good basis for the development of induction, whose use in that science was limited.) Physics was also the science that best developed experimentation, which Comte felt was difficult to pursue in the organic sciences. However, physics relied too much on mathematics and “specious verbiage,” used especially by “ambitious mediocrities.”141 In addition, physics was still infested with the spirit of the absolute, which led to a search for ultimate causes. As in the past, Comte condemned physical explanations involving “fantastic fluids or ethers” in particular. Just as scientists could never have an exact representation of the universe, physicists would never know the “intimate structure of real 138

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Comte was a traditionalist in astronomy. He maintained that “normal astronomy” should concentrate solely on the “three principal bodies” – the earth, sun, and moon – and the “five other planets” known since the Greeks – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. These could be seen with the naked eye because of their size and proximity to the earth. They thus had an influence on humanity. Comte found the planet Uranus to be completely “insignificant.” To him, its “terrestrial influence” was “always so minimal that its existence remained unknown until the last century without any inconvenience.” Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel. Perhaps Comte still resented his son. John Herschel had criticized Comte’s attempted verification of the “nebular hypothesis” in an essay that he submitted to 1835 to gain admittance into the Academy of Sciences. Comte also made fun of the public’s and astronomers’ excitement over the “so-called discovery” of Neptune by Urbain Le Verrier in 1846, which “if it had been real would have truly interested only the inhabitants of Uranus.” Le Verrier, according to Comte, conjured up the existence of Neptune to explain the disturbances in Uranus, but there was no proof that it really existed. Comte’s insistence that Neptune was “fictive” again reflected his ignorance in scientific matters. Along with a young scientist from the Observatory, Le Verrier himself came to Comte’s public course on the history of humanity and was profoundly insulted by his sarcastic remarks. Syst`eme, 1:511. See also ibid., 3:591; Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” October 19, 1846, MAC; Deroisin, Comte, 5. Ibid., 1:457. In contrast to mathematics and astronomy, which were largely based on deduction, physics and chemistry dealt with modifiable phenomena and relied more on induction. Ibid., 577. See also Cat´echisme, 114, Syst`eme, 1:524.

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substances.”142 Comte may have gone too far, however, when he maintained that the theory of atoms was only a useful, logical artifice with no necessary basis in reality. Chemistry studied the internal material substance of bodies.143 Chemical studies were particularly useful to humanity because they helped industry and directly advanced material progress. Logically, chemistry developed induction to a greater extent than physics, which remained more deductive thanks to the large role mathematics played in its theories. Chemistry also introduced the comparative method, the theory of taxonomy, and a sense of “the hierarchy of natural existences.”144 After showing how these inorganic sciences shed light on the material life of Humanity, Comte turned to biology, the main part of natural philosophy. It connected mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry, which focused on the vital existence of Humanity, with the final science, that of sociology, which covered the Great-Being’s social existence. Because living creatures had to be understood relative to their milieu, biology depended a great deal on the four preliminary sciences – a dependence that most current biologists ignored, according to Comte.145 As with mathematics, Comte was very critical of current biological practices, which he found in disarray. Influenced by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Blainville, he was concerned with the interrelationship between organic forms and the physical milieu in which they lived. Other biologists focused solely on the phenomena of life themselves.146 Denouncing the growing specialization that marked biology and the modern world in general, he wrote, “No part of this universal order can be really understood without the conception of the others.”147 Comte’s acute sense of how elements in a system were interconnected seemed to foreshadow Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralism. As in the Cours, Comte focused on biology’s distinctiveness. He maintained that especially in its theory of the brain, it trained researchers to think in more relative and synthetic terms, anticipating the subjective method of sociology. In terms of logic, biologists grew familiar with deduction and the various modes of inductive logic: 142 144 145

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Ibid., 1:520, 522. 143 Cat´echisme, 114. Syst`eme, 1:540. In the Cat´echisme, Comte seemed to suggest the contrary when he insisted that physics was more important logically than chemistry. Cat´echisme, 114. Like sociology, biology was synthetic because it was first concerned with the whole, whereas in the other sciences, the elements were known first and thus analysis prevailed. See Braunstein, “La Philosophie des sciences,” 811–12. See also Syst`eme, 1:565–6; Braunstein, “Auguste Comte et la philosophie de la m´edecine,”in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, 1798–1998, ed. Annie Petit (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 164. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 655. Syst`eme, 2:317. See also ibid., 350.

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direct observation, experimentation, the historical method, and comparisons between “different parts of the same organism,” “successive ages of one of them, and finally . . . different living beings.”148 Comparisons led to the formation of classification systems, where groups of like phenomena were created and put into hierarchies. Comte praised the systems of Carl Linnaeus, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, Lamarck, and Blainville. However, he warned readers not to look at the scale of life as a definitive “absolute expression of exterior reality.”149 The scale was inaccurate because it omitted animals, contained species that should not be included, and dealt poorly with exceptions. Comte recommended eliminating species that did not fit and inventing fictitious “ideal” ones in order “to ameliorate the principal transitions” linking vegetal, animal, and human species.150 To him, the system of classification was chiefly a subjective logical tool. Comte’s argument with regard to biology was highly original, reflecting his deep knowledge of this subject. Indeed, thanks chiefly to Blainville, he was more informed about new developments in this science than in mathematics, his specialty. From his studies, he determined that biology was both an independent science and a dependent one.151 What made biology truly distinctive and prevented it from being reduced to one or more of the physical, inorganic sciences was its study of life. Life had three interrelated characteristics, which were the bases of three biological laws. The first law was that of material renewal. All organized beings, including vegetation, animals, humans, and Humanity, depended on regular nutrition, which put them in touch with their milieu, or environment. The relation between the organism and the milieu was biology’s special subject.152 Comte accepted Blainville’s idea that life could be defined by the responsiveness (“sensibilit´e”) of the organism to its surroundings. The material environment provided the matter that was absorbed, and it received the exhaled matter. Again showing his fear of ruptures and reflecting an originality of his own, Comte explained with pride his theory that there was a certain harmony between the living being and the world (or milieu). These distinct entities interacted. Living creatures could 148

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Syst`eme. 1:654. As in the Cours, Comte expressed his doubts as to the efficacy of experimentation in biology. Referring to Franc¸ois Broussais’s findings, he recommended instead looking at sick and healthy beings to acquire a better understanding of the body. Ibid., 1:656. 150 Cat´echisme, 118. Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “Canguilhem, Comte et le positivisme,” Actualit´e de Georges Canguilhem: Le normal et le pathologique: Actes du Xe Colloque de la Soci´et´e internationale d’histoire de la psychiatrie et de la psychanalyse, ed. Franc¸ois Bing, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, Elisabeth Roudinesco (Paris: Institut Synth´elabo, 1998), 104–6. Syst`eme, 1:642. Comte wanted to revive the fetishist practice of celebrating vegetation, which was essential to the nutrition of animals and humans. Ibid., 1:595.

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affect their environment, and the milieu could influence them. The importance of an outside environment proved that Comte was not a pure organicist. In addition, the dependence of life on its material environment indicated that he was not a vitalist. Comte’s emphasis on the organism’s influence on the environment also prevented him from being a pure mechanist.153 Using religious language to describe the basic material needs of every being, Comte wrote, “In short, one often see bodies without souls but one does not see any soul without a body.”154 (Comte defined a soul simply as “the totality of intellectual and moral functions” without alluding to God.)155 This first biological law had social ramifications; it was incumbent upon the industrialists and other members of the ruling class to provide the material basis of society, to nourish, in essence, its members.156 The second biological law was that all living things developed and died. A living body died when the harmony between absorption and exhalation was disrupted and there was more of the latter than the former. In other words, the living being’s relations between its inner and outer milieu broke down. The internal organs were no longer acting in harmony, and the organism was no longer in harmony with its environment.157 The third biological law was that of preservation. To compensate for the destruction of every individual and to maintain the species, each living body needed to reproduce.158 In discussing reproduction, Comte took up the problem of evolution. He followed the example of his friend Blainville and rejected Lamarckian transformism, that is, the notion of the “variability of the species.”159 Although Comte acknowledged the importance of Lamarck in forming his concept of the milieu, he thought he 153

154 156 157

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William Coleman, “Blainville, Henri Marie Ducrotay de,” in Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 2:187. Coleman points out that Blainville’s idea was influenced by Bichat. Yet Comte did not accept Bichat’s definition of life as consisting of a struggle between the living organism and its environment. Annie Petit, “Les D´ebats positivistes sur la notion de vie,” Ludus Vitalis 3 (1995): 165, 168; Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, “La Biologie et le social chez Auguste Comte,” in Auguste Comte aujourd’hui, ed. Michel Bourdeau, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, and Annie Petit, 67; Braunstein, “Comte ‘in context,’” 309; Braunstein, “Le Concept de milieu,” 571. Syst`eme, 1:587. 155 Cat´echisme, 80. Kremer-Marietti, “La Biologie et le social,” 85. Juliette Grange, “Du Corps politique a` l’organisme social: De la Philosophie politique a` la sociologie et la science politique,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52, no. 203 (1998): 104; Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, “Auguste Comte et l’´ethique de l’avenir,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52, no. 203 (1998):165. Comte discarded the idea that God created the earth from nothing. At the same time, he believed that poetic license allowed one to think of it as having been at first inhabitable by men and animals – a notion that supported his idea of the permanence of all species. He liked to think about “relative creation” where one “deduces the actual order from a previous state.” Comte to Robinet, February 27, 1855, CG, 8:31–2. Syst`eme, 1:665. Yet Comte did seem more willing to admit in the Syst`eme than in the Cours that there could be “variations” in the species, caused by the milieu, although he still maintained the fixity of the species. He explained at one point that all living creatures

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had exaggerated the effects of the environment on living beings.160 Lamarck had not relied sufficiently on observation, experience, and reason, thus allowing himself to be carried away by his imagination.161 Upholding the traditional notion of the fixity of the species and the integrity of every type of species in order to maintain his scientific hierarchy, Comte concluded, “The opinion of the instability of the species is a dangerous emanation of cosmological materialism, coming from an irrational exaggeration of the vital influence of inert milieux, which has never been understood.” If a living body formed in a different manner, the cause would have to be chemical. But if that were the case, the “aberration would be directly contrary to the normal independence of biology” and would give too much credence to “cosmological materialism,” which exaggerated the influence of inorganic phenomena.162 True to his interest in vitalism and loyal to one of its primary exponents, Paul-Joseph Barthez, who taught at the medical school in Montpellier, Comte upheld the importance and uniqueness of life.163 Something inorganic could not generate something organic. Moreover, one species could not produce another.164 Comte would not have favored Darwinian evolution. Evolution was too messy for someone of Comte’s disposition; it smacked of disorder and anarchy.165

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change their milieu and modify themselves to adapt their nature to their situation. Yet he also added that the living being “never creates in the milieu the aptitude to corresponding modifications; it limits itself to utilizing it there.” It cannot create entirely new aptitudes but can develop ones it already has. Ibid., 2:37. See also ibid., 1:666. In the Cat´echisme, he clarified his position; he explained that the series of living creatures was “discontinuous, according to the fundamental law that maintains the essential perpetuity of each species in the middle of its secondary variations.” Cat´echisme, 118. On Blainville, who was a great admirer of Lamarck, see Raoul Mourgue, ”La Philosophie biologique d’Auguste Comte (suite et fin),” Archives de l’Anthropologie criminelle de m´edecine l´egale et de psychologie normale et pathologique 24 (December 15, 1909): 930. Syst`eme, 3:616. Yet on the other hand, he did not think much of Lamarck’s rival, Georges Cuvier, although he upheld his view of the fixity of species. Comte did not elaborate on his reasons for dismissing Cuvier’s works as not worth reading. He evidently did not regard highly Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism. Cuvier was also estranged from Blainville, Comte’s good friend. See Comte to Audiffrent, March 9, 1851, CG, 6:31; Pickering, Comte, 1:667n177. On this point, see Annie Petit, “L’H´eritage de Lamarck dans la philosophie positive d’Auguste Comte,” in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1744–1829, ed. Goulven Laurent (Paris: Comit´e des Travaux Historiques et scientifiques, 1997), 544. Syst`eme, 1:593. Canguilhem, G. “L’Ecole de Montpellier jug´ee par Auguste Comte,” Bulletin et M´emoire de la Soci´et´e Internationale d’Histoire de la M´edecine, n.s., 6 (1959): 49. Canguilhem believes that Comte, partly inspired by Paul-Joseph Barthez, accepted Bichat’s notion that life represented “a struggle against death.” Thus living nature had to wage a permanent battle against the inorganic world. Cat´echisme, 120. Comte also did not accept Lamarck’s notion of spontaneous generation. See Mourgue, 934. Cherni, “La Philosophie d’A. Comte,” 49.

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Yet like Darwin, whose The Origin of Species appeared in 1859, Comte underscored the affinity between humans and animals. To him, it was “better to be the first of the animals than the last of the angels.” Opposed to “Cartesian automatism,” which took a dim view of animals, he emphasized the “fundamental chain which unites humanity to all real existences.”166 In particular, the more complex animals had the same attributes as humans, but simply in a more rudimentary form.167 Both animals and humans had a moral capacity and were deeply motivated by their affections. Comte wrote, “In short, the animate being acts usually only if solicited by some affection, and he thinks only to act more effectively: . . . all his existence conforms to the preponderant inclination.” The overriding inclination was the desire for self-preservation, which was a goal that unified and harmonized each animal’s existence. Simple animals cared chiefly about individual self-preservation; complex animals, especially humans, were more concerned with social preservation. “Collective tenderness” was a distinction of the human species. This interest in others was the beginning of sociability, that is, “altruism,” which in truth developed fully only in humans.168 Nevertheless, like fetishism, positivism would highlight the dignity of animals, whose close association with humans was “one of the essential sources of our grandeur.” It would depict them as “companions of our miseries and also our works.”169 Indeed, dogs, cows, and horses were often “more estimable than certain men” who were frequently “useless” and parasitical.170 Animals who helped people should be incorporated into the Great-Being. Comte insisted that we should overcome our natural egoism and treat animals and others weaker than us with kindness, for “cruelty” and “indifference” led only to “demoralization.” For this reason, he rejected vivisection on animals as cruel and harmful to morality.171 There was a rise of interest in the fate of animals around this time, as reflected in the passing of the Grammont Law of 1850, the first legislation entirely devoted to their protection.172 Yet in a statement that could have been written by Darwin, Comte pointed out that all the animal species, like all nations, were engaged in a conflict and only one could triumph and dominate the others.173 He envisioned the day when all useful living things, including plants and animals, would be organized in a 166 168 169 171 172

Syst`eme, 1:603, 615. 167 See also Cat´echisme, 65. Syst`eme, 1:610, 614, 634. Sociology, which studied man in his social environment, best covered humans’ distinctive features. Syst`eme, 1:602, 614. 170 Cat´echisme, 79; Syst`eme, 614. Syst`eme, 1:615, 4:225. See also See also ibid., 4:358–9; Emile Corra, “La Vivisection,” RO 11 (November 1883): 404, 407, 412. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 307n59. 173 Syst`eme, 1:630.

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continuous hierarchy modifying the planet and serving the Great– Being, that is, the human species, which would be dominant.174 Although Comte did not believe that animals could evolve into new species, they could improve themselves. Adopting Lamarck’s theory, Comte affirmed that “any animal apparatus [that is, any animal function or organ] is developed through habitual exercise and . . . atrophies if there is prolonged unuse.”175 Improvements occur in both the nature and situation of animals and are both “static and dynamic,” meaning that they happen in space and in time.176 As Comte pointed out, there is a “natural identity . . . between development and improvement. In combining them, one forms the true conception of progress.” Individuals’ improvement in their structure or functions could be fixed in the species through reproduction. Limited physical improvements were thus apparent in all animal species thanks to the effects of habit and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Comte wrote, “Heredity renders natural modifications that were at first artificial.”177 Complex beings were capable of more improvement than lower ones because they were more modifiable and active and had “a more elevated and special” nature.178 Given their complexity, rich social life, and concern about the species, humans were the only animals who experienced not only physical changes but intellectual and moral improvements. The mind developed from animal instincts so that in the future people would be inherently more intelligent and loving.179 These were important ideas that explain why Lamarck figured in Comte’s calendar and his work was included in the Positivist Library. Indeed, according to Annie Petit, Comte was more taken with Lamarck in the Syst`eme than in the Cours, perhaps because he had distanced himself from Blainville and was looking for other authorities.180 174

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Comte called this league of organic nature a “vast biocracy.” According to him, vegetation and animals that were destructive would eventually be eliminated, but he did not explain how. Ibid., 1:618. Ibid., 1:605, 606, 608. See also Cat´echisme, 120. This law of improvement was the third of three “new biological laws” cited by Comte. The first was the law of intermittence, which concerned animals’ need for alternating activity and rest. The second was the law of habit, which stated that animals repeat their “periodic functions” despite the interruptions caused by their intermittent activity. Cat´echisme, 120. Syst`eme, 1:608–9. Comte made the idea of heredity a seventh vital law in the Cat´echisme. See Cat´echisme, 120. Comte had more criticisms of Lamarck. He did not believe that modifications were infinite, as Lamarck did. He also attacked Lamarck for asserting that animals were passive vis-`a-vis their environment. Comte saw more interplay between the organism and the milieu. In addition, he believed that Lamarck was wrong to insist that simple organisms can change more readily than complex ones. Petit, “L’H´eritage de Lamarck,” 549. Cat´echisme, 121. 179 Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture, 25. Petit, “L’H´eritage de Lamarck,” 550–51.

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At the end of his section on biology, Comte underscored the innate sociability of humans, which was the basis of their union across time and space. Only in humans did sociability assume its two regular characteristics: feelings of solidarity with other contemporaries and continuity between generations. The intellect helped develop and indeed served sociability by making people appreciate collective existence and by showing them the activities that could best improve the world. Comte insisted that his Tableau c´er´ebral demonstrated that “the preponderance of the heart over the mind” was a “positive dogma of modern science.”181 It was, in fact, a principle that he had introduced in Lesson Fifty of the Cours, where he had demonstrated that the “preponderance” of the “affective faculties” over the intellectual ones was important for fixing the “goal and direction” of society; feelings oriented the mind.182 There was indeed much continuity between the Cours and the Syst`eme. volume two: social philo sophy and the introduction of morality After having surveyed cosmology, which focused on the external world and order, and biology, which investigated life and progress, Comte turned his attention to sociology in volume two of the Syst`eme.183 Sociology would unite order and progress because social life, when dominated by universal love, would have order as its basis and progress as its goal.184 Appearing in May 1852, this second volume dealt with social statics, which pertained to social order, including morality, its key component. Social statics was simpler and more general than social dynamics, which covered progress and would be 181

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Syst`eme, 1:681. The “Systematic Chart of the Soul” (“Tableau c´er´ebral”) is attached to page 726. Comte later republished it in the Cat´echisme and Appel. Cat´echisme, 138–9; Appel, 41–2. Reflecting his own problems with insanity, he also hoped his theory of the brain would help in the treatment of mental and moral diseases. Syst`eme, 1:732. Cours, 2:182. Except for the first chapter, which he wrote in January 1851, Comte wrote most of this volume in early 1852. He introduced the volume with a preface bitterly describing his recent loss of position at the Ecole Polytechnique. He was certain that the “hatred” shown to him by his colleagues stemmed from their animosity toward his works. Syst`eme, 2:vi. In the appendix to the preface, he added his “Troisi`eme Circulaire annuelle”; a letter to Dr. John McClintock of the Methodist Quarterly Review, showing the widespread influence of positivism; his letter to Vieillard of February 1852, explaining the contents of the course he wished to give in 1852; and his announcement of a fund to subsidize the Revue Occidentale. He was pleased that Thunot made him make only “insignificant changes” to escape attacks by censors. Comte to Laffitte, August 18, 1854, CG, 7:245. Syst`eme, 2:2, 38. Progress was “simple evolution, without ever supposing any creation.” Ibid., 2:41. To support his claim to appeal to those interested in order and those desirous of progress, Comte alluded in the preface to the fact that his doctrine was attracting support among American conservatives and Lyonnais leftists. Ibid., 2:xii–xiii.

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the topic of the third volume of the Syst`eme. Whereas in the Cours, Comte dwelled on social progress, especially the law of the three stages, he sought in the Syst`eme to cover social statics in greater depth as part of his new strategy to attract support from conservatives. He argued that because order was the basis of progress, it was necessary to imagine the human order as endowed with all the characteristics that would later develop. Just as science was a prolongation of common sense, civilization seemed to be in Comte’s view an extension of the state of nature. Assuming that all laws were common to all peoples at all times, one could see the continuity and uniformity inherent in human existence. If one studied social statics and worked to create a regime appropriate to human nature, without getting sidetracked in areas not accessible to change, one could predict the future direction of society. Just as order was the manifestation of progress, progress was the gradual development and improvement of order. As reflected in a severe “intestinal crisis” and bouts of insomnia, he experienced great stress in writing this second volume, which he claimed covered new and difficult material.185 To him, analyzing order was harder than studying progress because the scientific subject matter of social statics was more difficult to define. Moreover, he wanted to appeal to conservatives but at the same time make them recognize the inefficacy of their old beliefs and structures, which had proved powerless to solve the problem of anarchy. For two years, from April 1850 to May 1852, Comte struggled with the material. After completing the volume, he concluded that it would be “painful to read for those who are strangers to scientific studies and habits.”186 Nevertheless, he boasted that it was his most important volume, indeed “the most systematic book that has yet been written on the Government since Aristotle’s Politics.”187 Yet, as various commentators have noted, 185

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Apparently, he had difficulty writing about social statics while at the same time preparing his lectures on the history of Humanity. The subjects were “distinct” but still too closely “connected” for him to feel comfortable meditating about both simulataneously. He gave up trying to write this second volume until his course was finished in October. Then, beginning in November, he wrote very quickly to finish it by May. Volume two sold for six francs. (Comte would get four francs for every volume sold.) Volumes three and four cost eight and nine francs respectively. See Comte to Laffitte, August 8, September 1, September 12, 1851, CG, 6:129, 147, 158; Comte to Capellen, November 26, CG, 6:189; Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1852, CG, 6:270; Comte to Papot, August 17, 1853, CG, 7:103; Comte to Hadery, June 22, 1854, CG, 7:221; Comte to Carilian and Dalmont, May 6, 1852, Collection Marcel Gu´erin, p. 46, N.a.fr. 24918, BN. Eventually Comte decided to sell his works only from his home (with Bliaux in charge of sales) and at Carilian et Dalmont. See Comte to Carilian and Dalmont, August 30, 1852, Collection Marcel Gu´erin, p. 47, N.a.fr. 24918, BN. These letters in the Collection Marcel Gu´erin are not in the CG. Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1852, CG, 6:270. See his records of his work, in Laffitte, ed., “Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” RO 6 (November 1888): 444–5. Comte to Tholouze, August 26, 1852, CG, 6:347. See also Comte to Holmes, September 18, 1852, CG, 6:375.

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Comte rarely even employed the word “politics” in the usual sense of the term, for he was most concerned with morality, which he saw as its equivalent.188 The Syst`eme is indeed more of a religious tract than a political treatise. As Pierre Arnaud noted, Comte recognized that “politics was essentially religious.” Religion gave the state a goal, whereas the state helped religion with its institutional structure.189 re lig ion Comte began the volume with an analysis of religion, which he considered the key to unity in the human order from the point of view of the individual and the collectivity.190 He defined religion in terms of its disciplinary ability “to regulate and rally” in order to effect “universal improvement.”191 As Michel Bourdeau has demonstrated, Comte should be applauded for trying for the first time “to dissociate religion from the forms by which it had been heretofore known, that is, to think . . . of religion in terms that were not theological.” Alluding to the root Latin word “religare,” Comte insisted, as he did in the Cat´echisme, that religion coordinated not only facets of the individual but parts of society. It regulated both private life and social existence, which were linked.192 Because society was lived from within as well as observed from without, individual unity was connected to social unity.193 Both unities represented not only religion but happiness and health.194 There was, in Comte’s mind, a correlation between moral and physical health, thanks in part to the influence of the Id´eologues, on his intellectual development. In his own life, he always wished to prove that he was physically vigorous and morally upright as proofs of his own internal harmony. Religion was thus crucial to achieving unity both within individuals and in society. It was preeminently synthetic because it erected a center on which to base this unity. To Comte, religion did not need to place God at its center. Humanity could perform this function.195 188 189 190

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Julien Freund, “La Politique d’Auguste Comte,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’´etranger 110 (October–December 1985): 473. Pierre Arnaud, Le “Nouveau Dieu”: Pr´eliminaires a` la politique positive (Paris: J. Vrin, 1973), 566–7. Laurent Clauzade, “Le «Culte» et la «Culture» chez Auguste Comte: La Destination morale de la religion positiviste,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et th´eologiques 87 (2003), 39–57. Syst`eme, 2:44. Michel Bourdeau, “L’Autre Face du positivisme,” Th´eorie g´en´erale de la religion ou Th´eorie positive de l’unit´e humaine, by Auguste Comte (Paris, Fayard/ Mille et Une Nuits, 2005), 99, 100. Wernick, Auguste Comte, 107. Michel Bourdeau, introduction to John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte et le Positivisme, trans. Georges Clemenceau (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 18–19. Fedi, Comte, 41.

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Shaping existence around this center, religion appealed to the imagination, the emotions, and the intellect, which guided activities. To Comte, the Religion of Humanity represented the culmination of all the previous stages of religion: fetishism, which appealed to the imagination; polytheism, which satisfied the emotions; and monotheism, which interested the intellect. He considered fetishism a “spontaneous” religion, polytheism an “inspired” religion, monotheism a “revealed” religion, and positivism a “demonstrated” religion. The Religion of Humanity was superior to these other religions because it alone had principles that could be demonstrated intellectually.196 Yet as Bourdeau shows, Comte’s religion paradoxically was not scientistic; the mind was to serve the heart, though not in a slavish fashion. Comte’s approach challenged traditional representations of both positivism and religion.197 He believed that with its emphasis on faith and love, his religion encouraged intellectual agreement and altruism, which were the bases of social unity. The mind and heart had to work together to overcome personal egoism and contribute to the growth of altruism. Both also influenced activity, for emotional inclinations and opinions determined and modified what we did respectively. Given that the positive regime cultivated consideration toward others, activity would be directed toward social ends. There would be more cooperation among individuals to achieve these goals. Religion entailed this social cooperation as well as the cooperation between the mind and heart, which determined actions leading to individual and social improvement. Because intellectual and emotional capacities were expanding and this cooperation among individuals and between the heart and mind was growing, Comte felt justified in announcing a new “law” that stipulated that “our nature, individual or collective, becomes therefore increasingly religious.”198 To be more religious meant to be “more sympathetic, synthetic, and synergetic.”199 The traditional struggle between the intellect and the emotions was over. Human subjectivity itself would unified. As Wernick says, “What was to be understood about the subject [of knowledge, that is, society] was to be understood as occurring within the subject [the whole person], in harmony therefore with all its faculties, including, especially, the affects.”200 One way to squash the ego that fed the struggle between the intellect and the emotions was to emphasize submission.201 Reflecting 196 198 200 201

Syst`eme, 2:7. 197 Bourdeau, “L’Autre Face du positivisme,” 99. Syst`eme, 2:11, 19, 138, 173. 199 Testament (1896 ed.), 24. Wernick, Auguste Comte, 68. Comte believed that pride was common among people in intellectual pursuits because of their solitary concentration. Practical life also led to pride because practicians were proud of their achievement. Yet their pride was not as morally dangerous as that of theoricians. Emotional life best developed social feelings.

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his interest in theories of evolution, Comte developed his biological notion that the organism must be subordinated to an outside power, namely the milieu. Indeed, he affirmed that the notion of the significance of the milieu was “the principal scientific acquisition of our time.” It influenced all aspects of religion. In terms of faith or belief, Comte wrote, “It is necessary that our intelligence make us conceive a power on the outside that is sufficiently superior to make us subordinate our existence to it forever.” Besides being essential to life itself, the milieu, or outside world, was an “independent spectacle” that coordinated all our ideas and was thus crucial to our intellect.202 The sciences, which gave us knowledge of the immutable outer world, had an important moral purpose because such knowledge stabilized our interior world.203 A fixed milieu helped give a coherent, unified character to our emotions, which were otherwise unstable. A feeling of submission to a superior power – a feeling recommended by the mind – not only humbled us and constrained our egos but also developed our sense of veneration, which then led to the development of other feelings of altruism, namely attachment and benevolence (love).204 As for activity, the milieu, or outside world, gave it something on which to focus. Indeed, somewhat contradicting his earlier statements in the Cours, when he suggested that ideas rule the world, Comte now asserted that “speculation is always directed essentially by action.”205 Our activity either involved submitting to the outside world or humbly modifying it, never creating something entirely new. Comte summarized his position: The human is in this way fastened together within himself and to the outside world by the entire convergence of his sentiments and thoughts toward the superior power that determines his acts. At this point there is truly religion, that is, complete unity, with all the internal motors coordinated among them and freely submitted as a whole to the external fatality . . . [T]rue unity consists of linking the inside and reconnecting it to the outside. Such is the final result of the great positive dualism between the organism and the milieu, or rather between man and the world, or better still, between humanity and the earth.206 202 203 204

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Syst`eme, 2: 12, 13, 18. See also Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, Le Projet anthropologique d’Auguste Comte (Paris: Soci´et´e d’Edition d’Enseignement Sup´erieur, 1980), 47. Bourdeau, “L’Autre Face,” 101. Comte carefully rejected the notion that we had to feel subjected in an abject, servile manner to a superior power. Slavery did not cultivate generous feelings. Syst`eme, 2:15. See also Bourdeau, “L’Autre Face,” 101. Syst`eme, 3:13. In the fourth volume, he added, “Activity dominates or supports intelligence, according to whether it was necessary to modify the outside world or to reveal the inside one.” Ibid., 4:290. Ibid., 2:18.

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In short, religion (that is, the cult, dogma, and regime) bound and unified us from within by subordinating us to some external power that regulated us. It did so by focusing our actions, feelings, and ideas on this superior authority and in this way harmonized these three areas of our existence.207 Indeed, in keeping with his relativism, Comte made the interesting observation that changes in our notions of the external milieu always affect our concept of religion and our beliefs in general. Through the intellect and activity, the milieu also had a big impact on the emotions.Thus the milieu was “the principal regulator of the organism.”208 Comte seemed to be responding to Mill’s criticism that he had not concerned himself sufficiently with the influence of outside circumstances on the formation of individuals.209 Wernick suggests that by insisting on our adoration of the universal order, Comte “risked diminishing or even dethroning the divinized Humanity,” the “focal point” of his religion.210 Comte did not see the rivalry. He simply stated that Humanity, to which we were all subservient, was “the immediate regulator of our destinies.” Each of us feels always dominated by the mathematical-astronomical order, the physical-chemical order, and the vital order. But a more profound appreciation shows him also a last yoke, not less invincible although more modifiable, resulting from all the static and dynamic laws of the social order. Like all the others, this complementary fatalism makes itself felt first to us by its physical results, then its intellectual influence, and finally its moral supremacy.

People generally recognized their material, intellectual, and emotional connections with their contemporaries and predecessors – a recognition that stimulated benevolence.211 Pointing out the dependence of the individual on society and of society on the natural world, Comte wrote, “The individual order is subordinated to the social order as the social order is [subordinated] to the vital order, and the latter is [subordinated] to the material order.” In endeavoring to complete the picture of “the real order,” he believed he had discovered “the only unity that it involved,” for Humanity encompassed the vital and material orders on which it depended.212 In Comte’s mind, the difference between Humanity and the external order was not as 207 208 209 210 211 212

Arnaud, Le “Nouveau Dieu,” 338. Syst`eme, 2:26. See also Wernick, Auguste Comte, 102. Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, introduction to The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, ed. Oscar A. Haac (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995), 17. Wernick, Auguste Comte, 178. Especially in studying sciences, people became cognizant of the many generations of humans who contributed to their knowledge of their milieu. Syst`eme, 2:53, 54, 55.

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important as their interrelationship and our subservience to both of them. Nevertheless, one of the main points of the Syst`eme was the importance of privileging Humanity now that the objective passage from the world toward man had been achieved with the development of sociology. Positive faith and love would be in complete harmony once we focused completely on the Great-Being, which secured for us benefits from the natural order through its wisdom, love, and activity. “Continuous service” to Humanity strengthened our true unity, making us “both better and happier” individuals.213 As Wernick points out, Comte tended to assimilate “religion and society to one another”; it is difficult to determine whether Comte believed that religion was an instance of spontaneous social unity coming from benevolent instincts or an artificial force that created social unity in a coercive manner. Moreover, Comte did not elaborate sufficiently on the types of community that exist. A family is different in its emotional make-up from society, which he does not adequately ground in an associational relationship, such as fraternity. Because Comte was not close to either his brother or his sister, he was not about to celebrate a sibling relationship, which might, in addition, have something to do with equality. Wernick argues convincingly that Comte’s mechanical approach to love, which excluded mutual sympathy and equal relationships, holds the key to explaining why the Religion of Humanity strikes us as coercive. Comte insisted on the need for a hierarchical society. Just as the individual psyche required an “organising centre” to prevent its dissolution into “an internal chaos of warring impulses,” society needed a “centred unity” to achieve order. Terrified of “disorientation,” Comte asserted that there was an “absolute dichotomy between order and disorder” and saw no intermediate possibilities. His abstract, orderly, hierarchical, society had no intense emotional basis and was the object of no desire; thus his notion of love seemed empty. As Wernick pointed out, the people in his society were “so walled up in themselves that they were incapable of sympathy in anything like an intersubjective sense.”214 One example of enforced togetherness in the interest of building altruism was Comte’s system of commemoration. Each servant of Humanity had two types of existence, a temporary, objective one that was “life properly speaking,” and a subjective one that began after death when he or she was remembered in other people’s minds and hearts. Positivism guaranteed “immaterial” immortality.215 If an 213 215

Syst`eme, 2:59. 214 Wernick, Auguste Comte, 102–5, 152. See also ibid., 124–31. Syst`eme, 80. Comte explained that worthy deceased people achieved many “resurrections” in the brains of those who continued to live and who might not have even known them during their life on earth. Syst`eme, 4:103.

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individual served Humanity well, he or she would be incorporated into this large organism. Death, in fact, “purified” our nature, allowing our “best attributes” to become more salient as the bad ones were forgotten or erased. Our “soul” prevailed only in this idealized, subjective state of existence. We could then live in perpetuity as an organ of the Great-Being. In effect, we led ambiguous lives. “Objectively, the Great-Being is as exterior to each of us as other real existences, while, subjectively we are part of it, at least in hope.”216 Again, everything was relative, that is, relative to the view of the observer. This notion of multiple perspectives may have come from one of Comte’s favorite books, Don Quixote.217 But Comte’s formula begged the question, who was the real person, the one working for Humanity during his or her life time or the idealized type remembered by others after death? Moreover, was not Comte’s effort to memorialize people revelatory of a desperate attempt to save collective memory, which he knew was in danger of disappearing in the modern industrialized society? Did he really expect people to love past and future generations, who existed only in their minds? Was Humanity something real and evolving or an abstract ideal, a fictional entity whose nefarious aspects were purged? Was it tightly knit, or were we supposed to strive to make such an entity? Exposing the hollowness of Comte’s concept of society, Wernick writes, “His system aimed and claimed to be pervasively social. But it secretes at its contradictory core a theory of the impossibility of the social.”218 Another, related subject that caused Comte trouble was his concept of individualism, given that he supported rituals and festivals that were homogenizing. In 1851, Pierre Proudhon had lashed out at Comte, Catholics, socialists, communists, and absolutists for destroying the individual in the name of society.219 In both the Syst`eme and the Cat´echisme, Comte emphasized, somewhat defensively, that it was important to be a distinct individual in serving Humanity. “All collective functions demand ultimately individual organs.” Indeed, he represented Humanity as a collectivity of individuals to prevent it from being a transcendent being. Humanity acted through concrete individuals, whose independence was essential to their “personal dignity” and “social service.” It was as dangerous to lose one’s individuality as it was to acquire an exaggerated sense of one’s own 216

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Syst`eme, 2:60, 68; 4:35, 36. Comte insisted that “ideality must improve reality.” Cat´echisme, 162. Referring to Dante, he also pointed out that poets showed the way to remember and feature individuals without blemishes. Syst`eme, 4:103. It was “the best book published on the true theory of madness.” Poets, Comte said, were often ahead of philosophers in their understanding. Comte to Hadery, January 25, 1856, CG, 8:212. Wernick, Auguste Comte, 220. 219 Haubtmann, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1:64, 82n254.

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importance.220 In his mind, great men should not be reduced to “pure automatism,” for Humanity’s domination of its organs was not total.221 People had to assert their wills in order to be remembered for something distinctive. Comte wrote, “The principal privilege of our nature consists of the fact that each individuality perpetuates itself indirectly by subjective existence if its objective growth has left appreciable results.”222 Once they were suitably remembered, these men and women, who had been agents of Humanity, now became its representatives, that is, models for future generations.223 In subjective existence, one would continue to serve the GreatBeing indirectly by means of the results he or she left behind. Because this Great-Being grew with constant additions, it was ironically made up more of the dead than the living. Indeed, it was inevitable that “the living are always and increasingly dominated by the dead,” who act as their “protectors” and “models.”224 This great weight of the past, against which philosophers such as Nietzsche would later rebel, was the “fundamental law of the human order.” The dead were, in a sense, another “fatality” like the milieu that shaped the lives of the living. Our sense of history also made us more human. We felt the essence of sociability to a greater extent when we thought about what we owed to our ancestors and what we will give to posterity than when we thought about others living at the same time as we do. Reflecting his growing interest in history, Comte asserted that the “noblest” and most distinctive attribute of the Great-Being was continuity, not solidarity. Human societies could not be reduced to biological organisms because history had importance to humans, which was not the case with other living creatures. Indeed, “subjective continuity,” as opposed to “objective solidarity,” was the “principal motor of human destinies, especially among modern people.” The honorable dead were really representatives of Humanity, and as these worthy souls increased in number, Humanity was always evolving in a “progressive” fashion.225 Part of the worship of Humanity entailed celebrating superior men, who had served others and represented the Great-Being in whom they were incorporated. However, the most important attribute of individuals and the Great-Being, that of sociability, was embodied by women. Taking an essentialist position, Comte argued that because of the “uniformity of the feminine nature and situation,” women 220 221 223 224

225

Syst`eme, 2:73; 4:51. See also Wernick, Auguste Comte, 216. Comte to Hutton, June 28, 1857, CG, 8:504. 222 Syst`eme, 4:34–5. For more on how individuals were remembered by others, see Syst`eme, 4:101–2. Ibid., 2:61; 4:36. See also Cat´echisme, 388. But there was also an inverse relationship. Dead people dominated the living only by means of the living. The living did not have a choice in this matter. Ibid., 80, 125; Syst`eme, 2:364. See also Braunstein, “Comte ‘in context,’” 310.

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were “superior in love,” “better suited to subordinate intelligence and activity to sentiment,” and best equipped to cultivate universal affection and maintain morality. They were guaranteed a subjective influence, for “no worthy woman can really die in terms of her principal function,” that of attaching men to Humanity.226 By nature, they thought in terms of relations and would live on in others’ minds. Comte argued that to maximize the important impact of women, men should be under the influence of at least one guardian angel, that is, a mother, wife, or daughter, who corresponded respectively to veneration, attachment, and goodness, which were the three altruistic instincts.227 These women would act as protectors just as the fetishist and polytheistic domestic gods did.228 If a man lacked a mother, wife, or daughter, a substitute woman could be used. Extending the model of antiquity, Comte wanted each household to set up a “private temple,” where people would gaze at “cherished images” and pray to these “best personifications of Humanity.”229 The point was to use women to help improve men. Comte seemed to assume not only that all women were inherently similar but that they needed no assistance, inspiration, or protection. The cult of great men and the cult of women were the two main components of the Religion of Humanity. To embellish this religion, the imagination would be called into service; art would idealize the “dogma, cult, and even regime,” express our best feelings, and help inspire our moral improvement. Embracing all of human existence, the religion had as its motto “Love as the principle, Order for the base, and Progress for the goal.”230 Because love impelled people to cooperate and to improve themselves, it corresponded to our moral aptitude and was the most important aspect of the religion. To support this idea, Comte quoted from Madame de Sta¨el’s novel Delphine: “There is nothing real in the world except loving.”231 Comte went so far as to suggest that there were organs in the brain for love. He also insisted that order was associated with the intellect and that progress was linked to our practical activity. In other words, he sought to make our inclinations toward love, order, and progress part of our 226

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228 230 231

Syst`eme, 2:63, 64. Yet Comte did not believe one could truly speak of women in a collective sense. Each of them was really the “soul of the family.” They were individuals who promoted sympathies and moral values. Ibid., 4:63. Comte traced the origin of guardian angels to the Jewish tradition. Appel, 42. He maintained that the three angels – mother, wife, and daughter – also corresponded to the three types of solidarity, obedience, union, and protection, as well as to the three types of continuity, past, present, and future. Syst`eme, 2:64. Appel, 42. 229 Syst`eme, 2:76–7. Ibid., 2:68, 382. This motto appeared on the cover of the various volumes of the Syst`eme. Ibid., 4:49. For more on this quote, see Comte to Tholouze, July l3, 1854, CG, 7:231. Comte kept a copy of Delphine in his library. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Auxillaire, I, MAC.

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natural constitution. Always attuned to cultural practices, he devised a positivist sign to replace the Catholic sign of the cross. It consisted of reciting the formula of love, order, and progress while putting one’s right hand on the three cerebral organs that corresponded to them and one’s left hand on the heart to show that “it is necessary to have blood for all that.”232 To Comte, this gesture was more expressive than the ones associated with Catholicism and Islam.233 Love, order, and progress tended to reinforce each other. “For love seeks order and pushes progress; order consolidates love and directs progress; and finally, progress develops order and restores love.” Love would prevail more spontaneously and systematically than in any other religion, for it would direct activity to serve the Great-Being and the intellect to develop the “most noble and difficult speculations” clarifying activity that would benefit humanity.234 In fact, positivism celebrated activity more fully than any other religion. Positivism originated in practical activities, which modified the external world and stimulated the mind and social cooperation, and it had a practical goal, that of improving human conditions.235 Comte wrote, “Far from being radically unfavorable to intellectual and moral growth, this continuous preponderance of practical life must therefore provide the best guarantee of our unity by procuring to the mind and heart a set direction and a progressive destination.”236 Without activity stimulating sociability, our mind and emotions would degenerate, and there would be no progress in any sphere. Ultimately, all research should have some practical purpose; in the positive republic, specialties would be abolished.237 Laurent Fedi tends to downplay the pragmatic, utilitarian aspects of Comte’s thought, pointing to a passage in the Discours sur l’esprit positif that suggested that the positive spirit tended to be more interested in making connections and generalizations than in limiting itself to matters of common sense, which was more preoccupied by “reality” and more interested in “utility.”238 But for a philosopher allegedly devoted to the sciences, 232 234 235

236 238

Comte to Edger, November 2, 1855, CG, 8:141. 233 Cat´echisme, 187. Syst`eme, 2:65, 68. Positivism began in the practical arena, where people sought to understand causes. Later they substituted laws for causes. Comte also insisted again that the positive clergy and the public would discourage scholarly activity that did not lead to general or useful results. They would make sure that scientists were concerned only with improving scientific methods, discovering natural laws, or determining the possible areas of human intervention in the natural world. The only specialists who would exist in the positivist republic would be practicians similar to engineers. All “pure theoreticians” would be positive philosophers, that is, priests, “devoted to constructing and applying the fundamental synthesis.” Ibid., 1:433. See also ibid., 454–5, 2:174. Cat´echisme, 125. 237 Syst`eme, 1:543; 4:73. Discours sur l’esprit positif, 54. See Fedi, Comte, 57–8, 61.

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Comte’s growing lack of respect for pure research is striking.239 In his fourth opuscule of 1825, “Consid´erations philosophiques sur les sciences et les savants,” he seemed more worried about scientists’ becoming industrialists’ hirelings, and he downplayed the importance of their influencing man’s action on nature.240 The moral and intellectual training inculcated by the sciences seemed paramount. This discipline was still important, but because of his own deficiencies in research and his dislike of the egoism and power of scientists, he was more wary of letting them operate without controls. The scientists, however, were not the only egoists. The individual, family, and society faced the same problem of subordinating egoism to altruism – the worst problem that faced the human species. Comte traced this struggle throughout the past. History to him was an account of the preparation of the “relative and altruistic synthesis by the absolute and egoist synthesis, which alone could arise in the beginning.” Comte was a committed historicist. To fully understand the Religion of Humanity and its cult of the dead, which was central to it, he believed it was necessary to comprehend its history. He even complimented another historicist, Vico, for having “erected the cult of the dead into an essential privilege of humanity.”241 History seemed, in fact, to invade this volume. Comte described in great detail Humanity’s travels through the fetishist, polytheist, and monotheist stages, which he had already covered in the Cours and would repeat in volume three of the Syst`eme. He justified this historical sketch in his volume on social statics by claiming that because religion embraced all aspects of our lives, its history was in fact the story of our evolution. As Michel Bourdeau as pointed out, Comte could be considered “one of the founders of the history of religion.”242 Comte also set up a “fictive” or “hypothetical” scenario to describe the ideal social life that would occur if egoism did not exist. He wanted to show the “general direction of human improvement.”243 This approach was in keeping with the principles of social statics, which did not consider questions of time in order to grasp the essence of its object of study. Egoism, Comte argued, was rooted in our physical or material needs. Usually, our intellect guided our activities to satisfy egoistic feelings regarding the modification of this exterior world; this world had to be manipulated to meet or physical needs. But if our bodily needs could somehow be decreased, 239 240 242 243

Pierre Arnaud, introduction to Du Pouvoir spirituel, ed. Arnaud (Paris: Le Livre du Poche, 1978), 58. Pickering, Comte, 1:340. 241 Syst`eme, 1:634, 2:136. Michel Bourdeau, “Auguste Comte et la religion positiviste: Pr´esentation,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et th´eologiques, 87 (2003): 6. Syst`eme, 2:146, 148, 173.

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our egoistic penchants would be less stimulated and would diminish. Our weak altruistic feelings would be exercised through increased human interaction especially because we would enjoy their charms once they started developing. They would then expand. Basing his argument on Lamarckian theory, Comte maintained that our offspring would inherit the enhanced affective organs in the brain, and these organs would enlarge significantly in several generations.244 At the same time, the mind would have less reason to clarify the material activities associated with the practical organs and would be devoted to devising the best means to express the emotions, especially because they would be so strong. The mind would gain satisfaction in directing its energy toward the arts. Abandoning a focus on the material world, practical activities would also become involved in aesthetics to perfect the means of expression.245 In the ideal positivist republic, people would be freer from physical wants, would prize the emotions more than intellectual and physical prowess, and would tend to become artists. In a sense, Comte returned to nature and found the aesthetic, loving man, a man akin to a fetish worshiper.246 He wrote, “Thus we see how much art suits our nature better than science and even industry because of its more direct and pure relation with the emotions that stimulate us.” Moreover, without practical worries and unconcerned with status and material wealth, the family and society would take on an aesthetic character, giving us untold satisfactions, especially because aesthetic projects like festivals appealed most to the emotions. As “civilization developed moral power,” the temporal government would become less important; it would simply institute some kind of “preventive or corrective force.” Women would be more in control, their excellence having “burst forth” in this culture devoted to art and the emotions. “The active and speculative sex would subject itself voluntarily to the affective sex.” Comte had described what was in effect his utopia, which he used to highlight his biological arguments about the existence of altruistic feelings in human nature. He knew his scenario was fictional and unverifiable, for altruism would never completely triumph over egoism.Yet he insisted that one could measure how progressive a society was by how much it displayed altruism.247 244 245

246 247

Comte accepted Lamarck’s principle that individual organisms had “the faculty of acquiring new organs, even essential ones.” Ibid., 2:304. For example, people would be keen on setting up festivals to promote togetherness. Comte based this idea on the communal festivals that had once united the different Greek peoples. See Ibid., 2:146. Comte insisted that fetishist peoples furnished “the best approximation of this abstract type” of human. Ibid., 2:148. Ibid., 2:145, 146, 173; 4:280.

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economics and mate rial activitie s Having revealed that the construction of a utopian society was in many ways a biological and practical problem, Comte pointed out that the first task of Humanity was to overcome or sublimate its natural physical needs, which produced egoism and made it possible for material activity to dominate the entire human order. He launched into a discussion of economics to demonstrate that challenging the dominance of egoism was possible, but in the process he showed that material needs paradoxically spurred people to greatness and developed them morally and intellectually.248 The strong egoistic instincts gave the weaker sympathetic instincts an initial push and demanded intellectual guidance. Thus the external order was the chief source of humanity’s grandeur. Practical activities dominated the mind, which in turn influenced the heart and the moral order.249 There were two laws of Comtean economics. The “subjective” law of economics, relating to man, showed that each male produced more than he consumed. The “objective” law of economics, relating to the external world, demonstrated that the materials produced by individuals could be preserved for a longer time than was necessary for their simple reproduction; wealth accumulated. Because of these two laws, it was clear, according to Comte, that we generated material products that increased with each generation. Influenced by Dunoyer, who wanted parents to have more liberty in deciding who should inherit their property, Comte intended to eliminate the system brought in by the French Revolution of equal inheritance of property. Socially irresponsible, it put capital in the hands of people who did not care about helping others. He was also against primogeniture, where large sums of money were bequeathed to often unworthy, incompetent sons.250 Capital – “a durable group of material products” – should be transferred to a few worthy men so that it could be used to increase wealth more effectively than if each individual accumulated products only from his own labor.251 Each capitalist was a public servant, and he had a “moral responsibility” to bequeath his property freely to anyone he chose.252 He should even have 248 250

251 252

Kremer-Marietti, Le Projet Anthropologique, 65. 249 Syst`eme, 2:279. Ibid., 2:297; Cat´echisme, 235. Dunoyer, however, did not go as far as Comte did in allowing substitutions. Charles Dunoyer, De la Libert´e du travail ou Simple Expos´e des conditions dans lesquelles les forces humaines s’exercent avec le plus de puissance, 3 vols. (Paris, 1845), 3:508–9. See also Cat´echisme, 245; Syst`eme, 2:407. All that a father owed his son, according to Comte, was a good education and the means of starting a career. Syst`eme, 2:150. Indeed, Comte wanted only people who already had capital to become directors of special production processes. Ibid., 402. This transfer of capital could be done in the form of a gift, exchange, inheritance, or conquest. Comte considered the gift the oldest, purest, and noblest way of transferring

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the freedom to adopt this person.253 But this individual had to use the power coming from these riches to benefit the entire community. In addition, priests and women should give up their inheritances not only to avoid corruption coming from money but to make sure capital was in the hands of experts.254 Comte boasted that instead of eliminating private property, he was developing it and in this way preserving family life. Here is the nub of the problem, as Wernick points out: Who was to decide what benefited society at large? Why would people even care about social health?255 Indeed, it seems that Comte was allowing some individuals to have property at the expense of others. In addition, he would allow a parent to disinherit his children or favor one child over another. In the end, this power could damage family relations. In his own family, he resented his father’s preferential treatment of Alix. The power of adoption, which Comte had wanted to exercise with respect to de Vaux and then Bliaux, could be inimical to traditional family life. Comte’s support of industrial enterprises and big businessmen’s “social efficacy,” which depended on the sufficient development of their social sympathies, was reminiscent of Saint-Simon’s schemes – schemes that Comte had resisted in his early days.256 But like Fourier, Comte was also very critical of the capitalist system for wasting money, and like Marx, he wished to restore the “social dignity” of the worker.257 Yet he did not go as far as these men and advocate the creation of cooperatives or the abolition of capitalism. Instead, he urged that capital accumulation be used to improve society and liberate people. The more wealth there was in a society, the less people would have to worry about satisfying their material needs and the more altruistic they could become. In effect, he believed the capitalist system could be tweaked to promote altruistic feelings, which were initially too weak to inspire action but could be developed through exercise. As George Henry Lewes explained in his summary of Comte’s doctrine, The peculiarity of Comte’s system is its deduction of social principles from biological principles; and in this great question of property

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wealth. He pointed to the polytheists of Oceania as an example of people who could show us “admirable examples of the real power involved in such an institution.” Positivism would systematize the gift. Comte’s favorable reading of the gift anticipated that of Marcel Mauss. Ibid., 2:156. Comte to Barbot de Chement, August 6, 1850, CG, 5:175. Comte introduced this idea in his course in 1849. See Comte to Pierre Laffitte, August 27, 1850, CG, 5:185. For more on the importance of inheritance, see Auguste Comte, Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, ed. Annie Petit (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), 193, 244; Comte to Pierre Laffitte, October 13, 1848, CG, 4:193. Cat´echisme, 234, 245. 255 Wernick, Auguste Comte, 59. Comte to Jacquemin, December 12, 1852, CG, 6:447. See also Rey, Littr´e, 243. Syst`eme, 2:159.

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he . . . shows how here, as elsewhere, the selfish instincts of man lead in their satisfaction to the development of unselfish instincts, – how egoism is the impulse to altruism: thus the egoistic instinct of material preservation, which impels to industry, is the foundation of Society, rendering it possible in a higher sense than that of mere aggregation of families.258

In sum, Comte was by no means a communist or socialist. As a reader of Adam Smith, he believed that personal, egoistic instincts could be a force for good. Egoism, though it should be repressed, should never completely disappear; egoistic sentiments would in fact always be dominant. They inspired practical activity and social solidarity. Thanks to the division of labor, each worker, devoted to a single part of the productive process, worked indirectly to satisfy other people’s needs and relied on fellow workers to produce materials to satisfy the gamut of his needs. Most practical activities, including warfare and industrial production, required some cooperation and thus encouraged the growth of “social virtues.” Working with others, each capitalist laborer ultimately developed his altruistic tendencies, even though he was eager to earn money for himself. Industrial activity did not need to be corrupting, as radical leftists such as Pierre Proudhon implied. Acquiring personal property consolidated and developed material activity on every level – individual, domestic, and social. Material progress could lead to moral progress. Comte wanted to show that something good could emerge from what seemed bad at first glance. Thus he said, for example, “ambition finished ordinarily by inspiring . . . social devotion, which did not exist at first.”259 Comte even believed that the bourgeoisie’s instincts for domination would diminish once it saw how appreciative workers were of its protection. Marx would probably label Comte’s approach utopian and naive because there was no way to ensure that individual capitalists would use their wealth chiefly for the benefit of others. As Antimo Negri has pointed out, Comte was “too optimistic” in believing that entrepreneurs would disobey the basic law of the marketplace, “that of profit,” and would invest their capital to help the proletariat.260 Resembling Benjamin Disraeli’s vision in Sybil, Comte’s program was paternalistic, based on antiquated notions of chivalrous protection and service. According to Comte, material progress also bolstered intellectual progress. (One of his principles was that the different types of progress were interrelated.) The accumulation of capital made human activity not only more social but more intellectual because once material resources were procured without great difficulty, people could be 258 260

Lewes, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, 343–4. 259 Syst`eme, 2:161, 297. Antimo Negri, “Travail et technique dans la pens´ee d’Auguste Comte,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Annie Petit, 148.

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liberated from physical labor and devote themselves to the life of the mind. Moreover, the need to modify the environment gave the mind a goal, that of finding ways to do this activity more effectively. To modify the natural world, we needed to know its laws. Comte argued that there would eventually be perfect harmony between our subjective world and our objective existence, for as soon as the former was subordinated to the latter and we stopped imagining illusory beings in charge of us, our minds could become a more “faithful mirror of the world that dominates us.”261 Finally, our activities, which improved the material order and stimulated intellectual progress, indirectly advanced the arts and morality. Our greater knowledge of scientific laws could enhance the arts. In terms of morality, we learned through our industrial activity what could not be modified. We realized the need to submit to material necessity. In contrast to Nietzsche, Comte viewed “submission” as the basis of “all real moral discipline.”262 In addition, if men were paid a decent family wage for practical activities, the moral life of the family would improve.263 Women, freed from work, would display their “true nature” and exercise their moral authority.264 Children would be able to receive an education, which fostered their social feelings. Old people would not have to worry about penury, and with their wisdom and experience, they could become the intellectual force in the family. This ideal family was the ideal polity, with the male heads of the family acting as the temporal authority and their wives and old people assuming the spiritual power. In sum, contrary to the hypothetical case that he depicted earlier, Comte concluded that material necessity was essential to human greatness because material activities had an impact on both intellectual and moral life. Indeed, progress was first material, then intellectual, and finally moral.265 He once boasted to Proudhon that he felt more than anyone else “the fundamental importance and radical dignity of work.” Material activities created mutually dependent classes in the temporal sphere and a speculative class in the spiritual sphere; gave our lives direction; and revealed the significance of solidarity, an important goal that everyone should strive to realize. The seemingly 261 262 263 264

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Syst`eme, 2:167. See also ibid., 384. Cat´echisme, 156–7. Syst`eme, 2:168. See also Cat´echisme, 203. In the Cat´echisme, Comte defined human work as “the useful reaction of man against his destiny.” Cat´echisme, 129. Syst`eme, 2:170. Women had to be supported first by their fathers and brothers, then by their husbands and sons. Only in “exceptional cases” would the state supplement these men’s efforts. Ibid., 411. There was also an inverse direction. Once there was sufficient moral and intellectual growth, all our other kinds of progress would be newly regulated. For example, only when morality was regenerated could our practical activities rise about their selfish origins and achieve their true social character. Ibid., 2:176.

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base physical activity was the “first natural basis of the human order” and of the highest institution, the Religion of Humanity.266 the family and emotional activitie s After looking at the unifying effects of economic, that is, material activity, Comte turned his attention to the family, which was the zone of the sentiments, especially those of continuity and solidarity. The family was a transitional institution that taught individuals to rise above their egoism, introduced them to sociability, and prepared them for society. He spoke highly of the defense of domestic life expressed by the conservatives, although in general he found them too closed to change. Referring to Louis de Bonald for the first time and commending his notion of the family, he wrote, The decisive insights that the illustrious Bonald was able to pull from the Egyptian and especially the Roman experience to rectify Greek sophisms have not really been adopted up to now by all the progressive thinkers. On the contrary, all the current utopians, like the preceding ones, are deeply taken with anti-domestic aberrations.267

Taking off from Bonald’s hatred of the egoism of the age, Comte rejected the leftist notion that the individual formed the unit of society. He wrote, “A society is thus not any more decomposable into individuals than a geometric surface is decomposable into lines.”268 He insisted that the analogy between the collective organism and the individual organism should not be exaggerated. After all, the components of society could exist in isolation, whereas the parts of the individual could not be separated. A system had to be composed of like elements. Families were the building blocks of society because they were more similar; both were collective entities.269 Moreover, families 266

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Comte to P.-J. Proudhon, August 5, 1852, reprinted in Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, 289. The importance given to work is consistent with Comte’s principle that in the universal order, “our most sublime attributes” are subordinated “to our most base needs.” Syst`eme, 2:172. Syst`eme, 2:178. Comte had great respect for Bonald, who was also much admired by Saint-Simon. Many aspects of the Syst`eme are reminiscent of Bonald, including his dislike of psychology and his stress on property, the importance of language, religion as key component of social unity, the relations between the spiritual and temporal powers, and the social organism. See Bernard Valade, “La Critique comtienne de l’´ecole r´etrograde,” Auguste Comte et l’id´ee de science de l’homme (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 148; Pickering, Comte, 1:73–5, 157, 668; Pierre Macherey, Comte: La Philosophie des sciences (Paris: Presses Universitatires de France, 1989), 52–5. Syst`eme, 2:181. Ibid., 2:304. The coming together of families, not individuals, also constituted nations, which Comte considered an artificial construction. Synth`ese, 211.

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relied on society for maintenance, consolidation, and improvement, whereas societies depended on families for preservation and growth. Both families and society required love and faith (beliefs) for unity. Comte systematically reviewed the emotional benefits of the primary familial relations – filial, fraternal, conjugal, and paternal relations – which gave people a sense of the past and future and developed larger social affections, including the different senses of being a master, disciple, protector, and friend; positivism would utilize these different relations to connect more closely private and public lives.270 Comte focused most intently on the conjugal relation between the active and affective sexes – a relation that he regarded as the most powerful in a family. Although originally stemming from personal selfinterest on the part of both partners, who desired self-preservation, marriage developed, nevertheless, the three social instincts, attachment, veneration, and love, and made people tender, happy, and good.271 It was also the only relation that led to a complete identification with another person, something Comte assumed we all desired. Because it was so significant, he argued that the marital tie had to remain exclusive, indissoluble, and effective even after death. Divorce was acceptable only in cases where the husband experienced a kind of “social death,” as had happened in de Vaux’s situation. Although maintaining fairly traditional views on divorce, Comte did not uphold Christian and Islamic views that marriage was solely an institution for breeding children and that celibacy was the best route to moral perfection.272 To Comte, the sexual instinct, although egoistic in origin, intensified the social instincts, just as the material instincts stimulated altruism. “Carnal satisfactions” certainly helped advance conjugal affections and fortified veneration and goodness, but once they established attachment between the partners, love grew “by its own 270

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Reflecting his relationship with Louis Comte, Comte was critical of paternal relations, which he found not sufficiently intense. He maintained that men had “too feeble” a sentiment of paternal affection – a problem aggravated by the lack of choice involved. He hoped to solve this problem by increasing the role of mothers in the family and developing adoption, which he insisted would also help sterile couples. This sensitivity to adoption came from his own childless state. In addition, he encouraged the development of more tender filial relations, which were often hurt by primogeniture or competition for the estate of one’s parents. He knew about this competition because of his poor rapport with Alix. Comte wanted to change the laws so that fathers could leave their estate to whomever they wished, even to people outside the family. Knowing that they would not necessarily inherit either capital or offices, sons could focus more on developing their fraternal affections. Yet Comte’s plan would not necessarily mean the end of envy or rivalry among children. Syst`eme, 2:189. Attachment united equals and regulated the present and private life. Veneration concerned superiors and involved the past and private and public life. Love or goodness focused more on inferiors, prepared the way for the future, and founds its proper sphere to be public life. Ibid., 4:47. Cat´echisme, 231.

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charm, independently of any brutal satisfaction.”273 Indeed, attachment grew more intense as relations become purer and the partners saw each other simultaneously as both “protector and protected.” To him, marriage was a good in itself for the perfection of the partners and could certainly endure if they were devoted simply to each other with no ulterior motive, either in terms of sex or children.274 Yet his own childless marriage, one marked by a long period of sexual abstinence, did not support this theory. One reason Massin had objected to the kind of marriage they had was that Comte was too controlling. Unsurprisingly, Comte asserted in this volume that as a small society, the family required a government, for “there can exist no society without a government.”275 The family government in turn needed a religion “to consecrate and regulate commandment and obedience.”276 Like the larger state, the family had to be under the regime of men. Rejecting the equality promoted by Fourierists and other leftists and quoting the misogynist Aristotle for support, Comte insisted that women had to obey the commands of man for harmony to exist within the family. Although he had been critical of the Napoleonic Code’s attitude toward women, he now subscribed to its rule that women be submissive. Only by being submissive and avoiding vanity and pride, two sins in the Comtean universe, could a woman develop her “moral superiority.”277 In making the family the microcosm of the state as different political thinkers in the past had done, Comte underscored the distinctive roles of wives and husbands, who corresponded to the spiritual and temporal powers.278 As he had stated in the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, women’s role in the family was analogous to that of the positivist priests in the state: both were components of the spiritual power in opposition to the predominant material activities in society.279 Both were counselors 273 274

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Syst`eme, 2:188. For more favorable comments on sex, see Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” January 11, 1846. CG, 3:280–81. Comte did not deny, however, the importance of children in giving a marriage consistency and focusing its activity. Indeed, he sensitively encouraged the institution of eternal widowhood because of the “sad situation” of children placed in new homes after a second marriage. Rejecting Thomas Malthus’s doomsday scenario, he urged every couple to have three children to increase slowly the population of the human race. Syst`eme, 2:199, 296. Cat´echisme, 205. One sociological law was that every society needed a government, and every government required a society. Syst`eme, 2:267. Ibid., 2:193. See also Cat´echisme, 235, where Comte quotes Aristotle’s command that women be submissive. For the first time, Comte defended his selection of the terms “spiritual” and “temporal,” evidently in response to criticism. See Syst`eme, 2:314–15. Ibid., 2:354. Reflecting his sensitivity to areas outside of Europe, Comte wrote that before the Middle Ages, which emancipated women, the “theocracies of Egypt, Chaldea, and

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who could not issue commands or engage in force. Whereas priests were experts in opinions, women had to use their feelings to gain moral ascendancy over men and thereby raise the morality of the entire society. Basically embracing the concept of the angel in the household, Comte emphasized that devoid of any material or cerebral worries, women – mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and servants – countered the egoism and corruption inherent in men’s practical activities and theoretical work.280 He wrote, We are in all regards . . . far more the sons of our mothers than of our fathers. In a parallel fashion, the best of brothers is assuredly a worthy sister: the tenderness of the wife surpasses ordinarily that of the husband; the devotion of the daughter is more important than that of the sons . . . the woman constitutes then in every respect the moral center of the family.

To be preserved from temporal ambition, grandeur, and wealth, which were too often sources of greed and “degeneration,” both women and priests needed to be supported by practical men of action.281 Priests would not even be able to own property or inherit money from their families.282 Comte wrote, “Without a sincere and constant renunciation of power and wealth, the clergy would never inspire in the rich and poor the trust it needs to intervene in civil conflicts, of which it must become the best arbiter.”283 Priests would ultimately be maintained by the public treasury. Forbidden all outside work, women would be supported at first by their fathers and brothers and then by their husbands and sons. The government would support them as a last resort. Independence coming from status or wealth was particularly detrimental for women. Indeed, “independence” in his mind meant “enfranchisement” from “external work” and material worries. Suggesting that women were a threatening force, Comte insisted that they stay in the domestic sphere – “their natural sanctuary” – which was free from “ambitious seduction” and “absorbent calculations.”284 He knew that such restrictions on their activities detracted from their power to influence public life. “Thus without ruining her nature, a woman cannot . . . acquire a sufficient knowledge 280

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of India and then later those of Mexico and Peru, utilized . . . this domestic assistance to fulfill their social office better.” Ibid., 2:354. In the Cat´echisme, Comte expressed this cult of domesticity most clearly when he wrote, “From the domestic sanctuary . . . emanates this holy impulsion, which alone can preserve us from the moral corruption to which we are always disposed because of our practical or theoretical existence.” Cat´echisme, 173. Syst`eme, 2:204, 353. See also Arnaud, introduction to Cat´echisme, 22. Cat´echisme, 218. 283 Syst`eme, 2:421. Ibid., 2:376, 414, 4:66, 4:69. Comte also said that women would make the worst heads of industry because they would be very corrupted by the desire for profit. Cat´echisme, 234.

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of real life . . . which is indispensable to spiritual power.” These restrictions made it possible for priests to wield this power without fearing a rival authority. As if to compensate women for their imprisonment, Comte mentioned that they must have “the exclusive direction of what is accomplished in the domestic circle.”285 This concession was really a slippage, for it contradicted his insistence that men should govern the household. In the rarefied atmosphere of the home, women encouraged the growth of the best sympathies, taught the importance of putting the heart above the mind, introduced aesthetic culture, and prepared children to fulfill their civic duties. They also assumed an intellectual role, that of teaching language (a task later entrusted to priests) and opening the way to the “most precious” knowledge, that of human nature and the moral order. The father contributed to the family his knowledge of “the city,” that is, the laws of the material order. Education in the family was thus both intellectual and moral.286 As mentioned above, family life was dependent on faith, that is, beliefs, as well as love. Women’s activities helping the family, especially their advancement of altruism, constituted their chief contribution to public life and ensured them immortality.287 All too often, Comte lamented, the influence of women was overlooked. Comte astutely noted that transformations in society affected the family. For example, different types of military or industrial activity had an impact on family life. Also, modifications of different social institutions affected the family. Given that the family and society were interdependent, positivism would regenerate both of them. Especially by eliminating war, the positivist society would make the family more altruistic than it currently was. comte’s theory of language: inte llectual activitie s One very important instrument of the influence of society on the family was language, which connected these two collectivities.288 Language was “sacred” because as the “depository of collective wisdom,” it shaped and transmitted faith, that is, beliefs. Comte wrote, “Through the institution of language, the true Great-Being continually reveals its own existence to us, while it initiates us into the knowledge of the universal order which dominates it.” Like religion, 285 287

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Syst`eme, 2:313, 378. 286 Ibid., 2:206. In the Synth`ese, he seemed to see more clearly that a “historical appreciation of art led to that of sentiments” because painting, music, and so forth communicated emotions. Synth`ese, 130. Language originated in the family but developed fully in society, where personal relations were more extensive and complex and different activities emerged. Syst`eme, 2:285.

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language was “inspired by the heart and constructed by the mind.”289 It also represented and improved the social unity, that is, the community, created by religion in the first place.290 As Lewes pointed out, Comte considered language to be analogous to capital; it was the “stored-up labour of generations of minds.”291 Using terms made fashionable by the Port-Royal grammarians, Comte explained that a language was made up of signs. Each sign represented a regular connection between an external movement (an outside influence) and an internal sensation (or subjective impression). Comte’s ideas reflected the impact of Thomas Hobbes and the Id´eologue tradition that the English philosopher influenced.292 Michel Foucault called Ideology “the last of the Classical philosophies.”293 Taking off also from ideas expressed by Locke and Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Antoine-Louis Claude de Destutt de Tracy, one of the principal Id´eologues, wrote, “To pass a judgment, true or false, is an act of thought; this act consists in feeling that there is a connection, a relation . . . To think, as you see, is always to feel, and is nothing other than to feel.”294 Thus to Destutt de Tracy, words represented sensations.295 Since his youth, when he was taught by one of the leading Id´eologues in his lyc´ee, Comte had been deeply influenced by their philosophy, especially the doctrines of Destutt de Tracy. Yet Comte’s approach to feeling was wider than that of Destutt de Tracy, who seemed to reduce it to simple sensation. Comte constructed in the Syst`eme a new, highly original theory of language, one that moved beyond the Classical tradition described by Michel Foucault.296 According to Foucault, most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers believed that language was the only 289

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Ibid., 1:721, 2:218, 255, 256. Comte later added that language relied on the cerebral organs for the creation of artificial signs and especially needed the discipline of reason in order not to be “pure verbiage.” Cat´echisme, 144. Alain Rey, “La Th´eorie positiviste des langages: Auguste Comte et la s´emiotique,” Semiotica 4 (1971): 71. Lewes, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, 344. Syst`eme, 2:220. Comte praised Hobbes for having “compared the efficacy of our signs to the general influence of constant relations that manifest themselves between any two phenomena, whether they be simultaneous or consecutive.” Ibid., 2:221. See also ibid., 2:255; Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, “Auguste Comte et la philosophie du langage,” in Auguste Comte et le positivisme, deux si`ecles apr`es (Actes du Colloque du 27 au 30 avril 1999), 139. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1973), 242. Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy, El´ements d’id´eologie, 3 vols. (Paris, 1803–5; repr., Paris: INALF, 1961), 1:22–3, 25. Pamela Major-Poetzl, Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Western Culture: Toward a New Science of History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 184. Comte made language the subject of an entire chapter – chapter four – in the second volume of the Syst`eme. On the originality of Comte’s theory, see Rey, “La Th´eorie

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medium by which one could know “the things of the world” and that the signs that made up language were largely “co-extensive with representation, that is, with thought as a whole.” Consequently, thought was reduced to perception.297 More of an anti-nominalist and antirationalist, Comte held that only pedants believed reasoning consisted solely of the logic of signs.298 Signs reflected the intellectual faculties, but the sign and the idea were not transparent to each another.299 Thought was influenced not only by signs, as was usually assumed, but also by feelings and images. Language was meant to express first emotions, then actions and ideas. Signs, which were weaker than images, played a very minor role even in the preliminary stages of conceptualization; signs often preceded ideas and chiefly helped us fix and remember our fleeting unformed thoughts. For example, Comte asserted that he sometimes wrote without knowing exactly what he was thinking. There was thus a gap between conception and expression. Citing Hobbes, whose theory of language he praised, Comte declared that signs initially provided only “some notes” to “mark out the spontaneous route of the mind.”300 Once ideas were ready to be expressed to others, signs became necessary as proof of their reality, maturity, precision, and coherence. Important for creating a clear discourse, language helped the elaboration of thought. Comte therefore criticized philosophers who focused exclusively on the intellectual origins and character of language.301 As one critic put it, his theory furnished romanticism with one of its “most profound theories.”302 Comte maintained that people generally began thinking inductively or deductively with the help of feelings, which called on images to sustain the mental effort and to make unformed thoughts more precise and rapid. In other words, language was rooted in the subjective world, not in the outside world of perceived objects as the Classical tradition maintained. People used language not so much to represent

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positiviste,” 52–74; Kremer-Marietti, “Comte et le retour a` une rh´etorique originelle,” 91–104. Foucault, The Order of Things, 65, 296. Around 1800, according to Foucault, the modern episteme arose with the growth of comparative anatomy, political economy, and historical philology. Comte was interested in all three developments. On the relationship between thought and perception, see Major-Poetzl, Michel Foucault’s Archaeology, 150. Syst`eme, 4:202. Foucault, The Order of Things, 65. See also Syst`eme, 2:228; Rey, “La Th´eorie positiviste,” 54; Kremer-Marietti, “Comte et le retour,” 92; Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture, 38. Syst`eme, 1:716, 2:249, 251. Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti points out that Comte was particularly critical of Condillac. See “Auguste Comte et la s´emiotique,” Recherches s´emiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry, 8 (March/July 1988): 135–6. Edouard Morot-Sir, “Langage et po´esie selon Auguste Comte,” in Carrefour de cultures: M´elanges offerts a` Jacqueline Leiner, ed. R´egis Antoine (T¨ubingen: Guner Narr, 1993), 156.

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things but to express their emotions and to appeal to the feelings of others. Indeed, individuals expressed themselves spontaneously after having had an emotional experience of some sort, and they kept up their desire to communicate to fulfill strong emotional needs. Besides originating in the emotions and expressing them, language profoundly influenced them by exciting, calming and strengthening them. Like Franz Bopp, a contemporary linguist who helped form the new discipline of philology, Comte viewed words as indications of what a person did and felt, not what that person saw.303 As Ze¨ıneb Ben Sa¨ıd Cherni indicated, to Comte, “vocal expression” in particular was “the most accessible to affection”; it constituted “the language of sentiment par excellence,” especially because the muscles connected to it were close to the nervous system.304 Comte wrote that “the least spontaneous orator” displayed his moral character through his use of language.305 Presumably, his beloved opera singers would be the most expressive of all. Because Comte rarely mentioned the name of contemporaries who influenced him, it is difficult to determine the extent of his familiarity with the rising science of linguistics. One German positivist enthusiast, August Hermann Ewerbeck translated August Schleicher’s Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Ubersicht into French in 1852, and sent Comte a signed copy.306 It concentrated on the evolutionary nature of language and the laws of linguistic change. Influenced by the leading philologists, Bopp, Jakob Grimm, and the Schlegels, Schleicher had a strong respect for prehistoric languages and believed that in many ways they were superior to modern languages. Likewise, Comte was critical of philologists who focused solely on contemporary language use, and he admired the language of primitive peoples. To him, their rich use of substantives and verbs and the absence of declensions and conjugations indicated their proximity to the concrete and the emotions.307 To Comte, there were two kinds of languages, involuntary and voluntary. Involuntary languages were widespread among all animal species and primitive peoples, whose social relations were limited. The signs they used did not have to be words but could be behavioral.308 Here Comte’s account seems to have been influenced by Diderot. In his Lettre sur les sourds et muets (1751), which Comte greatly 303 304 305 306 307 308

Alan Sheridan, Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth (London: Tavistock, 1980), 75. Ze¨ıneb Ben Sa¨ıd Cherni, “Fonctions logiques et fonctions <sacerdotales> de l’´ecriture chez A. Comte,” Revue tunisienne des Etudes Philosophiques, no. 11 (December 1991), 20. Syst`eme, 1:290. See also Foucault, The Order of Things, 290. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Syst`eme, 2:255, 258, 3:135, 223; Olga Amsterdamska, Schools of Thought: The Development of Linguistics from Bopp to Saussure (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987), 44–9, 55. On this point, see Rey, “La Th´eorie positiviste,” 61.

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admired, Diderot expounded on Condillac’s theory that gestures and cries represented the natural origins of language.309 Comte explained that objective external acts, such as cries, which concerned hearing, or gestures, which addressed themselves to sight, were primordial, physical means of expression; they were the instinctive, natural signs of the subjective impulses or emotions that inspired them.310 Continuing his combination of biological and sociological approaches, Comte next turned his attention to voluntary languages. He boasted that he was the first to demonstrate the collective nature of language, for he showed how society formed, preserved, and developed it.311 He believed that voluntary languages, those of humans and superior animals, developed as social relationships and ideas became more complex and new needs emerged. These languages included vocal, audible signs such as musical notes, and visual signs such as letters of the alphabet, numbers, or designs. These languages were artificial in that the connection between the movement and the sensation could be changed to fulfill different external or internal needs.312 Yet voluntary languages were not arbitrary or meaningless.313 Their signs were naturally fixed in that they imitated the involuntary, natural signs of the preceding stage. Spontaneous cries and gestures, which were linked ultimately to the passions, were broken down and simplified.314 In a sense, Comte, the admirer of fetishism, was returning to the primitive in seeking to make his language more emotional and aesthetic, as it had been in the beginning. Like Grimm and Rousseau, 309

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Hans Aarsleff, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 218. Comte included Diderot’s Lettre sur les sourds et les muets and his Lettre sur les aveugles in the Positivist Library. Syst`eme, 4:560. Syst`eme, 1:721, 2:222, 227. Comte often emphasized the strength of the impulses behind them: “The muscular reaction, vocal or gesticulatory, which is the source of expression, is . . . commanded by the affective part of the brain.” Ibid.,1:290. He believed in the “dualism between the body and mind.” The body’s three parts – viscera, muscles, and senses – were linked to the three regions of the mind by three nervous apparatuses, “nutritive, motor, and sensory.” In positing this connection between the mind and body, he believed he had escaped both spiritualism and materialism. Comte to Audiffrent, September 23, 1855, CG, 8:117. See also Appel, 75. Comte’s emphasis on the collective nature of language is different from Condillac’s sensationalist approach, which stressed the individual’s acquisition of language. MorotSir, “Langage,” 144. As the need for universal communication grew with the development of society and intelligence became more important as a means of directing activity, language underwent three revolutions. First early oral language (music) became more important than early visual language (mimicry). Oral language soon split into music and poetry, and the latter became more important than the former as a form of expression. The most intellectual of the arts, poetry dealt with signs and was both pictorial and musical. It was divided into poetry proper and prose, with priority eventually given to the latter. See Morot-Sir, “Langage,” 154. Syst`eme, 1:635. 314 Ibid., 1:721, 2:223.

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he rejected the Enlightenment principle that the natural was primarily rational.315 Comte was aware not only of the biological and historical nature of language but also of its social and moral aspects.316 It did not develop simply to facilitate the intellectual growth of the individual as Hobbes and other philosophers believed. Whereas Classical philosophers maintained that an elite was responsible for language development, Comte argued that language derived from “popular spontaneity,” “common sense,” and the “collective instinct.”317 It was not in the special control of priests, poets, philosophers, or scholars. An “aesthetic operation,” it was a powerful medium of expression of the entire people who created it. It thus originated in society and developed along with it. Calling language “the most social of all human institutions,” Comte wrote, “Normal cooperation among different individuals depends on a . . . clear and direct transmission of feelings and thoughts. Before acting, everyone must make known his emotions or plans in order to obtain the sympathy or assistance of others.”318 To communicate efficaciously, people needed to use signs that were stable. The fixity of signs rested on the permanence of the universal order. Signs therefore had two parts. Comte wrote, “The objective part of each [sign or word] indicates the exterior order from which it emanates, and its subjective part alludes to the interior order” of the individual, that is, the brain’s impression of the sensation. Signs linked the internal world to the external world to which it was subjected. In this way, signs strengthened our inner world, making sure imagination was contained so that our mental health would not be disturbed. Moreover, because language derived from “the universal order,” which was both objective and subjective, and not from arbitrary conventions decided among individuals in a particular time and place, it brought people together.319 In sum, language had an important social, or political, function, that of facilitating the “mutual communication of sentiments and thoughts” and 315 316

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Amsterdamska, Schools of Thought, 36. In emphasizing its social and historical aspects, Comte’s approach to language was similar in this respect to that of Rousseau, Condillac, and Diderot. Daniel Droixhe, La Linguistique et l’appel de l’histoire (1600–1800): Rationalisme et r´evolutions positivistes (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 17, 169, 189, 332, 380–81; Aarsleff, From Locke to Saussure, 350. Syst`eme, 2:58, 259. Ibid., 1:721, 2:220. See also Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 9. Syst`eme, 1:290, 291; 2:255. Comte was critical of Hobbes’s theory that individual created their own signs to facilite thought. Hobbes, according to Comte, did not think about the need for mutual communication. Ibid., 2:237. See also Kremer-Marietti, “Auguste Comte et la philosophie du langage,” 155. On the dangers of mental illness arising from the intensity of interior images when they were not under the dominance of the external world, see Morot-Sir, “Langage,” 148.

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thus social cooperation.320 In so doing, it consolidated not only our inner worlds but the community. Indeed, Comte made an interesting analogy between property and language. He maintained that both were systems of accumulation that exerted a conservative and preservative influence on society. Property was the accumulation of material wealth, whereas language helped in the acquisition of spiritual wealth – knowledge – and transmitted it to new people, along with “our aesthetic treasure,” which it directed. Language created a fuller community because everyone could take from its riches and contribute to its preservation; property satisfied the personal needs of its individual holders, who often destroyed it in the process.321 Comte agreed with socialists who decried the abuse of private property. However, the direction language was heading also worried Comte. He lamented that once language had been improved by thought and practical reasons accelerated expression, which became less distinctive, the original emotional stimulus of the sign had gradually disappeared. Indeed, with social progress and the growth of the public sphere, the communication of ideas had become more important than that of emotions. Signs had become increasingly arbitrary, abstract, and technical to facilitate communication. Like Diderot and Rousseau, Comte worried that written words had lost their directness and immediacy and could no longer could unite people emotionally.322 As Andrew Wernick has remarked, Comte was concerned about the “rise of abstract signs and emphasized the importance of partially restoring iconic ones.”323 Comte thus proclaimed that under positivism, the original emotional, aesthetic (that is, expressive) aspects of language would be revived, for emotions constituted the most powerful logic. Language would again bring together understanding, imagination, and sentiment.324 There would no longer be “any transmission of thoughts or organization of actions without also the communication of the affections which dominate them.”325 Ideally the three logics of signs, images, and feelings would help each other and be united in every thought process, which would as a result be more coherent and precise.326 The logic of images, which was connected to the faculty 320 321 322 323 324 326

Syst`eme, 1:289, 2:242, 258, 259. Syst`eme, 2:254. See also Cat´echisme, 128. Syst`eme, 1:290–91; Droixhe, La Linguistique, 353–4. Wernick, “Comte, Auguste,” 132. Kremer-Marietti, “Auguste Comte et la s´emiotique,” 138. 325 Syst`eme, 227–8. On this point see Kremer-Marietti, “Comte et le retour,” 92. Comte went through the strengths and weaknesses of each form of logic. The logic of feelings was the most certain and efficient logic, especially because the affective organs were more active than cerebral organs. It inspired our intelligence. However, the logic of feelings suffered from two problems. It could not be controlled very well because of the impossibility of

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of the imagination and to art, would assist the logic of feelings by facilitating the connection between emotions. Likewise, the logic of signs, that is, language, would help the logic of images by making the combination of mental images easier.327 Images would perform a transitional function, helping in the attachment of subjective emotions to objective signs. If logic were perfect, each word (an objective sign) would bring to mind an image (which came originally from the objective world but was centered in the subjective world), which in turn would conjure up a feeling (a subjective emotion). In this way, each word would be at least indirectly linked to an emotion. As the expressions of emotions, words were eminently social. These three logics were to be used in the worship of Humanity. Positivist worshipers had to combine the “precision of signs” and the “clarity of images” and subordinate them to the powerful “force of feelings” in order to arrive quickly at appropriate conceptions.328 The mind, directed by the heart, primarily considered images when it was contemplating and meditating. Then the mind transmitted to the outside the results of this elaboration by means of signs. This procedure was the opposite of that of theologians, who always looked outside for a “chimerical object.” The positivist worshipped with his or her eyes closed “to see the interior image more sharply.”329 Urging everyone to know themselves in order to improve themselves, Comte wrote, “If private life, which was so cultivated in the Middle Ages, was not deplorably neglected today, a daily practice would make everyone feel how the least word can animate a touching or venerable image, to which it seems foreign.”330 Such images were crucial to the cult of the dead. Comte sought to encourage the growth of people’s inner life and their use of images by rekindling an interest in aesthetics. Positivist

327 329

reproducing at will the emotions that help our ideas. Moreover, it was not precise; given that there were more thoughts than feelings, the correspondence between them was not always clear. The logic of images, though less closely connected with our thoughts, partly corrected these problems. The reproduction of images could be controlled to a greater extent, for it was easier to bring to mind images than feelings. Moreover, because images were greater in both number and complexity than feelings, it was easier to connect an idea with an image than with an emotion. The logic of images thus helped us combine our thoughts. The logic of signs was most important in facilitating the combination of ideas. Signs were artificial constructs used to connect the outside and inner worlds. They were thus less natural, that is, less spontaneous, than feelings and images. They were also less closely and less spontaneously connected with our thoughts than images or feelings were. Yet they could be directly linked to ideas and should be so in regard to abstract ideas. Though not as powerful as images or feelings, signs were, nevertheless, necessary; because they were simply artificial connections with thoughts that were learned through habit, they could be easily reproduced and multiplied. Through their synthesizing abilities, signs thus more efficiently accelerated and clarified our thought processes. Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture, 38. 328 Synth`ese, 32. See also Syst`eme, 4:98. Cat´echisme, 157. 330 Syst`eme, 2:247. See also ibid., 2:325.

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education would emphasize the arts of singing and drawing so that everyone would be able to compose in an aesthetic sense. As in the Cours, Comte even insisted on developing the aesthetic aspects of scientific thought, a topic covered in great detail in the Synth`ese subjective. Enthusiastic about creating a synthesis bringing everything together, Comte condemned the artificial division between science and art. Barriers between them would vanish once we recognized that the heart and mind were not separate and that the affections resided in the brain along with the intellectual functions. In the future, art would help science in the formulation of thought by means of poetry and musical and graphic images. Such “aesthetic images” could “complete the logical office of artificial signs because of their superior energy.”331 Besides helping science at the fundamental methodological level, the arts would enhance the expression and communication of scientific theories. As one critic pointed out, “What obviously matters to him is the way in which art becomes the means by which the difficult and often uncongenial thought of an intellectual elite [the spiritual power] is made palatable to the masses in order to achieve social unity.”332 In stressing art’s role in science, which could borrow the use of images to improve its speculations and the communication of its ideas, Comte wished to demonstrate that all potential forces must be employed in the arduous process of thinking and reasoning, the prerequisites for moral regeneration and political action.333 Comte’s theory was revolutionary for his time.334 One example of how artistic expression influenced politics was Comte’s approach to language. Going against the rising tide of nationalism, Comte wanted to see all peoples united by a common language, morality, and faith.335 Yet although he maintained the cosmopolitan ideals of the philosophes, he did not join in their search for a universal language of artificial symbols and operations. Instead, reflecting his love of Dante, Comte recommended that the Italian language become the universal language because it was the most expressive, poetic, and musical.336 People would voluntarily adopt it, considering it was “formed by the most peaceful and aesthetic people, the only one free of any colonization.”337 Italian would become the usual language used especially by worshipers to express their emotions. 331 333 335 336

337

Ibid., 2:252. 332 Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture, 34. See also ibid., 39. Syst`eme, 4:56. 334 Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture, 35, 39. See especially Synth`ese, 825. Although heavily influenced by Condorcet, Comte did not endorse the philosophe’s famous schema of a universal scientific language composed of symbols. Diderot too had praised Italian in Lettre sur les sourds et muets as the best language for moving people. Foucault, The Order of Things, 63, 84; Droixhe, La Linguistique et l’appel de l’histoire, 354; Syst`eme, 4:96–7, 481. Syst`eme, 4:76.

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Comte’s interest in language as an object of study with its own laws and history illustrates Foucault’s point that once language became problematic in the nineteenth century, man himself became an object of knowledge. The human sciences arose – a fact clearly reflected in Comte’s establishment of sociology. What also emerged, according to Foucault, was modern literature, which represented man as a verbal creature. All attention became focused on the “simple act of writing.”338 Language’s power to influence and express feelings and to inspire social and political activism made Comte pay increasing attention to his own writing and to literature in general. Significantly, while covering sociology in the closing volumes of the Cours, he started to become anxious about his work’s “literary imperfections.” By the time he began the Syst`eme, he recognized the almost “supernatural” ability of words to awaken “our most intimate feelings,” especially because of their capacity to revive “touching or venerable” images. Convinced that prayers and poems had a significant impact on “moral culture,” he cited passages from great poetry and even inserted his own prayers throughout the Syst`eme. In sum, Comte came to believe that the act of writing, when it was “spontaneous,” as he always insisted his was, could stimulate and transform not only the emotions of his readers but his own feelings. Writing became a form of catharsis or therapy, giving him the impression that he was improving his moral character.339 In the Syst`eme, Comte used mechanical devices to simplify his style in the hope of elucidating his ideas, broadening the appeal of his work, and increasing his own self-discipline. Although he continued to refuse to rewrite his material as a sign of his spontaneity, he limited his sentences to five printed lines and his paragraphs to seven sentences, that is, 250 letters. He did not allow himself to repeat words for two sentences or to use hiatuses. Such rules, he believed, allowed his prose “to approach the musical perfection of poetry.” In his eyes, poetry was the most natural, influential, and popular art form, the one that best stimulated and expressed the feelings. Idealizing poets, he insisted that they understood the natural existence of benevolent affections, something Christians and liberals did not recognize. Poetry’s inspirations were, moreover, frequently in advance of philosophical tenets. To strengthen the connection between his work and poetry, he asserted that his sentences were similar to poems in that they derived from “solitary reflection”; they were forms of selfexpression, not part of academic controversy. At the end of his life 338 339

Foucault, The Order of Things, 300, 363. See also Major-Poetzl, Michel Foucault’s Archaelogy, 188; Sheridan, Michel Foucault, 82–3. Cours, 2:480; Syst`eme, 2:243, 246–7.

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Comte decided that having been a scientist and the founder of a new religion, he now was ready to embrace a third career, that of poet. This need to play with words and write poetry is typical of people with bipolar disease who are in a manic phase of their disorder.340 In his last work, the Synth`ese subjective, he set down more rules to ensure that future positive philosophers would be poets celebrating Humanity in verse. He was certain that the final stage of history under positivism would be “more poetic than philosophical” in character.341 In contemplating the poetic age of the future, Comte even established strict guidelines for the creation of a new Italian epic comparable to the Divine Comedy. Whereas Dante’s work inaugurated the “Western revolution,” the “poem of Humanity” would close it.342 the social organism After discussing the economy, the family, and language, which were connected respectively to the three primary social (and individual) activities, that is, material, emotional (moral), and intellectual activities, Comte looked at the social organism itself. He considered it a collective being, something more than the sum of its parts.343 Reflecting the influence of biology on sociology, he used a variety of perspectives based on biological analogies to characterize society because he viewed it as an outgrowth of the individual, despite his insistence that families were the basic social unit. He proclaimed that Humanity in the future would have three main components, families, classes, and cities, which corresponded respectively to the parts of the human body: “the elements properly speaking, then the tissues, and finally the organs.”344 (Comte was reluctant to use the word “cell” and so used the word “elements” instead.345 ) Having already looked at families, Comte explained his theory of “classes,” which he equated with social forces. In contrast to his usual emphasis on the separation of spiritual and temporal powers, he 340 341 342 343 345

On disorders associated with bipolar disease, see Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993). Syst`eme, 2:353. See also ibid., 4:489. Ibid., 1:4, 4:ix, 482. See also Cat´echisme, 79. Bourdeau, “Science de l’homme,” 290. 344 Syst`eme, 289. Comte believed that families were more fundamental to society than cells were to the structure of the body. He was still ambivalent about cellular theory. He preferred to think that the organism was indivisible rather than admit that the cell was an “organic element.” Georges Canguilhem, “La Philosophie biologique d’Auguste Comte et son influence en France au Xixe si`ecle,” in Etudes d’histoire, 66. Comte thus warned that the “collective” (social) and individual organisms were not entirely analogous; one was composed of elements that could be separated without killing the organism, but the other was not. Ibid., 2:288–9.

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stressed that there were three kinds of social forces, again corresponding to the three parts of the brain, that is, the material, intellectual, and moral parts.346 The material force, resting on pure physical power, was concentrated among the great or wealthy. This force was the most important because it sustained human existence. The intellectual force, depending on reason, which enlightened and guided us, belonged chiefly to wise men or priests. The moral force, focused on affection, which motivated us, was generally found among women, who represented the “social character of positivism.”347 But these powers could also be further broken down. There were two kinds of material power: the force of numbers (i.e, the workers) and the force of wealth (i.e., the entrepreneurs). The intellectual power was composed of those who were talented in conception (thinkers) and those who were gifted in expression (speakers, writers, and artists). The moral force was made up of those skilled in matters of the heart, who tended to obey, and those with a powerful character, who commanded. As for cities, Comte insisted that they were the real organs of the Great-Being. To him, the “most vast human associations never had any other real origin besides a simple city.”348 He deliberately dismissed intermediary associations such as provinces or nations because it was hard “to distinguish” them with precision; often they were artificial constructions whose borders were arbitrary. What is most interesting is Comte’s animus against the state. He claimed that in the positivist era there would be no more need for large states whose “tyranny” over other states was terrible and whose imperialist expansions were “monstrous.”349 Once there was a common spiritual government, all states would be reduced to simple cities with their adjoining countryside. Comte declared that the city was “the most vast political society that can be born and endured without oppression.” Cities were better social and political units than states because they relied on spontaneous, voluntary adherence and sociability was easier to cultivate. Like Thomas Jefferson, he celebrated small governments, at least in the temporal order. Shaped by his classical education, he was eager to revive the ancient city-state and civic patriotism.350 Sentiments of nationalism were too diffuse and vague.351 Cities were important places for people to see the necessity of going beyond the confinement of the home to make more personal relationships. True 346 347 348 349 350

Annie Petit, “‘Pouvoir spirituel’ et ‘Pouvoir temporel’ dans le positivisme comtien,” Impr´evue: Itin´eraires du positivisme, ed. Mich`ele Soriano, no. 1 and 2 (1997): 24. Syst`eme, “Pr´eface,” 1:21. See also ibid., 2:30, 311; Cat´echisme, 122. Even the emotionally laden term “civilization” derived from the notion of civic union. Syst`eme, 2:290. Ibid., 2:290, 305; Cat´echisme, 131. Syst`eme, 2:375, 2:306. See also Cat´echisme, 130–31. 351 Cat´echisme, 131.

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social unity was civic, not domestic, for ultimately private life had to be subordinated to public life. The relationships among the social forces and among the families, classes, and cities were ideally marked by cooperation in pursuit of a common aim, the well-being of society. Cooperation was a key concept in social statics. Calling Aristotle the “creator of social statics,” Comte praised him for having discovered that society was characterized by “the separation of offices and the cooperation of efforts.”352 However, various groups did not always work in harmony. The ever increasing division of labor worked against unity because it led to “diversity and inequality” within society and made people specialized and narrow-minded. Also, our instincts tended to isolate us and make us belligerent. To execute projects effectively, Comte insisted on the importance of discipline. Reflecting his authoritarianism, he wrote, “Man is not any less inclined to revolt than to submission. So that his obedience becomes certain and durable, it is necessary that his entire nature be subjugated.” Comte insisted that some repression by a government was crucial because of the division of labor and the problem of enforcing cooperation. Yet support for the government did not have to be blind or servile. It did not have to be motivated by fear, habit, or excessive veneration. The metaphysicians – leftists – were wrong to make “the disposition to revolt” into a virtue and to belittle the importance of obedience, which Comte believed stemmed from “the natural existence of disinterested inclinations.”353 The best solution, in Comte’s mind, to the disharmony created by the division of labor lay in giving some social forces power over others. The working classes, people gifted in expression, and persons with loving hearts should be subordinated to their counterparts, the entrepreneurs, thinkers, and people with powerful characters, respectively, who should work together. With progress, inequalities would diminish. The gap between the force of numbers and the force of wealth, those involved in expression and those concerned with conception, and those with big hearts and those with strong characters would lessen with the evolution of positivism but it would never entirely disappear. Trying to compensate the subordinated individuals for their painful dependence, Comte explained that in the positive stage, they would be honored for their superior social dignity and nobility. This patronizing argument was one that was used often in the cult of domesticity to make women resigned to their inferior position; they supposedly need not care about their 352

353

Syst`eme, 2:281, 351. See also ibid., 293, 295. Considering himself Aristotle’s successor, Comte prided himself on adding his own theory of progress to the Greek philosopher’s concept of order. Cat´echisme, 84, 104–5. Syst`eme, 2:270, 272, 291, 293, 294, 296, 297.

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subordination because they would be happy being the more virtuous sex. The people in charge of directing the government would be men who were prominent in either status or wealth related to their material activities.354 In ancient times they were involved in the military. In modern times, they were barons of industry. Again the influence of Hobbes and other conservatives, such as Joseph de Maistre, on Comte’s thought is evident. Indeed he wrote, “The celebrated principle of Hobbes on the spontaneous domination of force basically constitutes the only important step taken by the positive theory of government between Aristotle and me.”355 Comte praised Hobbes’s notion that political order depended on a strong, energetic material force to pull society together and repress revolutions. Although this authoritarian streak owed much to right-wing thought, Comte’s insistence on people’s natural goodness and the need to guard against excessive repression seemed to emanate from the leftist tradition. Hobbes believed that an absolutist government was a necessary threat and could never be legitimately questioned. Comte agreed on the need for a strong government but could see that its domination could lead to excessive or “prolonged” submission on the part of the people. Unlike Hobbes, he recognized that “every power is inclined to abuse.”356 There were needs for social controls to make the government more of a guiding, enlightening force. The need to guard against oppression and to balance independence and cooperation was one reason he favored small states, which would have more limited governments than large, ambitious imperial nations.357 One critic has stated that Comte was not necessarily authoritarian because he believed that once there was order, “authority in the sense of force becomes largely useless.” Order could be maintained by a balancing game between different unequal social forces and by acculturation.358 To guide the government and make sure their interests prevailed, “the masses” had to participate.359 In addition, Comte stated that government had to rest on more than material forces; it needed an “intellectual culture,” which would help it explain its purpose and guide it in the right direction. He assumed that the ambition of those in control could be directed toward the common good just as personal instincts could become benevolent. Women and workers could help give the government this moral direction. He increasingly 354 355 356 359

Comte asserted that a few prominent families – one-thirtieth of the entire population – would have temporal power. Ibid., 2:415. Ibid., 2:296, 299. Comte believed Hobbes was the only person who advanced social science since Aristotle. Ibid., 567. Ibid., 2:296, 302–3. 357 Cat´echisme, 130. 358 Fedi, Comte, 43, 44. Syst`eme, 4:288. Women’s participation would be “indirect,” whereas men’s would be “direct.”

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emphasized that they were part of the spiritual power. In these various ways, Comte hoped to create a “more noble society.”360 the church and po sitive prie sts The Church would also help produce this noble society. Again using biological analogies relating to our cerebral structure, Comte argued that each individual belonged by sentiment to the family; by activity to the city, which combined families, who were grouped into classes according to their social function; and by intelligence to the Church. When looked at from the “objective” point of view, Comte explained that in many ways, the city was the most important of these associations, for it was the “organ of active cooperation” and reflected the importance of material activities in our lives and in society. After all, “cerebral existence” was always subordinated to basic “corporal existence.”361 It took a long time for the Church to become separated from the family and city; it was not a permanent feature of civilization as these two were. Yet when subjective existence became more important in the positive era, the Church would be the most important association because it would be finally universal.362 To Comte, the existence of an independent Church was the key to ensuring the stability and harmony of both the political and domestic societies. The Church would regulate the small city-states, providing them with intellectual and moral guidance. As the microcosm of the state, the family was also open to abuses coming from the unlimited power of its male head. Likewise, priests would moderate in this arena, protecting women from tyrannical husbands or ungrateful sons.363 The priests would “penetrate . . . the heart of families to ennoble and consolidate all domestic affections by attaching them to their social destination.”364 Just as influences from domestic life could uplift public life, the outside world could have a beneficial impact on the private sphere. There was no strict separation of spheres. Just as the line between the private and public spheres was permeable, the division between theory and practice was artificial. Showing 360 361

362

363 364

Ibid., 2:303. Syst`eme, 2:341. See also Cat´echisme, 130. The centers of the family, the city, which he sometimes called the patrie, and the Church, which he sometimes called Humanity, were respectively the woman, the patriciate, and the clergy. The relationship of these three associations (family, cities, and Church) to the other three mentioned before (family, classes, and cities) was not entirely clear. Comte seemed to suggest that the Church was a fourth association, but this approach would ruin this three-part schema. Ibid., 304–5, 347. Ibid., 235. Priests would “speak to men in the name of women.” Ibid., 2:312, 313. Cat´echisme, 236.

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great flexibility and an understanding of the complexity of human nature, Comte insisted that the qualifications of practicians and theoricians were similar; men who were experts in one realm could be experts in the other, especially if they were intelligent. Cervantes, for example, could have been a renowned practical man. Caesar could have been a scholar. Given the similarity in their cerebral structures, the education of both theoricians and practicians was almost the same. The main difference was that practicians tended to use induction, while theoricians employed deduction. Ultimately, the laws they discovered were similar: “empirical laws differ essentially from rational laws only in that in the former one induces what could have been deduced.”365 Besides training, habits and the historical context determined whether one would be a theorician or practician.366 In the positive era, Comte anticipated that men would change careers, going from theorician to practician and vice versa. We have already seen that scholars could be poets. Although endowed with similar intellects, the temporal and spiritual powers were different.367 The temporal power had the capacity to “command acts” and dealt primarily with the objective world, the spiritual power “modified wills” and was chiefly involved in the subjective sphere. The spiritual power could not have political authority, which would detract from its advisory and regulatory role.368 The temporal power was composed of specialists, who regulated particular, local operations in a small given territory. The spiritual power consisted of generalists, who had a higher dignity and had jurisdiction over the entire universe. The temporal power dealt with present concerns and especially problems of human solidarity, whereas the spiritual power’s domain consisted of the past and future and thus the more important matters of continuity.369 In general, priests played a key role in society because of the importance of the intellect in unifying a community. As human relations became more extensive and the influence of the affections became weaker, the role of the mind grew more important. Domestic but especially social harmony depended on the intellect. People came together if they had common opinions, which were intellectual in nature. Thus whereas sentiment was stronger in the family, which 365 366

367

368

Comte to Papot, May 8, 1851, CG, 6:73. Comte asserted that Aristotle could have been an eminent poet, whereas Dante could have been a great philosopher. It was the historical context that determined the nature of their genius because “the species always dominates the individual.” Aristotle lived in a scientific era, whereas Dante existed in an artistic one. Cat´echisme, 168–9. As was his habit, Comte elaborated on five distinct ways the spiritual and temporal powers were different. One was spiritual, perpetual, theoretical, general, and universal, whereas the other was material, temporal, practical, specialized, and local. Syst`eme, 2:314. See also ibid., 4:9. 369 Cat´echisme, 207.

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launched its development, the intellect exerted more force in society. In the future positivist state, thanks to the universal educational system and the work of an independent priesthood, a system of shared opinions would create groups of people that were more extensive than was possible than if they simply worked together or were affectionate with each other. The priests would ensure the “preponderance of the spirit of the whole over the spirit of detail and of sociability over personality.”370 They would have a consulting and instructional role, which would come from their general knowledge of the physical (material and vital), intellectual, social, and moral orders. Because they had to be able “to conceive of everything” and take charge of intellectual life, they would have to study each preliminary science.371 This knowledge was especially important in order to explain to people the domination not only of their predecessors but of the natural order, both of which needed to become objects of worship. Besides being intellectual generalists, positivist priests had to be tender, loving, generous individuals. To develop “domestic affections,” the “source and guarantee of the true social sentiment,” they should not be obliged to be celibate.372 Furthermore, to be effective universal agents advising practical authorities, priests had to be “honest,” “energetic,” and full of character.373 And because they had to be experts in the emotions, they had to be fine poets.374 Philosophy and poetry were “inseparable sisters,” according to Comte, and priests could be known as either philosophers or poets.375 Being a philosopher was important in matters of dogma, whereas being a poet was crucial to aspects of worship. Expertise in both areas was necessary to influence others, especially those involved in practical activity. Reflecting the interest that the medical profession had shown in positivism, Comte also urged priests to take over medical tasks because modern money-hungry doctors too often offered shoddy care. Specialists blind to the “indivisibility of our nature,” contemporary doctors did not recognize that the physical condition of men and women was related to their moral state. A physical disturbance was related 370 372 373

374

375

Syst`eme, 2:218, 350. 371 Cat´echisme, 168. Syst`eme, 2:253, 364. Comte believed that celibacy rules led to licentiousness as a form of escape. Ibid., 2:318. Referring to the findings of Dunoyer, Comte suggested that there were two types of industry, which were connected. One dealt with the world, and one involved man himself. Whereas the temporal rulers embodied the first type, each priest had to embrace the second type and practice the art of correcting human wills first on himself to become a model for others. See also Comte to P.-J. Proudhon, August 5, 1852, reprinted in Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, 289. Comte wanted intellectuals and people in the arts who were deficient in character or in their affections to be supported by the state as priests were even though they could not be part of the positivist clergy. Syst`eme, 4:255. See also Cat´echisme, 195–6. Syst`eme, 2:317–18. See also ibid., 4:73, 148.

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to a moral one, and vice versa. “Health, as much as happiness, consists in unity, considered corporally and cerebrally.”376 Illness was often linked to social dysfunctions. Acting as doctors, priests could cure these sicknesses by urging patients to connect more with other people.377 Positivist priests should be not only doctors but psychiatrists. “Alienation” in the modern age often derived from a disregard for tradition. Communists and socialists, for example, spurned tradition because of their lack of interest in continuity in history.378 Priests could counter this tendency by stressing the importance of the past. Furthermore, as educators, they demonstrated the domination of the outside world, which was also crucial to our mental equilibrium. People went mad if they complicated matters by thinking about them too much from a subjective point of view, producing extravagant “arbitrary creations” in their minds and allowing their memories and interior images to become stronger than their sensations from the external world. Comte knew from personal experience the need to exercise control over one’s subjective life; emotions should not run amuck. “Thus the constant subordination of the inside to the outside furnishes the necessary basis of mental harmony, and, consequently, the entire cerebral economy.”379 This was “true liberty”: the “submission” of both our mind and body to the “outside world.” Once we made this outside world a true “spectacle,” we achieved harmony on an individual and social level.380 Yet in his characteristic cautious way, Comte also warned that an excessive preoccupation with the 376

377

378

379 380

Syst`eme, 4:75, 280. Comte insisted in particular that the brain and body had to be in harmony. According to his “subjective theory of the brain,” which was influenced by Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, Blainville, and Gall, there were eight cerebral ganglia filled with nerves corresponding to the eight senses. These ganglia presided over the body’s relations with the outside environment, which stimulated them. They gave bits of information about external phenomena to the region of abstract contemplation, which analyzed them. Blood vessels were also important in relaying information from the body to the brain. Comte called the nerves and vessels the “two sources” of the “mutual relations of the physical and moral” parts of humans. Syst`eme, 4: 235, 238; Comte to Papot, July 24, 1855, CG, 8:77. See also Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” March 29, 1846, MAC; Braunstein, “Auguste Comte et la philosophie de la m´edecine,” 172. Comte prohibited these priest-doctors from performing surgery or autopsies, which he considered beneath their dignity. He was so opposed to autopsies that he maintained that executioners alone should be permitted to do them and they should perform them only on murderers. Comte always believed that one could learn more from modifying the environment than from experimenting directly on living beings. Syst`eme, 2:363. See also Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 388–9. Comte added that the “economy” of the brain was disturbed in modern times by the “insurrection of the living against the dead,” causing a “true illness” in Western society. Comte to Audiffrent, January 12, 1855, CG, 8:5. Syst`eme, 2:383, 457. Cat´echisme, 158; Syst`eme, 2:385. On the need to connect affectivity with the external world, see Ze¨ıneb Ben Sa¨ıd Cherni, “La Pens´ee d’A. Comte entre la norme et

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outside world in an effort to get a closer or simpler view of reality led to “idiotism.”381 There had to be a recognition of inner impulses and “mental spontaneity.”382 Women would survey the educational system to make sure there was not excessive attention given to esoteric theories, which gave the mind too much authority.383 Comte also understood the relativity of madness. He explained that the proportions of objectivity and subjectivity changed from one place to another and from one time to another. In general, subjective influences had been decreasing, whereas the impact of the objective world had been increasing. In early ages, we tended to link our observations by using theories coming from within us. Comte wrote, If every true theory rests necessarily on observed facts, it is equally certain that every . . . observation demands some theory. The human mind could not . . . find any primitive solution [to this circular problem] except in the subjective method, which pulls from inside the means of connection . . . Thus sentiments made up for the feebleness of the mind by giving it the principle of all explanations by means of affections corresponding to some beings who were based on human types.384

Yet after having been studied a long time, outside reality increasingly dominated, a change in keeping with the demands of “modern reason.”385 Effective activity could not occur if the world was directed by the “arbitrary wills” of beings such as gods; it depended on knowledge of invariable laws.386 Thus madness in one era or one area of the globe might be considered sanity in another. Anticipating Foucault, who was also interested in the nefarious effects of modern reason, Comte warned that people should be wary of using the term “mad” to label individuals. He knew from experience how damaging and arbitrary such a label was. Comte also foreshadowed Freud’s psychoanalytical approach. He insisted that one could learn more about human nature, especially intellectual and moral laws, by studying dreams. Whereas thinking and acting were intermittent activities, which stopped in sleep, affections continued to work throughout sleep and illness, guaranteeing the continuity of cerebral life. Emotional life was, in other words, continuous. The dominant emotions made themselves felt in dreams when the constraints of the intellect and activity were relaxed and

381

382 386

l’historicit´e,” in Auguste Comte et le positivisme, deux si`ecles apr`es (Actes du Colloque du 27 au 30 avril 1999), 243. Syst`eme, 2:456. Comte gave two examples from personal experience to illustrate problems in the relationship between the mind and the outside world. He explained that the mind did not work properly if our surroundings were disturbed or if we closed our eyes for a long time. Ibid., 3:24. 383 Ibid., 4:73. 384 Cat´echisme, 261–2. 385 Syst`eme, 3:23. Cat´echisme, 262.

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there were no complicating influences coming from the milieu. He wrote, “This [affective] region of the brain can function even more in sleep than in an awakened state for the other two regions rest at that time.” In fact, subjective impulses prevailed “involuntarily” as they did during periods of mental illness. Criticizing modern thinkers for not imitating polytheists in trying to discern the meaning of dreams, Comte stated, “Rational positivity must revive such speculations by substituting the subjective for the objective in order to study the interior state instead of the external spectacle.”387 He thus thought it crucial to systematize the study of dreams in order to examine the psyche. Although critical of the psychology of his day, he was still interested in its subject matter. mate rial life: practicians Eager to categorize, Comte applied his law of decreasing generality and increasing dependence to classify practicians. He ranked the leaders from highest to lowest in the following order: bankers, merchants, manufacturers, and agriculturists. Like Saint-Simon, Comte viewed bankers as the most important members of the temporal arena. The solidifiers of wealth, the bankers had the most general, dependent tasks; the widest views; and the most generous sentiments. Ideally, the governing civic triumvirate would be drawn from this group.388 The agriculturists were the most specialized and independent and thus the lowest in the practician hierarchy. Like Marx, Comte did not think highly of peasants, who he believed should be subordinated to the urban population, and he disliked the petite bourgeoisie, whom he accused of being disdainful of workers and motivated by “envious ambition,” which caused much disorder. Like Marx, he also assumed that in the positivist era, the “middle classes” (“les classes moyennes”) would disappear because the wealthier members would join the upper class, whereas the poorer ones would join the proletariat.389 The only classes that really interested him were the upper class and the workers at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Unlike Marx, he did not foresee the day when class conflict would evaporate. Yet like Marx, he recognized that the workers suffered the most from abuses connected to industrialization, which he considered a corrupting force.390 Workers could be subversive, undisciplined, and inclined toward utopian dreams. They envied the wealth and position 387 388 390

Syst`eme, 1:690, 3:174, 4:240, 242. On the connection between dreams and madness, see Syst`eme, 3:20; Cat´echisme, 137, 140. Syst`eme, 4:149. 389 Cat´echisme, 243, 244. Comte to Audiffrent, August 2, 1855, CG, 8:87.

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of their bosses. But the proletarian situation was unjust because as in the entire universal order, “the most noble phenomena” depended on the “most common.”391 The workers directly served Humanity, unlike their employers, who were more administrators. Workers should be respected because they were, in Comte’s mind, simple, loving individuals interested in civic harmony and learning. As such, they had many connections. They were linked to the practical leaders by their material activities, but they were also associated with the priests, who taught and protected them, and with women, who were close to them in the family. Because of these associations, workers represented the key to preserving social solidarity; they could persuade the other three groups to see their respective duties in perspective and to work together in harmony. Their chief means of exerting pressure on these groups was to refuse to cooperate with them.392 Rejecting the assignment of duties to people based on their birth as too arbitrary, Comte hoped to make career selection a function of ability. Although he often dismissed upward social mobility as threatening to the social hierarchy, he was a product of the French Revolution and thus embraced meritocracy. He pointed out that workers often became temporal and spiritual leaders. He maintained that the spiritual power would help place people in positions that suited them. However, he admitted that his ideal society would never be perfect. Inequalities would still exist because some people had different natural or acquired advantages. Priests would teach resignation to those who felt victimized by the injustices of the system. These victims would find recompense in another system of classification that would offer them respect. Priests, who regulated subjective existence, would distribute esteem based on a person’s total ability to serve Humanity, not simply on his job. Although not a democrat or a populist, Comte did feel sympathy for the people who did not fit into bourgeois society as it was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century. Comte’s criticisms of the bourgeoisie were scathing. Unlike their counterparts in the past, the new industrialists displayed much mediocrity, cared too much about wealth, and had no social conscience whatsoever. Their practical responsibilities and concerns about the present made them unloving and uninterested in ideas. Comte pointed out that it was not surprising that their indifference and selfishness coupled with the hatred of the poor for the rich had led to so many disturbances. Perturbations in a state usually derived from an abuse of material force. Revealing an old-fashioned, paternalist attitude, he demanded that employers learn to consider themselves 391 392

Syst`eme, 2:327. See also ibid., 4:80. Ibid., 4:42. Comte was adamant about the proletarians’ rejection of violence as a means of coercion.

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guardians of the workers.393 Although he attacked socialism and supported private property, he nevertheless believed in socially responsible business practices. In keeping with the Saint-Simonian tradition, he wanted government to be administered in such a way as to benefit all of society.394 He hoped that the lazy parasitical rich would be replaced by a new class that would be smaller, more powerful, and more moral. The process of replacing the present immoral class with a more socially responsible one was not clear. Comte suggested that some seemingly worthy industrialists could be provided with an education in sociability. If they proved themselves to be loving and intelligent, they could be given capital by the state and act as models for others in prioritizing the needs of the collectivity. The power of the priests to advise industrialists of their duties, the influence of women, and the pressure of workers represented ways to control them. With the support of women, priests could also formally condemn those industrialists who did not follow positivist principles. This action could result in social excommunication or judgment against their incorporation into the Great-Being. But Comte did not hold out terrible punishments for the industrialists, bankers, and other members of the upper class if they abused their position and squandered their wealth on useless luxuries for themselves. He assumed that public opinion would keep them honest and they would feel a sense of social responsibility because of the large sums of money that they were allowed to manage. Although this idea may strike us now as naive, Comte did at least imagine that there were other ways to regulate society than by introducing the heavy hand of the state with its judges, police force, and prisons. There were subtle forces within society itself that could intervene to reinforce solidarity.395 Comte imagined that the new industrial ruling class would be pleased to support priests, women, and workers, whom he now considered the three parts of the spiritual power. The workers were the least important of the three, given that they were subordinate to both the spiritual and temporal powers, between which they served as intermediaries.396 Nevertheless, the upper class had to ensure that each worker “always fully” possessed “everything that is for his continuous and exclusive usage.”397 Workers’ salaries should be higher and more regular to ensure a stable domestic life, which necessitated a house and furniture. Denouncing the high salaries of public officials, Comte reminded his readers that all citizens, including the workers, 393 395 396 397

Ibid., 2:392, 4:60, 76. 394 Wernick, Auguste Comte, 9–10. Namer and Cingolani, Morale et Soci´et´e, 49. Annie Petit, “‘Pouvoir spirituel’ et ‘Pouvoir temporel’ dans le positivisme comtien,” in Impr´evue: Itin´eraires du positivisme, ed. Mich`ele Soriano, no. 1 and 2 (1997): 24, 28–9. Syst`eme, 2:411.

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were public functionaries, who participated in the community and deserved a decent life. Yet at the same time he maintained that much of the recompense of workers would be in the form of the satisfaction that they would receive in helping the community. This principle as well as that of the regulatory power of public opinion reveals Comte’s naivete with regard to the “social question.” In the Cat´echisme, he seemed to be more aggressive in defending the workers and more supportive of their efforts to unite to gain influence and to remind the upper class of their social responsibilities.398 Nevertheless, he remained loyal to the republicans’ main goal, the defense of the working class’s welfare.399 In sum, Comte imagined that his positivist city-state, though not capable of absolute perfection, would achieve harmony for several reasons. First, it conformed to the laws of human nature and so would be less likely to experience disturbing contradictions. The “partial and temporary perturbations” that would occur would be due to “our passions and our errors” and were easily correctable. Moreover, there would be harmony because of the influence of women, priests, and workers and the regeneration of the industrial leaders. Public opinion, which would be at a more elevated level thanks to the excellent educational system, would act as a coercive force if persuasion did not work.400 The negative judgment of others was a good indirect way of compelling guilty people to change their ways.401 After all, public opinion would be important in judging people to ascertain whether they merited incorporation into the Great-Being.402 The priest could use social excommunication in the sense of ostracizing the person first from society and second from the Great-Being. (If the priest abused his power because of secret animosity or overzealousness, he would be punished by public censure or other means. Any believer could bring charges against a priest.) These measures seem fairly mild, but Comte believed in the value of moral pressure; he did not want to resort to coercion in a period when the heart was to predominate. But he admitted that as a last resort the temporal power could use material force, that is, punishment, to exercise control. Although it should not be excessively repressive, punishment was necessary, for there would always be vicious people who must be 398

399 400 401

402

In E. P. Thompson-like words, Comte insisted that workers remind the rest of society of the “moral rules of an economy” whose disturbances hurt them the most. Cat´echisme, 126. Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, 261. Syst`eme, 2:413, 4:72. See also Cat´echisme, 215. He explained that positivist priests could first humiliate the guilty party in front of his or her family. If that did not work, the priest could condemn the person from the pulpit, making him or her bear “public blame.” Syst`eme, 2:215. Ibid., 4:167, 172.

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removed from society. Confiscation of property was one suitable form of punishment. Capital punishment would always be a last resort; Comte assumed its use would be rare once society was reorganized. Since his youth, Comte had deemed capital punishment “useless,” citing Voltaire’s phrase, “A hanged person is good for nothing.”403 Comte discussed at length how society could be changed. He covered celestial and biological influences, the effects of the environment, the impact of other societies, the role of the individual, and so forth.404 Despite the numerous sources of change, Comte insisted that modifications were limited. Using Broussais’s principle about the abnormal being similar to the normal, he wrote, “One can thus conclude . . . that regular existence and its alterations . . . differ only by the intensity of the phenomena . . . without requiring different laws.”405 In terms of social statics, change involved increasing or decreasing intensity, whereas in social dynamics it had to do with different rates of speed. All in all, progress to Comte could only come from order, for movement was inevitably linked to structure. Change always meant evolution, not a complete new beginning. In effect, if radical change were possible, it would be impossible to predict what was to happen in the future, and Comte maintained that prediction was one of the key elements of any science. Much of Comte’s discussion covered material already treated in the Cours. There was one new interesting topic, which had to do with the relationship between race and change. Europeans’ movement into black Africa provoked new ideas on the physical and moral differences between the “civilized” and “primitive” races, reinforcing the tendency to classify groups into “types.”406 Taking advantage of the growing body of knowledge of other cultures, Georges Cuvier was one of the first prominent scholars to present “scientific” evidence to support racism. Whereas race before had simply pertained to lineage, he began to popularize in 1800 a new concept of race as a permanent type of human group that had existed from prehistory. He arranged the races in a hierarchy with blacks at the bottom and whites on top. Henceforth, theorizing about races became increasingly widespread as people became more preoccupied by the rapidly growing gulf, caused by industrialization, between “civilized” Europeans and “savages.” For the first time, this gap seemed unbridgeable, and people now tended to ascribe it to racial differences. Physical differences seemed to account for moral and intellectual ones. Scholars 403 404 405 406

Comte to Valat, May 15, 1818, CG, 38. See Syst`eme, 4:467; Cat´echisme, 217. Comte credited Ferguson with having first seen the impact of various social groups on one another. See Syst`eme, 2:453. Ibid., 2:442. Elizabeth A. Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 207.

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such as Paul Broca, the physical anthropologist who founded the Soci´et´e d’Anthropologie de Paris in 1859, maintained that civilization was reserved for white people, because blacks’ physical structure (especially their small cranial capacity) condemned them to permanent intellectual inferiority.407 This new interest in racism went hand and hand with the more virulent brand of nationalism that was also developing. Comte was very critical of nationalism, whose stress on “independence and national isolation” led to a sense of exclusivity and prevented the development of a worldwide “social reorganization.”408 He did not subscribe to the kind of racism that reinforced it, for it made the establishment of an association of different peoples even more unlikely. Comte argued against thinkers who exaggerated the differences between the races and made them immutable and all-determining. Blainville had shown, according to Comte, that racial differences derived from varied local influences and were “slowly accumulated by heredity.”409 These racial differences, which were tied to the milieu, were not very important because the three main, scientifically determined “races,” the white, black, and yellow, were equivalent. Taking an essentialist position, he asserted that white people were superior in terms of intelligence, black people in terms of their emotions, and yellow people in terms of their activity.410 This theory was designed to accord with several of his schemas. The first was that there were three stages of religion. Blacks corresponded to fetishism, yellow people, that is, Asians, to polytheism, and whites to monotheism. Borrowed from Bichat, the second schema was that human nature had three parts: reason, emotions, and activity. Modifying Gall’s phrenology to fit this arrangement, Comte affirmed that each race had a part of the brain that was more developed. Whites had a more developed frontal region, which governed thought processes. Blacks had a larger back area, where the emotions were gathered. Yellow people, or Asians, had a more pronounced middle region, which governed activity or 407

408 409

410

Michael Banton, Racial Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 28–30; George Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1968), 37–8; William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530–1880 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 210, 221. Cours, 2:33. See also Adam Kuper, The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion (London: Routledge, 1988), 240. Comte argued that the environment affected the nature of a society more than biological differences did. He insisted that those who stressed the impact of race were similar to Montesquieu and others in the eighteenth century who exaggerated the role of climate in pursuit of scientific authority. Climate did have some impact on society, but civilized men would further diminish the social effects of climate so that the entire planet would become habitable. Syst`eme, 2:449, 450; 3:589. See also Cat´echisme, 257. Syst`eme, 3:193. See also Fedi, Comte, 104.

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character. Humanity was not represented by one of these races but by the fusion of them all.411 These various attributes marking each race were the only differences that Comte acknowledged, and as mentioned above, he suggested that they were not fixed, for influences of the environment could cause them to change. (These environmental influences were, however, vague.) Moreover, simply because one race was characterized by one of these attributes, the other characteristics were not necessarily excluded. A black person, for example, could be chiefly emotional yet still partly active and intelligent. Influenced by Lamarck, Comte believed a black person’s activity and intelligence could grow if the parts of the brain governing them were exercised. The result was that racial differences would diminish in importance in the future when “all human forces” would be fully employed thanks to positivism.412 Contrasting Comte with Hegel, Ang`ele KremerMarietti astutely points out, “The dynamic of positive historicity does not demarcate or exclude; on the contrary, it determines the indeterminate elements, it reintegrates isolated elements, it gives to alterity access to identity . . . [T]o Comte, Humanity brings to fruition in . . . history the constitutive elements of man.”413 In the positive era, the intellect would not be considered as crucial as it was in the present, for we would not have to rely as much on our minds to sustain our material existence. Emotions would be more highly prized. Because of these factors, blacks’ status would be enhanced, and they would not seem inferior. Moreover, once “our cerebral constitution” was improved by a fusion of its parts during the positive regime, the complementary differences among the races would tend to disappear.414 In short, what was important to grasp was not racial differences, but the growing similarities among races, which facilitated their ability to associate with one another. Whatever differences, if any, they retained in the future would be appreciated for their contribution to the common good. In this way, the “odious animosities” of the present, that is, “the barbarous prejudices of whites against blacks,” could be transformed into “new sources of universal harmony.”415 Comte’s approach was close to that of the French revolutionaries and the first anthropological society, the Soci´et´e des Observateurs de l’Homme. (Active between 1799 and 1804, this association was closely connected to the Id´eologues, who exerted a large influence on Comte.) According to their theory, which was common in the 411 412

413 415

Muglioni, Auguste Comte, 20–21. Syst`eme, 2:461. On the division of the brain, see ibid., 1:685. See also Ang`ele KremerMarietti, Entre le Signe et l’histoire: L’Anthropologie d’Auguste Comte (Paris: Klincksieck, 1982), 133–5. Kremer-Marietti, Entre le Signe, 134–5. 414 Syst`eme, 3:193. Ibid., 2:261, 449, 461–2; Cat´echisme, 257.

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Enlightenment, human nature was always the same everywhere, and differences in cultures and in the progress of peoples were chiefly environmental. Joseph-Marie Deg´erando, a founding member of this anthropological society, and other philosophers insisted that all peoples, including primitive groups, would gradually reach the level of Europeans by means of philanthropy, commerce, and science. Still a believer in the brotherhood of man and the benefits of universal enlightenment, Comte affirmed this evolutionary view that civilization was within the reach of all groups in the human family. A people was backward, not because of some inherent biological racial defect, as nineteenth-century scientific racists tended to believe, but because of environmental and historical forces.416 All races could become civilized, that is, they could develop their minds, cultivate their sociability, and strengthen their action on nature. Comte believed that the three races indeed experienced progress differently in terms of intensity and speed, but these variations did not represent “radical diversities, each having their own laws.” With the growth of knowledge, which eliminated ignorance and superstition, and with society’s increasing control of nature, the impact of local influences (i.e., climate) on the various peoples of the world would lessen, and the globe would look more uniform. Comte rejected primordial racial differences and rendered all societies as similar as possible in order to uphold his law of three stages, which was a global principle, and to defend his comparative method, whose representation of the beginning of all of human history was based on material relating to contemporary, chiefly nonwhite primitive cultures. There was a “normal type,” from which peoples displaying dissimilar skin colors and living in various climates did not stray significantly. In this way, the “laws of existence and those of evolution must be essentially the same.”417 Such uniformity was necessary for the Great-Being to be unified. But the “normal type” that Comte had in mind was the white race, which he believed at the moment was “everywhere superior to the other two” races, who had to follow its path. After all, intellectual development took the lead in progress, and whites, according to him, had the most developed minds.418 But he preferred not to dwell on any race’s claim to be superior to others, for such claims were dangerous in his eyes; they took away from the unity of the species.419 In sum, Comte disliked Cuvier’s substitution of the term “race” for “people,” for he found the whole “notion” of race “vague,” unscientific, and “irrational.” It did not have a determining effect on society. At times he avoided the term “races” by alluding to the “diverse varieties of the directing species [the human species].” Although he 416 419

Stocking, Race, 14–28, 35–8, 75. Kremer-Marietti, Entre le signe, 93.

417

Syst`eme, 2:450, 451.

418

Ibid., 1:391.

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was enthusiastic about using the authority of science, as he did in his own “science” of society, he did not support the findings of science that maintained racism. For example, Comte denied that China and Japan were inferior countries because of their race. China was undeveloped simply because it had created a “pedantocracy” based on examination results.420 Mandarins were a brake on progress. As for the Japanese, their problems came from the fact that they lacked industrial development, maintained theocratic habits, and isolated themselves from other nations.421 To him, the theory that race was all-determining was as absurd as Montesquieu’s stress on the overall importance of climate. Those who used racial theories were merely attempting “to give themselves a scientific appearance with little effort” to legitimize their prejudices.422 the new scie nce of morality In discussing the causes of social change, Comte also confronted the problem of the role of the individual and his or her impact on society. He declared toward the end of the second volume of the Syst`eme that he felt compelled to create a new science to deal with the individual.423 He was tempted to call it anthropology but decided to refer to it as morality to underscore its “sacred” character.424 The creation of a seventh science, one that was above his new science of sociology in the scientific hierarchy, indicates that his religious construction now was more important to him than his philosophical one. It was also a reminder of how seriously Comte took his relativism. As he said, “One could never objectively fix the number of sciences. . . . Basically, the name given to each science designates only the group of speculations whose unity is found sufficiently recognized; this must vary according to time and the minds of the individuals.”425 Whereas the Cours made sociology the object of all the sciences, the Syst`eme would make morality the supreme science as well as the premier art, which everyone would have to learn. In a sense, morality, the science of the individual man, would complement sociology, the science of 420 422 423 424

425

Syst`eme, 4:515. 421 Ibid., 4:516–17. Syst`eme, 2:449–50, 461–2. See also Kremer-Marietti, Entre le Signe, 130. Syst`eme, 2:437; 4:549. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” October 13, 1847, MAC. It is difficult to state the immediate cause of Comte’s decision to make morality into a science. In a classification sketch of September 1849, he still considered sociology, or the “Science of the Great-Being” the “final science.” See Comte, “Manuscripts,” “Tableau” of September 1, 1849, MAC. Also, there is no mention of morality as a science in the first volume of the Syst`eme. Syst`eme, 2:437; 4:187, 549. See also Annie Petit, “Des Sciences positives a` la politique positive,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivists, ed. Petit, 113.

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humanity.426 The new science represented a large change in Comte’s doctrine. He had previously thought it would be “absurd” to treat morality “as a distinct science” because it should be part of the science of politics, that is, sociology.427 Comte did not dwell on the change in his approach, making it difficult to discern the reasons for his decision to create a new science. In his recent works, he had frequently defended his stance on the need to uphold liberty in response to leftists’ criticisms that he disregarded individual freedom. Mill had also attacked him on this score and had offered ethology and psychology as crucial to the study of human nature.428 Comte originally had thought that Mill and other critics would understand that morality was an inherent part of sociology (especially social statics), but now because he feared it was not able “to prevail sufficiently” and no one recognized its importance, he sought to make it a separate science. To anchor his new science in tradition, he claimed that its roots could be found in Greek antiquity, which regarded the “knowledge of man as the true goal of every science.”429 Moreover, one must remember that ruminations about the human condition were endemic to French philosophy. Pascal, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Voltaire come immediately to mind.430 Comte’s youthful interest in reading about Benjamin Franklin, who was popular in France, demonstrated that he had always been concerned with the improvement of the individual. Indeed, on his examination tour of 1843, he took with him Franklin’s autobiography.431 Laffitte later gave another explanations as to why Comte imposed a new science upon sociology. Originally, Comte, motivated by his desire to give an intellectual direction to society, had insisted that sociology was necessary to discipline the natural sciences. But the organization of knowledge was “not completed by that measure because sociology itself was exposed, without any direction of its own.” Morality was created to give sociology the guidance it needed, and it was also influenced by the social point of view that sociology upheld. Morality pushed people to think for the first time about “really important questions,” such as what conditions had to be fulfilled in order for individuals to live in society. It thus eliminated from 426

427 428 429 430 431

On this interesting point, see Michel Bourdeau, “Science de l’homme, ou science de l’Humanit´e?” in Auguste Comte et l’id´ee de science de l’homme, ed. Michel Bourdeau and Franc¸ois Chazel (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 279–82, 293. “De la Division qui a exist´e jusqu’`a pr´esent entre la morale et la politique” (1819), Ecrits de jeunesse, 471. Laurent Clauzade, “Auguste Comte et Stuart Mill: Les Enjeux de la psychologie,” Revue d’Histoire des sciences humaines 8 (2003): 47. Ibid., 2:433; 3:5; 4:229. Fedi, Comte, 70. See A. Comte, “Ma Biblioth`eque de voyage en 1843,” Manuscripts, MAC.

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sociology “premature or futile questions.”432 The subjective synthesis now would begin with morality, which would guide everyone’s actions to enhance Humanity’s well-being and advancement.433 In addition, the new importance Comte gave to the subjective synthesis necessitated that he spend more energy thinking about the individual.434 As Laurent Fedi points out, Comte was more interested in diversifying his approach to “man” than one imagines.435 Comte disliked the way in which the study of the human being was partitioned among “three classes of thinkers”: “doctors who study only the body, philosophers who believe they study the mind, and priests who study especially the heart.”436 This specialization was absurd, according to Comte, who was increasingly dedicated to discovering the laws governing the relations between the body and soul, that is, the outer physical world and the inner moral and intellectual world; these laws, he lamented, were “still too scarcely known.”437 Comte claimed that his new study of morality was a synthetic science that studied the individual in all his or her multiple layers. The individual was more particular and more complex than society and was harder to study.438 Thus morality was more complex than sociology, for it dealt with individual and social influences, whereas the latter just covered the effects of society.439 Comte attributed the complexity of individuals to the numerous diverse influences on them, including those coming from their penchants and from social forces. The fact that there were many individual aberrations made it difficult to create general scientific laws.440 Such was not the case with society, whose regularity facilitated the formulation of natural laws. Sociology was a valid science for the study of society but could not hope to take into account individuals, who were not units of society and tended to be exceptions to laws.441 From the point of view both of solidarity and of continuity, which were studied by sociology, the individual was not significant. Indeed, concerned with collective 432

433 434 437 438 439 440

441

Laffitte to Comte, August 3, 1851, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d. ser. 36 (July 1907): 101–2. See also Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” May 2, 1847, MAC. Levine, Visions of the Sociological Tradition, 167. Pierre Arnaud, Cat´echisme, 303n24. 435 Fedi, Comte, 81. 436 Syst`eme, 2:437. Cat´echisme, 95. Syst`eme, 2:265; Cat´echisme, 131. On anthropology, see Syst`eme, 2:437. See also Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” October 13, 1847, MAC. Cat´echisme, 95. Comte also discussed the difficulties inherent in the study of different families, but he came up with one sociological law: as an association such as society grows more extensive, the units that compose it, such as families, increasingly depend on each other, and “the influences which distinguish them gradually disappear.” Syst`eme, 2:264, 363. Cat´echisme, 95.

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existence, sociology proceeded by overlooking the nature of individuals and the influences on them. Moreover, sociology could not deepen our investigation of the individual because it did not sufficiently consider the emotions. “Our sentiments do not play a role in sociology . . . except for the impulse that they give to common life and for the modifications that they derive from it.”442 Only morality would investigate the laws of the emotions because it dealt with the individual in his or her specificity. Comte seemed to recognize that he had exaggerated the social point of view to the detriment of our understanding of the individual’s relation to society.443 As KremerMarietti points out, Critics have not always realized that Comte’s study of society begins with the individual and self-interest. Like [Adam] Ferguson, Comte makes the general interest flow from individual interest, just as the social instinct channels individual interests to support altruism. Social concern shapes the attitudes of the individual and guides his intellectual activities. Thus egoism, which is ultimately transformed into altruism, need not be suppressed. The individual will overcome his social insufficiency by aiding others.444

Franc¸ois Dagonet also suggests that to Comte, religion signified “the alliance of a man with himself and with others.”445 To develop a moral, religious spirit, one had to begin with oneself. In sum, morality presided over, depended on, and represented the endpoint of the encyclopedic scale of the sciences.446 It was necessary to study the sciences preceding morality in the hierarchy because an individual could not be understood without a prior grasp of the natural world and humanity, on which he or she depended.447 Biology in particular dealt with the human body, which was critical to understand. (Yet biology had its limitations because it considered humans as animals, not individuals.) Sociology was important because the laws of human nature were best understood when one studied their influence in society. Morality in a sense combined biology and sociology, the two other sciences that touched on the human order, and in this way systematized the “special knowledge of our individual nature.”448 All 442 444 445 446 447

448

Ibid., 132. 443 Bourdeau, “Science de l’homme,” 293. Kremer-Marietti, introduction to The Correspondence of Mill and Comte, 18. Franc¸ois Dagonet, “D’Une Certaine Unit´e de la pens´ee d’Auguste Comte: Science et religion ins´eparables?” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’´etranger, no. 4 (1985): 419. Appel, 12. One also needed to study the different scientific methods because the new science of morality used both the inductive and deductive methods. It used deductions from biology and sociology. It also used induction by observing individual existence. Syst`eme, 4:184. Ibid., 2:438.

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three sciences, which he often referred to as “anthropology,” represented Comte’s answer to the psychology of his day, which he found distasteful. Biology, sociology, and morality could shed more light on what it meant to be human than any philosophy of the self or ego. Annie Petit astutely points out that after having been attacked by Comte, psychology paradoxically reemerges: it “subverts frontiers” and is “present everywhere.”449 Comte was very much in advance of other thinkers of his day in concluding that psychology had to resist metaphysical speculations, take off from the biological study of the brain, incorporate the findings of sociology, and remember the importance of morality.450 The ramifications of this new science of morality were unclear. Comte claimed that it was the most synthetic science because it was most closely connected with practice, which consisted of guiding the individual’s thoughts and actions to focus on the Great-Being.451 Yet there was a certain tension in his approach. On one hand, the science of morality seemed designed to highlight the role of individuals in changing society. Comte constantly encouraged his contemporaries to modify the universal order to better their condition and their nature, not to show off their power. They could increase their control over their destiny by improving first the physical order, then the intellectual order, and finally the moral order. He believed that driven by their new positivist morality, people would serve the Great-Being in these various ways with enthusiasm. Yet on the other hand, Comte repeatedly suggested that only the social was real and that individuals could not dramatically affect their society. He wished to eliminate anomalies in order to make sure that the global society progressed in a lockstep fashion. Thus, according to him, statesmen and other men could have only a limited impact, for they were subject to the general conditions of society, the direction of history, and the natural environment. Individuals could change at most the intensity and speed of developments, not the nature of those developments. For example, Napoleon’s tyrannical abuse of power retarded the evolution of the Western revolution for only one generation. Frederick the Great reinforced a progressive movement that was already in process. Referring to contemporary developments, Comte insisted that Napoleon III’s regressive actions could not threaten the coming French republic. Despite the weakness of his following, Comte took comfort in the belief that no one could stop his positivist movement, which was in keeping with the times. He implied, moreover, that once his movement triumphed, the impact of one people on another and the 449 450

Annie Petit, “Conflits et renouveau de la psychologie comtienne,” in Auguste Comte et l’id´ee de science de l’homme, ed. Bourdeau and Chazel, 104. Syst`eme, 2:110. 451 Cat´echisme, 131.

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influence of one individual on a society would diminish even further. One reason for this change was the growth of industry, which countered militarism, ending wars and violence. Another reason was the greater respect given to the dead. Because the past would increasingly dominate the present, there would be less susceptibility to the destabilizing effects of international influences or of powerful, ambitious individuals.452 Once again, he reminded his readers that the GreatBeing was composed chiefly of the dead who ruled us. To illustrate his principle, Comte referred to de Vaux, whom he claimed to have incorporated into the Great-Being in 1849.453 The next volume of the Syst`eme would be devoted to demonstrating that “all the dead govern directly the thoughts and affections of the living.”454 It was hard to see much personal liberty or potential for change in a society weighed down by tradition and a cult of the dead. There was something hypocritical in Comte’s approach. One person from the past haunted the pages of the Syst`eme. Although Comte did not acknowledge the influence of his past mentor, he used SaintSimon’s ideas in the closing pages of the volume where he explained that henceforth commands would be used less frequently. We no longer had to develop our forces but simply regulate them. With our greater sense of discipline and control, “our adult constitution will be characterized . . . by the preponderance of arrangement.” Saint-Simon had remarked years before that government would change in character in much the same fashion, from commands to regulations. Perhaps it was not just by chance that Comte felt compelled to deny once the influence of his former mentor in the preface to the third volume of the Syst`eme.455 The past might dominate others but not Comte, who rewrote his history. Morality might be of supreme importance, but not always to Comte, who was not completely forthright about his intellectual debts. 452

453 454 455

Comte pointed to the examples of Algeria, Corsica, and Alsace as national entities that were resisting domination by a foreign country, namely France. One example of the diminishing power of individuals was the greater impact that Attila had had in comparison to Napoleon. Comte to Audiffrent, July 29, 1851, CG, 6:118. Syst`eme, 4:77. Indeed, he argued that the power of priests and women would grow because they were more turned toward the past and the dead. Ibid., 2:469; 3:xvi.

Chapter 5

Syst`eme de politique positive: Comte’s Philosophy of History

The present century will be principally characterized by the irrevocable preponderance of history in philosophy, in politics, and even in poetry. Auguste Comte

introduction Reflecting Comte’s obsession with the domination of the dead and covering the destiny of the Great-Being, which was the object of his religion, the third volume of the Syst`eme was devoted to the “sacred science” of history.1 Because he was so familiar with history, he spent only six months writing this volume – February to August 1853 – in contrast to the two years he devoted to composing the second volume.2 After all, he had already treated social dynamics in depth in the Cours, where it was featured in the last lesson of volume four of the Cours, all of volume five, and over half of volume six. History had even seeped into volume two of the Syst`eme, which covered social statics. Social dynamics was the part of sociology that Comte developed with the most enthusiasm, perhaps because this historical component was what made sociology distinctive, that is, different from biology, whence he had pulled so many terms, such as “consensus,” “organicism,” and “regulation,” to apply to society.3 Comte boasted that he organized his ideas on history in a “more profound and more complete” manner in the Syst`eme than in the Cours, where his overview of the past was only sketchy. Yet at the same time, he admitted that he had not actually fulfilled his promise to provide more historical details to prove his points. The reason he gave was that he wished to remain on a philosophical level. Indeed he proudly called this volume his “Philosophy of History” – a phrase that he used increasingly in the mid-1850s.4 Moreover, now that he felt he 1 2 3 4

Syst`eme, 3:2; Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:457. See his records of his work, in Laffitte, ed., “Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” 446–7. Braunstein, “Canguilhem, Comte et le positivisme,” 108–10. Syst`eme, 3:v, vii; Appel, 9; Comte to George Frederick Holmes, August 4, 1853, in Neal C. Gillespie and Gerald H. Davis, “Auguste Comte: Four Lost Letters to America,” Journal

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was on the same elevated level as his “principal ancestors,” Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz, he could leave the tasks of “verification and development” to the public as they had done.5 Comte was certain that his historical approach was in keeping with the tenor of the age. With its law of three stages, positivism embodied the “universal supremacy of the historical point of view” and could even be said to have resulted in part from his own preoccupation with the past. Only the past and future, the subjects of volumes three and four, mattered to Comte; they were his forms of escape. To him, preoccupation with the present, which was a “vague and rapid transition between two immensities” of time, was “immoral” and “irrational.” Alluding to the “infinite doubts” that arose from contemplating the present, Comte seemed to express his uncertainty about not only the meaning of Napoleon III’s takeover but also the course of action positivists should take at the moment. Nevertheless, he knew that the task of the new positivist clergy, himself included, was “speaking to the living in the name of all the dead.” He had to explain to contemporaries their relationship to the past generations, whose influence over them was ever growing. His fixation with the past, including his own past, was evident even in the preface, where he discussed at length his memories of preparing this volume and reviewed all his own intellectual “ancestors,” except Saint-Simon.6 Comte was optimistic about the reception of his volume. Commenting on its publication in September 1853, he wrote, “Considering the present enthusiasm for historical studies, I hope that this new volume has a more vast and rapid success than the two preceding ones and that it will make them more appreciated.”7 Indeed, many

5 6

7

of the History of Philosophy 8 (1970): 60. This letter is not in CG. Comte was interested in the grand narrative of history, one that had to do with the direction that Humanity was heading. Laws of history, such as the law of three stages, are what engaged him. Thus it is paradoxical that what he advocated is precisely the opposite of what we usually call “positivist history”: detailed history full of rigorously documented facts relating to men and events. This kind of history, which lacked depth and focused on political events, was practiced by historians such as Charles Langlois, Charles Seignobos, Gabriel Monod, and Ernest Lavisse. Comte’s history, with its emphasis on the longue dur´ee, continuity, and interdisciplinary approaches, was more akin to the practices of the Annales School. See Petit, “La R´evolution occidentale,” 31; Fedi, Comte, 14, 155. Syst`eme, 3:vii–viii. He obviously reconsidered his position, because in 1854 he announced that he would give a course on his philosophy of history in 1855. Ibid., 4:xiv. Ibid., 2:364, 3:vii, viii, 1. He emphasized that he had prepared the volume by giving a course on the history of humanity in 1849, 1850, and 1850. He appended a program to “perpetuate the memory of such a preparation.” In this way, he provided the history of his own course on history. See ibid., 3:vi. Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:98. In 1854, Audiffrent gave almost two thousand francs to help with the costs of publication. Comte to Audiffrent, December 25, 1855, CG, 8:161; Testament (1896 ed.), 14.

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of his disciples praised the Syst`eme for its clear exposition of the past.8 Perhaps because it whetted many of his contemporaries’ appetite for history, more people did take an interest in Comte’s works after the publication of this third volume. As a result, the Positivist Subsidy grew.9 The audience that Comte targeted was the conservative camp. Appealing to conservatives’ love of tradition, he claimed that unlike other philosophies of history, his system preserved and consecrated all the previous periods of the past, each of which at its height was “a necessary element of human development.”10 Comte was certain that one of the chief causes of the “Occidental illness,” that is, his contemporaries’ sense of alienation, was the “continual revolt of individual reason against all human antecedents.”11 He believed that this destructive attitude had been developed by the Enlightenment thinkers, who prided themselves on critiquing and breaking with the past. Now contemporary leftists displayed this attitude.12 He would rescue the past, showing that it provided us with stability, unity, and harmony. The Middle Ages, which was reviled particularly by the philosophes and leftists, furnished models of order that were still viable. Furthermore, he reassured conservatives that his interest in progress did not mean he condoned anarchy. In any case, he wanted them not to fear innovation. Their support for a constitutional monarchy in 1830 indicated that they could accept change. Thus true “conservationists of order” who feared regression should be willing to become “directors of progress.”13 To bolster his appeal to these progressive conservatives, who he assumed would rule until the positivist dictatorship was established, he announced that positivist statesmen would come from their ranks. His enthusiasm for workers, which had already diminished somewhat in his last volume, was even less evident in this volume. Perhaps he felt that he had already targeted 8

9 10 11 12

See, for example, Hutton to Comte, January 29, 1854, MAC. Inspired by Martineau’s example, Hutton wanted to translate the third volume because he believed Comte’s philosophy of history would attract many English disciples. He even wrote to Harriet Martineau for her advice. In addition, Hutton wanted to add a preface critiquing the philosophies of history of Comte’s “predecessors” – Bossuet, Vico, Bolingbroke, Herder, Kant, Condorcet, de Maistre, Hegel, Henry Hallam, and Montesquieu. Comte rejected the idea of reviewing the doctrines of these thinkers, whom he deemed now “almost superfluous.” He wanted Hutton to show how the third volume depended on the first two in order to encourage people to read them. Yet Hutton could not find a publisher. Chapman was afraid of losing money and refused to help. See Hutton to Comte, January 29, February 12, March 25, 1854, October 19, 1856; Comte to Hutton, February 9, April 13, 1854, CG, 7:187, 202. Comte to Bligni`eres, August 28, 1853, CG, 7:117. Syst`eme, 3:ix. See also Synth`ese, 116. Syst`eme, 2:458; Comte, “Huiti`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1857, CG, 8:374. Cat´echisme, 30. 13 Syst`eme, 4:367.

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workers in the Cat´echisme, which was written the year before, and it was time to move on to another potential source of supporters. To cement his relationship with the right, Comte launched into a tirade against the left, whose leaders he considered the “principal enemies of the new faith.”14 Thanks to the left’s demagogic tendencies, anarchism, negativity, and egalitarianism, no one knew what to believe anymore. Intellectual disagreements, the chief source of contemporary anarchy, affected emotional life.15 Family and social ties were at risk. One sign of his contemporaries’ deficient morality, according to Comte, was their refusal to support the Positivist Subsidy as punishment for his having approved the elimination of parliament. Once again the public and the private were confused in his mind. Just as he justified his abandonment of the revolutionaries in favor of the conservatives, Comte also rationalized his turn from the West to the East. Appending his manifestos to Nicholas I and Reshid Pasha, he explained that he had given up on Western governments, which rejected his doctrine because they were “too taken with retrograde empiricism.”16 Nicholas and Reshid Pasha represented the kind of conservative with whom he hoped to develop relations. Writing in 1853, he publicly exonerated Nicholas from any real involvement in the struggle against Turkey in the Crimea, a position that would later prove embarrassing to positivists when war broke out in that region. To appease conservatives, Comte announced that the study of history revealed “its unique law: man becomes increasingly religious.”17 As mentioned previously, religion had to do with cooperation. As people became more cooperative, they made more connections with other human beings, which encouraged “full unity” in both individual and collective live. Religion also involved regulating behavior in both the private and public spheres.18 Comte sought to reassure his conservative readers that God might be dead, but religion was not. Despite the growth of individualism, society persisted, resting on social ties and regulations. Social dynamics looked at history according to this principle, explaining that individuals were more closely connected with other individuals than they used to be and that their conduct was increasingly regulated, all in the interest of unity. This concern with regulation appeared later in the works of Max Weber and Michel Foucault, but Comte regarded it in a more favorable light than did these later thinkers. 14 15

16 18

Ibid., 3:x. Comte maintained that modern anarchy was “essentially intellectual” and resulted from the “betrayal of the intellect, which, while dreaming about a vicious domination, puts itself in the service of force . . . instead of subordinating itself to the influence of morality.” Appel, 28, 132. Syst`eme, 3:xiii. 17 Ibid., 3:10. See also Cat´echisme, 264. Syst`eme, 3:9. See also Comte to Sabatier, April 2, 1857, CG, 8:429.

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Comte declared that history had three aspects, corresponding to the three facets of human nature: sentiment, intelligence, and activity. Sentiment, which was related to religion, represented the source of human unity. Pushing us to act, it was also a motor force behind progress. In addition, the cultivation of the emotions was a prime goal of progress. Indeed, the growth of our affections, or sociability, ultimately provided “the best measure of all of human development.”19 What most influenced the affections was the mind and activity. More in contact with the exterior world than the emotions were, our intellectual and active functions were close associates; our activity pushed our mind to know the outside world in order to modify it. Encouraging social cooperation, the mind and activity were the chief stimuli of progress. Once again, Comte tended to see material drives as more important than intellectual ones.20 As Audiffrent pointed out, to Comte, “all knowledge is a social institution and . . . our conceptions could not be the exact, faithful, representation of reality; . . . [they are] institutions, approximations that are demanded by our needs.”21 Everything had to be related to Humanity, and positivism had to do with what was useful. Scharff also points out that to Comte, “practical-mindedness” was the “attitude most suitable to maintaining” the harmony between human beings and their surroundings.22 But Comte qualified what seemed to be at first an embrace of materialism. He wrote, Despite the abstract independence dreamed of by the pride of the theoricians, all our mental revolutions therefore emanate from the successive needs of our practical situation. The activity which our instincts inspire according to our needs always regulates the general exercise of our intellect. Nevertheless, the latter preserves an extreme importance, as the necessary minister of the former. For, our manner of conceiving the natural order profoundly influences the steps we follow to modify it, even in our individual lives. But our social life especially develops this intellectual function, which at first is the only source of the community of opinions necessary for any kind of cooperation, and then furnishes the unique basis of the indispensable consecration of the corresponding authority.

Derived from our intellect, ideas were most significant because the mind judged everything and gave us our opinions of the “moral world and physical world.” These opinions guided our activity. Because the intellect directed human progress and the laws of the mind were clearer in the study of social evolution than in individual development, 19 21

Syst`eme, 3:252. 20 See his comments on Condorcet, ibid., 3:13. Audiffrent, R´eponse, 21. 22 Scharff, Comte After Positivism, 77.

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social dynamics highlighted the history of the mind.23 As Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti has aptly pointed out, Auguste Comte, who would not deprive the mind of its deeprootedness in concrete reality, can affirm that the history of society is dominated by the history of the human mind on the condition, in order not to fall into an empty idealism, that one understands the mind as the development of the relations between man and his milieu. The organism and the milieu are as inseparable as the individual and society.24

Reminding his readers of the need to contextualize intellectual history and uphold relativism, Comte pointed out that “mental harmony” changed from one period to another, especially because throughout history, there was a shifting equilibrium in our minds as they negotiated between impressions from the outside and inspirations from the inside.25 As in the first volume, Comte emphasized the subjective nature of our understanding. He brought up the law of three stages, the first sociological law, which showed the development of the different methods of understanding. The subjective method was “at first absolute” and directed humans at the start of history, especially during the period of fetishism.26 It was gradually subordinated to the objective method during the theological and metaphysical stages. However, the subjective method would return to preside “more and more” over our last stage of history. But it would be “relative,” respectful of reality, and careful to avoid references to first causes.27 As our observations of phenomena became more complete, our explanatory hypotheses coming from within would grow more complex. The “scientific spirit” would acquire once again “its rational liberty, now repressed by empirical scruples,” that is, scruples about trying to depict reality in an exact fashion. Comte recommended the following, more modest course of action: We [must] freely form verifiable hypotheses in order to institute laws sufficient for our conduct, without aspiring any longer to the perfect representation of the world or the full satisfaction of the mind. Mental unity [should never be] . . . sought independently of the general unity 23

24 25

26

Syst`eme, 3:14–17. Comte maintained that the individual mind was too narrow to reflect the intellectual progress of the entire species and that mental phenomena could not be studied in isolation, apart from their social context. Ibid., 3:46–7. Kremer-Marietti, Le Projet Anthropologique, 68. Comte again emphasized that people were subject to their environment, which fed, stimulated, and regulated them. The physical world even gave them the sensations at the base of their thoughts. Comte prided himself on developing this key concept of Aristotle. Syst`eme, 3:22, 311. Appel, 27. 27 Cat´echisme, 272.

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that results from a correct subordination of speculation to action and of action to affection.28

By stressing moral considerations in the creation of scientific laws and carefully avoiding the rule of the mind, Comte believed that he ensured the smooth development of our emotions, which were stifled when positivism was in its initial stages of growth. Yet he did not see the dangers that could arise if moral concerns were to take precedence over intellectual ones. Who, after all, would decide the moral code of a particular society? Comte seemed to assume that what constituted morality was clear to everyone. Besides this law of three stages, there was the sociological law of classification. Scientific conceptions were arranged in a hierarchy according to the decreasing generality and increasing complexity of their subject matter. In keeping with his renewed moral concerns, Comte modified this law. He had previously highlighted its “objective”character when he stated that the decreasing generality of phenomena determined their place in the natural hierarchy. From a physical point of view, more specialized phenomena were higher in the hierarchy; they depended on and modified more general phenomena under them. They themselves could be modified more than the general phenomena below them. The sciences that studied the more specialized phenomena were also higher in the scientific hierarchy. He now explained the “subjective” character of this law of classification, which would triumph in the positivist era. From an intellectual point of view, the most general phenomena and the most general scientific laws were the simplest and most independent. Specialized ones were more complex. From a moral point of view, the most complex, specialized phenomena and scientific laws were the most dignified. Comte summed up his position, From simple mathematical existence . . . to human existence, one can construct an immense series, . . . where each term is simultaneously more particular, more complex, and more eminent than its predecessors. This hierarchy permits us to appreciate the growing dignity of the diverse positive studies as their subjects become less material or more human.

He pointed out that the human was the most specialized and complex phenomenon and thus furnished “naturally the universal measure of the real nobility of the different beings.” Comte prided himself on looking at the “nobility” of the different natural phenomena as a way of demonstrating that he had escaped “materialism,” which he 28

Syst`eme, 3:25–7. On Comte’s proposal to accept our limited understanding of the world, see Michel Houellebecq, “Pr´eliminaires au positivisme,” in Auguste Comte aujourd’hui, ed. Michel Bourdeau, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, and Annie Petit, 12.

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defined as the “spontaneous tendency of the inferior sciences to dominate and even absorb the superior ones.”29 There were two types of materialism that Comte particularly disliked: mathematical materialism, which reduced what was complex to something simple, and medical materialism, which focused exclusively on the physical causes of illnesses, reduced biology to physics and chemistry, and made sociology part of biology.30 Comte embraced hierarchies partly to escape the reductionist tendencies inherent in materialism. Coordinating his theory of classification with his theory of the cerebral constitution, he reviewed the three classes of natural laws – physical, intellectual, and moral. The laws relating to the physical order covered material and living phenomena and corresponded to practical activities, such as military and industrial work. These laws were more general but less complex and noble than laws of the human order, which included the intellectual and moral laws. The study of physical laws, which was fairly straightforward, constituted good preparation for the study of the human order, which was more difficult and intense, especially because intellectual and moral phenomena were apt to engage our prejudices and were susceptible to greater modification. In discussing the laws of the human order, Comte made it clear that he wanted sociology to focus on intellectual laws, although they often entailed input from biology and morality. He wrote, Sociology is reduced essentially to the true science of the understanding. The static or dynamic study of the human mind includes the exercise of practical reason as much as the growth of theoretical reason. Although the latter must prevail in the demonstration of the fundamental law of the intellectual movement, the former really dominates in the historic appreciation, as the principal source of the successive modifications of the mental regime. . . . Thus . . . the science of the mind necessarily constitutes the very major part of sociology.

While sociology would take care of intellectual laws, the new science of morality would deal with the emotions, which push us to act.31 Feelings dominated our intellect and activity, indeed our entire existence, and thus governed our conduct. The laws of the moral order were the most noble, specialized, and complex. In sum, reflecting the historical development of the seven sciences, our progress was first physical or material, then intellectual, and finally moral. The same progression was apparent in the individual, who first 29 30 31

Syst`eme, 3:41–3. See also ibid., 2:625–7. Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “La Critique comtienne du mat´erialisme,” Pr´esences du Mat´erialisme, ed. Jacques D’Hondt and Georges Festa (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 184–6. Ibid., 3:47–8. See also Cat´echisme, 263.

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focused on material power, then appreciated the efficacy of intellectual power, and finally in his maturity understood the importance of moral power, which was the most specific and complex. The most important progress was moral progress, that is, the development of our instincts and emotions. As mentioned above, moral progress was generated by changes in our thoughts and activities, which in turn were influenced by the external order, the object of our ideas and actions. The outside world regulated our emotions in two ways: by exciting them because of the ideas that it supplied or by exercising them due to the strenuous activities required to modify the external order. Comte wrote, “The true theory of our moral nature thus represents the exterior order as tending to regulate increasingly not only the natural course of our theoretical and practical operations, but also the effective growth of our penchants.” Because the intellect gave us knowledge of the external order, it affected not only our activities but our sentiments, determining “ultimately the effective character of religion for the individual and especially for the species at each phase of our evolution.” In other words, to reach a fully unified state on both a personal and social level, we must recognize that our thoughts, feelings, and actions depended on a fixed, independent, exterior world, which was simpler and more regular than either the individual or society. We must try to understand the exterior world, but not in a passive manner. We must make this world the endpoint of our activity and modify it wisely in areas where change was possible. We must also embrace the world as an object of affection. If the exterior world became their focal point in these various ways, our opinions, emotions, and actions would all work together more effectively. The existence of a natural order with a certain fixity made our lives more stable. It also brought everyone together because they were under the same outside power and sought cooperation and unity to work in the practical sphere to modify the outside world. Practical life thus helped develop love. Comte concluded, “In short, the principal religious difficulty consists of making sure that the outside regulates the inside without altering its spontaneity.”32 Having examined the two sociological laws relating to the intellect, the law of three stages and the law of classification, Comte next turned to the third law of social dynamics, which involved the history of activity.33 This law confirmed that activity evolved from conquest to defense to work (or industry). Like Marx, Comte pointed out that the normal state of activity was work, which involved “our useful action 32 33

Ibid., 2:26–7. Comte attributed this law to Hume, who first saw the “irrevocable preponderance of industrial life.” Ibid., 3:62. Comte also commended Dunoyer’s development of Hume’s theory.

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on the human milieu” to satisfy our material needs.34 As we have seen, work was the source of social cooperation, unity, and development. But just as observation depended on a preexisting theory of some sort, work depended on the prior existence of social unity, especially because most men hated regular work. Just as this circular problem led to the development of fictive beings in the first stage of intellectual life, this dilemma in temporal existence was resolved by the growth of military activity, which came from the “natural preponderance of the destructive instinct over the constructive instinct.” Despite its violence, people liked military activity. Indeed, Comte seemed to evaluate military life more favorably in some regards than industrial life, which he condemned as egoistic and rife with fraud. At the least, he appreciated its role in history. Warlike activity led to the development of “consistent and durable associations,” which were required for its effectiveness.35 It also helped extend and unite a society because one people would get together, dominate, and incorporate another people. Besides encouraging a deep sense of solidarity, it led to the development of such sentiments as veneration for one’s leaders and good habits like obedience and command. It stimulated the mind, which had to think especially of strategies, and it made people exert themselves physically. Military activity thus encouraged progress. Whereas antiquity specialized in systematic conquest, the later Roman era and feudal period limited themselves to defensive activity, which allowed the growth of industrial enterprises. A hybrid society, combining elements of both military and industrial life, grew up in the Middle Ages. Unable to devote themselves entirely to war and having to think of other activities, people began to overcome their repugnance toward work. Comte maintained that there was perfect concordance between his law of temporal evolution (activity) and the double law of intellectual progress.36 The three modes of practical activity – conquest, defense, and industrial work – corresponded to the three stages of intelligence – fiction, abstraction, and demonstration. There was, in addition, a law of emotional development that was consistent with these practical and intellectual histories. There were three stages of sentiment. In antiquity, the social instinct was civic. In the Middle Ages, it became collective. In the positive age, it would become universal. This progression reflected the growing importance of altruism, thanks in part to the diminution of the personal instincts, such as the desire for sex. Again, he mentioned that one sign of this growth of sociability was the improvement of the condition of women and their increased 34 36

Ibid., 3:56. 35 Cat´echisme, 263. In the Cat´echisme, Comte also referred to “the double law of mental evolution.” Ibid., 261.

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influence.37 Comte concluded, “Given that our evolution consists only of the development of our nature, the three laws [the double law of three stages and classification, the law of temporal activity, and the law of affection] . . . show that we are always becoming more intelligent, more active, and more loving.”38 After explaining his different laws of history in general terms, Comte showed their operation in the various stages of the past – stages that he assumed were universal. He sought above all to underscore the importance of continuity in history, for he believed that his contemporaries were too present-minded and disdainful of certain periods in the past, especially the Middle Ages.39 History provided him another tool with which to bolster his authority. Robert Scharff makes the novel argument that Comte stressed the importance of putting philosophical issues within a historical context to promote reflection because he did not have faith in scientism with its belief in objectivity. “Every orientation in thinking is inescapably shaped by its inheritance.”40 As a developing philosophy, positivism needed to be cognizant of its inheritance, including its kinship to prescientific activities. Comte wanted to highlight the sources of his positivist synthesis to give it further legitimacy. fetishism: thoughts on racism and sexism To advance historical self-understanding, Comte began his exposition of humans’ struggle to explain and control nature with the earliest, most spontaneous, and longest stage of theocracy – a stage when individuals worshipped fetishist gods who were assumed to reside in and animate surrounding objects. The scholar William Pietz has pointed out, “‘Fetish’ has always been a word of sinister pedigree.”41 The 37

38 39 40 41

Syst`eme, 3; 69. Later he added that there were three phases in the growth of sympathetic instincts. In infancy, we develop attachment because of the intimacy of our relations. In childhood, we cultivate veneration because of a growing appreciation of connections and a sense of our own powerlessness. In adolescence, we develop kindness because we feel our “independence and the protection we can exercise.” The social evolution of these sympathetic emotions was evident during the three stages of theocracy. Ibid., 3:188. Ibid., 3:72. He condemned contemporary Protestants and deists for discrediting this period. Cat´echisme, 206–7. Scharff, Comte after Positivism, x. William Pietz, “The Problem of the Fetish, I,” Res 9 (Spring 1985), 5. Although not sanctioned by the French Academy until 1835, the term “fetish” had roots that were several centuries old. The medieval Portuguese word feitic¸o derived from the Latin adjective facticius (“manufactured” or “man-made”) and referred to magical, witchcraft-like practices and objects of simple, uneducated people. Applied by the Portuguese to the West Africans in the sixteenth century, the term later evolved into the pidgin word Fetisso, which

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eighteenth-century philosophes regarded fetish-worshiping African savages as mired in illogic, injustice, and immorality – vices that came from being “unenlightened,” that is, ignorant of the scientific view of causality and the impersonal rule of law.42 Most of the great nineteenth-century thinkers continued to give the term a negative meaning.43 G. W. F. Hegel wrote that African fetish-worshipers stood outside of history; they had no sense of movement or “universality,” and they indulged in “perfect contempt for humanity.”44 Marx used the term pejoratively in his allusion to the “fetishism” of commodities; according to him, objects were worshiped for their mysterious, “mystical” values regardless of their usefulness.45 Unlike Hegel, Marx, and other thinkers, Auguste Comte looked favorably on fetishism. A construct tied to his theories of race and gender, Comte’s image of

42

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European traders used to refer to the natives’ religious objects. To the Europeans, the Africans gave either excessive economic value to trinkets or religious meaning to trifles. Confronted with this radically different culture, the Europeans found the Africans’ worship of these objects or Fetissos to be emblematic of their credulous, superstitious nature and their irrationality in not being able to assign a “proper” market value to material goods. William Pietz, “The Problem of the Fetish, II,” Res 13 (Spring 1987), 23–5, 41. William Pietz, “The Problem of the Fetish, IIIa,” Res 16 (Autumn 1988), 106, 122. The actual term “fetishism” was coined in 1757 by Charles de Brosses, an influential lawyer, who wrote Du Culte des dieux f´etiches (1760). He considered fetishism a universal primitive stage of religion and a form of mental consciousness common to all peoples in “their first childhood.” Preceding polytheism and monotheism, which differed from it in featuring transcendent divinities, fetishism could apply to any “savage” people among whom the “objects of worship are animals or inanimate beings that are made into gods” with power over the natural and human worlds. Charles de Brosses, Du Culte des dieux f´etiches (1760; Paris: Fayard, 1988), 11, 13. Comte may have heard of fetishism from two works he had read in his youth, the Grimm-Diderot correspondence and Charles-Georges Leroy’s Lettres posthumes sur l’homme, both of which discussed Brosses’s work. He probably became more fully acquainted with the theory when he read the first two volumes of Benjamin Constant’s De la Religion consid´er´ee dans sa source, ses formes, et des d´eveloppements, published in 1824 and 1825. Reflecting on the evolution of religion, Constant used the term “fetishes” to refer to the “material divinities” worshiped by primitive people during the infancy of humanity. Benjamin Constant, De la Religion consid´er´ee dans sa source, ses formes et ses d´eveloppements, 5 vols. (Paris, 1824– 31), 2:237. In the same month in 1825 that he read Constant’s work, Comte wrote “Consid´erations philosophiques sur les sciences et les savants,” where he mentioned for the first time “fetishism” as the original stage of intellectual development before polytheism and monotheism. Syst`eme, vol. 4, “Appendice,” 139. Comte’s theory of religion also owed much to David Hume and Adam Smith. See Canguilhem, “Histoire des religions,” 90–96; Madeleine David, “La Notion de f´etichisme chez Auguste Comte et l’oeuvre du Pr´esident de Brosses «Du culte des dieux f´etiches»,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 171 (April–June 1967): 216–17. I thank Takashi Sugimoto for pointing out David’s and Canguilhem’s articles. Pietz, “The Problem of the Fetish, I,” 8; idem, “The Problem of the Fetish, IIIa,” 106. Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1991), 95. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Random House, Vintage Books: 1976), 163–4.

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the primitive ultimately reflected his fears about modern society and himself.46 Having first used the term in 1825, Comte developed the notion of fetishism in the Cours and now revisited the topic. Because his understanding of the weaknesses of Western civilization had deepened, he had a new appreciation of the first stage of history, especially fetishism, which he regarded as the birthplace of the subjective method. He admired fetishism’s spontaneity, simplicity, emotionality, and aestheticism. As a historian, he lamented the insufficiency of documents relating to this early form of religion and recommended studying the “less advanced civilizations” of his own day to catch a glimpse of what “our ancestors” were like many thousands of years ago.47 The assumption that one could go backward in time by exploring the far corners of the earth was common to seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury thinkers, such as Descartes and Condorcet.48 According to Comte, fetishism was rampant in “primitive” areas, such as Oceania, Tierra del Fuego, and the Indian territories in the western United States. But it was most practiced by the contemporary black race in “the middle of Africa” (Central Africa), which was “still completely inaccessible to our civilization,” as well as in the Caribbean and the southern part of the United States.49 Because he lived in a country with few blacks and never ventured abroad, Comte’s image of the black race was chiefly shaped by the writings of explorers, travelers, missionaries, colonialists, abolitionists, scientists, and other scholars. In contrast to Hegel, Comte assigned fetishism a positive role as the first motor of progress. He frequently expressed regret that fetishism’s contributions to civilization were not better known, and he criticized “modern thinkers” whose pride in their “semi-emancipation” blinded them to its value. He maintained that one could “never appreciate the true historical spectacle without a profound veneration toward the entire past” – a past that included fetishism, which in his mind was the only universal religion that had ever existed.50 To avoid hubris, modern people should remember their primitive roots in the same way they should keep in mind the concrete observations at the base of their theories. Highlighting the achievements of fetishism, Comte maintained that at a time when the affective dominated the intellectual, it was only natural for primitive people to believe that the objects that they 46 47 48

49

For more on Comte and fetishism, see Mary Pickering, “Auguste Comte and the Return to Primitivism,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52 (1998): 51–77. Syst`eme, 3:viii, 3:6. Franc¸ois de Dainville, La G´eographie des humanistes (Paris, 1940; Geneva: Slatkine, 1969), 307; [Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat] Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progr`es de l’esprit humain (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1971), 82; Stocking, Race, 27. Cat´echisme, 256. 50 Syst`eme, 3:92. See also ibid., 340.

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observed around them behaved like human beings and were subject to the same strong passions that they themselves felt. Like many other scholars, who believed that collective evolution was reflected in individual development, Comte equated primitive people with children, whose undeveloped minds also animated objects. Only when people began to think more abstractly did they go to the next stage of theological development and attribute to different properties what they had originally ascribed to objects; these properties were personified by divine beings, who did not reside in the objects they controlled. Despite its weak theories, fetishism had at least wrested the mind from its original torpor. It was far more important than polytheism and monotheism in advancing intellectual progress. During the fetishist period, the intellect grew stronger in order to express primitive people’s powerful emotions. The fetishists’ interest in the living qualities of material phenomena also inspired observations about the outside world and provided the rudimentary hypotheses linking these observations. Indeed, fetishists spontaneously adopted the positivist rules of proceeding from the known to the unknown and creating the simplest hypothesis that accounts for the facts and is subject to verification. Using signs, images, and sentiments, this “popular” mode of theorizing represented the beginning of logic.51 In addition, primitive peoples could generate “synthetic thoughts,” something modern people could not do very well.52 Comte also commended fetishists for introducing the basic principle of positivism that individuals were subordinated to the world, a principle seen in their adoration of matter, whose phenomena were assumed to have affections and wills. Primitive people understood the necessity of submission, which led to humility, the first source of our desire to improve ourselves. In short, fetishism laid the objective groundwork for the systematization of knowledge and moral revival that would come with positivism.53 Comte explained that the errors of the fetishists were usually understandable, given the primitive era in which they lived. Other religions made worse mistakes. Fetishists’ theories were closer to reality and 51

52 53

Ibid., 3:120. The fetishist also constructed the logic of the feelings, which connected ideas and emotions. This practice awakened human intelligence “by making arise spontaneously from our affective impulses the first hypotheses capable of linking and directing our observations, which were at that time deprived of any guide.” Ibid., 2:88. Synth`ese, 181. Syst`eme, 3:100, 122, 418. Comte also praised the intellectual approach of fetishism for other reasons. Fetishism marked the birthplace of mathematics. By placing the worship of celestial objects above terrestrial ones, astrolatry, the last stage of fetishism, introduced the positive doctrine that particular phenomena had to be subordinated to general, less modifiable phenomena in the classification of the sciences. In addition, astrolatry introduced the objective method of proceeding from the world to man because it subordinated all phenomena to events that were far from man. Science grew out of the observation of events, not beings.

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more scientific than those of polytheists or monotheists, who could not prove or disprove their theory of imaginary beings. The hypotheses of fetishists that phenomena were alive and had wills of their own were at least “always open to verification and . . . a decisive refutation,” in contrast to “theological or metaphysical suppositions, whose empire ends only by desuetude.” The fetishists were wrong to see life in the activity of inorganic phenomena and to stress the resemblances between men on the one hand and plants and animals on the other. Yet at least they appreciated the association between men and animals – an association that positivism would develop. Polytheists and monotheists erred even more by asserting that inorganic phenomena and living beings were completely passive in order to explain their activity by means of supernatural beings. Polytheists and monotheists also had no concept of submission to the natural order because their imaginary gods could do their bidding. However, the fetishist gods’ constant interference in the natural world worked against the important notion of the “fixity of the natural species,” which the fetishists otherwise embraced because they believed natural bodies were independent and permanent. Their idea of the fixity of the species was the “first basis of any real order.” Not hesitating to offend proud intellectuals and religious people of his own day, Comte boldly asserted, “Until the advent of positivism, . . . [fetishism] constituted really the best manifestation of healthy logic and the best approximation of general order.” It displayed a “mental superiority over all other fictive syntheses.”54 Comte enumerated the aesthetic achievements of this period. As usual, he took a sociological approach, considering the arts both as the product of their society and the creator of social conditions.55 The fine arts began to develop, thanks to fetishism’s stimulation of the imagination and feelings. He commended the sculpture of “Negro artists” in particular and condemned the destruction of primitive art by “conquering monotheists.” “Barbarous Christianity” wrought havoc in Mexico and Peru, both of which had “great astrolatric states.” “Muslim brutality” did likewise in Malaysia, especially Borneo.56 Moreover, fetishism had a direct effect on material progress. Because it gave primitive man confidence that the supernatural would help him dominate his surroundings, he began to engage in important practical activities, such as hunting in groups, clearing terrain, taming animals, cultivating the land, and engaging in commerce. These activities relating to man’s conquest of nature constituted the beginnings of industry and should not be seen as signs of brutality as they usually were. After all, according to Comte, humans are generally practical 54 56

Ibid., 3:89, 100, 121, 125, 150. Syst`eme, 3:137, 182.

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Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture, 34, 35.

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creatures.57 In dwelling on the services and affectionate nature of primitive peoples, he added that polytheists were far more warlike and destructive. Comte also reminded “civilized men” that they too displayed a certain cruelty when their powerful destructive instinct was not repressed.58 Besides leading to intellectual, aesthetic, and material development, fetishism favored moral and social progress. Its insistence on the heart being more important than the mind was the subjective principle of positivism; it complemented fetishism’s laying the objective groundwork of positivism by making the world dominate man. Of all the intellectual systems, fetishism most encouraged the growth of our innate sympathies and sociability because it inspired “toward all beings, even inert, dispositions [such as veneration, trust, and adoration] that were eminently proper to cultivating . . . our best affections.” Primitive people’s “incomparable tenderness” reflected the fact that benevolent, disinterested feelings were innate in human nature.59 The growth of their emotions diminished their egoistic instincts, which were stronger in the beginning and inspired great projects. These egoistic instincts were not very persistent and could not continue to be the basis of these projects. The heart had to take over.60 Fetishism especially developed the sympathetic emotion of attachment. Families, based on love, arose for the first time during this early era.61 Because a fixed residence was required to worship certain objects, fetishism facilitated not only the transition from a nomadic to a sedentary, agricultural life but the development of the home.62 Fetishism also anticipated the growth of cities, which relied on larger associations of people. According to Comte, this important sentiment of belonging to a larger society than the home was evident in the black man’s “touching affection for his people.”63 Attachment to the native soil would later develop into patriotism. Yet fetishist beliefs 57

58 60

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Ibid., 3:105–6, 140. Comte seemed to attack Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism when he insisted that the destruction of wild “big animals” was wrongly attributed by scholars to “alleged physical revolutions.” Comte believed scholars should commend fetishists for this service. Ibid., 3:141. See also Scharff, Comte after Positivism, 9. Syst`eme, 3:104. 59 Ibid., 3:108, 109, 418. Comte to Bligni`eres, June 27, 1857, CG, 8:496. The fetishists then developed a very rich concrete language, rich in nouns and verbs and reflective of the domination of their feelings – an achievement Comte hoped to imitate in positivism. He did not refer to any language in particular as an example. Comte also noted that due to polygamy and the many wars during the fetishist era, the “principle of adoption” spread. He complimented the Romans for having extended this practice. Syst`eme, 3:144, 361, 394–5. One of Comte’s laws of history was that sedentary existence was essential for the development of collective activity. Another “natural law” of history was that maritime states resisted being incorporated into foreign empires. Ibid., 382, 383. Ibid., 3:144.

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and affections were basically domestic and too narrow to extend over wide areas, preventing the creation of large associations, such as cities, states, and churches; consequently, there was an insufficient growth of public life. Nevertheless, political and religious order emerged at this time. Hunters and warriors displayed military qualities, such as force, courage, and prudence, which became the basis of temporal authority. A cult of ancestors arose spontaneously and instituted spiritual authority.64 The priesthood fully emerged only under the last form of fetishism, astrolatry; sidereal fetishes were more inaccessible than the usual domestic fetishes and required priests to interpret their wills and pay them homage.65 Old men, the transmitters of tribal traditions and experience, became the foundation of the spiritual power. Women, who were to be the future assistants of the spiritual power, saw their condition improve under fetishism thanks to polygamy, the first kind of marriage. No longer cruelly abandoned by their lovers as they had been before, women developed their influence over men.66 Capital accumulation began in order to support them. True to his principle of relativism, Comte was one of the first philosophers to celebrate fetishism and the kind of society that it generated. Indeed, he expressly stated that he aimed to inspire “sympathy” for fetishism, for it was “essentially superior to those [systems] that separated it from . . . positivism, with which it offers . . . a fundamental affinity.”67 Both fetishism and positivism worshipped the human type. Whereas in fetishism, the human type was worshipped in individual objects, in positivism, it was worshipped in its social form. Fetishism thus prepared the way for positivism. Comte’s views of the accomplishments of the blacks who practiced this kind of idolatry were in stark contrast to the judgment of Hume and Kant, whom he otherwise admired. In “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,” Kant wrote, The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling. Mr. [David] Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere 64

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67

Social discipline was encouraged thanks to religious prescriptions, such as taboos, which led to hygiene and the concept of property. Writing after the Saint-Simonians made many rethink the ramifications of free love, Comte mentioned that the “institution of clothing” arose during the fetishist period chiefly to protect women from the “free growth of the sexual instinct,” which they correctly considered dangerous. Ibid., 3:142. Comte called astrolatry “the first important revolution” in history. Ibid., 3:117. Ibid., 3:143, 500. Comte pointed to Islamic traditions once again to reinforce a principle. According to him, Muslims generously compensated their female slaves for their services by making them their wives. Ibid., 3:112; Cours, 2:268.

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from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man.68

The prevalence of such views of “primitive” blacks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was due not only to Kant’s widespread influence but also to social changes. Especially after 1850, when Europeans became increasingly aware that their society was changing in a profound manner, they tried to bolster their self-image by portraying modern civilized society as having developed from its antithesis, a lazy, promiscuous, unintelligent, communistic, nomadic, religious society, one close to the beasts. The typical primitive society was portrayed as black, the “opposite” of white. This image of the primitive society was an illusion that served in particular the interests of nationalists and imperialists.69 Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the black would always remain an “alien to the European”: “His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low, and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.”70 The negative representation of the primitive reappeared later in the writings of Sigmund Freud, whose derisive account of fetishism was similar to Kant’s. In Civilization and Its Discontents, he wrote, It is remarkable how differently primitive man behaves. If he has met with a misfortune, he does not throw the blame on himself but on his fetish, which has obviously not done its duty, and he gives it a thrashing instead of punishing himself.71

In contrast to Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Freud, Comte constructed a certain image of fetishism so that it could play a variety of positive roles in his doctrine. Reinforcing his historical narrative, he argued that fetishism should reemerge in positivism. There was a certain symmetry and circularity to history. The highest stage of civilization was in effect a return to the beginning. Emphasizing a definable beginning and ending gave Comte’s narrative a sense of 68 69 70 71

Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 110–11. Kuper, The Invention, 5; Cohen, The French Encounter, 33–4. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Phillips Bradley, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1945), 1:358. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), 82–3.

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closure and coherence.72 He also lent more authority to his depiction of positivism by showing its roots in the distant past. Moreover, fetishism served as a foil to criticize Christianity, whose demise was essential for the triumph of positivism. As mentioned above, Comte suggested that monotheism, that is, Christianity, was intellectually and emotionally weaker than fetishism. In his eyes, fetishism was the most spontaneous and natural form of theology. In no other period did religion exert such a dominant influence on the intellect, for primitive people understood everything through the lens of fetishism. Unchallenged by other intellectual systems, such as metaphysics, fetishism was the most intense form of theology. It created the most immediate and complete emotional harmony within the fetish worshiper. As a result of the personification of all observable bodies, there was also “perfect harmony” between the external world and the spectator – a harmony that was never replicated.73 Fetishist worshipers sympathized with all existences, even inert ones. Comte used fetishism to criticize not only Christianity but the intellectual pretensions and pride of modern man. He commended “the humble thinkers of central Africa” for being more rational about human nature and society than the “superb German doctors,” with their “pompous verbiage.” Perhaps the so-called primitive was even the most civilized. He wrote, “The touching logic of the least Negroes is . . . wiser than our academic dryness, which, under the futile pretext of an always impossible impartiality usually strengthens suspicion and fear.”74 Impatient with pure theorizing and musings about the transcendent, which characterized the other theological and metaphysical systems, he praised primitive people’s interest in the concrete and the useful. Though necessary for progress, man’s faculty of abstraction only increased his egotism, selfishness, and lack of respect for the material, natural world.75 The appeal of fetishism was apparent in its continued existence among many contemporary populations, including the “deplorable victims” of the slave trade. It was thus not only the oldest but the “most durable of all the provisional syntheses.”76 Almost as if to provoke his readers into considering the human costs incurred by the growth of civilization, Comte maintained that fetishism revealed the hidden, unchanging aspects of man’s nature. In a sense, it showed the “savage” within all of us. But this “savage” was more emotional, physical, trusting, and caring than the civilized man who had evolved during the course of scientific and material development. Commenting on Comte’s argument, Jean-Paul Frick pointed out, “Civilization begins with the necessity of disciplining 72 73 75

Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 245. Cours, 2:248. 74 Syst`eme, 3:99, 121. Ecrits de Jeunesse, 61; Frick, Auguste Comte, 259n1. 76 Syst`eme, 3:113.

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men, of pushing them to collaborate with each other only to end up in a situation that incites them to oppose one another.”77 Fetishism could remind people of their need to connect again. Comte’s interest in the primitive reflected the continuation of the Enlightenment myth of the Noble Savage, which indicated Europeans’ estrangement from their artificial, hypocritical society.78 Yet he never supported the notion of forcing civilization to undergo a “universal regression” to a fictional state of nature or a “primordial” society.79 Going backward in this fashion would deny progress. It was best, in effect, to modernize fetishism, to bring it back in a modern form. To underscore the proximity that should exist in some arenas between the primitive and the civilized man, Comte insisted that fetishist ways of thinking were not alien mental processes. The three stages of his sociological law represented not only historical periods but different ways of thinking and feeling that coexisted in any era, despite the dominance of one of them.80 Modern intellectuals, he said, frequently reverted to fetishism to satisfy their emotional needs. When motivated by hope, fear, or veneration, they tended to personify and deify inert objects that attracted their affections. Here Comte was speaking from experience, having recognized the fetishist within himself in 1826, when he went mad. He wrote to a friend in 1829, I will only tell you that when a mind that has already reached the positive state drops again into infancy and comes back, through a true mental indisposition, to the theological state, it is not at the outset and by a single leap that it stuffs itself with all the vulgar theological stupidities. It holds itself usually for a certain time in a vague pantheism.81

To Comte, pantheism was a “systematized” fetishism.82 77 80

81 82

Frick, Auguste Comte, 260. 78 Cohen, French Encounter, 71–3. 79 Cours, 2:34–5. Comte insisted that each population went through the three stages of progress at different speeds and that there were often oscillations. Even in the mid-nineteenth century, some theories were still at the theological stage, some at the metaphysical stage, and still others at the positive stage. Comte wrote, “This temporary coexistence of the three intellectual stages constitutes today the only plausible foundation for the resistance which backward thinkers still put up to my law of [three stages,] . . . which was discovered over thirty years ago and has never encountered any other serious objection.” Syst`eme, 3:41. He also alluded to his own bout with mental illness in 1826 to provide evidence of the oscillations that were possible. During the eight months that he was cerebrally deranged, he went backwards and forwards through the stages without experiencing any variations in their order. During the first three months, he went from positivism to monotheism, polytheism, and fetishism and then during the last five months, he went back again, gaining insights into the nature of these religions and the relativity of knowledge. He concluded that regression could be only temporary, thus reassuring himself that the empire of Napoleon III was not a complete hindrance to progress. Ibid., 75. Comte to G. d’Eichthal, December 11, 1829, CG, 1:214. Cours, 2:247. Comte was more critical of pantheism in the Appel, where he likened it to deism and atheism. All three sects had no sense of discipline and were ultimately

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Comte generalized from his experience, making his encounter with fetishism part of the norm instead of the abnormal so as not to discredit himself. He refused to view the primitive through the category of mental illness, a practice that became more widespread as the discourse on fetishism grew increasingly psychological. Beginning with Alfred Binet, fetishism was linked to a psychological disorder characterized by an exaggerated reverence for the relics of a lover owing to an extreme form of love. Freud and later Michel Foucault also presented fetishism as a severe form of mental illness. According to the scholar Bernard Mouralis, the two human sciences anthropology and psychiatry took on “normalizing roles” and made the civilized white European the ideal of the mentally healthy individual.83 The point was to correct the deficiencies of those people whom these sciences deemed deviant. As if anticipating the direction the discourse on fetishism would take, Comte insisted that mental illness was more common among monotheists, such as Catholics, than fetishists. He wrote that the mental health of fetishists would be verified, “I hope, [by] judicious voyagers.”84 The tentativeness revealed by his choice of words demonstrates his awareness that he was going against current thought, which always linked Africa and “la folie.”85 Yet having seen an affinity between himself and the savage, he needed to vindicate the latter to escape his fear of his own abnormality. If he was devoid of reason, he would lose the legitimacy to found a new philosophy and the society that would ensue from it. In effect, to avoid threats to his entire life’s work, Comte argued that all of us are fetish worshipers and that modern man could only benefit by recognizing this part of himself. He reiterated throughout his works that whenever even the “best,” most rational intellectuals were led by a “strong passion” to reflect on why a “cause” leads to an “effect” or to “penetrate the mystery of the essential production of a phenomena whose laws they did not know,” they were thinking like fetish worshipers and conjuring up images that were similar to those of fetishists; in attempting to come up with a theory to explain what they observed, they assumed that these phenomena had a will and affections similar to those of humans. In effect, whenever we made an imaginary hypothesis – a “fictive synthesis” – to link observations about phenomena whose laws we did not understand, our behavior was similar to that of fetish worshipers. Our subjectivity took over as we projected our feelings and aims onto the world. Emotions initially had a large impact on our hypotheses and then dissipated

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reactionary in dreaming of condensing all power in one body, such as a group of pedants. Appel, 74. Bernard Mouralis, L’Europe, l’Afrique et la folie (Paris: Pr´esence Africaine, 1993), 43–4. Syst`eme, 3:87. 85 Mouralis, L’Europe, 50.

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the uncertainty of our speculations. Comte found this emotionally charged and imaginative logical process to be highly beneficial, for it laid the groundwork for more rational thought. Discussing the need for modern positivists to adopt fetishist approaches whenever there were “lacunae of positivity,” he wrote, “We must therefore turn to causes, as in the beginning, to link facts in a provisional fashion, by assisting positivity with fetishity.” “Fictive wills,” similar to those embraced by fetish worshipers, could help us think until we could find “real connections.” He even used the phrase “primitive logic,” which many people would have regarded as an oxymoron. This kind of logic, he insisted, should supplement induction and deduction in the scientific process because the reliance on “fictive syntheses” was a permanent feature of the intellectual landscape. He wrote, “The real order will never be sufficiently known for us to dispense with . . . recourse to a fictive synthesis.”86 The primitive was not “the Other,” who stood in contrast to the civilized. The primitive was within every civilized person, whose emotions stimulated the learning process and whose ability to know and control the world around him or her would always be limited even in the positive era. Positivism, which was devoted to the preservation of memory and the past, would remember and valorize the primitive within us. One example was Comte’s recommendation that there was poetic license to think of the Earth as endowed with sentiment, just as Humanity was.87 Indeed, one of the primary reasons Comte sought to revive fetishism was to reinforce positivism’s appreciation of sentiment. Metaphysicians tended to reduce everything to the intellect. Theologians and scientists looked askance at the passions as “if only bad ones existed.”88 Comte maintained that both fetishism and positivism were attempts to reconcile reason and feeling by privileging subjectivity; according to him, they recognized the heart’s decisive impact on the mind and thereby succeeded in creating a synthesis of the two. In fetishism, the dominance of the passions over reason was spontaneous and conflict-free because reason was in its infancy and 86

87

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Syst`eme, 2:85–6; 3:83, 84; 4:43. See also Muglioni, Auguste Comte, 19. In the Cours, Comte had already underscored the necessity of using provisional hypotheses pulled from the imagination and “scientific fictions” when there was a lack of data. Cours, 1:457, 728. See also Syst`eme, 1:657. Comte pondered a great deal the absorption of fetishism by positivism after completing the Syst`eme. He pointed out that the Great-Being and the Great-Fetish (the Earth) differed essentially in that the former had intelligence while the latter did not. However, he believed both had activity and sentiment. He wrote, “In returning to matter the activity which was stolen from it by theology and which science has badly represented, I must also furnish it with sentiment, which fetishism had given to it in a worthy manner.” Comte to Ellis, March 25, 1855, CG, 8:40 Cat´echisme, 135.

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the emotions were strong. In the positive stage of history, reason was more highly developed, and the emotions had to be cultivated more systematically to maintain their crucial position in our lives. In the Synth`ese, Comte wrote, “Our maturity systematizes the empiricism of our childhood by representing the mind as our principal privilege, without altering its normal subordination toward the heart.”89 The mind and heart should cooperate without conflict. As the culmination of what existed in the beginning of history, positivism therefore had to be a form of “systematic fetishism.”90 Reason, Comte continually reminded his readers, had its limits; there was no absolute knowledge. Even “human reason” at the height of its “virility” would “always” include a “degree of poetic fetishism.”91 Comte was thus one of the first thinkers to point out that fetishism did not belong exclusively to the primitive age and did not always represent a type of false consciousness or prelogical mindset. Marx also showed the continuity of this way of thinking when he referred to commodities as fetishes, but he thought commodity fetishism represented a type of perverse alienation. Comte was more sympathetic to this way of thinking and, as mentioned above, he went so far as to emphasize fetishism’s scientific aspects. In a sense, he deconstructed the primitive, showing that it was not diametrically opposed to the scientific and the civilized. Such binary opposition was misleading. Fetishism was not the opposite of positivism; both systems were merely two extremes of intellectual development. There existed no savages entirely devoid of speculative abilities. Reflecting his commitment to the concept of continuity, which was essential to his view of progress, Comte wrote there were no “real differences [between the various periods of history] other than those of maturity and gradually developed experience.”92 Fetishists, as the initial people, had to display the “fundamental constitution” of humanity itself.93 He thus depicted fetish worshipers as rudimentary scientists in their interest in observation. Comte’s attitude is in contrast to that of Lucien L´evy-Bruhl, who posited a dramatic difference between the Western mindset which was rational and the primitive one, which was prelogical.94 Comte’s stance profoundly shocked John Stuart Mill, who exclaimed that his amalgamation of positivism and fetishism was “most repugnant to the fundamental principles of Positive Philosophy.” In Auguste Comte and Positivism, Mill explained, 89 90 91 92 94

Synth`ese, 25. Comte to Eug`ene Robinet, February 27, 1855, CG, 8:32. See also Synth`ese, 181. Comte to Clotilde de Vaux, December 2, 1845, CG, 3:212. See also Muglioni, Auguste Comte, 55. Cours, 2:265. 93 Cat´echisme, 124. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 135–6.

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To the Fetishistic view of nature he [Comte] evinces a partiality, which appears strange in a Positive philosopher. But the reason is that Fetish-worship is a religion of the feelings, and not at all of the intelligence. He regards it as cultivating universal love: as a practical fact it cultivates much rather universal fear. . . . The Fetishist thinks not merely that his Fetish is alive, but that it can help him in war, can cure him of diseases, can grant him prosperity, or afflict him with all the contrary evils. Therein consists the lamentable effect of Fetishism – its degrading influence on the feelings and conduct, its conflict with all genuine experience, and antagonism to all real knowledge of nature.95

Mill’s intellectual disdain of primitive religion deterred him from portraying its strengths as Comte did. Michel Serres has maintained out that Comte’s appreciation of the fetishist spontaneity in positivism and the spontaneous positivism in the classifying savage is remarkable. It is tempting to see Comte as a precursor of Claude L´evy-Strauss, who also pointed out the coexistence of scientific and primitive ways of thought as well as the mental operations common to both.96 To the scholar Marianna Torgovnick, L´evy-Strauss was “fundamentally attracted to the primitive as a site of alternative possibilities . . . a world of oceanic oneness.”97 This achievement of oneness through fetishism is what Comte sought as well. He believed that combining positivism and fetishism would solve the modern problem of how to connect the individual with all of society.98 Fetishism was embraced by individuals; it represented the worship of an object to which a family or individual was devoted. The worship of these personal objects arose from a disinterested, spontaneous feeling of love and gratitude, instead of from a preoccupation with salvation – a selfish preoccupation that Comte believed lay at the heart of monotheism. Yet fetishism was weak as a social movement, for it lacked a common body of beliefs that could unite large groups of people; each individual had a different object of worship according to the personal relationship he or she developed with it. Because of this shortcoming, fetishism could not develop public life as polytheism and monotheism could. However, positivism could give fetishism the more civic or public direction that it lacked. Convinced that a belief system had to satisfy the spiritual needs of the people during the next positivist stage of history, Comte inaugurated the Religion 95 96 97 98

John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 187–8, 191. Michel Serres, La Traduction, vol. 3 of Herm`es (Paris: Minuit, 1974), 169. See also Mudimbe, Invention of Africa, 31. Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, 217. On Comte as a postmodern thinker trying to reconcile pluralism and holism, see Grange, La Philosophie, 39, 427–31.

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of Humanity to create a “new fetishism.” People would revere the abstract, collective being called Humanity. As mentioned above, the human type would not be venerated in simple, personal, concrete objects in an instinctive, spontaneous manner, as it was by fetishists. Positivists would adore more systematically a general social construct that existed chiefly in our imagination.99 Besides honoring illustrious people from the past, individuals would find their own private and sentimental ways of worshiping Humanity, such as by venerating certain persons, especially women in their lives, who could represent this collective being. In effect, Comte argued that the individual and concrete aspect of worship must be maintained but within a collective framework. In this fashion, people would be united not only by a single body of knowledge provided by positivism but by common sentiments generated by the Religion of Humanity. Humanity would be the “Great-Being” toward which would converge all of “our feelings, our thoughts, and our actions.”100 By reviving the intensity of fetishism in this fashion, Comte believed that he would create an emotional and intellectual revolution that would be far more efficacious than political experiments in fostering the social harmony lost during the French Revolution. As various scholars have pointed out, his history was fundamentally religious and anthropological, not overtly political, as one might think, given the title of his work, Syst`eme de politique positive.101 In his quest for oneness, Comte also insisted that positivism incorporate fetishism in order to create a synthesis that would be superior to other “syntheses that . . . embrace only a part of time and space.”102 By bringing together all of history and the entire globe, this synthesis would realize the French revolutionaries’ dream of creating a universal revolution. The positivist revolution would unite all of humanity because it would avoid the revolutionaries’ mistake of trying to break with the past. Regeneration meant renewal by bringing the past to fruition, not by undoing it. “Human life . . . [can] never offer any true creation whatsoever, but always a simple gradual evolution.”103 Most of the important historical movements and institutions were born in some form during the fetishist period.104 Moreover, writing in the postrevolutionary period, Comte was aware of the power of public opinion, and he wanted positivism to be embraced voluntarily by people everywhere. He specifically targeted the oppressed in terms of race, class, and gender as potential supporters. All three 99 100 101 103

Syst`eme, 4:88. For similarities between fetishists and positivists, see also Cat´echisme, 256. Comte to Tholouze, March 27, 1855, CG, 8:42. See also Grange, La Philosophie, 26. Grange, introduction to Politique d’Auguste Comte, vi. 102 Syst`eme, 4:521. Cours, 2:223. 104 Syst`eme, 3:186.

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groups – blacks, proletarians, and women – were associated in Western European discourse with “the Other.”105 Instead of seeking to oppress “the Other,” he welcomed their participation in the positivist revolution. He appropriated elements of the socialist and feminist agendas to appeal to the working class and women. Fetishism, he figured, would bring him the support of “primitive” races, in whom he was beginning to take more interest. Despite the “stupid pride of . . . pedants,” who always sought to eradicate it, fetishism was fundamentally “popular” and “perpetual.” Comte went so far as to argue that because the evolution of the human race now was more collective, it would be possible for a “primitive” people to learn from “advanced” peoples that matter was not alive; such knowledge would enable them to proceed directly from fetishism to positivism. Such rapid progress was also possible because of the close “moral affinity” between the two “extreme systems” in privileging sentiments.106 The final reason Comte legitimized fetishism was to criticize Western forms of oppression, especially slavery and imperialism. Few people in France were concerned about abolitionism, but there was a movement to stop slavery, headed by Victor Schoelcher. He encouraged Arago to abolish slavery in the French colonies in 1848.107 Comte was outspoken on this issue. He criticized all Westerners for participating in slavery and attacked the Catholic and Protestant churches for condoning it. He pointed out that missionaries in West and Central Africa were engaged in “illusory and disturbing” work and were wrong to interpret the natives’ refusal to embrace a Western religion as a sign of their barbarity. Missionaries often used the Africans’ so-called sinfulness to justify slavery and imperialism. Comte pointed out that Africans were not irreligious and simply had different customs that missionaries could not understand. At least positivists could appreciate the value the Africans placed on domesticity and peaceful activities. Thus Comte commended the Africans on “wisely” maintaining their physical isolation and resisting “stupid and blameworthy efforts” to convert them.108 He lamented that the African slaves taken from their homes by “Occidental barbarianism” expressed every day their unhappiness at being denied the ability to practice their fetishist religion.109 To him, “modern slavery, that of our colonies” was “a true political monstrosity,” for it subjected “the worker to the capitalist in a manner that . . . [was] equally degrading 105 106 107 108

Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 37. Syst`eme, 2:85–6; 3:121, 135. See also Synth`ese, 147. Horace Chauvet, Franc¸ois Arago et son temps (Perpignan: Edition des Amis de Franc¸ois Arago, 1954), 117–22. Syst`eme, 4:518, 519. 109 Cat´echisme, 272.

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to both of them.” Praising the “oppressed race” for having “courageously” begun their liberation in Haiti, Comte argued in favor of “delivering the American archipelago [West Indies] to the free descendants of transplanted Africans.”110 Comte’s hatred of imperialism went beyond Africa. He condemned England’s involvement in the first Opium War against China,111 its oppression of Ireland,112 and its retention of Gibraltar, which he believed should be given back to Spain.113 He also objected to the English domination of India.114 To him, the English aristocracy was trying to deflect the other classes’ criticisms of the government and prevent a popular revolution by offering them “the world to pillage or dominate.” All the classes would then collude in a “regressive tyranny.”115 Comte feared the French state also deflected attention from domestic problems by setting up tyrannical governments abroad. The drive into Algeria was greeted far too enthusiastically for his tastes. Many social reformers, including Philippe Buchez, Prosper Enfantin, and Charles Fourier, saw the area as a potential home for model communities. However, at least one Saint-Simonian objected: Isma¨yl Urbain. He was a mulatto friend of d’Eichthal’s and knew Comte. Recommended by Comte’s former student Colonel Lamorici`ere, Urbain went to Algeria in 1837, became a specialist on Arab politics, and converted to Islam. Protesting against French colonization and the process of assimilation, he became one of the leading spokespersons for Algeria for Algerians.116 He may have influenced Comte, who also insisted on the “restitution of Algeria to the Arabs.”117 Comte feared that the government was trying to placate 110 111 112 113

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Syst`eme, 4:520; Cours, 2:230. Comte to Audiffrent, February 21, 1856, CG, 8:226. Comte supported Catholic complaints against the “oppressive union” of Ireland and England. Comte to Fisher, September 24, 1855, CG, 8:118. Comte to Laffitte, September 19, 1849, CG, 5:85; Comte to Fl´orez, December 29, 1856, CG, 8:358; Comte to Fisher, May 22, 1856, CG, 8:256; Comte to Hadery, May 29, 1856, CG, 8:263. Comte discussed the plight of Gibraltar in his oral course in 1849 and in the last volume of the Syst`eme. Anything that troubled “the fraternity of elite populations” had to be eliminated. Comte to Edger, June 26, 1856, CG, 8:273. Comte’s library still contains the issues of Le National that had the review: September 7, 15, and 29, 1845. Another friend of Littr´e’s whom Comte might have known was Jules Barth´elemy St. Hilaire, a specialist in Indian religion. Eastern religions seemed to fascinate Comte, whose ideas of eternal widowhood and the adoption of heirs may have been shaped by them. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC; Syst`eme, 4:514; Comte to Laffitte, October 2 1849, CG, 5:93. See also Rey, Littr´e, 66. Comte to John Fisher, May 22, 1856, CG, 8:257. Comte also mistakenly thought imperialism would soon come to an end. Syst`eme, 4:519. Michel Levallois, Isma¨yl Urbain (1812–1884): Une Autre Conquˆete de l’Alg´erie (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002), 19–21, 30, 616–21; I. Urbain, Alg´erie: Du Gouvernement des Tribus, Chr´etiens et Musulmans, Franc¸ais et Alg´eriens (Paris, 1848), 7, 10. Comte to John Fisher, May 22, 1856, CG, 8:257–8. Comte was interested in the resistance of the Algerians to the French occupation. He was especially concerned about one

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the oppressed in France by making them oppressors abroad. Just as he was against the abuse of power over nature that stemmed from the illusion of having absolute scientific knowledge, Comte opposed the exploitation of classes, nations, and races. He wrote, “Internal oppression [is] always allied with external oppression.”118 In general, he felt alienated from the political realm and the “general direction” of society, which he believed was too preoccupied with economic issues and excessively shaped by men’s “excessively cold or unrefined reason.”119 Consequently, he took a second look at “the Other” in the hope of enriching his system and gaining support. In the Syst`eme, he began to highlight the importance of fetishism and the role of the black race in the development of the species at the same time that he started to promote the role of women.120 Scholars have increasingly recognized the link between racism and sexism, two doctrines that fortify white males in positions of power. Yet Comte began to question the reign of the white male. He grew disillusioned not only with white politicians but with white male scientists, who had rebuffed him. Moreover, he recognized that much of scientific practice relied on the fictional, imaginative, and subjective, which had been excluded from the white male scientific domain. Taking an essentialist approach, he called the black race the “affective race” and women the “affective sex.” They were primarily emotional in contrast to white men who were rational. In fact, he asserted that both blacks and women were superior to men in this realm. “One can already recognize that the blacks are as superior to the whites in terms of feeling as they are beneath them in terms of intelligence.”121 Blacks and women were also primarily religious and moral. Because he did not need to justify an imperial system, Comte did not depict blacks in a completely derogatory way to justify their subjugation. For example, he did not stress the lascivious nature of blacks, though the stereotypical image of them was that they had a bestial sexual appetite. Comte must have been well aware of this image because

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disciple, Captain Charles Anfrie, who was transferred to Algeria in 1857 to fight the resistance. Comte was fond of him because he had been impressed by his mathematics lectures in 1836 at the Ecole Polytechnique. Comte wrote a letter of introduction for him so that he could meet Foley’s brother, who lived in Algiers. Comte to Foley, May 23, and May 25, 1857, CG, 8:475, 476; Comte to Audiffrent, February 21, 1856, CG, 8:226; Charles Anfrie to Comte, July 24, 1857, Correspondances Positivistes, p.1, N.a.fr. 27356, BN; Cohen, French Encounter, 270. Comte to John Fisher, May 22, 1856, CG, 8:258. 119 Cours, 2:187. In the Cours, Comte’s remarks tended to be slightly more sexist and racist. For example, in the fourth volume of the Cours, written in 1839, he portrayed the “savage” as motivated by hatred and physical appetites. Besides being selfish, the savage had very little reasoning power. Cours, 2: 203. Yet his later writings presented the savage as having a sense of religion, propriety, property, and industry. Syst`eme, 2:461.

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his good friend Blainville had performed an autopsy on the famous Hottentot Venus, the African woman who was considered a symbol of black sexuality.122 Comte did not embrace this image, preferring to stress the religiosity of blacks. Like Max Weber, Comte was opposed to the disenchantment of the world. He saw the need for the religious, the emotional, and the poetic in the industrial-scientific age. Comte’s sexual politics were closely related to his racial politics. He gave woman an increasingly redemptive role in the positive stage, making her the assistant of the male positive philosophers and the key to the regeneration of society because of her mastery of the social sentiments. Blacks did not have the same elevated role, but they were the privileged minority; they were closer than Asians, for example, to the positivist doctrine. Comte’s attitude was different from that of most Frenchmen, who preferred Asians to Africans. For example, Gustave Flaubert stated, “Europe will be regenerated. The law of history being that civilization goes from East to West – the role of China – the two humanities finally will be fused.”123 Yet Comte associated the Asians with activity and polytheism; his interest in them was limited. In his mind, only the Africans could skip the later theological and metaphysical stages of humanity and go directly to the positivist stage. For harmony to exist in the positive age, couples had to work closely together, whether it be the woman and man in terms of gender or blacks and whites in terms of race. Each race and gender would then assume characteristics of its opposite. The antislavery activist Fanny Wright, whom Comte had known well in the 1830s, had played with the idea of interracial communities when she established her utopian community of Nashoba in 1825. She once remarked on how similar her ideas were to Comte’s.124 Influenced by Lamarck, Comte thought that if the milieu, which determined many differences, were altered, the intellectual abilities of both blacks and women would grow, especially if the parts of the brain that governed the various faculties were more developed by exercise.125 He imagined “some Negro thinker” would study his works and lend him his support.126 This allusion to a “Negro thinker” is highly significant for it implied that blacks had refined reasoning 122 123 124

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Gilman, Difference, 83. Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard et P´ecuchet (Paris: Garnier Fr`eres, 1954), 387. See also Cohen, French Encounter, 16, 70. Gail Bederman, “Revisiting Nashoba: Slavery, Utopia, and Frances Wright in America, 1818–1826,” American Literary History 17 (Fall 2005), 438, 453; undated letter from Madame F. W. Phiquepal d’Arusmont to Comte, MAC. However, because of the influence of Gall’s phrenology on Comte, he did not believe that the basic structure of the brain could be modified in totality. See Comte’s famous letter to John Stuart Mill, November 14, 1845, CG, 2:208. On the need for exercise, see Cours, 2:204. Syst`eme, 3:156.

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abilities – a view that ran counter to that of some scholars, such as Herbert Spencer, who said, “Conditioned as he is, the savage lacks abstract ideas.”127 Comte praised racially mixed couples, an idea he may have originally adopted from his former disciple, Gustave d’Eichthal, the secretary of the Soci´et´e Ethnologique, which was founded in 1839. With the help of his mulatto friend, Isma¨yl Urbain, d’Eichthal published in 1839 Lettres sur la race noire et la race blanche, which he sent to Comte, who was eager to read it.128 The pamphlet asserted that the black race was not barbarous or depraved; it had a role to play in the “human family” that was equally important as that of the white race. The white race, whose forte was its intelligence, excelled in politics and the sciences. Yet its world was “tired,” for there had been an “excessive development of intellectual power.” The white race needed to be associated with the black race, which outshone it in the realm of the emotions and in domesticity. Arguing that the white race represented the male, and the black race the female, d’Eichthal advocated a kind of mystical union of the two complementary races: “The typical couple is composed of a white man and a black woman.”129 This approach was diametrically opposed to that of Count Arthur de Gobineau, “the father of racism.” Gobineau’s book Essai sur l’in´egalit´e des races humaines (1853–5), which was written while Comte was finishing the Syst`eme, posited that Asians were apathetic and blacks were stupid; European civilization would collapse due to whites’ mixing with these inferior races.130 Comte seemed more taken with d’Eichthal’s approach. He maintained that the “organic distinctions” between the races would disappear under positivism not only because of the changing milieu, which had produced racial diversity in the first place, and the races’ cooperation in honor of Humanity, which would increase mutual respect, but because of “worthy marriages.” He concluded that “their growing combination will procure for us . . . the most precious of our improvements, that which concerns our entire cerebral constitution, which will then be more apt to think, to act, and even to love.”131 Thanks to interracial marriages, people would become better 127 128

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Herbert Spencer, quoted in Stocking, Race, 41. Gustave d’Eichthal to Comte, August 3, 1839, and Comte to d’Eichthal, August 5, 1839, “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Correspondance d’Auguste Comte et Gustave d’Eichthal (Suite),” RO., 2d ser., 12 (May 1896), 382–3. Gustave d’Eichthal and Ismayl Urbain, Lettres sur la race noire et la race blanche (Paris, 1839), 16, 23. See also Barrie M. Ratcliffe and W. H. Chaloner, eds. A French Sociologist Looks at Britain: Gustave D’Eichthal and British Society in 1828 (Manchester: University of Manchester, 1977), 148–61. Cohen, French Encounter, 217–18; Christopher Miller, Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 16. Cat´echisme, 257. See also Syst`eme, 3:621; Comte to Audiffrent, August 25, 1853, CG, 7:110.

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intellectuals, lovers, and practicians. Personal and social harmony would be assured. In addition, issues of gender and race converged in Comte’s personal appreciation of fetishism. He could understand the point of view of the fetish worshiper not only because intellectually he used fictive syntheses but also because emotionally he worshiped objects. The objects that Comte venerated in a fetishist fashion were those connected with a woman: Clotilde de Vaux. He frequently alluded to fetishism to express his feelings for her. He placed the medallion with her lock of hair that she gave him on an “altar,” the chair in his apartment that she sat on during her visits. Every day he prostrated himself before it. The lock of hair, the chair, her poetry, and her letters – all were objects of intense devotion. In December 1845, he wrote, “To read you, to write to you, to get emotional almost to fetishism over the precious talismans that I owe you . . . ; this, my Clotilde, is what always calms my convulsive agitation.”132 The agitation to which he referred had to do with his sexual frustration, for she would not consent to be his lover. These objects had to satisfy him instead. At the end of his life, rumors proliferated in Paris that he had even cut off her hand and worshiped it.133 In short, Comte respected the magical world of the fetishist because certain objects were to him enchanted. He was as fixated on these objects as the fetishist was preoccupied by the ones with which he had developed a relationship. These objects were important to Comte because they not only formed part of his religious practices but also gave him surrogate sexual satisfaction. There was a link, albeit unacknowledged, between his religious and sexual ecstasy. In some respects, Comte could be considered a figure in the transition from fetishism as a religious discourse to fetishism as a sexual discourse – a switch that is usually said to have occurred around the 1880s, when fears of French degeneration led to a crisis of masculinity. Western European discourse was replete with images connecting sexuality, race, and pathology. According to fin-de-si`ecle doctors, a fetishist overvalued objects used by others or parts of the body due to a need for erotic excitement. This person suffered from biological exhaustion, which reflected a general fatigue or malaise endangering the entire French people.134 Comte’s case of fetishism 132 133

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Comte to Clotilde de Vaux, December 5, 1845, CG, 3:219. This allegation was circulated by Pierre Leroux and Luc Desage and denied by Martin Thomas, Sophie Bliaux, Pierre Laffitte, Fabien Magnin, and Eug`ene Robinet. See “D´eclaration,” November 10, 1861, MAC. Gilman, Difference, 11; Emily Apter, Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 245; Nye, Masculinity, 110–15; idem, “The Medical Origins of Sexual Fetishism,” in Fetishism as a Cultural Discourse, ed. Emily Apter and William Pietz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 13–30.

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shows that the crisis of masculinity may have begun earlier, especially because he himself may have been impotent.135 Yet instead of condemning fetishism to bolster the masculine self-image, he used it to throw into question the white male’s pride in his rationality. As Jean Baudrillard has pointed out, fetishist discourse seems to have “a life of its own.” It is supposed to refer to the “magical thinking of others” but ends by “surreptitiously” exposing one’s “own magical thinking.”136 It hexes those who use it. Comte’s preoccupation with fetishism reveals his own doubts about the validity of a purely white male-dominated scientific system as a cure for the ills of “civilization” in postrevolutionary Europe. Although considered the consummate optimist thanks to his belief in progress, he anticipated the sense of decadence that marked the fin de si`ecle.137 The thinker who is remembered for his faith in Western civilization ironically believed that it had to be reenergized by primitive religion and interracial marriages. Only such measures could regulate the “decline” of the Great-Being, which he was certain was to occur within the next several centuries.138 polytheism Despite his commendation of fetishism, Comte believed that its original version at the beginning of time had to disappear because it had no concept of change, could not develop abstract thinking or extensive social and public life, and displayed a sterile empirical approach to practical life. The continued existence of this essentially private religion would have prevented further progress by stifling all aspects of our existence. But Comte could not adequately explain the transition from fetishism to polytheism. Referring to children’s pattern of mental development and positivism’s forceful insistence on abstract contemplation, he made the weak argument that the mind simply began “spontaneously” to “make the study of events prevail over the study of beings.” Ultimately, it was the positive spirit acting through the metaphysical spirit that was the driving force behind change. Matter was no longer regarded as active but as inert, and the mind, in searching for causes and for properties common to several phenomena, began to attribute these phenomena to “some supernatural will,” which was not in the substances under consideration and 135 136 137 138

Pickering, Comte, 1:490–91. Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, trans. Charles Levin (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1981), 90. On Comte’s optimism, see Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848–c. 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 42. Syst`eme, 3:73.

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represented the collective characteristics. In this way, “theologism,” comprising polytheism and monotheism, began. Comte considered polytheism the “true theologism,” for monotheism was simply a concentrated version of it.139 In fact, revealing his dislike of Catholicism, Comte now maintained that with the help of more advanced peoples, not only fetishists, but polytheists in Asia and Oceania could skip monotheism and proceed straight to positivism.140 As with fetishism, Comte examined polytheism’s principal contributions to history. Intellectually, polytheism developed the objective method, especially by introducing the notion that humanity could modify and improve the external world.141 Comte added, “Man came . . . to place himself henceforth in contrast to the world, whose general order he even tried to dominate with the aid of wills . . . with which he believed he could freely associate himself.”142 Men’s creation of these fictitious gods reflected the fact that polytheism developed the imagination, which gave depth to the subjective method. These gods had human attributes.143 Echoing Feuerbach, Comte pointed out that the gods “served as an organ for our best aspirations.” By inspiring “nobility” against the forces of the material world and sanctioning our desire for improvement, theologism worked against the sense of fate and submission in fetishism and encouraged progress. Positivism would reconcile the fetishist and polytheistic approaches. It would adopt a “relative fatalism,” stressing the immutability of the universal order but allowing for secondary modifications; these changes would display a certain regularity, which would encourage man’s intervention on a wide scale and in an efficacious manner.144 Comte did not share the romantics’ pantheism or desire to return to untouched nature.145 Part of progress was increasing man’s rational modification of nature.146 139 140

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142 143

144 146

Ibid., 3:151, 158–9. Comte believed that “the most numerous populations are still polytheist,” and he did not want them to waste their time in monotheism. Their favoring of peace and industry could bring them close to positivism. Ibid., 3:7. Polytheism was also important in advancing mathematics, especially geometry, and cultivating astronomy. Fetishism had developed only multiplication. Astrolatry had started and helped launched astronomy, which was important in the emergence of geometry. Syst`eme, 3:163. In addition, polytheism fine-tuned the logic of images, which helped fix people’s attention on general phenomena. Comte criticized contemporaries who dismissed the personification of attributes as contrary to scientific development. At least the habit of thinking in terms of divine images helped bring together observations in an abstract fashion. Each god was a generalization describing a collective phenomenon. Moreover, because the polytheists always attempted to figure out what these gods would do, they advanced the scientific notion of forecasting. Their interest in meteorology and the study of dreams came from this impetus. Ibid., 3:162. 145 Grange, La philosophie d’Auguste Comte, 350. Negri, “Travail,” 154.

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In terms of aesthetic development, polytheism favored art chiefly by developing public life as a source of inspiration. It also created striking collective images – personifications of composite beings – that modern artists tried vainly to imitate. Only positivism would bring to fruition this focus on “real types” as the “best representation of collective existences.” In general, Comte preferred primitive art to that of antiquity, whose aesthetic contributions he believed were exaggerated. He maintained that the prevailing “love of antiquity” was “blind.”147 In terms of practice, polytheism urged men to modify the earth, giving them the confidence to do so by means of appealing to the gods for help. Most important, however, was polytheism’s development of the military movement, which emerged under astrolatry and stimulated collective action. Polytheism was able to incorporate vast amounts of territory into one state. Such conquests were important for spreading civilization. They did, however, rest on slavery, which freed men to become warriors. In the process, slaves became accustomed to work as a way of self-improvement, and they learned useful activity, which would eventually lead to their liberation. Although critical of both war and slavery, Comte endeavored to grasp their function in history.148 Finally, Comte looked at polytheism’s advancement of the social and affective movements in history. Whereas fetishism developed the family and attachment, polytheism extended the sympathies to “all human relations,” launched the city, and cultivated the veneration that came with civic life. It organized society. Public life, that is, politics, was able to develop because there were sufficient common beliefs and “true spiritual authorities,” that is, priests who were rivals of men holding military power.149 As in the Cours, Comte distinguished between the different forms of polytheism. His discussion remained on a very vague level, without much reference to specific events or individuals, whom he ultimately considered as “abstract and artificial” as molecules.150 For example, he stated that theocratic polytheists started to develop the geometric study of volumes but did not begin the study of lines. He did not mention the civilization, period, or key figures that he had in 147 148

149 150

Ibid., 3:183, 542. Comte argued that the ancient system of slavery where the worker was forced to submit to a warrior made more sense than the modern system, which degraded everyone involved to a larger extent. Ibid., 4:520. On slavery, see also Cat´echisme, 274. Syst`eme, 3:194, 254, 500. Comte to Ellis, March 25, 1855, CG, 8:40. Although their use was legitimate, molecules were subjective and “inaccessible to objective verifications because if atoms could ever be seen, even with a microscope, they would soon lose the indivisibility that characterizes them.” Synth`ese, 540.

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mind. It seems that Comte’s representation of this early period, like that of other periods, was simply a construct designed systematically to illustrate the perfect nature of another construct, the positive regime. Later, in a chapter on Greece, he tried to justify his vagueness. “Although fetishism and theocracy fill the major part of human initiation, I was able to devote to this fully normal past the first half of this volume without ever having to name a single people because the movement remains common to everyone.”151 Comte began his review of polytheism by pointing out that its various forms were influenced by the environment. A gentle environment that made it easy to satisfy material needs and encouraged intellectual life led to theocracy. Theocratic polytheism was the regime of such peoples as the Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, and Chaldeans.152 Comte believed that contemporary China and India still preserved traces of it. Stemming from the astrolatry phase of fetishism, a theocratic regime represented the rule of a priesthood, which brought families together by creating a common cult and developing feelings of veneration, especially toward the state. There was some progress thanks to the “heredity of professions,” which represented “the only way” to preserve the small advances that were made.153 These hereditary professions formed castes. The priestly caste was the most important. Comte depicted its members as men with “synthetic” or encyclopedic learning. Overseeing all theoretical activities, they were simultaneously judges, poets, astronomers, doctors, legislators, and popes. He declared that positivist priests would be similar, for they would counter the “modern” tendency toward “dispersive analysis.” Positivist priests would also imitate these early priests by directing speculation to the practical end of helping humanity and by making morality the highest branch of learning. The supreme rule of this ancient period, which Comte applauded, was “Know yourself to improve yourself.” One way priests exercised discipline over people’s lives to improve them was to cast judgments on the dead, a practice Comte wished to revive. In addition, the priests’ effective employment of art and a “system of collective festivals” to spread dogmas and precepts would be adopted by positivism.154 As for practical life, Comte praised the theocrats’ development of peaceful activity as a way of ensuring that the military did not grow too strong. In sum, because theocractic polytheism embraced every aspect of human existence and represented the “only truly complete order” in this preparatory period of history, it was a model that positivism should imitate.155 151 152 153

Syst`eme, 3:266. Two theocratic regimes were anomalies. Judaism, which Comte respected, was based on monotheism. Buddhism had a weak hereditary priesthood. Ibid., 3:241, 277. Cat´echisme, 275. 154 Syst`eme, 3:207, 210, 225. 155 Cat´echisme, 275.

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Yet Comte also criticized the theocrats. As he had stated since his first writings, intellectuals should not be solely in charge of the government. Reviving the liberal sentiments of his youth, he insisted that “corruption” was “inherent” in any “absolutist dogma” and in any situation where “authority” was “too concentrated.”156 Theocrats degraded themselves by abusing their power and pursuing wealth.157 Their regime was oppressive and conservative. He guarded against it by always insisting on the need for a secular government, which reflected the importance of material activities in our lives. Comte argued that theocratic polytheism degenerated chiefly because it lacked a military character, which was necessary to develop the mind and encourage collective activities. Wars were necessary for the emergence of true societies. Warlike habits arose not in theocracies with their gentle environments but in areas with a harsh climate that favored the rise of military activity rather than a strong priesthood.158 Thus the next phase of polytheism – military polytheism – came into being. It started in the Homeric period, and in various forms, it was prolonged by monotheism and metaphysics for three thousand years. Unlike the conservative theocracy, which embraced order, this phase of polytheism was progressive. There were two forms of progressive or military polytheism, the Greek and Roman, which Comte called respectively intellectual polytheism and social polytheism.159 The Greeks developed abstraction, whereas the Romans advanced collective activity. He reviewed both polytheisms at length, commenting on their intellectual (aesthetic, philosophical, and scientific), practical, moral, social, and political contributions to the progress of humanity and their various anticipations of the positivist regime. Indeed, much of volume three was devoted to ancient history. In the eighty pages that Comte devoted to ancient Greece, several points are worth noting. Like many nineteenth-century Europeans with a classical education, Comte regarded the Greeks as the intellectual source of Western civilization, although he did point out that Egypt was the overall “mother” of Occidental culture.160 Comte admired the Greeks for their intellectual accomplishments, which were facilitated by their democratic system.161 He explained that 156 159 160 161

Syst`eme, 3:213, 242, 246, 266. 157 Cat´echisme, 277. 158 Cat´echisme, 275. Intellectual polytheism lasted 1,300 years, whereas social polytheism spanned 1,100 years. Syst`eme, 3:398. Cat´echisme, 279. Comte concentrated on the period from Thales to Aristotle. His favorite philosophers were Thales, Pythagoras, and Aristotle, whom he regarded as precursors of the spiritual power. His favorite Greek scientists were Hippocrates, Apollonius, Hipparchus, and especially Archimedes. Syst`eme, 3:305–8, 4:144; Cat´echisme, 280, 298. On the Greeks’ contributions to mathematics and astronomy, see Syst`eme, 3:295–302. On Thales’ and

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geographic and political factors made it difficult for them to launch a “true system of conquests.”162 Their elite, who were not involved in military or priestly matters, devoted themselves to the life of the mind. Some serious philosophers, who renounced wealth and grandeur, were supported by society; this system anticipated the subsidies to intellectuals that would occur under positivism. After reminding his readers of the fetishists’ prior work in natural philosophy,163 Comte praised the Greeks for their advancement of mathematics and astronomy and their establishment of the foundations of physics, chemistry, and biology.164 Aristotle, whom he regarded as the greatest Greek thinker and a mathematical genius, laid the groundwork for social statics because of his understanding of human cooperation. He and other Greeks cultivated abstract thought. Greek polytheism was more abstract than fetishism because it attributed occurrences in the material order to transcendent supernatural beings. Advanced thinkers even began to think in terms of laws, which seemed to clash with the concept of gods’ possessing their own wills. Some of them began to reject both polytheism and monotheism and started creating metaphysical conceptions, seen in the proliferation of entities that replaced some of the gods. A few intellectuals even already perceived that it was as inane to believe in entities as it was to profess faith in gods. Although enthusiastic about their “abstract genius” and their scientific appreciation of the objective world, which prepared the way for positivism, Comte found Greek society to be arrogant, selfish, anarchic, and overly intellectual. The insufficiencies of both military and priestly authority led to a lack of discipline and purpose in Greek society. Because of this deficiency, the Greeks oppressed their allies and tributaries and mistakenly called everything that did not originate with them “barbarian.” They showed little respect for great men and public servants. As a result, mediocre demagogues took charge all too often. There was little interest or success in either war or industrial pursuits, while intellectual matters took up too much attention. Some theoreticians, especially writers, tended to degenerate into a “pedantocracy.”165 The public was in awe of the speculative genius of perhaps a hundred eminent thinkers, who were put on

162 163

164

Democritus’ corpuscular theory and its effects on physics, see Syst`eme, 3:305. In the Synth`ese, Comte remarked that physics took this theory from morality, that is, “from the decomposition of people into families.” Synth`ese, 521. Such a remark reflects Comte’s interest in the cultural context of scientific theories. Cat´echisme, 277. The fetishists’ “concrete instinct” had sketched out spontaneously many aspects of natural philosophy. The “Greek genius” was to develop “systematically” what the concrete instinct had grasped. Comte wanted again everyone to remember that fetishism marked the beginning of all the important developments of history. See Syst`eme, 3:306. Syst`eme, 4:512. 165 Ibid., 3:269, 415.

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a pedestal and developed above all their rhetorical skills, not their thinking abilities.166 The “talent for saying things well” was overly prized. Although praising Herodotus and Thucydides for launching historical studies, Comte criticized them for being too literary and unconcerned with moral lessons. Socrates and Plato were also excessively literary, besides being too ambitious, eager to debate, and negative.167 “Their sacrifice of the heart to the mind” contributed to the Greeks’ “disdain for women” and the “monstrous love” between men. They also constructed utopias that undermined the family and private property. Plato’s influence was especially “disastrous.”168 Besides being too preoccupied by “philosophic subtleties,” the Greeks engaged in “aesthetic puerilities.” Although Comte praised the Greeks for their aesthetic productions, he accused their artists (including poets, playwrights, architects, etc.) of being ethnocentric. They haughtily forgot their predecessors, the fetishists and theocratic polytheists (such as the Egyptians), attributing to themselves the “intellectual and even social foundation of the civilization whence they emanated.”169 Reflecting the realist movement of his own day, Comte also found Greek art to be mediocre. Greek artists disfigured reality, which they tended to disregard in order to idealize a low type of human beauty. There was no moral or intellectual stimulation involved in seeing heads that were too small for love or thought. Earlier theocratic sculpture was more aesthetically powerful. Deploring Greek ethnocentrism and the lack of moral elevation and social awareness in Greek art, Comte was not as celebratory of Greek civilization as Martin Bernal suggests in Black Athena, where he accused nineteenth-century thinkers of racism.170 Comte had his own agenda, which was to denigrate the Greeks in order to clear the way for positivist excellence in the arts. He boasted that positivism’s relativism allowed modern “rationality” to absorb primitive 166 167

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Cat´echisme, 279. Syst`eme, 3:271. Comte criticized Plato and Socrates for their “mental inferiority” and “moral insufficiency.” Comte seemed, however, to view Socrates with somewhat greater respect, calling him “the only honorable” man among the Greek charlatans. Ibid., 3:341, 404. Ibid., 3:313, 342. Comte referred mockingly to Plato as the “so-called master” of Aristotle. Calling him too “antigeometrical,” he criticized his “puerile affectation” in mathematics. Ibid., 3:310, 317. He also attacked his politics as immoral. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” December 28, 1845, MAC. Syst`eme, 3:279, 353. The fetishists had contributed spontaneity, and the theocrats, systematization. Comte commended the Greeks in particular for launching the logic of images. He particularly liked Homer, Aeschylus, and Phidias. Ibid., 3:279, 3:415, 4:143; Cat´echisme, 279. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Egypt, 1785–1985 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 239–40.

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instincts. Positivism would resurrect the concreteness, spirituality, and emotionality of primitive art, which more faithfully depicted human nature than did polytheists’ representations of man as “the passive plaything of divine caprices.”171 Comte even included in the dedication de Vaux’s “fetishist” poem about flowers to demonstrate the vitality of primitivism.172 In keeping with his concern with gender differences, Comte also looked at the condition of women in this first stage of history. Taking up a principle made famous by Fourier, he insisted that the improvement of the condition of women, including the extension of their influence, was “the principal measure of true civilization” and progress. His version of women’s history was remarkably astute. He maintained that women in general in primitive societies suffered from “a brutal oppression.” In particular, Comte condemned theocracy for maintaining polygamy, which was ultimately a sign of “masculine brutality” and a means of degrading women. The Greeks commendably developed monogamy but erred in neglecting the company of women and using slaves to satisfy their sexual desires. Comte noted, Basically woman found herself less deprived of the worthy society of man in the harems of Asia than in the gynaeceums of Greeks. Considering that public life had not been able to rise due to the absence of a common, continuous activity, the private deregulation resulting from moral indiscipline was seen especially in the little esteem accorded to the affective sex by a population essentially devoted to the pleasures of the mind. All the elite men and even most philosophers usually lived in the middle of courtesans, who alone were able to enjoy sufficiently such satisfactions.173

Excessive intellectual development was thus accompanied by the poor treatment of women and workers as well as homosexuality.174 Comte concluded, “All of Greek history presents the sad spectacle of a nation sacrificed to the . . . development of the speculative genius in several privileged people. For in placing intelligence above everything, this people experienced an unparalleled degradation, which has never been repaired . . . because the lack of order was made up by a progress in which the masses could participate only passively.175 Due to their 171 173

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Syst`eme, 3:280. For more on Greek art, see ibid., 278–89. 172 Ibid., 3:280. Ibid., 2:97, 257, 3:67–70, 271–2. See also Susan K. Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference: Women and the New Society, 1803–44 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 155, 164, 168. Syst`eme, 3:271. Condemning homosexuality, Comte added, “A fatal denomination will always remind us of the special tendency of this people toward a sexual degeneration that is naturally aroused by the vicious preponderance of the intellect over sentiment.” Ibid., 3:272. On Comte’s fears of being overly intellectual because he may have harbored concerns about his own sexuality, see Kofman, Aberrations, 209. Syst`eme, 3:271, 274, 332.

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one-sided development, the Greeks were not as complete as the theocracy that preceded them. Even intellectual life began to suffer. While the sciences continued to advance under Aristotle’s influence, philosophy became metaphysical and retrograde and finally allied with theologism to institute the transition to monotheism. In depicting such horrors, Comte sought to underscore his opposition to the tyranny of an intellectual power. Whereas Greeks represented the intellectual arrangement necessary for the advent of positivism, the Romans were associated with the social preparation, a contribution to positivism that was superior to that of the Greeks.176 The Romans absorbed Greek learning and put it in proper perspective.177 They showed that action was more important than contemplation, correcting the mistakes of the theocrats and the Greeks. In directing the mind to social problems and in giving priority to action that helped society, the Romans more tightly united people. Fetishism had begun this process of unification by making the heart supreme, but its stress on order stifled progress. The Greeks had ignored the problem of social unity because of their fascination with the mind. Thus the Romans moved humanity closer to social unity. Whereas the fetishists instituted the home as the material site of their feelings, the Romans developed the city as the objective expression of their patriotism. (Positivists would regard the planet earth as the physical representation of their love of Humanity.)178 The key to Roman history was this devotion to the patrie, leading to the cooperation of generations of Romans to extend their society’s borders and assimilate other peoples. By encouraging patriotism and developing civic activities, the Romans cultivated people’s sympathies and planted the seed of the love of Humanity. Comte asserted that there were three phases of Roman assimilation of other peoples and unification of much of the white race. Rome took over first all of Italy, then Spain, and finally Gaul. These three areas represented the heart of the West. Comte defended these wars of conquest by explaining that military activity at this time led to discipline and peace. Indeed, in his eyes, the Greek wars were more oppressive and bloody, whereas the fetishist and modern fights were sterile and murderous. The Roman wars represented “the only way to institute a truly collective activity, one that could rally the efforts of individuals.” But some individual soldiers acted on their own, often resisting the cupidity and pride of their leaders. Military life thus surpassed “industrial existence” in developing not only social 176

177 178

Ibid., 3:543. Comte wrote approximately one hundred pages on the Romans and pulled much information from Jacques-B´enigne Bossuet’s Discours sur l’Histoire universelle. See Cat´echisme, 280. Cat´echisme, 281. Comte stressed the need for a “material site” to consolidate human relations. Such a site fixed our feelings and thoughts and provided continuity and solidarity. Syst`eme, 3:364.

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cooperation but independence, both of which Comte insisted were necessary to the evolution of sociability.179 Representing an important collective activity that increased sociability, wars put humanity on the road to true unity. In general, Roman culture was morally superior to Greek civilization because of the subordination of private existence to public life, which was more developed than ever before. Public life had an important civilizing effect in improving people’s morality, for people regulated their personal lives according to their “social destination.”180 Courage, prudence, and firmness were particularly encouraged, and habits of obedience and command were developed because of the military tenor of the society. Personal merit began to replace birth as a criterion for social classification. Comte also examined the condition of women in the Roman period, reflecting his keen sense of social history and its relation to political history. He pointed out that Roman wives were still not considered true companions of their husbands, who were often distant. Their freedom was too restricted, and they could be repudiated too arbitrarily. However, in general, Roman marriages were superior to Greek ones because wives and mothers were held in higher regard. One reason is that the Roman wife was more involved in public life. Because their husbands were often away at war, women were put in charge of the education of their children, especially their “moral education.” Women also gained in stature because they had to provide a refuge to their husbands when they grew tired of military activity and political intrigues. Husbands were less tyrannical and closer to their family members, for they knew they had a social function, that of forming “true citizens.” In short, the “habitual liaison between private and public life” improved women’s existence.181 Comte’s description shows the persistence of the image of the Roman matron in the nineteenth century. Like the revolutionaries, he was much taken with Roman models of behavior. Just as Comte had mentioned the intellectual benefits of Greek democracy in widening people’s mental horizons, he discussed the consequences of aristocratic rule in Rome. At one point, the people in Rome rightly demanded changes in the constitution. Reflecting again his leftist roots, Comte wrote, “Although the philosophy of history demands impartiality, one could never misunderstand the general superiority of the popular movement over senatorial resistance.” The people demanded the creation of a dictatorship, which they viewed as crucial to so large an empire, and the diminution of the power of the Senate, which was indifferent to popular welfare. Comte, thinking of his own plans for a dictatorship in the positive era, approved of this concentration of “republican authority” in the hands of Julius 179

Syst`eme, 3:363, 379, 383.

180

Ibid., 3:372.

181

Ibid., 2:98, 359, 382.

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Caesar, whom he much admired.182 Comte maintained that during the Roman Empire the vast majority of dictators had been good rulers and usually represented the people against the tyranny of the patricians. This scenario reflected the innateness of benevolence.183 He wrote with characteristic naivete, “The very superior multiplicity of fully recommendable hearts proves both our native goodness and the special tendencies of high positions to cultivate spontaneously our best penchants.”184 He hoped to replicate this system in his positivist era. He also approved of the emperors’ practice of adopting sons who would succeed them. After all, he recommended this procedure for families during the positive era. As with other practices, he traced this one back to fetishism.185 After incorporating many peoples through conquest, the Roman Empire found that wars were less necessary. Military strategy became more defensive than offensive. People tended to engage in more pacific activities, laying the groundwork for the growth of “industrial operations.” “Dictators” prepared the path to the abolition of slavery, which would eventually lead to serfdom in the Middle Ages. Cognizant of gender issues, Comte stressed that affective life became more important, especially because women had more “liberty” and more authority in their own right and the practice of male guardianship diminished.186 Tackling the age-old question of why the Roman Empire fell, Comte asserted that the activities that gave the Roman Empire its strength finally doomed it just as the intellectual developments that characterized Greece proved ironically to be its downfall. In the long run, Roman military activities could not be permanent or universal and were not as effective in uniting society as the new industrial activities that were gradually replacing them. Once military expansion stopped, civic impulses diminished, and moral discipline declined. Idleness, excessive wealth, attachment to pleasure, and oppression of incorporated peoples contributed to the fall of the Empire. Comte did not think that the barbarian invasions played as large a role in the collapse of Rome as many historians stated.187 Comte asserted that during this decline, people longed for a new universal moral system to regulate their intellectual and active forces, which now were greatly developed thanks to the Greeks and Romans, respectively. He wrote, “All the moral needs relative to practical existence . . . increasingly pushed for the direct elaboration of the universal religion.” Monotheism emerged from the “dogma of fate” that represented one “central power” exerting ultimate authority over 182 183 187

Ibid., 3:387. Comte called Caesar’s murder a “crime without parallel.” Ibid., 3:389. Cat´echisme, 281. 184 Syst`eme, 3:398. 185 Ibid., 3:144. 186 Ibid., 3:391–2, 396. Comte seems to have been most familiar with the work of Edward Gibbon, whom he mentions at one point. Ibid., 3:414. In the Cat´echisme, Comte dismissed the idea that feudalism came from Germanic invaders. Cat´echisme, 283.

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the gods. The person who most contributed to its development was the Roman Jew Paul.188 Reflecting his openness to other cultures, Comte commended the Jews for helping to develop monotheism and criticized Catholics for failing to express their gratitude to them. It was a shame to proscribe forever “the entire Jewish nation to avenge one single victim” – a victim who submitted to death with the certitude of coming back to life three days later. Mocking Christ, he insisted that the “unfortunate” Jews would acquire much more recognition for their achievements in the positivist era.189 monotheism Combining Greek, Roman, and Jewish influences and spanning the nine centuries of the Middle Ages, monotheism represented the “last transition between theocracy and sociocracy.” It rehabilitated the feelings, the “necessary motor of all our existence” and the source of true unity.190 The coming of positivism thus rested on all of history. Fetishism and the Middle Ages, Comte’s favorite periods, founded the importance of the affections, the Greeks established the significance of the intellect, and the Romans underscored the necessity of activity.191 Countering the corruption and idleness in the Roman Empire, monotheism developed a moral system that demanded self-discipline and the substitution of duties for rights. Its moral goal was to develop benevolence, that is, love, which was the highest of all the emotions and essential to fulfilling the religion’s desire for universality. (Fetishism encouraged another important emotion, attachment, while polytheism advanced veneration.) Moral self-improvement was also an important way to get closer to God. This notion of self-perfection, 188 189

190 191

Syst`eme, 3: 401, 403. Paul introduced many Greek ideas into Catholicism, laid out the moral problems of humanity, and provided much discipline. Ibid. 134, 281–2, 427, 430. Ibid., 3:413, 4:509. See also 427, 453, 463. He suggested, however, that the Jews were perhaps mistaken not to take Mohammed as their Messiah in order to reestablish their nationality. Comte admired their “majestic ensemble of historic memories.” He discussed the Jews’ impact on Catholic festivals, their inauguration of the concept of the week, and their tendency toward the separation of powers. He also spoke highly of the “admirable books of the Hebraic theocracy.” Syst`eme, 2:353, 3:407. However, he agreed with the old ban on reading the “sacred books of the Old Testament,” chiefly because he wanted people to read Thomas a` Kempis. Appel, 73. Syst`eme, 3:398, 417. In some regards, Comte seemed to prefer the fetishists’ approach to emotional life because it was more spontaneous and direct. He wrote, “Directly founded on sentiments, fetishism was the only system that conformed to the true character of the absolute religion [of positivism].” Ibid., 3:420. Yet although fetishism proclaimed the preponderance of feeling, this strength became “too implicit” when the two polytheisms, that of the Greeks and Romans, emerged.

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seen also in Jewish and Islamic religions, helped launched the concept of progress, which complemented the idea of order that Aristotle had established. The moral strength of monotheism came especially from its concept of the future life, its stress on supernatural revelation to dispel the criticisms of metaphysics, and its creation of a separate priesthood, which drew support from the doctrine of divine incarnation. This doctrine suggested that priests had a supernatural leader and thereby gave them great authority vis-`a-vis the temporal power. The separation of powers meant that the independent spiritual power could impose moral rules and rally “populations that were too heterogeneous to continue to tolerate temporal concentration.”192 Monotheism joined its moral goal with an intellectual one, which had aesthetic repercussions. Aspiring to universality, it developed a belief system centered on one God, which could be common to many people and opened the way to the triumph of the positivist idea of Humanity. Monotheism’s insistence that everyone direct his or her thoughts toward eternal salvation and ultimately God helped the arts. Moreover, difficult questions about human nature and morality provoked “rational discussion” among members of every class, stimulating their minds. In particular, monotheism completed the system of logic, which helped to bring the mind to maturity. Fetishism developed the logic of feelings, by linking them to corresponding thoughts. To counter the vagueness of this system, polytheism advanced the logic of images. Images were important because they served as intermediaries between our thoughts and feelings. Yet images were not always readily available. Monotheism launched the logic of signs, which helped people better connect images with their thoughts and feelings.This advance in methodology facilitated the growth of mathematics and meditation, especially abstraction and deduction. (Fetishism fostered the observation of concrete things, and polytheism advanced the observation of events. These systems were more favorable to induction.) Comte also approved of scientific advances during monotheism. Under polytheism, the development of laws was limited because they conflicted with the belief in many gods with their own wills. The belief in the supremacy of one god allowed greater freedom in exploring the natural world. At least during the Middle Ages, there was no important conflict between science and religion. The “Catholic genius” improved “all parts of natural philosophy.193 These congruent mental and moral activities were closely related to practical activities. Catholicism, preoccupied by connecting each 192

193

Ibid., 2:106. Antiquity provided the original emphasis on philosophers’ control of the spiritual realm. The Middle Ages had the idea of separation of church and state. Appel, 3. Ibid., 2:101, 220; 3:489.

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person to God, did not care much about practical activities. Nevertheless, the growth of industry and the concomitant decline of offensive warfare and rise of chivalry, which were nonreligious activities, helped morality. Chivalry in particular stressed loyalty, devotion, “liberty,” and sincerity.194 Comte hoped to further develop chivalry’s protective functions in the industrial regime of positivism.195 Much of the influence of Catholicism on medieval society was, in Comte’s eyes, exaggerated. He was loath to give Catholicism more credit than he thought necessary. He pointed to feudalism and chivalry as beneficial social and political institutions in this period.196 Feudalism proved to be more important than Catholicism in encouraging the expansion of public life, which was so central to emotional development. Feudalism was responsible for creating the model of temporal hierarchy marked by “reciprocity” between “obedience and protection.” Those on the top owed those on the bottom protection, and those on the bottom were supposed to obey them in return. Comte wanted to replicate this paternalistic political system in his positivist society. Also, feudalism transformed slavery into serfdom and then effected the abolition of personal servitude, allowing the civic liberation of workers. The freedom of the workers was the most important revolution of the Middle Ages because it opened the door to industrial development.197 Through chivalry, which Catholicism downright hated, feudalism emancipated women. Comte wrote, “The preponderance of pacific activity and the coming of the universal religion demanded . . . the emancipation of women and the personal liberation of workers.” Women needed “personal liberty” to fulfill their moral function. Reflecting the views of Flora Tristan, he insisted that improvements in the lives of women and of workers were connected.198 194 195

196

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198

Ibid., 3:423–4, 462. He alluded to courtly love and chivalry as having foreshadowed his concept of the three guardian angels. During the Middle Ages, nobles tended “to animate and embellish their warlike scenes” with images of a beloved woman so that “tender emotions” would lessen their feelings of desolation and terror. Ho hoped his new religion would strengthen “chivalric sentiment,” which ideally would serve as the foundation of “republican habits.” Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 239. See also Comte to Congreve, January 4, 1857, CG, 8:367; Cat´echisme, 238. Feudalism, he insisted, was not a Catholic institution. It was a separate system common to many non-Western countries, including those of Islam. It stamped its character on the Middle Ages. Indeed, the “Catholic-feudal transition” “best foreshadowed . . . the normal state of humanity, of which it directed the last fundamental preparation.” Syst`eme, 2:113. Ibid., 3:402, 462. See also ibid., 2:123. Comte lamented that entrepreneurs soon became more concerned with their own upward mobility than with the condition of the workers, whose material well-being was no longer guaranteed as it was under serfdom. Comte maintained that the “social coming of women” was linked to “that of proletarians, among whom the feminine influence must be more complete and even purer than anywhere else.” Ibid., 2:122.

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Catholicism also “participated . . . in the worthy emancipation of Occidental women” by encouraging the repression of the sexual instinct. Because of the demands of celibacy, priests “were able to recognize . . . more so than worthy women the capital importance of sexual purity to . . . human improvement, which is not only moral but also mental and even corporeal.”199 Reflecting the nineteenth century’s fears of out-of-control women and opposing the freelove doctrine promoted by Fourier and the Saint-Simonians, Comte explained that purity was important to “feminine liberty,” which otherwise degenerated. During the Roman Empire, for example, women’s increased freedom had led to “universal disorders” because of their unbridled sexuality. Catholicism worked against this trend. The new emphasis on women’s purity and influence and the development of chivalry led to the cult of the Virgin Mary, the “common lady of lonely hearts.” This cult idealized the “feminine type,” launching the cult of Woman. The Virgin Mary also represented Humanity better than God did and thus was instrumental in preparing the way for the adoration of the Great-Being.200 Along with chivalry and Catholicism, feudalism contributed to women’s emancipation. It did so by insisting that women develop tenderness, a trait that initially did not interest Catholicism. Indeed, feudalism, not Catholicism, was responsible for the improvement of marriage. (Catholicism preferred celibacy to marriage, which it viewed only as a “concession necessitated by our vicious nature.”) Feudalism led to a more sedentary life, which demonstrated the “dignity of women and the value of domestic ties.” As a result, divorce was prohibited, women were granted more “liberty,” and father’s authority over the family, which had been paramount in Roman times, was reduced. Comte again took the words “liberty” and “emancipation” from the women’s rights movement of the times without giving them their full due because he imposed his own agenda on women. He claimed that women, who were more appreciated because of the new emphasis on affective life, obtained “freedom” from their husbands to increase their “moral efficacy,” the source of their happiness. In effect, they developed their role as angels of the household. Women’s 199

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Ibid., 2:111, 3:450. Yet at the same time, he did not approve of priests’ narrow focus on sexuality, their embrace of celibacy, and their insistence on virginity for everyone. Ibid., 3:452. Ibid., 2:111, 3:451, 3:486. Comte explained that chivalry developed “the Catholic fiction where ideality made up for the imperfections of reality.” This “mystical approach” to woman was elaborated more by feudalism than by Catholicism. Indeed, Comte maintained that the Virgin “supplanted” God in southern Europe. Ibid., 4:412. Although many mystics stressed the divine nature of this “new goddess,” other “superior souls,” such as Dante, endeavored “to humanize this ideal type.” Comte praised his verses to Mary. Ibid., 2:122. For more on this cult, see Appel, 77; Comte to Metcalf, February 28, 1856, CG, 8:232.

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increased “freedom” led ultimately to their becoming “better subordinated to their husbands,” whose names they even adopted.201 Comte was more favorable to women when he insisted that they not be confined entirely to the private sphere. Again he pointed out that women had a “double influence” that was both “private and public.” Feudalism helped women exert their influence in both the public and private spheres because medieval chˆateaux functioned as powerful local courts. Holding an important place as mistresses of their castles, women had an impact on public life, which revolved around their courts. Comte celebrated a variety of strong medieval women who had been active in the public sphere. Clotilde effected the conversion of her husband Clovis, who was “the founder of the French monarchy.” The “virgin” Joan of Arc heroically pushed back the English invaders and saved France. This “heroine” foreshadowed the “final superiority of the proletarian woman.”202 Another important medieval development was the increased closeness among the Western countries. Catholicism and feudalism stimulated a common faith and clergy; a convergence of all peoples toward defensive warfare, which meant fewer military squabbles; and the homogenization of manners and activities. Thus the five chief populations enjoyed a “free aggregation” instead of being forced into a union as they had been under the Romans. Comte showed in detail how this aggregation came about as he reviewed the principal events and personages of the Middle Ages. He divided the medieval era into three phases. The fifth to the late seventh centuries represented the birth of the “new Occidentality” in the midst of spiritual and temporal conflicts. The eighth to late tenth centuries were marked by the consolidation of the new “aggregation” and the development of defensive warfare against polytheist peoples. Reflecting his own patriotism, Comte called Charlemagne “almost as great as Caesar” because during this time he founded the “Occidental Republic,” as a “free association” of independent states. The eleventh to late thirteenth centuries were characterized by the completion of the foundation of the Occidental republic, which represented the “principal result of the Middle Ages.”203 Although Comte considered the Middle Ages the “essential core of a true philosophy of history,” he was very critical of many developments that occurred then.204 They harmed political life in particular. Echoing Voltaire’s stance, Comte wrote, “In effect, in spite of its claims to universality, the Catholic faith always had to inspire, 201 202 203 204

Syst`eme, 3:352, 451, 483. Ibid., 3:483. 468, 505, 538. Comte was angry that Joan of Arc was not recognized as a saint. “Lettre philosophique sur la commemoration social,” June 2, 1845, CG, 3:31. Syst`eme, 3:465, 472, 478, 486. See also Cat´echisme, 284. Syst`eme, 3:62. Chapter six, devoted to this period, was the longest of the book – over 150 pages.

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by its exclusive character, hatred and oppression of the populations which rejected it.”205 Its insistence that non-Catholics were damned negated the sense of historical continuity. Its intolerance also led to war and became particularly deadly with the growth of Islam, which also sought universality.206 The Crusades against the Muslims initially prolonged the Catholic feudal regime by bringing the Western states together, but they eventually destabilized it.207 The struggles of Catholicism against Islam dampened the hope that people could share a “community of opinions and manners.” After the period of the Crusades, the “monotheistic part of the white race was . . . divided between two irreconcilable cults, while the yellow race maintained polytheism, and the black race fetishism.”208 The dream of a universal religion vanished. Catholicism suffered from other shortcomings besides its intolerance. Although it created a common spiritual regime in the West and aspired to universality, it was marked by dissidence and contradictions, which hurt spiritual, practical, social, and moral life. As reflected in the split between the Roman and Byzantine churches, people were divided spiritually. Moreover, reiterating Edward Gibbon’s argument, Comte explained that Catholicism’s preoccupation with attaining personal salvation was incompatible with industrial and public life, which favored terrestrial concerns. In dedicating themselves to worshipping an egotistical God and in focusing only on their own personal eternal salvation, monotheists found no guidance or social purpose for their actions in the public sphere, and they became isolated.209 Because they were to be emotionally concentrated on themselves, their altruistic endeavors became distractions which made them feel guilty. Truly disinterested love could not exist. In fact, no one believed that purely benevolent feelings were natural. Such affections were considered “inspirations” sent from God as part of grace, which was represented to be in a battle with nature.210 Moral life was damaged in other ways as well. Because morality was God’s domain and no one could presume to understand it, Catholicism was incapable of ascertaining moral laws. People did not 205 206

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Ibid., 3:458. Reflecting his more global interests, Comte stated that most members of the “white race’ wanted a universal religion. Some embraced Catholicism, while “another noble part of the white race” veered toward Islam. The Roman world was thus divided “between the Koran and the Bible.” Cat´echisme, 284–5, 294. Ibid., 284. Moreover, in the fourteenth century, the Crusades were discredited because they had no real aims. After the Crusades, Islam took over the “Oriental domain.” Syst`eme, 3:561. Syst`eme, 3:493. Comte wrote to a friend that Catholicism denied the “natural existence of benevolent penchants” in order to make “divine Egoism” prevail. Comte to Metcalf, February 28, 1856, CG, 8:232. Syst`eme, 2:115. Comte attributed this fictional notion of grace to Paul. Cat´echisme, 134.

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closely adhere to the dictates of Catholicism; duels were fought for centuries despite the priests’ disapproval of this practice. Priests were idle and wasteful. Dismissing the importance of morality, businessmen sought to wrest the leadership of society from outdated feudal lords.211 In terms of intellectual life, monotheists referred to causes, instead of laws, and reveled in contradictory “vague speculations” and fictional devices. Clashes arose between feelings and reason. The allegedly perfect God seemed increasingly to be completely capricious, interested in fulfilling only his own desires and indifferent to the imperfect world that he had created. Comte boldly asserted, “The divine type is thus close to the last decree of animality.” Controversies over God and other issues led to persecution and heresies and eventually ruined monotheism, which came to view intellectual progress as threatening. In addition, reflecting the nineteenth-century interest in history, Comte criticized Catholicism for failing to embrace all of the past. In looking only at the Christian past, it lacked a “truly historical point of view.”212 At least Islam tried to avoid such “brutal discontinuity.”213 Comte believed the worst shortcoming of monotheism was its exaggeration of the “empire of sentiment.”214 Comte suggested that monotheism’s interest in putting sentiment before the intellect and activity was premature, for these had not sufficiently developed. Indeed, because monotheists were so focused on their own emotions, they neglected theoretical and practical developments. Thus in terms of advancing altruism, intellectual life, and industry, Comte found monotheism deficient. the occide ntal revolution The three transitional periods of ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the Middle Ages “led the Occident from theocracy to sociocracy.” These three eras developed the intellect, activity, and emotions, 211

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Feudal lords could not adapt to new agricultural, banking, and industrial activities. They lost their military importance as wars decreased. Comte astutely remarked that they did retain their superiority in the realm of manners, which represented a model of “personal dignity” and “social devotion” and were widely imitated by the nouveaux riches. Ibid., 3:497. Ibid., 3:446, 508, 4:512. Christianity completely ignored its Greek and Roman heritage and was unjust toward its “Jewish antecedents,” to whom it gave a “vicious importance.” Cat´echisme, 286. Comte told one supporter, “What I can’t forgive in Christianity is its rupture with all preceding times; it destroyed the true continuity which binds mankind together.” Comte, as cited in Perry, “A Morning,” 628. Cat´echisme, 286. 214 Syst`eme, 4:291.

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respectively, and deteriorated because they prized their areas of competency too much. It was premature to subordinate theory to practice, actions to feelings, and private existence to public life.215 Because the positivist regime was not sufficiently developed to take over, the West experienced growing anarchy from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. Comte called this five-hundred-year period of decomposition the “Occidental revolution.”216 He prided himself on picking the fourteenth century rather than the sixteenth as the beginning of this revolution. To him, the Reformation was not the beginning of the trend toward dissolution but the consequence of people’s tendency to discuss and question, which started in the fourteenth century.217 This intellectual chaos, though necessary, was ultimately corrosive. In each of the previous three periods of transition, there had been some temporary unity because their respective societies were devoted to either the mind, practical activity, or the emotions. But since the fourteenth century, there had been no goal or general direction. Order was maintained only because of the domination of obsolete theological and military medieval structures. As in his early essay “Sommaire Appr´eciation de l’ensemble du pass´e moderne” of 1820, Comte looked at the “double movement” of negative decomposition and positive regeneration that he believed marked the modern period.218 Unlike monotheism, which had evolved from polytheism, positivism would not emerge from an older theological system. Because positivism and theologism were opposites, the former would have to await the complete destruction of the latter. Thus the negative, destructive movement prevailed for five hundred years. The revolution from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century was primarily intellectual in character because the “cultivation of intelligence had remained essentially suspended since the Greek elaboration” of the bases of theoretical growth.219 Although monotheism had emerged from discussion, it increasingly sought to prohibit it.220 Moreover, the “divine principle” led to many irrationalities and “shocking obstacles to progress.” Catholicism became increasingly reactionary and wedded to its own material security. It thus lost its 215 216 217

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On the necessity of subordinating theory to practice, see ibid., 3:502. Ibid., 3:505. The chapter on this modern period was one hundred pages. Comte, “Sixi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1855, CG, 8:16. The fourteenth century encompassed the Great Schism, which hurt the papacy, and the rise of nominalism with William Occam. Syst`eme, 3:500. Comte republished this essay, called the “second opuscule,” in Syst`eme, volume four, “Appendice,” 4–46. Ibid., 3:504. In other words, after the Middle Ages, the intellect became dominant again, showing that the medieval stress on the emotions had been premature. Synth`ese, 460. Cat´echisme, 286.

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spiritual independence and authority, which hurt morality. “Henceforth, instead of regulating powerful people, its discipline tended only to subject weak persons to them.”221 Besides mental, social, and moral disorder, there was practical disorder, which was seen in the rise of individualism and specialization. The biggest problem, besides the replacement of monotheism by a new synthesis, was the incorporation of the proletariat into industrial civilization. As anarchy worsened, partly because of the workers’ demands for justice, the state followed the Church in becoming reactionary. Despite his criticisms of this revolutionary period, Comte asserted that the “full emancipation” that it engendered was “indispensable.” People had to become incredulous and reject the absolute before they would be open to cultivating a new whole or synthesis, which was crucial for the growth of the corresponding social sentiments.222 The “positive spirit,” emanating from the work of scientists, inspired this fruitful “complete negativism.” Also at work was the metaphysical spirit, which created a “negative doctrine” systematizing the absence of rules. This doctrine rested at times on “liberty in order to regenerate,” but at other times it sought “to destroy by equality.”223 Liberty could lead at least to a synthesis, whereas equality and the concomitant questioning of authority led to leveling, skepticism, and a different kind of domination. As everything fell apart, faith dissolved, the medieval goal of moral improvement evaporated, and people began to become increasingly isolated. Anarchy resulted when everyone, including the reactionaries, claimed the “infallibility” usually accorded to the Popes; this belief in the correctness of one’s own reason led to an increase in “pride and vanity,” which brought people to the brink of “madness.”224 In charting the alienating effects of isolation, Comte foreshadowed Emile Durkheim’s concept of anomie. He took the metaphysicians to task for this state of affairs. Metaphysicians, who often worked in the universities, set themselves up as a new spiritual authority.225 They advanced the cause of emancipation but in the process caused “incomplete negativism.” Politically ambitious and mentally incompetent, they had developed ontology, which had led from polytheism to monotheism, but they now created 221 222

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Syst`eme, 3:507–8. Ibid., 3:506. Comte commended Diderot for discerning the connection between the problem of incorporating the workers into society and the need for a demonstrable faith, whose roots went back to the Middle Ages. See also ibid., 617. Ibid., 3:505, 511. Comte sought evidence of this tension in the “insurrections of the fourteenth century.” Ibid., 505. Comte, “Sixi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1855, CG, 8:16; Appel, 73, 87; Syst`eme, 4:484. Comte’s reference to “personal infallibility” reflected the contemporary debate on papal infallibility, which was to become a doctrine of the Church in 1870. Comte believed that “pride and vanity” constituted “the principal seat of the cerebral malady” that had gripped the West. Appel, 87. Cat´echisme, 289.

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new entities to ensure their domination. They still supported causality, although they rejected its divine aspects, and they sought vainly to create an objective synthesis that Comte deemed more absolute than theology. As a result of their influence, people hesitated between rejecting the discredited faith of Catholicism and embracing the new positivist faith that was just emerging. This hesitation was “disastrous,” leading to much disorder.226 In the temporal realm, the transition was marked by the growth of industry, which worked with the developing scientific spirit. Science made industry more systematic in its approach to production, whereas industry gave science a practical destination. Industrial life not only stimulated the sciences but inspired peaceful, orderly, collective activity. The agents of the new temporal authority that was emerging were the legists, who were often judges. They instituted rules of conduct, reinforcing order.227 The cooperation demanded by industrial enterprises was “more vast and durable than the warlike solidarity, which was already exhausted.” Not a party to Luddite sentiments, Comte praised machines for raising the “dignity of workers as much as the power of entrepreneurs,” especially because they freed men from acting as weights and motors and allowed them to develop their minds and moral character.228 However, at the same time, he criticized machines for “aggravating the desertion of workers by entrepreneurs,” who no longer cared about their “social conditions.” Workers were “increasingly exploited instead of being governed.”229 They had no homes of their own or decent wages to shield them in periods of unemployment, which was often occasioned by the introduction of machines.230 Although Comte might not have dwelled on the factory owners’ cruelties as much as Marx, he certainly did not toady to them as Saint-Simon did. Instead, he constantly reminded the entrepreneurs of their growing responsibilities to their “agents,” the workers. The industrialists, who would replace nobles as the political leaders of society, had inherited the “great problem” left to them by the Middle Ages, that of incorporating the proletariat into society. Yet Comte astutely remarked that instead of being inspired by a sense of “civic grandeur,” the industrialists wasted their time by slavishly imitating the aristocrats out of disdain for their own class.231 Their ambition made them scorn labor and laborers. Their adoption of 226 228 229 230 231

Syst`eme, 3:511. 227 Cat´echisme, 289. Syst`eme, 3:519, 521. For more on machines and the importance of machine operators as the highest workers, see ibid., 4:353, 359. Syst`eme, 3:594; Cat´echisme, 296. Cat´echisme, 248; Namer and Cingolani, Morale et soci´et´e, 35. See Cat´echisme, 246 on Comte’s theory of the “necessary freedom of human work.” Syst`eme, 3:521.See also ibid., 3:497. However, Comte maintained that the nobles, especially aristocratic women, provided “important models of sentiment and conduct” to the “new classes” in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Ibid., 537.

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old prejudices also led them to “vicious conquests” of other nations. Imperialistic wars benefited only those in control of commerce and industry. The basic problem was that these men stupidly refused to recognize their own “humble origin.”232 Like Michelet, Comte generally commended the common people for their role in the Occidental revolution, especially for upholding morality and resisting their employers’ military ambitions.They wisely made alliances. At first, the people had promoted the work of the metaphysicians, who advocated their enfranchisement. Then after several centuries, the masses had supported the scientists, who were busy creating a positive synthesis, in the hope they would find a solution to the problem of class conflict. In this way, Comte found historical precedents for his own appeal to the common people to join his movement. He also provided historical background to explain why women should support him. He sympathized with women’s alienation from the modern world. To him, the modern transitional period did much to further science and industry but failed to deal with the emotions and tended to disregard moral values. Women felt that lacuna, according to Comte, and put up “feminine resistance” to modernization.233 They rejected the moderns’ infatuation with antiquity, especially Greece, a time when their activities had been restricted. Similarly, they criticized the moderns’ hatred of the Middle Ages. Women liked the medieval spirit, which was epitomized by chivalry and was responsible for their emancipation. In this way, women exerted a crucial moral influence on modernization. By showing the benefits of the Middle Ages, they also preserved a sense of continuity in history, which was crucial to the final regeneration of society.234 In short, both women and workers hated the new oppressive regime of the selfish industrialists, missed the dignity that they had acquired during the Middle Ages, and should rally to positivism.235 The moral influence of women and workers was reinforced by people working in the arts. Artists played an important role as critics of the monarchy and the Church. In addition, they modified the “materialist influences emanating from the scientific movement and the egoist tendencies coming from industrial growth.”236 232 234 235

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Ibid., 3:523, 525. 233 Ibid., 3:524. In the Cat´echisme, Comte also insisted that women alone upheld the importance of moral culture during the five centuries of the Occidental revolution. Cat´echisme, 291. Comte wrote, “Since the aristocracy had experienced moral degradation, the opposition of the affective sex to modern barbarism was transferred to the bourgeoisie until the corruption of the latter transported this attribution finally to its proletarian organ.” Ibid., 3:553. Syst`eme, 3:524.

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After covering the main developments of the Occidental revolution, Comte divided this transitional period into three subperiods. First there was the spontaneously destructive phase of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when negativity was very important. Liberty of discussion and examination arose spontaneously because intellectual principles were so weakened. The period was also marked by conflicts between the aristocracy and the monarchy, where one eventually triumphed over the other, depending on the country.237 This new kind of temporal dictatorship marked the end of feudalism, as seen especially in the decline of military habits.238 Legists helped in this process of temporal consolidation. Struggles between the temporal and spiritual powers resulted in the declining power of the Catholic Church. The clergy became submissive toward the temporal authority, while the Pope degenerated into an “Italian prince.”239 In this environment of increasing “mental anarchy and moral corruption,” metaphysical doctrines became indispensable.240 The task of metaphysicians was to spread emancipation to the masses, who needed to help with the destructive work of the revolution. In terms of the positive results of this period of dissolution, Comte pointed to the growth of various sciences, the rise of nominalism,241 the artistic achievements of Dante and mystics (especially Thomas a` Kempis),242 and industrial developments.243 Positive advances in science, the arts, 237

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In France, the monarchy eventually prevailed, whereas in Venice and England, the aristocracy did. Cat´echisme, 290. Comte condemned the Hundred Years War in particular. Deploring its viciousness, he referred to Hume as having correctly ascertained the cause, the desire of the English kings to deflect attention from the aristocracy’s challenge to their power. Comte thus blamed the English alone for this conflict, again showing his partisanship. He also maintained that the Arabs, who were already ruined in the thirteenth century, caused war in Spain by attempting to prolong their domination there. Comte praised in particular Louis XI as the “best type of modern dictator.” Syst`eme, 3:537. See also Cat´echisme, 290. By dictator, Comte seemed to mean any person in the position of ultimate power, because he called Louis XIII and Louis-Philippe dictators as well. Deroisin, Comte, 152. On Comte’s use of the word “dictator,” see Nicolet, “Littr´e et la r´epublique,” 490–91. Cat´echisme, 290. Syst`eme, 3:539. Comte pointed to Niccol`o Machiavelli’s doctrine in particular as symptomatic of this moral degredation in politics. Comte called nominalism the “most decisive step” in the coming of positivism until the works of Hume and Kant. “It indicated, in the middle of the objective preparation, the presentiment of a subjective synthesis because of the importance accorded to artificial logic as the provisional connection for all our thoughts.” Ibid., 541–2. Comte praised Dante for his subtle challenges to Catholicism and his announcement of the “final regeneration.” The Divine Comedy represented the “entire modern revolution and even the essence of human history.” Ibid., 542. Thomas a` Kempis was important to Comte for having understood human nature and for suggesting that God should be replaced by Humanity. Cat´echisme, 135. Comte stressed the development of gunpowder, the printing press, and the discovery of America. Cat´echisme, 291; Syst`eme, 3:574.

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and industry were as spontaneous as the decomposition of the temporal and spiritual spheres. The second modern period was the Protestant phase of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At this point, the destruction of the old system became systematic, but the decomposition was still incomplete. Whereas in the Cours Comte had pointed out some progressive aspects of Protestantism, now he attacked it more viciously. It appeared to be the most deficient religion in history.244 To him, Islam had accomplished by the year 900 “all the essential changes that the three founders of Protestantism attributed to themselves successively.” People became Protestants simply to escape the domination of the Pope, not because they were more advanced. To Comte, Protestantism unnecessarily fragmented Christianity, offered no originality or vigor, fomented moral disorder by allowing divorce, and rejected “the best institutions of Catholicism, purgatory, the cult of saints, and especially the adoration of the Virgin, the true goddess of meridional hearts.”245 In addition, it sanctioned individualism by allowing each person to make “the supreme decision” on religious and other questions. This negative intellectual doctrine was reinforced by two social ones, which arose in the Protestant countries of Holland and England: the dogmas of popular sovereignty and social equality. Both doctrines supported a “state of non-government” as the norm.246 These dogmas eventually influenced the Catholic Church, which was already proving itself incapable of accommodating the “scientific spirit and industrial existence.”247 Feeling threatened, Popes struggled against kings to get greater power, but the states ended by taking over more of the jurisdiction of the spiritual power.248 Protestantism seemed to reject spiritual authority altogether. Its “success depended especially on its necessary tendency to subordinate the clergy to the government.”249 Whether monarchical or aristocratic, these modern dictatorships grew stronger but were incompetent.250 244

245 246

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Annie Petit, “Le Rˆole du protestantisme dans la R´evolution occidentale selon Auguste Comte,” in Images de la R´eforme au XIXe si`ecle. Actes du Colloque de Clermont-Ferrand (9–10 novembre 1990), ed. S. Bernard-Griffiths, G. Demerson, and P. Glaudes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1992), 144. Syst`eme, 3:547, 548. See also Cat´echisme, 292. Syst`eme, 3:530, 550. The doctrine of popular sovereignty arose when Holland tried to free itself from Spain. The notion of equality emerged during the English Civil War. Ibid., 531. Ibid., 3:555. Comte dwelled favorably on Saint Ignatius’s efforts to reestablish spiritual authority but then denounced the Jesuits for becoming corrupt, hypocritical, and too eager to control students in their boarding schools. Remembering his own education in a boarding school, he maintained that it was more important for children to be at home, where they were under the moral influence of their parents, especially their mothers. Appel, 35. Metaphysicians attempted to advance national heresies, such as Gallicanism. Syst`eme, 3:557. 250 Ibid., 3:559. See also Appel, 34.

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In discussing the positive results of this period, Comte pointed out the importance of scientific advances, especially in astronomy, which was abuzz with discoveries relating to the position and movement of the earth. The “substitution of the relative notion of world for the absolute conception of universe” was largely responsible for destroying theology and “inaugurating positivism” at this time. Moreover, Descartes rightly pointed out that the coordination of ideas would have to be subjective, not objective, although he erred by founding such a subjective synthesis on “personal intuition.”251 The cogito had to be collective.252 In terms of aesthetics, the arts tended to idealize the new rational, peaceful life that was developing. Private existence and its connection to the public sphere represented the subject of many writers, such as Calder´on, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Moli`ere.253 Others such as Ariosto, Tasso, and Corneille focused on history. Taking the side of the Moderns in the famous debate with the Ancients, Comte proclaimed that more great poetry was produced between the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries than ever before.254 As for industry, it continued to develop its peaceful, collective nature, thanks to encouragement by the state. One big problem was the slave trade, which no clergy condemned as immoral, much to their discredit. 251

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Syst`eme, 3:565–7. Comte praised Descartes’s regeneration of human understanding and his launching of the subjective synthesis by making the subject of knowledge important. But Comte did not like the egoistic elements in his philosophy of cogito. Descartes thought that the individual began to understand the world after he first simply understood his own mind. Comte rejected Descartes’ emphasis on the individual and his insistence that the subject had priority over the object. Comte preferred Leibniz’s more social point of view and the importance given to social reality by Adam Ferguson and the Scottish philosophers. Moreover, Descartes, according to Comte, was a coward for not seeking the laws of mental and moral phenomena. Finally, he did not approve of Descartes’s isolation of the moral order from the physical one. Synth`ese, 360, 428–9, 452, 616–17; Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “Antipsychologisme et philosophie du cerveau chez Auguste Comte,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52, no. 203 (1998): 14; Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “La Philosophie des sciences,” 813–14; Fr´ed´eric de Buzon, “Auguste Comte, le Cogito et la modernit´e.” Revue de Synth`ese 112 ( January–March 1991): 62; Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, introduction to The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, 5. Buzon also reminds us that Comte considered Descartes “the last author of an objective synthesis.” Ibid., 72. Laffitte further explained that Descartes had posited that the problem of organizing conceptions could be solved if the understanding were renovated. Comte had finally “discovered” the “laws of understanding,” which were the basis of sociology and the foundation of the “systematization of human life.” Laffitte to Comte, September 9, 1853, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte (Suite),” RO, 2d ser., 37 (January, 1908): 53. Juliette Grange, introduction to Auguste Comte, Philosophie des Sciences, 34. She points out that Comte broke with and at the same time completed Cartesianism by proposing a new science of man whereby humanity was the “collective subject” as well as “the object of knowledge.” Ibid., 35. Unlike these poets, the “noble republican” John Milton had a more purely aesthetic talent. Syst`eme, 3:571. Cat´echisme, 294. See also Arnaud, ibid., 312n189.

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Slavery in general represented a “social monstrosity, which emanated from the vile oppression that the intelligent race exercised on the loving race.”255 Reflecting his growing interest in Islamic culture and his deep admiration for the “incomparable Mohammed,” Comte commented on the blossoming of the “modern revolution” in the so-called Orient. Because of their desire to conquer other peoples in this region, Muslims wanted the supreme head of their theocratic state to be not only a religious leader but a military one. They created a more fully developed theocratic state than had existed under polytheism.256 After they triumphed in the Orient, they lost their enthusiasm for universalism.257 Islam’s spiritual decomposition, which was more spontaneous than the Catholic one, was facilitated by “its confusion between the two [spiritual and temporal] powers and the simplicity of its faith.” Protestantism had also fragmented Christianity by dismissing the separation of powers and trying to create a more simple faith. However, to Comte, the Muslim faith was in some ways superior to both Protestantism and Catholicism during early modern history because it did not rely on metaphysicians and legists as the Christian religions did.258 Emancipation in the form of science and industry came late to Islamic countries and was embraced chiefly by the upper governing classes. In this way, anarchy was avoided.259 Instead of looking at the “Orient” as backward and exotic, as many of his contemporaries did, Comte asserted that this area had been progressive for a long time, was favorable to the positive movement that was developing, and was “especially prepared “ to adopt his universal religion.260 The third phase of the revolutionary movement was the deist phase of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which displayed a more complete systematic decomposition than the Protestant phase. This deist phase began with the expulsion of the Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. It ended with the French 255 256

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Syst`eme, 3:576. Cat´echisme, 255, 285. See also Appel, 14. Comte asserted that Mohammed, however, recognized the importance of separating the spiritual and temporal powers. For more on Mohammed, see Syst`eme, 3:460. Comte believed these two religions neutralized each other. For over five hundred years, Islam had abandoned efforts to convert the West, and Catholicism had even abandoned Jesus’s tomb to Islam. Cat´echisme, 33. Syst`eme, 3:561. Comte also believed that Islam was superior to the Eastern Orthodox Church, which was not effective in governing “undisciplinable” people in the eastern part of the former Roman Empire. Ibid.,. 4:xxi. In addition, he commended Muslims for their tolerance and for not disturbing India as much as the British Protestants did. Syst`eme, 4:511. Comte maintained that Oriental theocracy was the “only really complete type of human order” until the positivist system came into being. Yet he also recognized that this orderly society eventually stymied progress. Appel, 14. Syst`eme, 3:562. See also Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979).

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Revolution of 1789.261 Comte focused on the state in both France and England, showing how dictatorial and reactionary it was. Louis XIV, influenced by the Jesuits and the “skillful schemer” Madame de Maintenon, triumphed over the aristocrats and launched the reactionary movement in France.262 Although the “great Cromwell” supported a republic that was compatible with the “final sociocracy,” the English aristocrats who came after him were reactionary and sought to maintain order to preserve their class’s powerful position. As soon as Protestantism felt secure, it dropped its support for further emancipation. Anglicanism was especially hypocritical. Moreover, class conflict worsened. To avoid the challenge of social reform at home, the upper class encouraged conquests for the benefit of industry, which increased nationalism and corrupted popular instincts. England tended to distance itself more from other Western countries.263 The situation in both England and France became increasingly anarchic. The positive movement continued to develop but was not yet ready to take over. France eventually took back the leadership of the modern movement – a leadership position that had been conferred upon it during the Middle Ages. It encouraged the Enlightenment, which was partly inspired by Hobbes, who, according to Comte, had the excellent idea of combining “spiritual liberty and temporal dictatorship” as the best approach to “the modern transition.” Taking up this concept, Enlightenment thinkers created an “intellectual revolution,” while respecting the reactionary state. Comte believed that this restraint was necessary to avoid complete anarchy; indeed this stance was what he recommended in terms of positivists’ policy toward Napoleon III. He was therefore ambivalent about Voltaire. Led by this philosophe, the “subaltern class“ of literary types accepted the “glorious mission” of popularizing the “negative” ideas of the Enlightenment, especially the “critical dogmas” of popular sovereignty and social equality, which came from the Protestant Reformation. These men used such concepts also to attack Christianity. Yet because they adopted deism instead of altogether doing away with the belief in God, and because they maintained the monarchical system, the emancipation they promulgated was incomplete. Deism, “the last stop of negativism,” eventually caused a whole new set of obstacles to emancipation because it aspired to “universal domination.” Rousseau was the main culprit. Recognizing the urgency of reforming the increasingly corrupt government, Rousseau turned deism in a new direction, back toward Christianity, and then focused his attacks on the monarchical government, which he insisted must be open to equality. His political 261 262

Comte further divided this phase into three periods of equal duration, corresponding to three different generations. Syst`eme, 3:578. 263 Cat´echisme, 295, 297.

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campaign was thus the opposite of that of Voltaire and his followers, whom Comte considered more rational and closer to positivism. Yet both camps were ultimately “contradictory” because they sought to protect parts of the old system that they were otherwise destroying. Their intellectual disorder was reflected in their disregard for history. (Voltairians hated the Middle Ages, while Rousseauians were enamored of “subversive utopias” because of their exaggerated love of the Middle Ages.264 ) The efforts of these two schools, which were simultaneously anarchical and reactionary, neutralized each other.265 Fortunately, in Comte’s mind, there arose a third school. It traced its roots to Fontenelle and included the Encyclopedists, Comte’s “immediate precursors.” Some of the thinkers who were in this school were Diderot – the “greatest genius of the eighteenth-century” – and d’Alembert, Montesquieu, Georges Leroy, Turgot, Buffon, Clairaut, Lagrange, and Berthollet.266 This school was more emancipated than Rousseau’s and Voltaire’s followers because it was freer in both thought and politics. Politically, the school found its expression in Frederick the Great, who, following Hobbes, combined liberty and power. Again Comte’s predilection for strong authority figures could not be clearer. Intellectually, the members of the school paid most attention to their philosophical critique, which they felt was more important at the moment. Their aim was to coordinate the negative doctrine. The result of their efforts, the Encyclop´edie was a synthesis that reminded people of the organic, constructive goal of their campaign to regenerate the West. Yet Comte also criticized the Encyclopedists for being excessively individualistic, inept at historical judgments, and “viciously” antireligious.267 Their theory that religious beliefs were used by governments to manipulate the people was particularly absurd in his mind. 264 265

266

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Syst`eme, 3:580, 581, 586; Cat´echisme, 295. See also Cat´echisme, 32. Comte criticized the two schools for challenging marriage, authorizing suicide, supporting pride and vanity, advocating a system of nongovernment, discrediting the division of powers, and wanting the state to rest on the masses. Syst`eme, 3:583; Comte to Metcalf, February 28, 1856, CG, 8:231. See also Syst`eme, 3:582; Cat´echisme, 32, 296. Diderot was “the most encyclopedic mind” since Aristotle. Syst`eme, 3:583. Yet his powers of construction could not be fully used in this period of destruction. Laffitte showed that Comte’s roots in the school of Diderot in truth went all the way back to Descartes, who first tried to systematize knowledge on the basis of the understanding. Diderot continued this pursuit with the Encyclopedia, which systematized “all the diverse aspects of existence.” Fontenelle and Condorcet belonged to this school because the former deepened our comprehension of the mind by applying scientific laws to its development whereas the latter endeavored to show that the renovation of the understanding would lead to a reorganization of politics. Laffitte to Comte, September 9, 1852, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte (Suite),” 53. Comte to Metcalf, February 28, 1856, CG, 8:231. See also Syst`eme, 3:582, 583; Cat´echisme, 32.

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During this period, there were three metaphysical triumphs in the temporal sphere, according to Comte. All of them represented the essence of metaphysics, that is, its tendency to create ruptures.268 The first triumph was the suppression of the powerful Jesuits, who epitomized the “last mode of Occidental monotheism.”269 The second triumph was the administration of Turgot, which showed the need to overturn the government. The third was the American Revolution, which demonstrated the corruption of colonialism. Thanks to these three victories, the metaphysical faith was embraced by the people. As for the positive movement, Comte pointed out that the sciences, arts, and especially industry were encouraged by the government and made advancements. Hume, Diderot, and Kant transformed the laws of human understanding.270 Vico attempted to uncover “sociological laws,” although he was not as successful as Aristotle and Hobbes. Hume, by comparing “the industrial civilization of the moderns and the military sociability of antiquity,” did much to develop the concept of progress.271 Along with Georges Leroy, he also refuted the metaphysical system that was based on egoism, opening the way for the recognition of the altruistic penchants. Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues reorganized the culture of the heart. In short, the way was paved for the subjective synthesis, which Descartes and Leibniz had anticipated.272 As for the sciences, Comte reviewed in particular advances in astronomy (especially Isaac Newton’s law of gravity), chemistry, and biology (especially Linnaeus’s theory of classification). In the arts, Comte noted the rise of novels idealizing private life, the appearance of theaters, and the emergence of opera, which directly expressed human sentiments without referring to God. In practical pursuits, Comte praised the development of machines and banks for reinforcing pacific activities. 268 269 270

271 272

Kremer-Marietti, Le Concept de science positive, 184. Syst`eme, 3:556. Comte praised Hume for his work on causality and Diderot for his work on intelligence. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason chiefly summarized their results by “instituting the most appropriate formulas to characterize the fundamental dualism between the spectator and the spectacle.” Yet Kant’s attempt to create a subjective synthesis proved illusory. One reason is that he lacked the laws of mental evolution. Comte also did not approve of Kant’s wish to preserve society by reestablishing supernatural beliefs. Yet he did support Kant’s subordination of subjective constructions to objective materials. Ibid., 3:588; 4:176. Ibid., 3:589. Robertson also advanced historical studies. By 1855, Comte considered Descartes and Leibniz his “principal precursors” and the “founders of positive philosophy.” The former was important especially for the objective point of view, while Leibniz was “placed in the subjective point of view.” Comte claimed only to have “completed and systematized under a sufficient social impulsion” what they had done in the way of harmonizing the spirit of the whole and that of detail. He also approved of their philosophical approach to mathematics. Synth`ese, 20–21; Laffitte, “Conversations with Auguste Comte,” April 29, 1848, MAC.

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The crisis that occurred in the late eighteenth century came about because of the discordance between the development of the positive movement and that of the negative movement.273 On the one hand, the negative movement had reached the point where regeneration was clearly imperative. “All beliefs were dissolved, and the retrograde dictatorship, which rallied all the diverse debris of the ancien r´egime, was found to be irrevocably discredited.” Feelings were also in dire straits, as seen in “the continuous diminution of the feminine influence and the growing insurrection of the mind against the heart.”274 Because the sciences were too specialized and philosophy had failed to achieve a subjective synthesis, the positive movement could only substitute “conceptions relating to details” for the “views of the whole” that the negative movement had destroyed.275 Comte explained, “Considering that the organic evolution could therefore not satisfy the needs manifested by the critical movement, a social commotion was inevitable.” The culmination of five centuries of growing chaos, the French Revolution was “indispensable” in order “to obtain for the regenerating conceptions a decisive extension with free propagation.”276 Like Marx, Comte recognized the social and economic aspects of the Revolution. For example, he pointed out that the Revolution did the important work of breaking up the large feudal fortunes to prepare for a new upper class. Yet unlike Marx and more like Tocqueville, he focused on intellectual and political tensions. Displaying a good grasp of cultural history, Comte particularly lamented the way the leadership of the Revolution fell into the hands of the “most incapable class, that of pure writers, who aspired only to the metaphysical pedantocracy dreamed of by their Greek masters in order to take over all power.”277 He was aware of the significance of not only the press but the classical model. Moreover, instead of analyzing the impact of social classes at length, he insisted that the three schools of the Enlightenment directed the French Revolution. For the first eight months of the Revolution, Voltaire’s followers, the Girondins, were in charge. They were frivolous skeptics, who demanded liberty. The “encyclopedic school” of Diderot, which was “naturally organic,” produced the most important revolutionary leaders, including “the admirable Condorcet,” the only philosopher with “regenerating meditations,” and “the great Danton,” whom Comte called the only true statesman since Frederick the Great.278 After the British aristocracy created the coalition against France, “the needs of national defense” transferred the 273 274 278

Cat´echisme, 296. Syst`eme, 3:595. 275 Cat´echisme, 296. 276 Syst`eme, 3:596. 277 Cat´echisme, 254, 296. Danton’s altruism and heroism were revealed, according to Comte, in the statement that he made in the midst of anarchy: “May my memory perish provided that our country be

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reins of government to the Dantonians. According to Comte, they shone for ten months, from the expulsion of the Girondins in June 1793 to the “bloody triumph” of Robespierre and the “fanatics”in April 1794, when Danton was executed. Only the Dantonian school understood that republicanism did not consist of parliamentary government but of a strong central power. The Convention that they set up was “the only French assembly whose memory must remain [important].”279 This dictatorship, which was “comparable to those of Louis XI, Richelieu, Cromwell, and even Frederick,” directed the defense of the new French republic and completed the abolition of the obsolete monarchy, which was “the last vestige of the regime of castes.”280 The Dantonians also tried to create a new nonsupernatural religion, but it suffered from being simply a “social spectacle.” In addition, they insisted on the importance of bringing workers into the mainstream of society. Yet in the end, the Dantonian school was weak because it had only a vague, destructive program.281 Rousseau’s followers, the Montagnards and Jacobins, were complete anarchists devoted to popular sovereignty and equality. They eventually dominated the situation during the height of the Terror because they were the only ones who touted a doctrine, the Social Contract. Under Robespierre, who vanquished Danton, this critical doctrine triumphed and the “new dictatorship soon degenerated into an anarchical retrogradation, to which nothing will ever be comparable.” Their parliamentary regime with all its empty talk about the rights of man ended by curtailing freedom and preventing progress. Their deistic religion – the Cult of the Supreme Being – led to much bloodshed. Recognizing the inanity of the situation, many people turned to Napoleon. But his reactionary tyranny seemed to reestablish the theological and military regime because he combined Catholicism and war. Comte particularly denounced Napoleon’s Russian debacle, which he called the “final orgy.”282

279 280 281 282

saved.” Syst`eme, 4:50. Comte encouraged his disciples to do research on Danton, whom he admired for having appealed to the “intelligent and generous civism of the Parisian population and the patriotism of the French population to save the revolution.” He was certain that his disciples would find evidence to refute charges that Danton was corrupt. It was clear that “the devoted man who had sufficient audacity, intelligence, and loyalty to carry such a redoubtable enterprise through to a successful conclusion could not have been at the same time a traitor.” Comte, cited by Magnin in a copy of a letter to Robinet, November 29, 1879, MAC; Syst`eme, 3:596. Laffitte commended Comte for presenting Danton as the political representative of Diderot’s “great” philosophical movement. Laffitte to Comte, September 9, 1852, in Laffitte, ed. “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte (Suite),” RO, 2d ser., 37 ( January 1908), 42. Syst`eme, 3:599. It also wisely abolished scientific academies. Ibid., 3:599; Cat´echisme, 297. Syst`eme, 3:602, 3:610; Cat´echisme, 297. Syst`eme, 3:597, 600; Cat´echisme, 297. Comte condemned Napoleon’s aggressive expeditions, which were carried out “under the pretext of consolidating the independence” of

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Except for Danton and Condorcet, the revolutionaries were the target of Comte’s venom. Indeed, he commended the conservatives Maistre, Bonald, and Franc¸ois-Ren´e de Chateaubriand, who “discredited systematically negativism” and made the public turn against the eighteenth century.283 People finally began to recognize the need for a real religion and a “moral culture.” Comte even overcame his dislike of Louis XVIII, whom he now regarded as the best of the five dictators France had had since Danton.284 The period 1821 to 1828 was “the most honest, noble, and liberal of all the regimes” under which he had lived. There was at least some freedom of thought and discussion. At the end of his life, Comte commended Louis XVIII for being a “wise dictator,” in contrast to Napoleon III, in whom he had placed his trust in 1851.285 Comte asserted that since the French Revolution, and especially since the Bourbon Restoration, the West had entered a period of reaction without a regenerating doctrine. No one seemed able to solve the problem of the alienation of the proletariat from society, an important factor in the uprisings in Manchester in 1819, Lyon in 1831, and Paris in 1848. Modern society was undergoing a “spiritual crisis” that was being incorrectly treated by “material,” that is, political, means.286 Comte criticized revolutionaries, especially communists, for following Rousseau’s stress on equality, exaggerating the importance of political reforms, and seeking to eliminate the separation between workers and entrepreneurs, which he thought was important for industrial development. So-called republicans such as Pierre-Jean de B´eranger added to the anarchy of the day by engaging in “parliamentary intrigues” and embracing retrograde causes, such as the rehabilitation of Napoleon.287 Comte also condemned reactionaries for recognizing the “spiritual anarchy” but doing nothing about it because of the “powerlessness of their faith.” They mistakenly resorted to extreme political repression to reconstruct obsolete beliefs. Comte called Louis-Philippe the “most imperfect” and

283

284

285 287

France. He preferred the “heroic defense of the French republicans” at the beginning of the French Revolution. His views reflect his principle that defensive wars were becoming more justifiable than offensive ones. Appel, xx. Syst`eme, 3:605. Maistre, along with Walter Scott, Chateaubriand, and Alessandro Manzoni, rehabilitated the Middle Ages, rectifying Condorcet’s disdain for this period. Thanks to them, all of history could be respected. See also ibid, 3:615. Ibid., 3:605, 607, 4:384. According to Comte, Louis XVIII frequently invoked the name of his popular, “progressive” predecessor, Henri IV, instead of Louis XIV, who began the whole reactionary movement. Appel, vii–viii. 286 Syst`eme, 4:444. See also Appel, xi. Syst`eme, 1:74. Comte did not mention B´eranger by name, but Charles Anfrie congratulated him for alluding to him on this page in the Syst`eme as well as in volume 3, page 604. See Charles Anfrie to Comte, August 26, 1857, Correspondances Positivistes, N.a.fr. 27356, BN.

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“harmful” of the “five dictators” after Danton, especially because of his puerile fear of popular clubs.288 The parliamentary system that developed under him dispersed responsibility; developed habits of “corruption, sophism, and intrigue”; and allowed mediocre lawyers (who had replaced judges as leaders) and literary types (“litt´erateurs”), such as journalists, too much influence over public opinion. Parties were interested only in their own survival, that is, the defeat of their rivals.289 Chaos extended from politics to other areas. The negative doctrine began to challenge traditional social ties with “subversive utopias” regarding the family and property. Women found themselves at a crossroads. Comte wrote, “By a vain sentimentality, the feminine influence was subject to a new decrease, and the attitude of the affective sex was so altered that it furnished itself with anarchical organs.”290 Comte did not entirely approve of the antifeminist backlash, yet he did not like the women’s movement either. His confusion seemed as marked as the political, social, and intellectual confusion that he pictured around him. Nevertheless, he maintained that just as intellectual anarchy was showing the need for a new organic doctrine, so political and social anarchy was calling out for a new dictatorship to terminate it. Comte boasted that his form of dictatorship would allow liberty. Comte ended the third volume of the Syst`eme by reiterating his argument that only a “short transition” was needed before the “normal state” of history was attained. Once again in order to gain legitimacy, he ran through his philosophical scientific predecessors who had set the foundations of this future state. Condorcet had established the main idea of the spiritual reorganization by founding politics on history, for only the past could act as the basis for “the fixed and common convictions demanded by the regeneration.”291 Maistre had complemented his efforts, especially by rehabilitating the Middle Ages, which Condorcet had abhorred. Lamarck highlighted the impact of the environment on living beings.292 Bichat combined the static and dynamic aspects in the study of living beings. Broussais, the “only man of genius” in medicine since Hippocrates, deepened our understanding of the normal by pointing out that the pathological was different from it only in intensity.293 Cabanis demonstrated the interdependence of intellectual, moral, and physical functions. Gall deepened our understanding of human nature and located our sympathetic instincts in the brain. Now that all these men had established 288 289 292 293

Syst`eme, 4:384, 440; Comte to Hutton, January 12, 1855, CG, 8:9. Cat´echisme, 295, 298; Syst`eme, 3:607. 290 Syst`eme, 3:609. 291 Ibid., 3:614, 623. Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti makes a case that Blainville had a more direct impact than Lamarck on Comte’s “theory of organic milieux.” See Le Projet Anthropologique, 38. Comte to Audiffrent, November 1, 1855, CG, 8:135.

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the philosophical and scientific bases of the coming era, the “positive spirit” could finally seize “the social domain.” Comte boasted that in his youth he had discovered how to address both “scientific needs,” especially the need for a new demonstrable synthesis, and “political necessities,” particularly the incorporation of the workers into society. To him, these problems had been rankling Western civilization since the Middle Ages. Only he could rectify them and eliminate the “Occidental malady,” consisting of short bursts of anarchy followed by long reactionary periods.294 Only he could complete the transition to positivism.295 Comte’s volume on history reflects his devotion to metanarratives. His philosophy was arbitrary and schematic, but it seemed thorough and systematic, in short, much in keeping with the taste of his period. Above all, he was a historicist who insisted that the past of every institution would be kept in mind by positivism, which itself was rooted in history. Positivism represented the culmination of history, for the positive society would reconcile the order that marked theologism with the progress that characterized the metaphysical period. Instead of oscillating between order and progress, the new society would be characterized by stability; change would occur, but it would be slow instead of brusque and disruptive. Important aspects of the six preparatory periods of the human past – the fetishist epoch, the theocratic era, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and the revolutionary or metaphysical stage – would be adopted by the new positivist society. Eager to unite the future and past, Comte highlighted the importance of combining the “maturity of the Great-Being with its first infancy.” Fetishism would give positivism its spontaneity, concreteness, and imagination. Fetishism, in loving and venerating everything and in taking a fatalist approach to the external world, would strengthen positivism’s main mission, which was “to develop tenderness and consolidate submission.” Comte wrote, “The initial synthesis and the definitive religion recognize the same fundamental principle – first spontaneously, then systematically – by agreeing to proclaim the continual preponderance of sentiment over intelligence and activity. These natural affinities between the two extreme states of humanity must receive an irrevocable consecration by participating in the institution of its normal unity.”296 Positivism would extend the importance given to feeling by fetishism, for it would apply it to larger collectivities than the family and direct it at the human order, 294 295 296

Syst`eme, 3:615, 617. He considered himself part of the “third generation of the exceptional century” designated to cure the West of its long illness. Ibid., 3:624. Ibid., 4:43–4. On Comte’s historical approach to modern science, see Robert C. Scharff, “Comte and Heidegger on the Historicity of Science,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52, no. 203 (1998): 29–49.

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not simply the external order, as fetishists did. The new sociocracy, that is, the new spiritual power, would confirm the original theocrats’ interest in creating a synthesis and their emphasis on giving priority to morality. Humans’ intellectual powers, the arts, and the sciences would expand even more than they had in ancient Greece. Two aspects of Roman society would be adopted: the tendency to give greater emphasis to action rather than speculation and the necessity of subordinating private to public life. Inspired by the Middle Ages, the positivist society would give more emphasis to sentiment and separate the spiritual and temporal powers. Finally, the Religion of Humanity would acknowledge its roots in the “revolutionary milieu.” Developing all aspects of the past and of human nature, the positive synthesis would lead to true completeness. Comte reveled in determinism, for he embraced the eighteenth-century notion of development as preformation; everything emerged from a germ in the past.297 He concluded, All the phases of preparatory life must therefore contribute to the institution of the definitive existence. This universal convergence of the past toward the future results from the fact that the human problem was basically always the same; it consisted especially of constituting as much as possible the general unity of our nature, both in the individual and collective senses.

Indeed, the “law of evolution” demonstrated “our growing tendency toward unity.”298 With its odd status as a science that was a key part of another science, that of sociology, history was thus a jack-of-alltrades. It provided positivism with the legitimacy that Comte believed it needed. It also held the key to the future and to the present, the subject of his last volume. 297

298

This position explains why, for him, “progress was only the development of order” and social dynamics was dependent on social statics. Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “Canguilhem, Comte et le positivisme,” 101–2. Syst`eme, 4:16–17, 89.

Chapter 6

Syst`eme de politique positive: Comte’s Utopia

Every great soul always works for posterity, without being too preoccupied with the present. Auguste Comte

introduction Comte wrote the final volume of the Syst`eme in six months, from January to July 1854.1 It delineated his utopian vision of the future; in a sense, he assumed the role of a poet, presenting his idealized view of the “normal” society, which everyone should seek to realize in practice.2 Despite the short time that he devoted to composing the approximately six hundred pages of text, he hoped this work was better written and would be read by more people than the previous three volumes. The lack of attention that the press had accorded to the Syst`eme disappointed him, and he thought it might have to do with his poor style.3 He defensively belittled “litt´erateurs” who had the time to perfect their writing because they only developed other people’s ideas.4 He, on the other hand, was forced to “elaborate new concepts with an old language,” a challenge that inevitably led to some clunky writing. Nevertheless, beginning with the third volume of the Syst`eme, he had already paid more attention to his style, and so by the fourth volume, he was fairly comfortable with the method of writing that he had developed. Indeed, George Eliot found the first chapter of the fourth volume to be the best written. But Comte’s new 1

2 3

4

See his records of his work, in Laffitte, ed., “Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” 447–8. The work was published in September 1854. See Comte to Hadery, September 11,1854, CG, 7:260. Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture, 8. After the publication of the second volume, Comte complained of the “total silence of the journals.” Comte to Laurent, November 6, 1851, CG, 6:186. Thal`es Bernard tried to submit an article on positivism to the Revue sociale. The editor was Jules Leroux, the brother of Pierre Leroux, who had founded it in 1845. But Bernard found that even bringing up the “work of positive philosophy made the editor tremble.” See May 30, 1850 (not 1849 as marked in RO), in Laffitte, “Amis, Protecteurs, Correspondants d’Auguste Comte: Thal`es Bernard,” 232. On Jules Leroux, see Nadine Dormoy Savage, “Jules Leroux en Icarie,” The French Review 49 (1976): 1029. Syst`eme, 4:viii.

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method of composition was hopelessly mechanical and unaesthetic.5 He limited his sentences to five printed lines and his paragraphs to seven sentences. He did not permit himself either to repeat words for two sentences or to use a hiatus, that is, a succession of two vowel sounds, each of which constitutes a distinct syllable. Although he continued to refuse to rewrite his material as a sign of his spontaneity, he maintained that submitting to such stylistic rules improved both his ideas and his character and allowed his prose “to approach the musical perfection of poetry,” which stimulated the feelings. Comte also claimed that his sentences, like verses of poetry, emerged from “solitary reflection,” rather than from the need to engage in controversy.6 The fact that his language derived from his heart exemplified the essence of the subjective method and suited the topic of religion, which was central to the Syst`eme. Because poetry was “more synthetic and more sympathetic” and thus closer to religion than philosophy, the future positivist society would place poetry above philosophy.7 He was anxious to prove that he could be a positivist poet besides a positivist philosopher. Comte believed that positivist poets had to be rigorous about submitting to rules of language and morality to improve their poetry and character.8 The key word throughout this volume was indeed submission, which he believed would become increasingly necessary as humanity advanced. He seemed to anticipate Freud, who also pointed out that repression grew as civilization developed. Comte’s obsession with resignation reflects his recognition that he had to submit to conditions that he himself did not like, such as the closure of the academic world to his demands for a suitable post, his spoiled relationship with Massin, and the death of de Vaux. However, his many complaints about his situation reveal that he was not a man who submitted easily to the twists and turns of fate. In this volume, Comte used the laws of social statics and dynamics that he had revealed in the previous two volumes to provide an approximate picture of the future positivist society. He believed that his “philosophy of history” could be used to predict the future because it had become sufficiently systematic in its coverage of intellectual, practical, and emotional developments.9 Yet he was careful to point out that his picture of the future, though definitive and superior to 5

6 8

Indeed, he sensed that the work was still hard to read. He was surprised that Hadery read it so quickly because he figured that it took three minutes to read each page. Comte to Hadery, September 24, 1854, CG, 7:263. See also Constant Hillemand, La Vie et l’Oeuvre de Auguste Comte et de Pierre Laffitte (Paris: Revue Positiviste Internationale, 1908), 21. George Eliot also liked the fifth volume of the Cours, especially the section on the Middle Ages. Syst`eme, 1:4,450; 4:ix. 7 Comte to Congreve, July 9, 1857, CG, 8:519. Comte to Sabatier, October 17, 1856, CG, 8:319. 9 Appel, 9.

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Condorcet’s, would not be exact. He could not completely foresee the impact of human intervention on the workings of society because human phenomena were the most modifiable. Predictions about the future could not be entirely precise. Nevertheless, there were limits to the possible directions human action would take. Comte wrote, “Our intervention acquires efficacity only by conforming on the one hand to our immutable nature and on the other hand to its successive development.”10 Thus based on his grasp of the nature of both society and human beings (social statics) and his understanding of history (social dynamics), he believed he could deduce to a great extent what the future held in store. Indeed, it was essential for sociology to predict the future of society in order to be taken seriously as a science, for one of the prime characteristics of a science was its ability to foretell what was going to occur in the realm it studied. Reflecting other positivist principles, that theory preceded practice and that science had to have practical applications, sociology’s prediction of the future would allow contemporaries to determine the most rational plan of action for the present in order to attain a stable, so-called normal state. Indeed, Comte deliberately exaggerated the stability of the future state to underscore the confusion of his contemporary world.11 He never desired to make up theories for the sake of theories but always sought to theorize in order to have an impact on the world of politics, which was concerned with improving the “human situation.” One of his mottoes was “To know in order to ameliorate.”12 To institute the Religion of Humanity, which he saw as crucial to the future society, Comte argued that sociology, which had been dominant in his “objective,” philosophical work, now had to give up its place as the most important science to morality. Morality had to preside over all the sciences in the subjective or religious phase of reconstruction, especially because its knowledge of human nature united theoricians and practicians and best regulated society. Guided by morality, human existence would at last have a “real and complete discipline, one always conformable to our true needs.”13 Morality had to take into account not only social statics, that is, the knowledge of human nature and the nature of society, but social dynamics. Comte wrote, “The existence of individuals and peoples is so dominated by their historic situation that in order to regulate it, one must always modify the general notion of our unity according 10 11

12 13

Syst`eme, 4:3. Mike Gane, “Engendering the End of European History: Auguste Comte’s Cult of Woman at the Heart of the Western Republic,” Renaissance and Modern Studies 39 (1996): 25. Syst`eme, 4:6, 13, 49. See also Appel, 13, 18; Synth`ese, 81. Syst`eme, 4:7, 14, 20; Comte, “Septi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 28, 1852, CG, 6:288.

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to the actual phase of its development. It is only in this way that one can institute appropriate customs for each epoch.” Relativity would be strengthened by the proper study of history, one that truly studied development and rejected the classical approach to history as a “mass of examples” to be blindly followed.14 Pointing out the human need for continuity and still suffering from the loss of de Vaux, Comte emphasized again the importance of maintaining a more intense “commerce” with “the dead and even the non-born.”15 Making connections with others was of crucial importance in the modern age, which was marked by crises and intellectual disorder. The brain could even be regarded as more of an affective “apparatus” than an intellectual one because it represented “the apparatus of the influence of the dead on the living.”16 The dead continued to love and think “in us and by us” through our continuing conversation with them.17 Comte seemed to be reflecting French people’s fascination with the occult in the 1850s. With their belief in reincarnation and social progress, the Saint-Simonians Jean Reynaud and Pierre Leroux, and Massin’s freethinker friend Charles Fauvety had contributed to a kind of “secular spirituality” in the 1840s that culminated in the triumph of the famous spiritualist Allan Kardec, who published his best-seller Le Livre des esprits in 1857.18 Speaking eerily from experience and acting as if he too were a spiritualist, Comte asserted that conversation with the deceased could be “more intimate and continuous” because the dead participants in it were “disengaged from corporeal existence.”19 He resorted to a biological metaphor, emphasizing that the “subjective definition of the brain” was “the double permanent placenta between man and Humanity.”20 Each individual adhered both emotionally and intellectually by means of his or her brain to Humanity. As Braunstein explains, the brain was “a kind of interface between man 14 16

17

18 19 20

Syst`eme, 4:4, 88. 15 Ibid., 4:24. Comte to Hadery, January 25, 1856, CG, 8:212; Comte to Audiffrent, January 12, 1855, CG, 8:5. In 1856, Comte, preoccupied by the importance of morality, emphasized increasingly the emotional part of the brain. Considering that sentiments wielded the most authority in the cerebral region, the brain was chiefly an “affective mass” with two appendices, a “speculative region” and an “active region.” The “affective mass” was both altruistic and egoistic. Comte to Audiffrent, February 21, 1856, CG, 8:227. Cat´echisme, 163. Pointing out again that the “the dead increasingly govern the living,” Comte wrote, “Homer, Aristotle, Dante, Descartes, etc. will never cease to live again . . . in each mind capable of absorbing them in order to produce results in these individuals that are often superior to what happened during their objective life.” Syst`eme, 4:105–6. Lynn L. Sharp, Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Rowman & Little/Lexington Books, 2006), 2, 29. Cat´echisme, 163. See also Dehan and S´en´echal, Les Franc¸ais, 120. Comte to Audiffrent, January 12, 1855, CG, 8:5. For a better explanation, see Comte to Hadery, January 25, 1856, CG, 8:212.

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and ‘Humanity,’ defined as all men participating in the progress of humanity, whether in the past, present, or to come.”21 Thus besides remembering their debts to past generations, people had to keep in mind the future generations for whom they were working. In effect, the “objective population” – the living humans – were subordinated to the “double subjective population,” those in the past and future. Comte maintained that individuals gained in dignity and consistency and achieved “subjective perpetuity” if they subordinated themselves to collectivities, such as their family, their caste, their city, their country, the West, and Humanity.22 In keeping with his emphasis on submission, Comte asserted that both individuals who composed Humanity and Humanity itself had to obey the scientific laws governing the organic and inorganic worlds. He wrote, “It is not only to modify the universal order that we must know it: we study it especially to be able to submit to it in a worthy fashion, following the fundamental theory of unity, epitomized by the construction of the word religion, where the exterior consolidates the interior.”23 Individuals were less free than Humanity to act as they wanted because they were subject not only to biological and physical laws but to the static and dynamic laws of collective existence; they also had to acknowledge the influence of their bodies on their brains. Comte believed people acted more by necessity than by free will. There was little in the natural universe they could change. They could affect only the “intensity of phenomena,” not their arrangement. Given the feebleness of the human mind, there was even limited scope for human intervention in human institutions. For example, he was certain that humans could not eradicate all social problems; there would always be poverty and beggars even in the “best human order” because practical life was inherently flawed.24 As Pierre Macherey suggested, there was something tragic in Comte’s vision of the individual in the face of the enigmatic, all-powerful universe, which challenged him or her at every step. Comte, according to Macherey, should be categorized not with Descartes but with more tragic philosophers, such as Pascal and Nietzsche.25 Yet Comte endeavored to find a way out of a completely pessimistic position. He asserted that under positivism we would be more free than under a religious system because we would not have to pay attention to one or more gods, who were always capricious and arbitrary. 21

22 23

Braunstein, “Auguste Comte et la philosphie de la m´edecine,” 170. Braunstein points out that if a person snubbed tradition, the brain, which was to conserve memory, suffered, and illness ensued. The same was true for society. Thus a disregard for tradition led to the “Occidental illness.” Syst`eme, 4:25, 34. Two of these entities in particular, the family and the country, served as preambles to Humanity. Ibid., 4:164. 24 Cat´echisme, 197. 25 Macherey, Comte, 121–2.

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The rules we made would rest on the natural, “spontaneous” economy so that they would not be repressive. Submission to natural laws diminished egoism, the source of unhappiness, and gave us direction. He wrote, “Our unity rests, in effect, on this complete submission without which . . . our affections become unregulated, our thoughts incoherent, and our actions troublesome.”26 Submission, in short, led to self-improvement. Comte’s fatalism turned out to be problematic. At the same time that he was urging people to forego their illusions and face reality, he wanted to preserve some freedom for human action.27 He did not subscribe to Lamarck’s notion that beings were totally subordinated to their milieux. There was an interplay between them. People regulated the social, biological, and material milieux in which they developed and to which they were subject. They could improve this overall milieu, which influenced them. After all, Comte’s sociology was not just a description of society; it was a plan for social activism.28 It was normative, not simply descriptive. He thus continued to assert that the goal of the Great-Being was to “develop voluntary activity” as much as possible, especially in “secondary dispositions of the universal order” and in matters relating to human beings and society, which were the most modifiable. Indeed, he later said that the concept of “modifiable fatality” epitomized the “character of the positive dogma.” He wrote, “The complexity of the phenomena becomes . . . such that the possibility of modifying the natural order becomes as clear as the impossibility of subtracting ourselves from it.”29 One could argue that Comte was being realistic in recognizing the scope of voluntarism and countering the hubris of contemporaries who thought they could remake the natural, social, and political worlds at will.30 Countering such arrogance, Comte celebrated love as the most important component of his religion because it could regulate both the intellect and activity and thus all aspects of our existence. The point of his doctrine was to ensure the harmony of the mind and heart by having the latter regulate the former. Social harmony depended on having altruistic feelings and common thoughts. To cultivate the emotions, which led to social harmony and unity, Comte now demoted the sciences to a spot below the arts. The arts had more to do with the emotions, satisfied our needs more effectively, tended directly toward action designed to improve human nature, and revealed much about the moral order. The sciences all too often simply inspired an egoistic 26 27 29 30

Syst`eme, 4:39, 40, 172. Comte wrote at one point that “artificial progress always consists of developing natural order.” See also Cat´echisme, 225. Frick, Auguste Comte, 11. 28 Braunstein, “Comte ‘in context’,” 311. Syst`eme, 4:39, 221. On Comte’s realism and his effort to reconcile “a certain form of liberty” with the demands of reality, see Frick, Auguste Comte, 11.

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quest for vast, often superfluous knowledge, which led to the neglect of the emotions. Henceforth, scientific theories would acquire a sacred, unified character by forcing people to submit to the external order and thereby repressing their egoism. Because of the dominance of sociology and morality, the sciences would become more ethical; they would be compelled to refer ultimately to Humanity either in terms of man or society. This focus on Humanity would help people determine how to conduct themselves.31 Universal love would not only discipline the sciences but affect the classification of the three social forces. Hitherto, in terms of power, the material force (the practicians) was stronger than the intellectual force (positivist priests or theoricians), which was in turn stronger than the moral force (women). Yet in the positivist era, when the “subjective” method would be more significant and the heart would prevail over the mind, the order of importance of the material, intellectual, and moral forces would be reversed at least in terms of esteem. Morally speaking, the members of this society would be arranged according to “their aptitude to represent Humanity, that is, according to the degree of sympathy in their nature.”32 Intellectually speaking, they should be classified according to the synthetic nature of their minds. Thus social classification could be based either on a group’s abilities to sympathize or synthesize, which to Comte were equivalent because sympathies were the source of synthesis. From this principle, he concluded that the moral power (women) would have the most respect and dignity, the intellectual power (positivist priests or theoricians) would have somewhat less, and material force (the practicians, that is, entrepreneurs and workers) would have the least. Nevertheless, practicians would have the most independence, the priests would have somewhat less, and women would have the least.33 Although he had tempered his misogyny a great deal, Comte still vaguely resembled Rousseau and other antifeminists in trying to compensate women for their lack of power by giving them a high moral standing. the practicians In an effort to appeal to conservatives, Comte maintained his slightly critical stance toward the workers, which was also evident in the second and third volumes of the Syst`eme. He asserted that the proletarians’ simple work meant they were the least synthetic members of society and that their poverty did not make them as sympathetic as their bosses could be. They were too insistent that society should 31 33

Kremer-Marietti, Entre le Signe et l’histoire, 93. 32 Syst`eme, 4:62. See Syst`eme, 2:279–80 for how this classification of social forces accorded with the hierarchy of the sciences. See also ibid., 2:359, 376, 4:62, 304, 4:241; Cat´echisme, 125, 234.

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be constructed around their needs alone. They could be violent and antisocial. They were also hypocritical in condemning the idleness of wealthy people but seeking their same “ignoble existence.”34 Using terms borrowed from Roman history to emphasize his position, he insisted that in the so-called normal positivist state, the entrepreneurs, the “new patriciate,” would have a higher position in the social hierarchy than the workers, now called the “plebeians.” The patricians would have more drive, greater responsibilities, and harder jobs. Nevertheless, despite his virulent criticisms of the lower class, he admitted that at the moment he found workers to be superior to the corrupt patricians. Workers were to be respected, for most of the positivist priests and some members of the temporal power (especially entrepreneurs) would come from their class, at least in the beginning. Despite the fact that patricians would have a higher place in the positivist state, workers would, nevertheless, exercise an important civil function related to morality. Because they had little responsibility in the workplace, they were freer intellectually and emotionally and could apply the positive doctrine to control abuses by women, theoricians (scientists), and practicians (entrepreneurs or industrialists), especially by means of public opinion.35 Representing the public, they would make sure that scientists in particular did not become too specialized or distant, although they could not question their authority in matters of pure science because they were not experts. Workers were also to moderate conflicts between the practicians and the theoricians, making sure both groups kept the needs of the whole society in mind. Comte’s insistence on the people’s surveillance of scientific research was in the tradition of Jacobin anti-academism.36 But because he gave workers little power against these two groups that monitored them, it is hard to see how they could effectively challenge them. Perhaps aware of this problem, Comte made specific suggestions to make workers stronger and more independent and to mitigate the violence of the class struggle, which would not be permitted in the positivist state, where force would be used only to repress “unanimously denounced actions.”37 In the positivist state, workers would acquire a specially designed encyclopedic education in the sciences and industry, which would help them in their jobs, and new guarantees of labor, which would secure them against want and improve their family life, the chief source of their happiness.38 Comte believed 34 35 36 37 38

Cat´echisme, 191, Appel, 90. Syst`eme, 4:77, 83, 322. Patrick Cingolani, Le Probl`eme de l’individualisme et de la d´emocratie aux origines de la sociologie en France au XIXe Si`ecle (PhD Diss., Universit´e de Paris VII, 1991), 255. Bensaude-Vincent, L’Opinion publique, 82–7. Comte also assumed that one day man’s “destructive instinct” would greatly diminish, and there would be more peace in all areas of society. Ibid., 249. Appel, 50.

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that domestic life would become more stable and public life more orderly if entrepreneurs did away with the unsatisfactory system of “vagabond,” that is, irregular, work, and gave workers a sufficient amount of money to support their wives and families.39 Admitting that socialist utopias were correct in demanding a more egalitarian system of pay, he maintained that given the homogeneity of their labor, all workers should be guaranteed a minimum income of 1,300 francs a year, which was at the high end of the range of workers’ wages at this time.40 (For example, a worker in the bookbinding industry in Paris earned one thousand francs a year.41 ) As functionaries, they should really get salaries, as professional men did, so that they need not feel insecure.42 Given the universal scope of positivism and its excellent schools, which would no longer be only for the rich, workers would more easily change jobs and find well-paid employment anywhere in the world. With greater job security, higher salaries, and better education, workers would be happy and would be able to devote themselves to moral self-improvement. Challenging Thomas Malthus, Comte insisted that workers could then surmount their egoistic sexual drives, which caused them to have too many children. Given their limited circumstances, the fact that they need not become absorbed in their work, and their “happy mediocrity,” they would be more capable of developing their faculties, cultivating altruism (especially the feeling of attachment), and containing pride and vanity than any other group.43 In short, workers would be the social group that would be regenerated first. Noting the way entrepreneurs degraded and neglected the proletariat, Comte urged them to develop benevolence in order to gain the respect of the workers.44 In the positivist regime, one day a year 39 40

41

42 44

Syst`eme, 4:84; Comte to Edger, March 12, 1855, CG, 8:34. See also Syst`eme, 4:337, 344; Appel, 90. Syst`eme, 4:341, 343. Comte wanted workers to be compensated by a salary that did not reflect their inherent value but only “the materials” that they consumed. In this way, the poor would think more highly of themselves. Wealthy people would not consider themselves more valuable than the workers simply because they earned more money. Comte also wanted workers’ salaries to consist of two parts, one sum appropriate to their function and another based on the results of their labors. In this way, workers would be protected from slow periods. Cat´echisme, 246, 248. Henri Touchet to Comte, January 8, 1857, MAC. Touchet, Comte’s neighbor, complained that his income of one thousand francs a year was insufficient for his family of six. Interested in the positivist religion, he wished to give to the Positivist Subsidy but could not afford to do so. Mont`egre informed Comte that most proletarians worked thirteen hours a day for two or two-and-a-half francs. Mont`egre to Comte, August 25, 1849, MAC. For more on workers’ wages, see Christophe Charle, A Social History of France in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Miriam Kochan (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 85–8. Appel, 51. 43 Syst`eme, 4:350. See also Cat´echisme, 143. Cat´echisme, 249; Appel, 91. Comte and Laffitte discussed at length how very wealthy industrialists could be induced to act benevolently more easily than moderately well-off capitalists, who were self-absorbed because they still worried about earning sufficient

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would be dedicated to remembering the members of the temporal power who helped women, priests, and workers, all of whom were the weak members of society. Recalling the chivalrous behavior of lords in the past, Comte called these new patricians “industrial knights.” Furthermore, Comte asserted that if both practical classes increased their capacity for veneration, the trust between them would grow, and there would be more cooperation because they were see that all of them were working on the “material treasure” given to each generation.45 It was only realistic to acknowledge that material wealth was the basis of a healthy society.46 Comte envisioned the day when “under the spontaneous impulsion of the loving sex, the patriciate and the proletariat will become the respective organs of order and progress whose reconciliation is systematized by the priesthood.”47 At the same time, reminding his readers of St. Francis and the mendicant orders, he wished to honor beggars, proletarians, and members of other classes who did not fit well into society owing to their special talents, weaknesses, or political problems.48 Positivism was to appreciate all forms of life. Even the idle rich people should not be stigmatized if they protected the weak. With regard to the idle rich and marginal poor, Comte wrote, “One would have to attach a degrading importance to material reproduction to believe that the inability to participate in it merits disdain or repression.”49 As long as people developed a social skill of some sort, they could be respected members of humanity. Comte opposed material preoccupations and the trend toward equating success with wealth. wome n and prie sts Along these same lines, he naively endeavored to take economics out of the woman question. He admitted that in seeking to make women

45 46 48

49

money to maintain their style of living. Perhaps the government could give “considerable funds” to some good rich capitalists to make them models of intelligence and activity. Public donations could also be given to virtuous, capable men to create from scratch a better class of wealthy individuals, who were crucial to the success of the positive republic. Comte to Laffitte, October 2, 1850, CG, 5:204; Laffitte to Comte, August 26, 1851, in “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d ser. 36 ( July 1907): 106; Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” January 26, 1845, MAC; Comte to Hadery, May 9, 1851, CG, 6:78. Syst`eme, 4:58, 150. Each functionary in the practical world would choose his successor as long as his successor approved of the selection. Ibid., 61. Grange, introduction to Politique d’Auguste Comte, x. 47 Syst`eme, 4:85. He pointed out that beggars were honored in the Middle Ages and criticized metaphysicians for disdaining them. He also wanted the state to take care of intellectuals who were misfits and could not be priests. Ibid., 4:354.

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renounce money as a way of limiting their ambition, he made all of them into “essentially proletarians.” But this position was ennobling in his eyes. He wrote, “The domestic priestesses of Humanity, born to modify by affection the necessary reign of force, must flee as radically degrading any participation in command.” Women’s value emerged most clearly in the private sphere, and if they left their “domestic sanctuary,” they lost their qualifications to direct it. Comte seemed to limit a woman’s freedom, despite his denunciation of other cultures, such as the Greeks, for doing the same.50 However, as mentioned previously, Comte seemed to challenge repeatedly the line between public and private spheres. Indeed, he maintained that women, like men, needed more “public life,” which came from creating more “healthy social habits.”51 Condemning the Catholics’ disdainful attitude toward the nature and destination of woman, he pointed out that women could change; indeed they were the more modifiable sex. “Although her intellectual qualifications have been less appreciated up to now than her moral privileges, the positive religion will make them evident . . . by dispelling a . . . confusion between aptitude and culture.”52 One way they could change was to increase their control over their own constitution. Comte asserted that women could not exert the kind of influence that he wanted them to if their lives continued to be so markedly shaped by their reproductive, physical function, which was generally considered inferior. At first, he sought to give a more favorable reading to reproduction itself. He criticized the classical doctrine which gave men the key role in the formation of the embryo. (These were the theories of Aristotle and Galen.) He preferred the theory of William Harvey, who had shown in the midseventeenth century that females independent of males produced eggs in their ovaries and thus contributed to generation. Ovism, the theory that a prefertilized ovum contains an embryo in miniature, had become very popular since the eighteenth century, when women had become increasingly visible and feminist tracts had started to proliferate. In the nineteenth century, more scientific work was done by such scholars as Karl Ernst von Baer, Jean-Louis Pr´evost, and Jean-Baptiste A. Dumas, showing the active role of women in the formation of embryos.53 Comte seemed disappointed that the old theories persisted. He wrote, “Despite this growing disposition to 50 52 53

Ibid., 4:63, 69, 151. 51 Comte to Audiffrent, January 29, 1857, CG, 8:393. Syst`eme, 4:63. On Catholicism and women, see ibid., 4:320. On the modifiability of women, see also Comte to Hadery, June 14, 1855, CG, 8:59. On the scientific history of women’s role in reproduction, see Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “The ‘Science’ of Embryology before the Discovery of the Ovum,” in Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present, ed. Marilyn Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, 2d. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 104–12.

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regard man as emanating especially from woman, general opinion has not yet . . . reached this normal state. . . . Through the confused notions of biology, we already recognize that the masculine participation is very inferior to what the activity of its apparatus suggests.”54 Moreover, referring to the ideas o