Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers Part 18

Comte had done one thing superbly well. England had recognized his merit to a degree that France had not, and to his English friends he now made an appeal for financial help, so he could have freedom to complete another great work he had in his mind. To John Stuart Mill he wrote, outlining in a general way his new book on a social science, to be called "The Positive Polity." It was, in a degree, to be a sequel to the Positive Philosophy.

Mill communicated with Grote, the banker, known to us through his superb history of Greece, and with the help of George Henry Lewes and a mite from Herbert Spencer to show his good-will, a purse equal to about twelve hundred dollars was sent to Comte.

Matters went along for a year, when Comte wrote a brief letter to Mill suggesting that it was about time for another remittance. Mill again appealed to Grote, and Grote, the man of affairs, wrote to his Paris correspondent, who ascertained that Comte, now believing he was free from the bread-and-b.u.t.ter bugaboo, was giving his services to the Polytechnic, gratis, and also giving lectures to the people wherever some one would simply pay for the hall.

To advance money to a man that he might write a book showing how the nation should manage its finances, when the author could not look after his own, reminded Grote of the individual who wrote from the Debtors'

Prison to the Secretary of the Exchequer, giving valuable advice. All publishers are familiar with the penniless person who writes a book on "How to Achieve Success," expecting to achieve success by publishing it.

Grote wrote to Mill, expressing the wholesome truth that the first duty of every man was to make a living for himself--a fact which Mill states in "On Liberty." Mill hadn't the temerity to pa.s.s Grote's maxim along to Comte, and so sent a small contribution out of his own pocket. This was very much like the Indian who, feeling that his dog's tail should be amputated, cut it off a little at a time, so as not to hurt the animal.

We have all done this, and got the ingrat.i.tude we deserved.

Comte wrote back a most sarcastic letter, accusing Mill and Grote with having broken faith with him.

He now treated them very much as he had Saint-Simon; and in his lectures seldom failed to tell in pointed phrase what a lot of money-grubbing barbarians inhabited the British Isles. To the credit of Mill be it said that he still believed in the value of the Positive Philosophy, and did all he could to further Comte's reputation and help the sale of his books.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when Comte was forty-seven years old, he met Madame Clothilde de Vaux. Her husband was in prison, serving a life-sentence for political offenses, and Comte was first attracted to her through pity. Soon this evolved into a violent attachment, and Comte began to quote her in his lectures.

Comte was now most busy with his "Polity" in collaboration with Madame De Vaux. Her part of the work seems to have been to listen to Comte while he read her his amusing ma.n.u.script: and she, being a good woman and wise, praised the work in every part. They were together almost daily, and she seemed to supply him the sympathy he had all of his life so much craved.

In one short year Madame De Vaux died, and Comte for a time was inconsolable. Then his sorrow found surcease in an attempt to do for her in prose what Dante had done for Beatrice in poetry. But the vehicle of Comte's thoughts creaked. The exact language of science when applied to a woman becomes peculiarly non-piquant and lacking in perspicacity and perspicuity. No woman can be summed up in an algebraic formula, and when a mathematician does a problem to his lady's eyebrow, he forgets entirely that femininity forever equals _x_. Those who can write Sonnets from the Portuguese may place their loves on exhibition--no others should. Sweets too sweet do cloy.

For the rest of his life, Comte made every Wednesday afternoon sacred for a visit to the grave of Madame De Vaux, and three times every day, with the precision of a Mussulman, he retired to his room, locked the door, and in silence apostrophized to her spirit. Comte now continued as industrious as ever, but the quality of his writing lamentably declined.

His popular lectures to the people on scientific themes were always good, and his work as a teacher was satisfactory, but when he endeavored to continue original research, then his hazards of mind lacked steady flight.

The Positive Polity degenerated into a dogmatic scheme of government where the wisest should rule. The determination of who was wisest was to be left to the wise ones themselves, and Comte himself volunteered to be the first Pope.

The worship of Humanity would be the only religion, and women would shine as the high priests. Comte thought it all out in detail, and arranged a complete scheme of life, and actually wished to form a political party and overthrow the government, founding a gynecocracy on the ruins. His ebbing mind could not grasp the thought that tyranny founded on goodness is a tyranny still, and that a despotic altruism is a despotism nevertheless. Slavery blocks evolution.

So thus rounded out the life of Auguste Comte--beginning in childhood, he traversed the circle, and ended where he began.

He died in his sixtieth year. M. Littre, his most famous pupil, touchingly looked after his wants to the last, ministered to his necessities, advancing money on royalties that were never due. M. Littre occasionally apologized for the meagerness of the returns, and was closely questioned and even doubted by Comte, who died unaware of the unflinching loyalty of a friendship that endured distrust and contumely without resentment. Such love and patience and loyalty as were shown by M. Littre redeem the race.

The best certificate to the worth of Auguste Comte lies in the fact that, in spite of marked personal limitations and much petty querulousness, he profoundly influenced such men as Littre, Humboldt, Mill, Lewes, Grote, Spencer and Frederic Harrison.

To have helped such men as these, and cheered them on their way, was no small achievement. Comte's sole claim for immortality lies in the Positive Philosophy. The word "positive," as used by Comte, is similar in intent to pose, poise--fixed, final. So, besides a positive present good, Comte believed he was stating a final truth; to-wit: that which is good here is good everywhere, and if there is a future life, the best preparation for it is to live now and here, up to your highest and best.

Comte protested against the idea of "a preparation for a life to come"--now is the time, and the place is here.

The essence of Positive Philosophy is that man pa.s.ses through three mental periods--the Theological or fict.i.tious; the Metaphysical or abstract; the Positive or scientific.

Hence, there are three general philosophies or systems of conceptions concerning life and destiny.

The Theological, or first system, is the necessary starting-point of the human intellect. The Positive, or third period, is the ultimate goal of every progressive, thinking man; the second period is merely a state of transition that bridges the gulf between the first and the third.

Metaphysics holds the child by the hand until he can trust his feet--it is a pa.s.sageway between the fict.i.tious and the actual. Once across the chasm, it is no longer needed. Theology represents the child; Metaphysics the youth; Science the man.

The evolution of the race is mirrored in the evolution of the individual. Look back on your own career--your first dawn of thought began in an inquiry, "Who made all this--how did it all happen?"

And Theology comes in with a glib explanation: the fairies, dryads, gnomes and G.o.ds made everything, and they can do with it all as they please. Later, we concentrate all of these personalities in one G.o.d, with a devil in compet.i.tion, and this for a time satisfies.

Later, the thought of an arbitrary being dealing out rewards and punishments grows dim, for we see the regular workings of Cause and Effect. We begin to talk of Energy, the Divine Essence, and the Reign of Law. We speak, as Matthew Arnold did, of "a Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." But Emerson believed in a power that was in himself that made for righteousness.

Metaphysics reaches its highest stage when it affirms "All is One," or "All is Mind," just as Theology reaches its highest conception when it becomes Monotheistic--having one G.o.d and curtailing the personality of the devil to a mere abstraction.

But this does not long satisfy, for we begin to ask, "What is this One?"

or "What is Mind?"

Then Positivity comes in and says that the highest wisdom lies in knowing that we do not know anything, and never can, concerning a First Cause. All we find is phenomena and behind phenomena, phenomena. The laws of Nature do not account for the origin of the laws of Nature.

Spencer's famous chapter on the Unknowable was derived largely from Comte, who attempted to define the limits of human knowledge. And it is worth noting that the one thing which gave most offense in both Comte's and Spencer's works was their doctrine of the Unknowable. This, indeed, forms but a small part of the work of these men, and if it were all demolished there would still remain their doctrine of the known. The bitterness of Theology toward Science arises from the fact that as we find things out we dispense with the arbitrary G.o.d, and his business agent, the priest, who insists that no transaction is legal unless he ratifies it.

Men begin by explaining everything, and the explanations given are always first for other people. Parents answer the child, not telling him the actual truth, but giving him that which will satisfy--that which he can mentally digest. To say, "The fairies brought it," may be all right until the child begins to ask who the fairies are, and wants to be shown one, and then we have to make the somewhat humiliating confession that there are no fairies.

But now we perceive that this mild fabrication in reference to Santa Claus, and the fairies, is right and proper mental food for the child.

His mind can not grasp the truth that some things are unknowable; and he is not sufficiently skilled in the things of the world to become interested in them--he must have a resting-place for his thought, so the fairy-tale comes in as an aid to the growing imagination. Only this: we place no penalty on disbelief in fairies, nor do we make special offers of reward to all who believe that fairies actually exist. Neither do we tell the child that people who believe in fairies are good, and that those who do not are wicked and perverse.

Comte admits that the theological and metaphysical stages are necessary, but the sooner man can be graduated out of them the better. He brought vast research to bear in order to show the growth and death of theological conceptions. Hate, fear, revenge and doubt are all theological attributes, detrimental to man's best efforts. That moral ideas were an afterthought, and really form no part of theology, Comte emphasized at great length, and shows from much data where these ideas were grafted on to the original tree.

And the sum of the argument is, that all progress of mind, body and material things has come to man through the study of Cause and Effect.

And just in degree as he has abandoned the study of Theology as futile and absurd, and centered on helping himself here and now, has he prospered.

Positivism is really a religion. The object of its worship is Humanity.

It does not believe in a devil or any influence that works for harm, or in opposition to man. Man's only enemy is himself, and this is on account of his ignorance of this world, and his superst.i.tious belief in another. Our troubles, like diseases, all come from ignorance and weakness, and through our ignorance are we weak and unable to adjust ourselves to conditions. The more we know of this world the better we think of it, and the better are we able to use it for our advancement.

So far as we can judge, the Unknown Cause that rules the world by unchanging laws is a movement forward toward happiness, growth, justice, peace and right. Therefore, the Scientist, who perceives that all is good when rightly received and rightly understood, is really the priest or holy man--the mediator and explainer of the mysteries. As fast as we understand things they cease to be supernatural, for the supernatural is the natural not yet understood. The theological priest who believes in a G.o.d and a devil is the real modern infidel. Such a belief is fallacious, contrary to reason, and contrary to all the man of courage sees and knows.

The real man of faith is the one who discards all thought of "how it first happened," and fixes his mind on the fact that he is here. The more he studies the conditions that surround him, the greater his faith in the truth that all is well.

If men had turned their attention to Humanity, discarding Theology, using as much talent, time, money and effort to wring from the skies the secrets of the Unknowable, this world would now be a veritable paradise.

It is Theology that has barred the entrance to Eden, by diverting the attention of men from this world to another. Heaven is Here.

All religious denominations now dimly perceive the trend of the times, and are gradually omitting theology from their teachings and taking on ethics and sociology instead. A preacher is now simply Society's walking delegate. We are evolving theology out and sociology in. Theology has ever been the foe of progress and the enemy of knowledge. It has professed to know all and has placed a penalty on advancement. The Age of Enlightenment will not be here until every church has evolved into a schoolhouse, and every priest is a pupil as well as a teacher.

VOLTAIRE

We are intelligent beings; and intelligent beings can not have been formed by a blind, brute, insensible being. There is certainly some difference between a clod and the ideas of Newton. Newton's intelligence came from some greater Intelligence.

--_The Philosophical Dictionary_

[Ill.u.s.tration: VOLTAIRE]

The man, Francois Marie Arouet, known to us as Voltaire (which name he adopted in his twenty-first year), was born in Paris in Sixteen Hundred Ninety-four. He was the second son in a family of three children. During his babyhood he was very frail; in childhood sickly and weak; and throughout his whole life he suffered much from indigestion and insomnia.