The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 111

However, human intelligence must have an ideal:

"The ideal is its dream and its worship. Now what will be its ideal?

Humanity itself. Humanity has a real existence; it is the great Being, really a great collective body, having a regular growth of its own, and provided, like every individual body, with temporary organs, which lose their activity, wither, and disappear in default of employment and nutrition" (_ib_., p. 118). "Formerly, and conformably to the medium in which they moved, theology and metaphysics, its slave, gave their demonstration of the divine existence. In like manner science to-day gives the demonstration of the existence of humanity. It is no longer possible to mistake the growth of this ideal--the solidarity of its most remote past with its most distant future, and this powerful life of which each man has been, is, and will be an organ" (_ib_., p.

283). "Humanity is a real ideal, which it is necessary to know (education), to love (religion), to embellish (the fine arts), to enrich (industry), and which therefore holds our whole existence, individual, domestic, and social, under its supreme direction" (_ib_., p. 286).

To love and serve humanity is the whole positivist moral law. M.

Littre says, pp. 291, 292: "This morality is much superior to the morality of the past, which was founded on selfishness. The 'salvation' of the theologians is as much a selfish calculation as the 'enlightened self-interest' {729} of the materialists. The materialists say, 'Do good: it is for thy interest in this life;' the theologians say, 'Do good: it is for thy interest in another life.'

Never was there a more perfect system of selfishness organized in the world; and if powerful instincts, and, it is but justice to add, sacerdotal wisdom, had not in part counterbalanced the disastrous effects of such an habitual direction, individual asceticism and aspiration to salvation would have dissolved all social bonds."

It is, we see, no longer G.o.d whom we are to love and serve, but humanity, and as humanity has few or no rewards to bestow, the worship we render her must needs be disinterested. Selfishness falls in proportion as the hope of reward vanishes. [But suppose one does not love and serve humanity, will he suffer punishment or lose anything in consequence? If so, what becomes of the positivist doctrine of the disinterestedness of the worship of humanity?--TR.]

Such are the solutions offered by the positivist philosophy on the princ.i.p.al points of biology, or the science of the individual; we proceed now to sociology, or the science of society.

Positivism, being at once a philosophy and a religion, must admit and does admit two distinct societies--a temporal society and a spiritual society. We begin with the first.

The aim of the temporal society M. Littre, _ib_., p. 119, explains in the following manner: "The historic tradition itself, without anything forced, arbitrary, fortuitous, or transitory, conducts us to the reign of industry. Before industry the whole past successively falls and disappears. For the modern man industrial activity is the only temporal occupation, the only practical activity... . If the accession of the industrial regimen is inevitable, it is also inevitable that the chiefs of our industry should be our temporal chiefs. We have no need of patricians or of gentlemen to lead us to war and conquest; we have no need of kings or kaisers to concentrate in their own hands the power of the sword. Their functions, formerly preeminent, are now without employment (!). But we have need of directors who can conduct the peaceful labors of industry with firmness and intelligence, labors which certainly want neither complication nor difficulty nor grandeur. It is to this end that all temporal power must aspire."

If so, if industry is the supreme and last end of humanity, evidently nothing is to be changed in the present condition of property, and that the wealth of the rich should be augmented rather than diminished. The const.i.tution of the family must also be maintained.

The marriage bond is, therefore, declared indissoluble; the positivist law is in this respect even more severe than the Christian law, for, not contented with prohibiting divorce, it even forbids second nuptials. In the purely political order the republican form must obtain.

"I have thought ever since February, 1848," said M. Littre, in 1850, p. 205, "that the establishment of the republic is definitive in France, having for it the guarantee of manners which have ceased to be monarchical, and after this wholly theoretical point of view, I have constantly lived, and engage to live, in security."

This confidence, wholly positivist, has been but poorly justified by events; yet there are compensations, and, in reality, the imperial _regime_, which has succeeded to the republic, differs not so much as might be supposed from that which the positivists themselves wished to establish. The princ.i.p.al conditions demanded by the positivist republic are: 1. Free discussion; 2. The preponderance of the central power; 3. The rigid restriction of the parliamentary or _local_ power to the vote of the budget; 4. In fine, the investment of the growing power in the hands of proletaries or working-men.

M. Comte and M. Littre both agree on all these points; they both have an {730} equal horror of parliamentary government, under which, says M. Littre, power pa.s.ses into the hands of lawyers, pettifoggers, and sophists. Both desire three directors; but M. Comte judges it most suitable to choose three bankers, because society is industrial, and bankers, who are the lessors of the funds of industry, are in a better position than others to know its wants. M. Littre (he was writing in _The National_ in 1850) preferred three eminent proletaries. "What is the proletary," exclaims he, "operative or peasant, who, if he has equal intelligence, that he should not be as capable as M. Thiers or M. Guizot of directing political affairs?" He concedes, however, that as a counterpoise to the central proletarian power, the _Chamber of Deputies_ should be composed of rich men, who are the best fitted by habit to vote the budget.

Master and disciple both agree, that Paris should elect the executive government; and that the rest of the French people should have the right to obey. Fear you that from such a system despotism must result?

M. Littre rea.s.sures you, with his strange apothegm, "what is despotism in our days but government in the hands of the retrograde parties?"

That is, despotism is simply power in the hands of those whose ideas are different from ours? Could he tell his secret with a more refreshing simplicity? He has another word which might excite some uneasiness. "The philosophical genius of the Convention was not inferior to its political genius, and, indeed, they were each the necessary condition of the other. _Positivism is their direct heir_.

The whole positivist political theory, therefore, like all revolutionary theories, ends at last in this: Below, as the very condition of its existence, the sovereignty of the plebs; above, as the crown of the edifice, the dictator.

But we pa.s.s to the spiritual society. We have seen under the influence of what sentiments the positive philosophy was suddenly transformed into a religion. Madame Clotilde de Vaux had the initiative, and inspired, in 1845, the religious thought of M. Comte. From that moment it was no longer the intellect but the heart, no longer intelligence but love, that predominated in the positivist school. The disciples were transformed with the master. "I recognize and profess as the positivist philosophy requires," says M. Littre, p. 298, "that this _affective_ side of human nature should always preponderate over the intellectual side." As soon as it was decided that religion should take the place of philosophy, M. Comte proclaimed a great Being and then a high priest. The great Being, who was none other than humanity itself, was defined to be "the collection of all beings, past, present, and to come, that freely concur in the completion of universal order," or more briefly, but not more clearly, "the continuous whole of convergent beings." [Footnote 113]

[Footnote 113: Aug. Comte, "_Cours de Politique Positive_," t. 1, p. 30.]

The high priest (_le grand pretre_) was, as we have said, M. Comte himself. After this came dogma and worship. The dogma had already its princ.i.p.al features in philosophy, and there was little to be added; but for worship, _le culte_, all was to be created. The fertile imagination of M. Comte promptly provided for it. He engaged at first in compiling and publishing a positivist catechism, by the side of which M. Littre gravely tells us "the Catholic catechism is only an embryo." He afterward constructed a calendar; he commences the new era with the year 1793, and names it _Cycle of the Great Crisis_. The year is divided into thirteen months of four weeks each; the months take the names of thirteen men of superior genius; instead of saying January, February, we must say Moses, Aristotle, etc. The days have also the names of celebrated men, but men of an inferior order.

Several circular letters from the high priest to the faithful were dated the 4th of Moses, {731} 6th of the Great Crisis, or 6 Archimedes, Great Crisis 64.

There was, or rather was to have been, a college of a.s.sessor priests--the number of whom was fixed at twenty thousand for Europe, one-fourth of whom were allotted to France; positivist savans and poets were to compose the college faculty.

Time and money failed for the construction of a temple for the new worship, and the apartment occupied by M. Comte, Rue des Fosses, Monsieur-le-Prince, held temporarily its place. The faithful congregated there on appointed days, and every positivist believer was required to say three prayers daily. It was, doubtless, in consequence of one of these pious exercises that M. Littre exclaimed:

"I have too clearly perceived the efficacy of this regenerative socialism in myself and in the little group of disciples, and the calm content with which it fills the soul, not to desire to take part in it... . In these times, when all things seem giving way, how salutary and sweet to feel ourselves in communion with the immense existence which protects us, with that humanity which is the spirit of our globe, and the providence of successive generations!"--_M. Littre, ib._, p. 294.

The number of festival days was considerable; there were fourscore and one a year. The festival of the great Being, those of the sun, the dead, the police, the press, etc. Nine sacraments were inst.i.tuted:

1. _The Presentation_, The parents present the new-born child to the priest, who accepts it, or, in some rare cases, rejects it. We are not told what becomes of the new-born child that is rejected.

2. _Initiation_. At fourteen the boy is delivered to the priesthood, who take charge of his instruction.

3. _Admission_. At twenty-one the adult is admitted to the service of humanity.

4. _Destination_. Seven years after the young man is admitted to the special office which he is judged capable of filling.

5. _Marriage_. Marriage is not permitted after thirty-five in men and twenty-eight in women. Three months continence before the definitive celebration, eternal widowhood, save in some rare cases, of which the high priest alone is the judge, are enjoined.

6. _Maturity_. At forty-two the man is admitted to the full maturity of the service of humanity.

7. _Retirement_. This takes place at sixty-three.

8. _Transformation_. Perfection is prepared by repentance.

9. _Incorporation_. Burial in a garden in the midst of flowers.

Once entered into this way, M. Comte cannot stop, and he even arrives at the Utopia of a virgin mother, at first hazarded only as a bold hypothesis, but afterward proclaimed as the synthetic _resume_ of the whole positivist religion, in which are combined all its aspects. He was preparing a special treatise on this grand discovery when death interrupted him. A word on this conception of a virgin mother. Through the indefinite progress of positivism, the wife may one day come to conceive without ceasing to be a virgin, and so universal continence become the supreme law of the positivist religion, without in other respects abolishing the social bonds of marriage.

But at least humanity, after so many efforts, once elevated to this glorious state, will henceforth remain in it? M. Comte thinks not; he inclines, on the contrary, to the belief that in spite of the positivist virtue, humanity will end by decreasing and entirely disappearing.

But we have detained our readers long enough with these sad lucubrations of a sickly brain. We could not well pa.s.s them over in silence, for they belong to the intellectual history of our times, and it seems to us some useful lessons may be extracted from them.

We have promised to make known {732} the philosophical theory of M. H.

Taine, but as the matter is small, the exposition may be short. His theory may be reduced to the three following points:

1. The philosopher in the study of science must be disinterested, and draw his conclusions after having made his observations, without disturbing himself as to their consequences. The philosopher, in a word, must set the man aside, forget that he is a son, a father, a husband, a citizen, and regard science alone, nothing but science, with the facts observation furnishes.

2. Observation is the only method, and observation must be confined exclusively to physical phenomena, which alone are real. Metaphysical beings, notions of the soul, of first cause, are pure illusions; consequently nothing survives the body, and there is no G.o.d, at least no G.o.d that can be inferred from any observable phenomena.

3. The highest synthesis to which observation can conduce is that there is a vast a.s.semblage of laws and phenomena which we call nature.

All this resembles positivism too closely to be separated from it. If we have distinguished it, we have done so that M. H. Taine should not accuse us of making him, in spite of himself, the disciple of a master whom, perhaps, he does not wish to own.

III.

Before proceeding to examine this strange and incoherent system either in its general principles or in its particular application, we must reduce to their first value the two propositions which we set forth as its preamble, or rather as its pretext: 1. That modern society is in want of a doctrine that unites all intelligences in a common symbol, and enables them to live in peace and harmony; and, 2. That this doctrine cannot be in the future the Catholic doctrine, though that doctrine for a long time in the past filled its office, for its dogmas are now known to be irreconcilable with the discoveries of science.

One of the most common practices of the sophistical spirit is not so much to deny facts as to distort them, exaggerate their reach, or confuse those which are distinct. This is what our positivists do in these propositions. That there is at present much intellectual anarchy, that many souls, having lost their faith, or suffered it to be greatly weakened, refuse to recognize any law except the law which they make for themselves, and that thence results a mental perturbation from which society suffers not a little, is a fact too evident and too lamentable to be questioned. It is only simple justice, however, to acknowledge that M. Comte has the merit of pointing it out much earlier than the most of his friends [and Saint-Simon much earlier than even M. Comte.--TR.] Although strongly imbued with the revolutionary spirit he comprehended [had learned from Saint-Simon?--TR.] as early as 1822 that that spirit, powerful indeed to destroy, is radically incapable of establishing anything, and he never spared the illusion of those who believed that the principles of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly of 1789, engrafted on religious unbelief, could serve as the basis of the social edifice.

But if the evil denounced is only too real, it is not necessary to represent it as greater than it is, or to conclude, because faith in many souls has grown feeble, that it has entirely perished, and is no longer to be found among men. We know how difficult and how delicate it is to establish the balance-sheet of religious society. Appearances are deceptive, and to reach the real facts we must explore, to the bottom, the consciences of men, which only G.o.d can do. However, there are certain exterior circ.u.mstances which may enable us even on this point to approximate the real facts in the case. It is undeniable that there are in all the degrees of society men who really believe and faithfully practise religion; others who believe but practise not; {733} and still others who make an open profession of not believing.

The first division have representatives in every social cla.s.s, among the poor as well as among the rich, in the sciences, in literature, in art, in industry, in politics. Their faith in general is equally firm and enlightened, for it has been thoroughly tried, and has withstood every attack, both from within and from without.

The second cla.s.s are more numerous, at least in the great centres of population, and form in those centres the bulk of society. They believe, but their faith is weak, or perhaps it were more proper to say that they have not faith, but only vague and indecisive beliefs, whose level rises or falls according to events. They recoil alike from avowed apostasy and from distinct, precise, and frank affirmation of the truth. As they have abandoned the practice of their religion, it may be supposed that they have lost all belief, but that is far from being the case, for often the slightest breath from without suffices to rekindle what seems to be extinct, but is really only asleep. It is rare, above all, that at the last moment, when the pa.s.sions have been appeased, when they stand face to face with reality and see it as it is, their last and solemn word is not a word of faith.

The third cla.s.s, those who make an open profession of unbelief, are relatively few; but they make up for their lack of numbers by their activity and the powerful means at their disposal. They fill high positions in the state, control the greater part of the organs of publicity, and gain the mult.i.tudes to their side all the more easily because they excel in the art of caressing popular prejudices and pandering to popular pa.s.sions. Beside, their hatred of truth is greater than their attachment to any doctrine whatever, and they can, therefore, hold themselves free to attack the faith without being bound to defend anything of their own against it, or to maintain any self-consistency in their attacks. What moves and governs them is not the desire to ascertain or defend the truth, but to appear to have independence and hardihood of mind, and to pose themselves as despisers of the past and precursors of the future.

But to appreciate the real situation of things, it is not enough to regard the present. We must also consider the past. No society makes itself such as it is, and every society holds infinitely more from the generation that went before than from the existing generation. Now, as the society of the past was manifestly a Christian society, it cannot be that the present should not remain Christian in the greater part of its elements; and in fact, notwithstanding the formidable efforts that have been made to unchristianize modern society, and its numerous deviations, it is still the Christian spirit that inspires the laws, manners, and inst.i.tutions, and so pervades the general intelligence that even those who would attack the Christian dogmas are constrained, in order to render their attacks more effective, to appeal to the very principles which Christianity has brought to light and made predominant.