V.

The laws which for us constitute the order of the world are of two kinds. Some are established by the positive method in each order of phenomena separately considered; the astronomical laws, physical laws, chemical laws, etc. They belong to the domain of science properly so-called. The others are apprehended when the mind leaves the special point of view of science, and places itself at the universal point of view of philosophy. They are found again in the different orders of phenomena, whose relations they express without compromising their respective independence. They represent them severally connected, or, according to Comte’s expression, as convergent. Comte calls these last _encyclopædic_ laws. They tend to realise the unity which the mind claims, not in pursuing the chimerical reduction of all laws to a supreme law, but in showing that the systems of irreducible laws are nevertheless harmonious among themselves.

Generally speaking, these laws have been known for a long time, but only as special laws of such and such an order of phenomena. It belongs to positive philosophy to give them their encyclopædic character, that is to say, to make them universal. For instance, d’Alembert’s principle is known in mechanics as a law which connects questions of movement with questions of equilibrium. Philosophy finds a similar law in biology: (physiological questions are correlated to anatomical questions); and also in sociology (“progress is the development of order”). It then formulates the encyclopædic law which generalises these three laws, that is, the principle of the conditions of existence.

Similarly the three great laws of mechanics, known under the name of the laws of Kepler, of Galileo and of Newton, must be universalised and become encyclopædic for they are applicable to all the orders of phenomena.[80] The law of Kepler, in the first place, expresses the spontaneous tendency of all natural phenomena to persevere indefinitely in their state, if no disturbing influence supervenes; a tendency whence are derived inertia in mechanics, habit in living bodies, and the conservative instinct in societies. The law of Galileo which reconciles every common movement with the various particular movements, applies to all the organic and inorganic phenomena. For, in any system, we can always ascertain the independence of the several

## active or passive mutual relations with regard to any action which is

exactly common to the various parts, whatever may be their kind and degree. Finally the universal character of Newton’s law (reaction is equal to action), is evident at first sight. It is accidentally, not essentially, that these laws have at first been mechanical laws. They could have been equally attained by the study of biological or social phenomena. If the science of mechanics was the first to formulate them it is because it has for its object the less complicated phenomena.

A complete and rational system of encyclopædic laws would realise the “philosophia prima” which Bacon dimly foresaw. In the actual condition of the sciences this would probably be a rash undertaking. Comte attempted it in the fourth volume of the _Politique positive_.[81] One can hardly say that the trial was a decisive one. It is true that at that moment Comte was already entirely taken up with religious preoccupations.

However, the encyclopædic laws are destined to play a part in the positive philosophy of nature, which may be compared, in some respects, with that of the categories in Aristotle’s philosophy. They are the most general forms under which the phenomena given in experience become objects of scientific thought for us. As in each class of phenomena we determine laws, principles of order and of harmony, so the encyclopædic laws make the order and the harmony of the different classes among themselves. They are, so to speak, _the laws of laws_. Through them the human mind which has already reached unity of method, may some day reach a certain unity of knowledge. But this unity will always differ by two essential characteristics from that which metaphysicians have pursued up to the present time: it will respect the irreducibleness of the various fundamental sciences, and it will remain relative, both by the conditions of the object and by those of the subject, upon which it equally depends.

Our conception of universal order “results from a necessary concurrence between that which is without us, and that which is within. The laws, that is to say the general facts, are never anything but hypotheses confirmed by observation. If harmony in no way existed outside us our mind would be entirely incapable of conceiving it, but in no case is it verified so much as we suppose it to be.”[82] We neither make order nor perceive it entirely. By long and arduous labour the human intellect gradually disengages the concept of order out of the facts that come crowding within its reach. It is an imperfect, contingent, perishable order, in a word, an order, relative like the mind itself. It is order nevertheless, and a necessary condition for ethics as well as for science.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Cours, I. 4.

[47] Discours sur l’Esprit positif, p. 23.

[48] Cours, II. 505.

[49] Cours, VI. 648.

[50] Cours, VI, 659.

[51] Cours, VI, 655.

[52] Discours sur l’esprit positif, p. 17.

[53] Lettre inedite a M. Papot, 8 mai 1851 (archives de la société positiviste).

[54] Cours, VI, 662.

[55] Cours, II, 36.

[56] Cours, III, 362.

[57] Cours, VI, 833.

[58] Cours, III, 339, 365.

[59] Cours, IV, 452.

[60] Cours, IV, 470.

[61] Pol. pos. i, 641.

[62] Cours, III, 235.

[63] Pol. pos. iv, Appendice p. 17.

[64] Cours, ii, 26-27.

[65] Cours, iii, 366.

[66] Dialogues on natural religion, VIII.

[67] Système de la nature, II. 187.

[68] Cours, III. 363-4.

[69] Pol. pos. II. 42.

[70] Cours, IV. 274.

[71] Pol. pos. Appendice, p. 25.

[72] Cours, III. 325.

[73] Cours, I, 128-9.

[74] Cours, III. 642.

[75] Pol. pos. II. 427.

[76] Pol. pos. 431.

[77] Cours, VI. 690.

[78] Pol. pos. I. 588.

[79] Pol. pos. II. 30.

[80] Cours, XI., 740-46; Pol. pos., I, 494-5.

[81] Pol. pos., IV., 173-80.

[82] Pol. pos., II. 33.

## CHAPTER VI

SCIENCE (CONTINUED)--POSITIVE LOGIC

Logic, says Comte, almost in the terms of Descartes, is the sole portion of ancient philosophy which is capable of still presenting some appearance of utility.[83] And does even this appearance correspond to a very solid reality?

If we distinguish, according to custom, formal logic from applied logic, Comte in his system will find no place for the former, which establishes _a priori_ the principles and the mechanism of reasoning. As to the principles, which are the laws of the understanding, positive philosophy has shown that the only way to discover them is to study the products of the human intellect, that is to say, the development of the sciences. And it is again from these sciences that, through observation, the theory of reasoning must be drawn. Formal logic, as metaphysicians have constructed it, especially develops the dialectical faculty, that is to say, an aptitude more harmful than useful, for proving without finding.[84] Descartes said the same, in speaking of the syllogism, that it serves more for explaining to others the things which we know, than to discover those which we ignore.

All the utility which we can attribute to the study of logic properly so-called is found again more extended, more varied, more complete, more luminous, in mathematical studies. The mechanism of reasoning is everywhere the same. Whatever may be the phenomena which are the objects of a science the nature of deduction and induction never changes in them. Thus in practising these forms of reasoning in the most simple and the most general phenomena, those whose science is most advanced, we learn to know them with the most entire evidence, and in all the generality of which they are capable. Nowhere is reasoning so exact, so rigorous as in mathematics. They accustom the mind not to feed upon false reasons, and it is in that school that men ought to learn the theory and the practice of reasoning.

But, if the old pure logic is thus replaced by mathematics, must we not at least preserve the general study of the processes used in the various sciences, which is called methodology? Has not Comte himself insisted upon the irreducibleness of the several orders of laws to one another, and in particular to the mathematical laws? Is not the legitimate object of logic to define the processes of investigation and of proof particular to each of the fundamental sciences?

Comte does not think so. This applied logic does not appear to him to be more indispensable than formal logic. In the first place, the former, in fact, supposes the latter. It proceeds from the same philosophical conception. In order to determine _a priori_, in a general way, the rules of the application of the mind to its various scientific objects, we should first have to possess a knowledge of the laws of the mind. But, according to Comte, this knowledge can only be obtained by the observation of the methods which the mind has indeed followed. Moreover, no art is taught abstractedly, not even the art of reasoning well, nor that of experimenting, of finding hypotheses, etc. It has never been sufficient to know the rules of versification in order to write true poetry. A deep knowledge of the rules of method will not lead to scientific discoveries.[85] Whatever we learn of an art, it is practice that has taught us. Nothing here can replace time, natural disposition, and experience.

Methods then cannot be studied apart from the positive researches in which men of learning make use of them. Even supposing that in the far future, when the sciences are advanced, the methods and their applications could be taught by themselves, the study would run a great risk of yielding poor results.[86] Up to the present time all that has been said of the method, considered in the abstract, reduces itself to vague generalities. When, in logic, we have thoroughly established that all our science of nature must be founded upon observation, that we must proceed sometimes from facts to principles, sometimes from principles to facts, and a few other similar aphorisms, we know far less of the method than the man who has studied a single one of the positive sciences somewhat deeply, even without any philosophical purpose. It is thus that Eclectic philosophers have imagined to make their psychology into a science, thinking they could understand and practice the positive method because they had read the _Novum Organum_ and the _Discours de la Méthode_. But did not Bacon, Pascal, Descartes, and the other great scientific leaders insist on the uselessness of abstract considerations about method? They never separated the rules they formulated from their application to positive research.

Comte himself, their successor and their heir, uses no other language. In his long study of the fundamental sciences he never fails to distinguish the contents of the science from its method, what he calls “the scientific point of view and the logical point of view.” But, while distinguishing them, he considers that they are correlated and closely allied among themselves. He no more conceives method as separated from the science which he studies, than science as separated from its method. Both constitute one intellectual reality seen under two aspects closely allied to one another.[87] To conclude, traditional logic is fast disappearing. In its theoretical parts it is superannuated like the metaphysical philosophy whence it proceeds. In its applied parts it is barren if separated from the practice of the sciences.