The philosophy of the spirit also justified every cruelty and abomination, but there it was philosophic and is therefore considered questionable; but in science it all turns out to be scientific and therefore indubitable.
How can one help accepting so admirable a theory! One has only to regard human society as an object of observation and one can calmly devour the labour of others who are perishing, comforting oneself with the reflection that one’s activity as a dancer, lawyer, doctor, philosopher, actor, investigator of mediumism, or of the form); of atoms, is a functional activity of the human organism, so that there can be no question of whether it is just that I should make use of the labour of others (I only do what pleases me) as there can be no question of the justice of the activity of a brain-cell which avails itself of the work of the cells in the muscles.
How can we help accepting such a practical theory enabling us to pocket our conscience for ever and quietly live an unrestrained animal life, feeling under our feet the unshakable support of modern science? And it is on this new creed that the justification of the idleness and cruelty of men is now built.
CHAPTER XXX
THIS creed began but recently-some fifty years ago. Its chief founder was the French savant, A. Comte. Under the influence of Bichat’s physiological researches, which were then new, he, a systematizer and a religious man, was struck by the old idea expressed long ago by Menenius Agrippa, that human societies and even all humanity may be regarded as one whole, as an organism, and men may be regarded as the living cells of separate organs each having its definite function in the service of the whole organism.
This thought so pleased Comte that he began to construct a philosophic theory on it, and he was so carried away by this theory that he quite forgot that his starting-point was merely a nice little analogy, suitable in a fable but quite unsuitable for the foundation of a science. As often happens, he regarded his favourite supposition as an axiom and imagined that his whole theory was based on the firmest experimental foundations. According to his theory it appeared that as humanity is an organism, the knowledge of what man is and what his relations to the universe should be can be attained only by studying the properties of this organism. In order to learn these properties man can make observations on other-lower-organisms and draw inferences from the facts of their life.
In the first place, the only true and scientific method according to Comte is therefore the inductive method and science is only such as is based on experiment. Secondly, the aim and apex of science is the new science of the imaginary organism of humanity or of the super-organic being-humanity: this new imaginary science being sociology. From this view of science in general it appeared that all former knowledge was false, and the whole history of humanity’s knowledge of itself fell into three, or really two, periods:
(1) The theological and metaphysical periods, lasting from the commencement of the world until Comte, and (2) the present period of true science-positivism-which began with Comte.
This was all very nice; there was only one error, namely, that the whole edifice was built on the sand-on the arbitrary assertion that humanity is an organism.
That assertion was arbitrary because we have no more right to acknowledge the existence of an organism of humanity not subject to observation than we have to acknowledge the existence of a triune God and similar theological propositions.
That assertion was fallacious because to the conception of humanity, that is, of men, the definition of an organism was incorrectly affixed despite the fact that humanity lacks the essential sign of an organism, namely a centre of sensation and consciousness. We only call an elephant or a bacterium an ‘organism’ because, by analogy we attribute to those beings a similar unification of sensation and of consciousness to that we are conscious of in ourselves; but in human societies and in humanity this essential indication is lacking, and therefore, however many other indications we may detect that are common to humanity and to an organism, in the absence of that essential indication, the acknowledgement of humanity as an organism is incorrect.
But despite the arbitrariness and incorrectness of its fundamental basis the positive philosophy was accepted most cordially by the so-called educated world, so important for that world was the justification this philosophy afforded to the existing order of things by regarding the present rule of violence among men as Just. What is remarkable in this connexion is that of Comte’s works which consist of two parts-the positive philosophy and the positive politics-the learned world only accepted the first: the part which. on the new experimental basis, offered a justification for the existing evil of human societies; but the second part, dealing with the moral obligations of altruism resulting from acknowledging humanity as an organism, was considered not merely unimportant but even insignificant and unscientific.
What had occurred with the two parts of Kant’s philosophy was repeated. The criticism of pure reason was accepted by the learned crowd, but the criticism of practical reason-the part which contained the essence of his moral teaching-was rejected.
In Comte’s teaching I they accepted as scientific what pandered to the prevailing evil. But the positive philosophy accepted by the crowd, being based on an arbitrary and unsound proposition, was itself so unfounded and therefore so unstable that it could not be maintained by itself. And then among the many idle speculations of so-called science there appears an assertion-lacking equally in novelty and in truth-to the effect that living creatures, that is organisms, have been derived from one another-not only one organism from another but one organism from many: that is, that in a very long period of time, in a million years, a fish and a duck, for instance, may not merely have come from one and the same ancestor but that one organism may have come from many separate organisms, so that, for instance, a single animal might be produced from a swarm of bees.
And this arbitrary and incorrect assertion was accepted by the learned world with yet greater sympathy. This assertion was arbitrary because no one has ever seen how some organisms are produced from others, and so the assumption about the origin of species always remains an assumption and not a fact of experience. And the assumption was incorrect because the solution of the question of the origin of species by the assertion that they were produced in accordance with a law of heredity and adaptation during an infinitely long period of time is not at all a solution, but only the repetition of the question in a new form.
According to the solution of the question by Moses (in a polemic with whom lies the whole importance of the theory) it appears that the diversity of the species of living beings is due to God’s will and infinite power, but according to the theory of evolution it turns out that the diversity of living beings came about of itself in consequence of endlessly varied conditions of heredity and environment during an infinite period of time. The theory of evolution, put into plain words, only asserts that in infinite time anything you please may originate from anything you please.
There is no reply to the question but the same statement is differently put: instead of a will, accident is predicated, and the coefficient of infinity is transferred from power to time. But this new assertion (made still more arbitrary and incorrect by Darwin’s followers) supported the former assertion of Comte, and so became the revelation of our age and the basis of all the sciences, even of history, philology, and religion, and more than that, according to the naive confession of the founder of the theory-Darwin his idea was suggested by Malthus’s law and therefore put forward the theory of the struggle of living beings and of men for existence as a fundamental law of all life. And one sees that that was just what the crowd of idle people needed for their justification.
Two unstable theories which did not stand I firmly on their own feet, supported one another and obtained a semblance of stability. Both theories contained within them the meaning so precious to the crowd-that men are not to blame for the existing evil in human societies but that the existing order is just the one that ought to exist; and the new theory was accepted by the crowd, in the sense in which it was needed, with full faith and unheard-of enthusiasm. And on these two arbitrary and incorrect propositions, accepted as articles of faith, the new scientific creed was consolidated.
Both in subject and in form this new creed is extraordinarily like the Church-Christian creed.
As to the subject, the resemblance consists in the fact that in both of them an unreal fantastic meaning is ascribed to something real and this unreal meaning is made the subject of investigation.
In the Church-Christian creed to Christ who really existed is attached the fantastic meaning of God Himself, while in the positivist creed, to mankind which really exists is attached the fantastic meaning of an organism.
In form, the resemblance of the two creeds is striking, for both in the one and in the other a certain conception held by some people is accepted as the one infallibly true conception.
In Church-Christianity the conception of a divine revelation to men who call
