POSILIPO 



POSITIVISM 



343 



' Tomb of Virgil.' At the base of the hill anciently 

 stood the poet's villa. During the middle ages 

 the common people believed the grotto to be the 

 work of the poet, whom they regarded as a great 

 magician. Two other tunnels penetrate through 

 the hill, one to the north of the grotto, 800 yards 

 long, 39 feet high, and 33 feet broad, made for 

 the tramway, and another constructed at the 

 command of Agrippa in 37 B.C., but only dis- 

 covered in 1812. 



Positivism, the System of Thought and Life 

 founded by Auguste Comte ( 1798-1857 ; q.v.), is de- 

 fined by him as consisting essentially of a 'philo- 

 sophy and a polity which can never be dissevered ; 

 the former lieing the basis, and the latter the end, 

 of one comprehensive system, in which our intellec- 

 tual faculties and our social sympathies are brought 

 into close correlation with each other.' He chose 

 the word Positive on the ground of its indicating the 

 reality and constructive tendency which he claimed 

 for the doctrine in its theoretical aspect, while he 

 anticipated that in the future the term would 

 acquire a wider meaning by suggesting also similar 

 ideas in the sphere of feeling alid action. The two 

 primary characters of Positivism, the philosophy 

 and the polity, were finally welded into a whole 

 under the conception of a religion, which has for 

 its creed the new synthesis established by the one, 

 and for its practice the scheme of moral and social 

 reorganisation proposed by the other. We may 

 best consider Positivism under these three aspects. 



Positive Philosophy. Comte 's primary aim was 

 to put an end to the intellectual and social anarchy 

 winch had resulted from the destructive criticism 

 and the revolutionary upheaval of the 18th century, 

 by supplying an interpretation of phenomena which 

 should organise our knowledge of the world, of 

 man, of society, into a consistent whole. Such a 

 universal synthesis must the new philosophy pro- 

 vide to form a sure basis for a new art of life. 



Historical analysis revealed to Comte, as a law 

 of mental growth, the progress of all human con- 

 ceptions through three distinct phases. The primi- 

 tive stage he called the theological ; the transition 

 stage, the metaphysical ; and the tinal stage, the 

 positive. The meanings which he attaches to these 

 words are most concisely explained by Stuart Mill's 

 translation of them into volitional, abstract ional, 

 experiential. The transition was effected by the 

 gradual acceptance of the scientific method of in- 

 duction from observation of phenomena as the only 

 sound basis of explanation, all inquiry into causes 

 other than phenomenal l>cing finally given up as 

 fruitless. Science, therefore, is the instrument 

 capable of effecting the desired unity ; and the 

 problem of the positive philosophy is a threefold 

 one : ( 1 ) to bring all knowledge within the sphere 

 of scientific investigation ; (2) to extend scientific 

 methods through the whole territory of each divi- 

 sion ; (3) to co-ordinate the results obtained from 

 the separate sciences, so as to approach an ex- 

 pression of all our knowledge in terms of a single 

 doctrine. All three parts of this problem Comte 

 considered to lie in a large degree solved by his 

 Classification of the Science*. 



_ He olwerved that the several classes of concep- 

 tions advanced from the theological to the positive 

 stage with different degrees of facility, and on 

 inquiring into the law of progression lie found 

 that the order of emancipation of the various 

 sciences was determined by the degree of com- 

 plexity and the consequent relations of dependence. 

 A preliminary distinction was made between the 

 abstract and the concrete sciences, the former 

 treating separately of the general laws manifested 

 by all the phenomena of any class, and the latter 

 depending on these and treating of definite objects 

 under the several aspects in which they may be 



viewed. The concrete sciences, Comte considered, 

 did not yet admit of co-ordination, and he confined 

 his classification to the abstract sciences, which he 

 placed in the following series : ( 1 ) Mathematics ; 

 (2) Astronomy; (3) Physics; (4) Chemistry; (5) 

 Biology ; each of these drawing its data from the 

 preceding science, and adding a new order of con- 

 ceptions peculiar to itself. This series he found 

 coincident with the sphere of knowledge then sup- 

 posed to admit of scientific treatment. But there 

 remained the phenomena of human character and 

 society, forming a wide field of inquiry to which 

 positive methods had never yet been applied. Cer- 

 tain tentative efforts had indeed been made to con- 

 struct a so-called science of history notably by 

 Montesquieu and Condorcet but no one before 

 Comte had formulated the principles on which such a 

 task might lie accomplished. By his discovery of the 

 methods proper to a rational study of social pheno- 

 mena, and by his dicta that owing to the com- 

 plexity of the conditions involved, the laws of such 

 phenomena cannot be determined a priori, but must 

 be inductively oliserved, and afterwards verified and 

 co-ordinated oy deductive application of the general 

 laws of life ; that the statical condition of each 

 historical period must be viewed in its totality, as 

 determined by the interaction of the various classes 

 of social factors ; that intellectual evolution affords 

 the true measure of social progress by his enuncia- 

 tion of these and other doctrines Sociology was 

 created and established in the hierarchy as the last 

 and crowning science of the series. 



The whole realm of fact was now included in 

 the domain of positive inquiry, and Comte next 

 addressed himself to the task of rationalising the 

 separate departments of knowledge. In the earlier 

 portion of this task his mathematical aptitude 

 ensured him a large measure of success ; while in 

 biology he paved the way for further developments 

 by his organisation of the materials then available. 

 His main services, however, in scientific co-ordina- 

 tion were in the department of sociology. Besides 

 the formal constitution which he gave to the new 

 science, his chief substantive contribution was his 

 enunciation of the fundamental law of intellectual 

 development, already referred to as the cardinal 

 doctrine of the positive philosophy. The progress 

 of thought, moreover, from theological to positive 

 conceptions was shown to be coincident with a 

 progression in social action from an aggressive 

 militarism, through a period of defensive attitude, 

 to the final regime of industrialism. The two 

 series of transitions are mutually dependent, our 

 increasing knowledge of the conditions of our 

 existence and our systematic efforts to modify 

 them naturally reacting on each other. 



The main problem of the positive philosophy, the 

 unification of knowledge, was not yet ripe for its 

 final solution in the days of Comte, but his classi- 

 fication of the sciences is regarded by his followers 

 as affording an admirable framework for the theory 

 of evolution advanced at a later date with the claim 

 of supplying this want. Comte was fain to be 

 content witb the demonstration of a subjective 

 unity in the subservience of all the sciences to the 

 needs of man. 

 Positive Polity. On the basis of the philosophy 



had thus established Comte founded a scheme 

 of individual and social conduct. The ethical por- 

 tion he did not live to complete, but in his elaborate 

 ixnosition of the art of social politics we have ample 

 nsight into his views on what he considered an 

 ntegral part of his system. We have space here 

 only for a bare outline. 



The most complete life must be that which rests 

 on the fullest knowledge. We naturally strive to 

 mprove those conditions of our existence which we 

 can affect in the direction indicated by the clearer 



