Auguste Comte and Positivism

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Auguste Comte and Positivism

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Title: Auguste Comte and Positivism
Author: John-Stuart Mill
Release Date: October 9, 2005 [EBook #16833]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUSTE
COMTE AND POSITIVISM ***

Produced by Marc D'Hooghe

AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM
BY

JOHN STUART MILL
1865.

* * * * *


PART I.
THE COURS DE PHILOSOPHIE POSITIVE.
For some time much has been said, in England and on the Continent,
concerning "Positivism" and "the Positive Philosophy." Those phrases,
which during the life of the eminent thinker who introduced them had
made their way into no writings or discussions but those of his very
few direct disciples, have emerged from the depths and manifested
themselves on the surface of the philosophy of the age. It is not very
widely known what they represent, but it is understood that they
represent something. They are symbols of a recognised mode of
thought, and one of sufficient importance to induce almost all who now
discuss the great problems of philosophy, or survey from any elevated
point of view the opinions of the age, to take what is termed the
Positivist view of things into serious consideration, and define their
own position, more or less friendly or hostile, in regard to it. Indeed,
though the mode of thought expressed by the terms Positive and
Positivism is widely spread, the words themselves are, as usual, better
known through the enemies of that mode of thinking than through its
friends; and more than one thinker who never called himself or his
opinions by those appellations, and carefully guarded himself against
being confounded with those who did, finds himself, sometimes to his
displeasure, though generally by a tolerably correct instinct, classed
with Positivists, and assailed as a Positivist. This change in the bearings
of philosophic opinion commenced in England earlier than in France,

where a philosophy of a contrary kind had been more widely cultivated,
and had taken a firmer hold on the speculative minds of a generation
formed by Royer-Collard, Cousin, Jouffroy, and their compeers. The
great treatise of M. Comte was scarcely mentioned in French literature
or criticism, when it was already working powerfully on the minds of
many British students and thinkers. But, agreeably to the usual course
of things in France, the new tendency, when it set in, set in more
strongly. Those who call themselves Positivists are indeed not
numerous; but all French writers who adhere to the common
philosophy, now feel it necessary to begin by fortifying their position
against "the Positivist school." And the mode of thinking thus
designated is already manifesting its importance by one of the most
unequivocal signs, the appearance of thinkers who attempt a
compromise or juste milieu between it and its opposite. The acute critic
and metaphysician M. Taine, and the distinguished chemist M.
Berthelot, are the authors of the two most conspicuous of these
attempts.
The time, therefore, seems to have come, when every philosophic
thinker not only ought to form, but may usefully express, a judgment
respecting this intellectual movement; endeavouring to understand
what it is, whether it is essentially a wholesome movement, and if so,
what is to be accepted and what rejected of the direction given to it by
its most important movers. There cannot be a more appropriate mode of
discussing these points than in the form of a critical examination of the
philosophy of Auguste Comte; for which the appearance of a new
edition of his fundamental treatise, with a preface by the most eminent,
in every point of view, of his professed disciples, M. Littré, affords a
good opportunity. The name of M. Comte is more identified than any
other with this mode of thought. He is the first who has attempted its
complete systematization, and the scientific extension of it to all
objects of human knowledge. And in doing this he has displayed a
quantity and quality of mental power, and achieved an amount of
success, which have not only won but retained the high admiration of
thinkers as radically and strenuously opposed as it is possible to be, to
nearly the whole of his later tendencies, and to many of his earlier
opinions. It would have been a mistake had such thinkers busied

themselves in the first instance with drawing attention to what they
regarded as errors in his great work. Until it