A General View of Positivism by Auguste Comte

Author:Auguste Comte
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, pdf
Tags: Philosophy
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2018-05-22T18:19:15+00:00

IV The Influence of Positivism Upon Women

In their ac­tion, then, upon so­ci­ety, philo­soph­ers may hope for the en­er­getic sup­port of the work­ing classes. But the re­gen­er­at­ing move­ment re­quires still the co­oper­a­tion of a third ele­ment, an ele­ment in­dic­ated by our ana­lysis of hu­man nature, and sug­ges­ted also by his­tor­ical study of the great crisis of mod­ern times.

The moral con­sti­tu­tion of man con­sists of some­thing more than In­tel­lect and Activ­ity. These are rep­res­en­ted in the con­sti­tu­tion of so­ci­ety by the philo­sophic body and the pro­let­ari­ate. But be­sides these there is Feel­ing, which, in the the­ory put for­ward in the first chapter of this work, was shown to be the pre­dom­in­at­ing prin­ciple, the motive power of our be­ing, the only basis on which the vari­ous parts of our nature can be brought into unity. Now the al­li­ance between philo­soph­ers and work­ing men, which has been just de­scribed, how­ever per­fectly it may be real­ized, does not rep­res­ent the ele­ment of Feel­ing with suf­fi­cient dis­tinct­ness and prom­in­ence.

Cer­tainly without So­cial Feel­ing, neither philo­soph­ers nor pro­let­ar­ies can ex­er­cise any real in­flu­ence. But in their case its source is not suf­fi­ciently pure nor deep to sus­tain them in the per­form­ance of their duty. A more spon­tan­eous and more per­en­nial spring of in­spir­a­tion must be found.

With the philo­sopher so­cial sym­path­ies will never be want­ing in co­her­ence, since they will be con­nec­ted with his whole sys­tem of thought; but this very sci­entific char­ac­ter will deaden their vigour, un­less they are re­vived by im­pulses in which re­flec­tion has no share. Roused as he will be by the con­scious­ness of pub­lic duty to a de­gree of activ­ity of which ab­stract thinkers can form no con­cep­tion, the emo­tions of private life will yet be not less ne­ces­sary for him than for oth­ers. In­ter­course with the work­ing classes will be of the greatest be­ne­fit to him; but even this is not enough to com­pensate the de­fects of a life de­voted to spec­u­la­tion.

The sym­path­ies of the people again, though stronger and more spon­tan­eous than those of the philo­sopher, are, in most cases, less pure and not so last­ing. From the pres­sure of daily ne­ces­sit­ies it is dif­fi­cult for them to main­tain the same con­sist­ent and dis­in­ter­ested char­ac­ter. Great as are the moral ad­vant­ages which will res­ult from the in­cor­por­a­tion of the people in mod­ern so­ci­ety, they are not enough by them­selves to out­weigh the force of self-in­terest aroused by the pre­cari­ous nature of their po­s­i­tion. Emo­tions of a gentler and less tran­si­ent kind must be called into play. Philo­soph­ers may re­lieve the work­ing classes from the ne­ces­sity of press­ing their own claims and griev­ances; but the fact still re­mains, that the in­stincts by which those claims are promp­ted are per­sonal rather than so­cial.

Thus, in the al­li­ance which has been here pro­posed as ne­ces­sary for so­cial re­or­gan­iz­a­tion, Feel­ing, the most in­flu­en­tial part of hu­man nature, has not been ad­equately rep­res­en­ted. An ele­ment is want­ing which shall have the same re­la­tion to the moral side of our con­sti­tu­tion, as the philo­sophic body has with In­tel­lect, and the people with Activ­ity.

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