Comte’s originality6 will therefore lie in taking from science and philosophy the principles upon which depends the social reorganisation, which is the real end of his efforts. While having the same aim as the reformers of his time, he will follow a different path. It is indeed a polity which he also claims to found, but this polity is positive: it rests upon ethics7 and philosophy both equally positive. Undoubtedly8 the polity is the raison d’être of the system, which Comte has constructed for it. But, without the system, the Polity would remain arbitrary. It would lack authority and that which would make it legitimate9. Philosophy is no less indispensable to the foundation of politics, than are politics to the completion and unification of philosophy.
Whence comes it that Comte has put this great problem, which preoccupied10 all the minds of his time, in a form which belongs to him alone? We cannot here enter into the detailed11 biographical study which would throw some light upon this question. Let us only recall that Comte was born in a Catholic Royalist family. From the age of thirteen, he tells us, he had broken with the political convictions and the religious beliefs of his own people. Perhaps, however, the trace of these beliefs was less completely effaced12 than he himself thought. During the whole of his life he professed13 the liveliest admiration14 for Catholicism. On his own confession15 he was especially inspired in this by Joseph de Maistre; but,6 if he so much appreciated the book du Pape, did not his great sympathy partly spring from impressions of childhood indelibly stamped upon a passionate16 and sensitive nature?
Whatever may be the case, the first subject which seriously occupied his mind was mathematics. Being admitted to the Ecole polytechnique a year before the usual age, he began to study the natural sciences. At the same time he “meditates” upon Montesquieu and Condorcet. He approaches philosophy properly so called by reading the Scottish philosophers, Ferguson, Adam Smith, Hume, and he sees very well that the last one is far above the others. Having left the Ecole polytechnique, he remains17 in Paris, and while giving lessons to earn his living, he completes his scientific education with Delambre, de Blainville, and the Baron18 Thénard. He reads assiduously Fontenelle, d’Alembert, Diderot, and especially Condorcet who has distilled19 and clarified the philosophy of the XVIII. century. While studying Descartes and the great mathematicians20 who came after him, he also follows attentively21 the labours of naturalists23 and of biologists, of Lamarck, for instance, of Cuvier, of Gall24, of Cabanis, of Bichat, Broussais and of so many others. He understands the philosophical25 importance of these new sciences, as already pointed26 out by Diderot. But for all that he does not neglect historical and social studies. He has read the ideologists, among whom he especially esteemed27 Destutt de Tracy. Without giving up Montesquieu or Condorcet, he studies the traditionalists: M. de Bonald, this “energetic thinker” and, more than the others, Joseph de Maistre who made the deepest and most enduring impression upon his mind.
Before knowing Saint-Simon then—and his correspondence with Valat testifies to the fact—Comte already possessed28 a large portion of the materials for his future system. Up to this time his labours had borne upon two distinct orders of7 subjects. The one scientific proper (mathematics, physics and chemistry, natural sciences) the other more properly political (history, politics, and social questions).
In 1818 Comte meets Saint-Simon. He is attracted and surrenders himself almost unreservedly. For four years he works with Saint-Simon. He loves and venerates29 him as a master. He feeds upon his ideas, and collaborates30 in his labours and enterprises. He calls himself “pupil of M. Saint-Simon.” However, from 1822 he detaches himself from this greatly-admired master, and in 1824 the rupture31 is complete and final. What can have happened?
The grievances32 brought forward by Comte are only of secondary importance. As a matter of fact master and pupil were bound to separate sooner or later. There was a radical33 incompatibility34 between those two minds. Saint-Simon, marvellously inventive and original, throws out a multitude of new ideas and views, of which many will be fruitful. But he quickly affirms, and proves little. He has not the patience to continue working long at the same subject, or to probe it to the bottom in an orderly way. Comte, on the contrary, thinks with Descartes, that method is essential to science, and that “logical coherence” is the surest sign of truth. He could not long remain satisfied with Saint-Simon’s disconnected essays. He could even, without dishonesty, turn to account the brilliant but disorderly intuition in which his master abounds35 and believe that his own doctrine36 alone gave those disconnected essays scientific value, because his doctrine alone was in a position to systematise them and to connect them with their principles.
It would therefore seem that we can admit at the same time that Saint-Simon’s influence upon Comte was considerable, and, on the other hand, that Comte’s philosophical originality is no less certain. Saint-Simon’s influence would chiefly have consisted: 1. in suggesting to Comte a certain number of general ideas and of views of detail, especially for his8 philosophy of history; 2. in showing him how the two orders of labours which he had been following until then were to blend into a single one, through the creation of a science which would be social, and consequently of a polity which would be scientific. Would this synthesis of the two orders of studies which Comte had undertaken side by side have been produced in his mind, had he not known Saint-Simon? In any case it would have been produced more slowly. Let us at least leave Saint-Simon the credit which Comte himself granted him, that of having “started” his disciple37 upon the line best suited to his genius.
The intellectual intimacy38 between them could never be perfect. If Comte entered entirely39 into Saint-Simon’s ideas, (without adopting them all, however), in return there was an aspect in Comte’s thought which Saint-Simon scarcely discerned through the lack of a sufficiently40 strong scientific education. It is enough to see how he speaks of the law of universal attraction. Comte must have been scandalised by it. So, at the very moment when he submits with most enthusiasm and youthful confidence to Saint-Simon’s influence he does not neglect his special mathematical studies. “My labours,” he writes to Valat on the 28th of September, 1819, “are and will be in two orders, scientific and political. I should set little value upon the scientific studies, did I not continually think of their utility to the human race. As well then amuse myself in deciphering very complicated puzzles. I have a supreme41 aversion for scientific labours whose utility, either direct or remote, I do not see. But I also confess, in spite of all my philanthropy, that I should put far less eagerness into political labours, if they did not stimulate42 the intellect, if they did not bring my brain strongly into play, in a word: if they were not difficult.”2 A year later, in sending a parcel of political tracts43 to his friend, in which he9 distinguishes what is in his own manner and what is from Saint-Simon, he says that he is besides very eagerly occupied with mathematical work. He wants to take part in the competition opened by the Institut; and his ambition is soon to enter the Academie des Sciences.
From 1822, in the celebrated44 pamphlet entitled Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société, the synthesis between the two orders of labours is accomplished45 in Comte’s mind, thanks to the double discovery of the classification of the sciences and of the great law of social dynamics46. We know that this work was, if not the principal reason, at least the occasion of the rupture between Comte and Saint-Simon. It is the moment which Comte himself considers to have been decisive in the history of his mind. The whole of his future doctrine was essentially47 contained in this pamphlet. The preface added by Saint-Simon shows that he did not understand its full bearings. Comte is henceforth his own master. At length he has found what for several years he had been seeking without being clearly conscious of it; and the rest of his life is now consecrated48 to the work which he has conceived and of which he has just outlined the plan. Since he has established a philosophical hierarchy49 of the sciences, whose summit is crowned by social physics, he has no further occasion to ask how he can conciliate his scientific labours with his political studies.
“In the interval50 of my great philosophical labours,” he writes on the 8th September, 1824, “I propose to publish a few more special works upon the fundamental points in mathematics, which I have long conceived, and which I have at last been able to connect with my general ideas of positive philosophy: so that I shall be free to give myself up to them without breaking through the unity51 of my thought, which is the great condition for the life of a thinker.”3 And in a very10 remarkable52 letter to de Blainville, on the 27th February, 1826, he explains in the clearest way the generating idea of his system. “My conception of politics as social physics, and the law which I have discovered upon the three successive states of the human mind are but one and the same thought, considered from the two distinct points of view of method and of science. That being established, I shall show that this single thought directly and completely satisfies the great actual social need, considered under its two aspects of theoretical need and practical need. I will therefore show that what on one hand tends to consolidate53 the future by re-establishing order and discipline among intellects, tends, on the other hand to regulate the present, as far as possible, by furnishing statesmen with rational lines to work upon.”4
Henceforth Comte’s life was to be but the methodical execution of his programme. In turn, with perfect regularity54, he wrote and published the philosophy of the sciences and of history, the ethics, the positive polity and the positive religion. Does this mean that Comte’s thought remained stationary55? Most certainly not. It evolved from 1822 to 1857. But this evolution followed a curve which an attentive22 observer might have sketched56 beforehand after having read the Plan des travaux scientifiques nécéssaires pour réorganiser la société. Comte had but one system, not two. From the opuscules of his twentieth year to the Synthèse subjective57 of his last year, it is the development of one and the same conception.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
formulating
|
|
| v.构想出( formulate的现在分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
justify
|
|
| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
lengthening
|
|
| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的现在分词 )； 加长 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
chimeras
|
|
| n.（由几种动物的各部分构成的）假想的怪兽( chimera的名词复数 )；不可能实现的想法；幻想；妄想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
previously
|
|
| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
originality
|
|
| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
ethics
|
|
| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
undoubtedly
|
|
| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
legitimate
|
|
| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
preoccupied
|
|
| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
detailed
|
|
| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
effaced
|
|
| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
professed
|
|
| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
admiration
|
|
| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
confession
|
|
| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
passionate
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
remains
|
|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
baron
|
|
| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
distilled
|
|
| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
mathematicians
|
|
| 数学家( mathematician的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
attentively
|
|
| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
attentive
|
|
| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
naturalists
|
|
| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
gall
|
|
| v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
philosophical
|
|
| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
pointed
|
|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
esteemed
|
|
| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
venerates
|
|
| 敬重（某人或某事物），崇敬( venerate的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
collaborates
|
|
| 合作( collaborate的第三人称单数 )； 勾结叛国 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
rupture
|
|
| n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
grievances
|
|
| n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
radical
|
|
| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
incompatibility
|
|
| n.不兼容 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
abounds
|
|
| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
doctrine
|
|
| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
disciple
|
|
| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
intimacy
|
|
| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
sufficiently
|
|
| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
supreme
|
|
| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
stimulate
|
|
| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
tracts
|
|
| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
celebrated
|
|
| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
accomplished
|
|
| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
dynamics
|
|
| n.力学，动力学，动力，原动力；动态 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
essentially
|
|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
consecrated
|
|
| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
hierarchy
|
|
| n.等级制度；统治集团，领导层 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
interval
|
|
| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
unity
|
|
| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
remarkable
|
|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
consolidate
|
|
| v.使加固，使加强；(把...)联为一体，合并 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
regularity
|
|
| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
stationary
|
|
| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
sketched
|
|
| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
subjective
|
|
| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |