Comte, Isidore-Auguste-Marie-François-Xavier

(1798-1857) The French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte is known as the originator of sociology and ‘positivism', a philosophical system by which he aimed to discover and perfect the proper political arrangements of modern industrial society. He was the first thinker to advocate the use of scientific procedures in the study of economics, politics and social behaviour, and, motivated by the social and moral problems caused by the French Revolution, he held that the practice of such a science would lead inevitably to social regeneration and progress. Comte's positivism can be characterized as an approach which rejects as illegitimate all that cannot be directly observed in the investigation and study of any subject. His system of ‘positive philosophy' had two laws at its foundation: a historical or logical law, ‘the law of three stages', and an epistemological law, the classification or hierarchy of the sciences. The law of three stages governs the development of human intelligence and society: in the first stage, early societies base their knowledge on theological grounds, giving ultimately divine explanations for all phenomena; later, in the metaphysical stage, forces and essences are sought as explanations, but these are equally chimerical and untestable; finally, in the positive or scientific stage, knowledge is secured solely on observations, by their correlation and sequence. Comte saw this process occurring not only in European society, but also in the lives of every individual. We seek theological solutions in childhood, metaphysical solutions in youth, and scientific explanations in adulthood. His second, epistemological law fixed a classification or hierarchy of sciences according to their arrival at the positive stage of knowledge. In order of historical development and thus of increasing complexity, these are mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and sociology. (Comte rejected psychology as a science, on the grounds that its data were unobservable and therefore untestable.) Knowledge of one science rested partly on the findings of the preceding science; for Comte, students must progress through the sciences in the correct order, using the simpler and more precise methods of the preceding science to tackle the more complex issues of later ones. In his six-volume Cours de philosophie positive (The Positive Philosophy) (1830-42), Comte gave an encyclopedic account of these sciences, ending with an exposition of what he regarded as the most advanced: social physics or ‘sociology' (a term he invented). The sociologist's job would be to discover the laws that govern human behaviour on a large scale, and the ways in which social institutions and norms operate together in a complex yet ultimately predictable system. In his later work, Comte fleshed out his vision of the positive society, describing among other things a Religion of Humanity in which historical figures would be worshipped according to their contribution to society. Despite such extravagances, however, the broader themes of his positivism - especially the idea that long-standing social problems should be approached scientifically - proved influential both in France and, through J.S. Mill's early support, in England. 1 Life Auguste Comte was born in Montpellier, France. He attended the École Polytechnique, from which he was expelled in 1816, for political reasons. Comte's main concern throughout his life was resolving the political, social and moral problems caused by the French Revolution. To that end, he embarked upon an encyclopedic work, which he first conceived under the inspiration of Henri de Saint-Simon, for whom he worked as secretary from 1817 to 1824. At that time, he proposed several plans for a competition to create an encyclopedia modelled on that of Denis Diderot, but designed to bring together the ‘positive ideas' of the period, that is, ideas conceived in their relation to modern science and free from the bonds of traditional theology and metaphysics. Comte's encyclopedic project developed into the famous Cours de philosophie positive (Course in Positive Philosophy) (1830-42), a complete system of philosophy in six volumes which aimed to provide the foundations for political and social organization in modern industrial society. Meanwhile, he wrote a series of minor works in social philosophy, which became known as the ‘opuscules'. The third, Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société (Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for Reorganizing Society) (1822), which is often called ‘the fundamental opuscule', presented the first outline of the concepts which would become central to Comte's positivism - the ‘law of three stages' and the classification of the sciences (see §3 below). While pursuing his intellectual career, Comte earned his living first as a mathematics tutor at the École Polytechnique, then as admissions examiner at the same school. When he lost the latter job , he was forced in 1848 to seek financial support from his disciples in order to survive. All his life Comte regretted his failure to be appointed a tenured professor; he accused François Arago, among others, of deliberately blocking his academic career. He was also unsuccessful when he requested the creation of chairs at the Collège de France: in 1832 the chair of the General History of the Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and in 1846 the chair of the General History of the Positive Sciences. Comte always linked his theoretical research to the practical aim of moral, social and political reorganization. He considered this reorganization from the theoretical aspect of political science - ‘sociology' or ‘positive politics' - and from the practical aspect of the union of the social classes. Moreover, it was for the benefit of the proletarians that he gave public courses in popular astronomy between 1831 and 1848. He considered these lectures the prelude to the reorganization of the intellectual system, which, thanks to the scientific knowledge of society, would finally result in ‘a politics finally freed from the arbitrary and the utopian' (Larizza-Lolli 1993: 76). Comte wrote the Discours sur l'esprit positif (A Discourse on the Positive Spirit) (1844) as a basic introduction to this reorganization. The Discours sur l'ensemble du positivisme (A General View of Positivism), which appeared in 1848, derived from a similar intention, that of presenting to the workers a synthesized vision of positivist philosophy. From 1847, Comte devoted his lectures to the refutation of communism. The epistemological foundation of Comte's political project tends to be problematic. For Comte, ‘epistemology' involved the history, philosophy and methodologies of the sciences, as well as their basic concepts and theories. His positivist politics is based, on the one hand, on historical and logical law, the law of the three stages (theological, metaphysical and positive stages) and, on the other hand, on an epistemological law: the classification or hierarchy of the sciences, fixed according to the order of their arrival at the positive stage of knowledge (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology). Thus, as a fundamental epistemological concept, ‘positivism' designates an intellectual attitude founded on the practice of rational and experimental scientific methods. At the same time, Comte's scientific positivism is a philosophy of the positive sciences, though initially it is also a philosophy of scientific creativity. Comte allowed certain new sciences that had not yet been fully regularized to be classed as positive: for instance, he confirmed the advance of biology to the level of a positive science. The most advanced of all positive sciences - social physics or sociology - allowed for the transformation of society based on the progress of the sciences. Under the aegis of his Religion of Humanity, first described in the sixth volume of the Cours de philosophie positive (The Positive Philosophy) (1842), Comte articulates his vast political project in the Système de politique positive (System of Positive Polity) (1851-4). In this work, he gives his project a social and moral goal, founding it on altruism - a term he originated, according to Emile Littré. Comte's last book was La Synthèse subjective (Subjective Synthesis) (1856). Never completed, it re-evaluates the role of the sciences from the perspective of a positivist education. Comte died, probably of stomach cancer, on 5 September 1857. 2 Speculation and action Following the example of Francis Bacon, who stressed the efficacy of combining knowing (scire) and doing (posse), Comte held that power is proportionate to knowledge: ‘From science, comes foresight; from foresight, comes action' ([1830-42] 1975 I: 45). Even though he clearly separates theory and practice in the scientific study of phenomena, Comte orients his positive philosophy towards a constant interrelationship between speculation and action, while keeping it equidistant between rationalism and empiricism. The pragmatic aspect of Comte's thought goes back to ideas he first expressed in 1816, while still a student at the École Polytechnique. He affirmed the necessity of pragmatism in a letter of 28 September 1819 to his best friend, Pierre Valat, declaring that he could not conceive of a scientific work that would have no useful goal for humanity. Conversely, he added that political research would have to be intellectually challenging in order to interest him; otherwise, it would have no validity in his eyes. This also explains why he underlined the necessity of basing political studies on a scientific foundation. On the one hand, Comte was interested in a discipline that would soon be known as ‘epistemology'. For him, it encompassed the history and philosophy of the sciences, the various methodologies which they used, fundamental scientific concepts and theories, and what he as well as Bacon called ‘primary philosophy', which constituted the synthesis of the regular means of scientific knowledge and their principal, universally valid results. His epistemological concerns later led Comte to establish a ‘Table of the Fifteen Universal Laws' in the fourth volume of the Système de politique positive (see §§2, 3 below), settling three groups of universal laws about (1) laws formation, (2) static and dynamic theories of understanding, and (3) movement/existence, action/reaction classification and relation. Yet he never worried about defining ‘facts', ‘scientific verification' or ‘observation'. Nor did the problem of the origin of knowledge concern him. Robert C. Scharff rightly emphasizes Comte's insistence ‘that such issues [could] not even be understood as issues without recourse to philosophy's history'. On the other hand, Comte was very conscious of the political, social and cultural problems posed by the French Revolution. As the third opuscule clearly states, he placed himself politically between ‘the people' and ‘the kings' (1970a: 57), between the ‘retrograde' ideas of the latter and the ‘critical' ones of the former; in effect, he had rebelled against the royalism and Catholicism of his parents, but at the same time opposed the destructive spirit of the revolutionaries. Similarly, he did not favour the mixture of the retrograde and critical currents advocated by the ‘doctrinaires' such as Pierre Royer-Collard, François Guizot, Charles de Rémusat, and Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne, whom Comte grouped in the ‘stationary school', characterized by ‘organic emptiness'. From 1822, after the fading of the spiritual power of the Church, Comte reproached the French body politic for neglecting to create an organization with analogous power. In spite of French politicians' efforts to recast a temporal power, they had, according to Comte, also failed here. He pointed to the absence of any explicit positive theory as proof of the double failure of French politics. Before his encyclopedic enterprise was sufficiently developed to become the Cours de philosophie positive, Comte, in his role of secretary to Saint-Simon and with his approval, edited some research projects which he called ‘Programmes'. One example is the Programme d'un travail sur les rapports des sciences théoriques avec les sciences d'application (Programme of work on the relations between the pure and applied sciences), which he published in 1817. From 1817 to 1820, he began a certain number of preparatory works, which were at least initially encouraged, if not conceived, by Saint-Simon. They would continue after 1820, but in a totally different form. Just as in the fundamental opuscule of May 1822, Comte resolutely insisted on linking his theoretical work to the practical goal of social reorganization in the Cours de philosophie positive, the two Discours of 1844 and 1848, the Système de politique positive and his last writings. Very early, in fact, he had made a definitive and fundamental observation that the development of human intelligence was closely tied to the history of societies, which he formulated as follows: ‘intelligence arrives at a higher stage of development when altruism itself is more developed' (1851: 693). It closely connected the development of intelligence with that of the individual's interest in his or her peers, intelligence and altruism both being clear signs of the progress of humanity. Comte considered the theoretical discipline of sociology to be concerned with the real nature of humanity, and so he gave a higher status to its method, which was originally objective, defining it instead as ‘subjective', that is, as situated beyond objective cosmological observation. The objective method employed in the Cours de philosophie positive had permitted the passage from the world to humankind. Now it was necessary to go from humankind to the world; hence the designation of this method as ‘subjective', that is, as dependent on the real nature of humankind. 3 Comtean epistemology Comte's epistemology focused on considering and evaluating the social phenomena that the fundamental sciences recognized as subject matter for a ‘positive science' - a science based on observation with a legitimate place in the system of recognized sciences. His epistemology reverses the accepted hierarchy of the sciences - astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology, all of which were traditionally subordinated under mathematics - and places them under the domination of sociology. Comte thought that once the principle of sociality was accepted by scientists, the new science should be called ‘anthropology'; he presents this in the Discours sur l'esprit positif (1844), where he defines the underlying nature of the scientific approach as necessarily social. First, a ‘semiotic principle' justifies it as social, because it originates in the constitution of the different systems of signs produced by society, especially the society of scientists. Second, it is social because it obeys a ‘principle of homology' (Kremer-Marietti 1980: 53-69), which applies to all relations and then expresses the possibility of applying the scientific norm of theoretical unification - a norm that Comte shared with Henri Poincaré. The principle of ‘classification', which would also be recognized by Pierre Duhem, is justified by the principle of homology; the latter belongs logically to a more general thesis (which Poincaé would later formulate) according to which ‘it is illegitimate to take into consideration a single isolated hypothesis in order to verify it' (Duhem 1914: 393; Kremer-Marietti 1992: 372). In Comte's case, it gives rise to the conception of the ‘Table of the Fifteen Universal Laws'; the theoretical unity achieved by Comtean epistemology thanks to this table is due to the organization of all laws through a classification of scientific facts. Comte distrusted a logic isolated from science, a fact isolated from theory, a doctrine isolated from method, and a method isolated from its object. It was necessary to have a theory in order to locate the observations which, if isolated, would have no scientific value. Comte never stopped saying that the ‘crudest' phenomena explain the ‘noblest' ones. Oddly enough, without this holistic type of explanation ordering the homology of the concepts of the world and man, abstract morality could not gain access to the positive system. For Comte, the reference to a system obeying the principle of homology was a universally practicable theoretical necessity - a criterion of verification which he could use to assess the value of experiments and conclusions. In his ‘Oral Course in Positive Philosophy', given from 1826, Comte developed his general review of the positive sciences, which he subjected to the historical and logical law of three stages. His teaching plan followed the classification or hierarchy of the sciences, which he saw as a fertile classificatory model. Henceforth he would elevate this model to the status of a key or grid of concepts. Not only did he depend on it to determine, according to the law of three stages, the historical and logical necessity of sociology, a new discipline dealing with social, historical and political points of view, but even more important, this classification permitted him to proceed in certain areas where observation was not yet possible. It is on this principle of classification that Comte established his ‘cerebral theory'. He also drew the necessity of ‘abstract morality' (the seventh fundamental science) from his view that the order of the individual, concerned with abstract morality, is at the very heart of sociology, where it is subordinate to the social order, exactly as the social order is subordinate to the vital order and as the latter in its turn is subordinate to the material order. In Comte's eyes, these successive subordinations do not exclude either the specificity or the originality peculiar to the different orders of phenomena and their respective sciences. The seventh degree of the series of sciences ‘arrives', according to Comte, ‘at man envisaged in the most precise fashion'. Because the double weight of the material and vital orders is in reality borne by the social order, which helps to modify them, the ‘order of the individual', the most dependent of all, becomes the ‘immediate regulator of our destinies' at the same time that it experiences the pressure of all the orders through the social order, to which it is subordinate. 4 The logic of systems and the semiotic principle Comte highlighted a history of human logics by emphasizing the necessary and reciprocal connection between the systems and institutions of signs, which are languages, and social systems. He saw social history as being affected by the systems of logic which he recognized as existing at three levels: the ‘logic of sentiments', the ‘logic of images' and the ‘logic of signs'. This tripartition into sentiments, images and signs contains the semiotic elements that we can recognize in Charles Peirce's semiotic as Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Language appeared as a dynamic system relating political life to domestic life. It allowed for the creation of a positive science whose basis was observation but whose ideal reference was mathematical language, which arose from the logic of signs. Comte's semiotic position explains his mathematical views. He called attention to the fact that physical science depended as much on observation guided by theory as on the proper use of a model of language, which, to him, was the language of mathematics. As early as 1819, Comte maintained a general theory of language and signs in his Essais sur la philosophie des mathématiques (Essays on the Philosophy of Mathematics). This logic of the systems of signs in both science and aesthetics was clearly confirmed in 1852 in the second volume of Système de philosophie positive. Written long after the first and long before the second of these works, the Cours de philosophie positive contains an epistemology concerned with revealing the scientific means of demonstrating the final necessity of the human and social sciences. These sciences are ruled by a logic of systems, of which the law of three stages is the determining operational element. The ‘positive logic' of the Système de philosophie positive is nothing other than a combination of systems of signs (affective, imaginary and intellectual), subjected to the unification of the three systems governing sentiments, images and linguistic or mathematical symbols. Comte wanted every ‘logic of signs' to be expressly connected with the ‘logic of images' and the ‘logic of sentiments'. He reaffirmed the semiotic principle in 1856, in Synthèse subjective, and this led to a complete formulation showing how ‘the regular conjuncture of sentiments, images and signs' was able ‘to inspire in us conceptions that meet our moral, intellectual and physical needs'. The logic of the systems of signs arises from ‘the interior function of language' because, according to Hobbes, people communicate by signs, with one phenomenon becoming the sign of another phenomenon. The Table of the Fifteen Universal Laws may be considered the outcome of this logic. The reason is that this table achieves an intellectual unity through its reduction to a precise and definite number of signs, which are specific laws, valid for all phenomena. Evidently, there is a link between the three Comtean logics and the three-stage law and an even closer link between these logics and the three sub-states of the theological stage. In fact, Comte thought that fetishism, polytheism and monotheism were at the origin of these three logics, whose development was closely connected with the system of society. The logic of sentiments originated in fetishism, the logic of images was created under polytheism, and the logic of signs (linguistic and mathematic) arose from monotheism. It is clear that this semiotic principle has important implications for Comte's epistemology as well as for his theory of language and art. 5 The moral and political plan The opuscules of his youth, appended to the fourth volume of the Système de philosophie positive, demonstrate Comte's constant interest in moral and political reconstruction, in which semiotics played a role. As mentioned above, semiotics was connected with the law of three stages and the three theological sub-states. In Comte's eyes, fetishism was superior to the other two sub-states because it founded human language. For Comte, the ‘fetishist thinker' was closer to phenomenal reality than the ‘theologicist dreamer'. Yet the theologians taught us to consider purely ideal existences, without which we would not have been able to create the scientific realm. In addition, without monotheism, abstraction would have been impossible. It is important to remember that mental states have their ontological foundation in the corresponding social state. It is impossible, for example, to speak abstractly of a society that embraces a specific intellectual and mental state. Thus man and society advance in correlation with the development of intelligence. As a result, the positivist project for society studies the different forms of learning, from the most ancient to the most advanced, by means of knowledge of the various forms of civilization. The study of ‘social statics' brings out the principle of solidarity that is crucial for the coexistence and cohesion underlying all social systems. The study of ‘social dynamics' highlights the principle of the continuity and tradition of societies. In brief, scientific positivism demands that we act so that theory and practice are in harmony. This harmony in turn generates the harmony between the knowledge of the environment that surrounds us and our reaction to this environment. If knowledge leads to power over the outside world, our industrial society should be able to realize an equitable political project only by developing an all-embracing moral project. If Comte had limited himself to considering the use of abstract science in the ‘sciences of application', or the results of the latter on industry, the industrial activity arising from positive science would not suffice to constitute a project for society. Because of his familiarity with all scientific areas, Comte turned to a complete knowledge of man; he contended that abstract morality, the ‘final science', could ‘systematize the special knowledge of our individual nature by combining the biological point of view with the sociological'. To this end, Comte provided the essential epistemological basis with the ‘cerebral chart', established in 1851 from his method of classification. ‘Abstract morality' usually precedes ‘concrete morality'; from the ‘cerebral chart' emerges the principle of man's action in society: ‘Act out of affection, and think in order to act'. The phrenology of Franz Josef Gall, which he criticized for separating the brain from the whole nervous system and detaching the individual from his social milieu, permitted Comte to maintain the innateness of human qualities and the importance of the emotions, as well as the distinction between the mind and the heart: their harmony constitutes the soul. For Comte, the rule of positive society will be love, a basic feature of humanity and thus something which it is possible to expect human beings to develop. 6 The human sciences and the standard conduct of nations A fundamental question remains: How does Comte's epistemological system make it possible for him to create a political project? The analysis of the human psyche (§5 above) showed that the need for love transcends natural egoism by means of altruism. The cerebral chart claimed that both speculation and action are dominated by affection and that social consensus depends on the affective life. Comte, who recognized the permanence of affectivity, expressed it by the phrase, ‘One tires of thinking and even acting; one never tires of loving', a progressive division in intermediate items between extreme terms. Using a process of binary decomposition, Comte was able to derive the scale of all the intermediary affections between complete egoism and pure altruism. His analytical method was inherent in the taxonomic method that he usually used. It permitted him to maintain that altruism ‘when it is energetic, is always better able than egoism to direct and stimulate the intelligence, even among the animals'. The cerebral theory thus represents the fundamental order of our natural make-up and can be applied to social existence. Social statics deals with the play of the permanent social forces revealed by Comte. What is the material power of Western society? Comte answered that it is ‘number' (the proletariat) and ‘wealth' (the administrators of capital). What is its intellectual power? It is the aesthetic and scientific spirit (its representatives in society). What about sentiment? Sentiment is concerned with the heart, which is both masculine and feminine, for man and woman share masculine and feminine traits. Even if Comte considers women intellectually inferior to men, he recognizes in them a superiority in terms of sensibility and makes them the guardians of universal morality; yet women remain auxiliary to men. No doubt it was from his romantic love for Clotilde de Vaux, which lasted a year (1845-6), that Comte obtained his experience of the feminine condition. Theoretically, Comte applies an Aristotelian principle governing the different forces of society: the double principle of the separation of functions and the combination of efforts. Property, family and language are the necessary elements of social statics, which owes its unity to ‘religion'. To Comte, religion is a synthesis of ‘dogma', which represents the philosophical unity of scientific theories; ‘worship', which directs sentiments; and ‘regulations', which govern behaviour. Worship and regulations form the subjective domain of love, which is subordinated to the objective realm of philosophical dogma. Social dynamics can be summarized in the law of three stages; it is the permanent substratum of human action. The harmony between the social static and the social dynamic expresses itself in the principle of progress, which is conceived as the development of order. The postulate of harmony is evoked in the perspective of that which governs and rallies, that is, religion, which is destined to ‘bind the interior and to link it to the outside'. The Cours deals with the creation of the system of scientific systems as does the Système de philosophie positive, which also proposes the new construction of a political synthesis inspired by religion. This completes the human unity to which the synthesis tends through loving, thinking and acting. Religion thus becomes a super-theory of the immediately applicable unity; it permits human intervention in the historical and social dynamic, for it puts morality and politics in the service of social progress. The Religion of Humanity is ‘proven' because it is founded on cosmological and human knowledge, and is thus the only answer to moral and political questions. Civil society cannot answer these questions even if its mechanisms permitted it, and it would in any case be unable to set its solutions in motion, since it is nothing but a battleground for divergent opinions. The same criticism is found in the works of Hegel, who limits the civil objective to the satisfaction of needs. While the Hegelian state is called upon to transcend the egoistic civil society by an objective moral idea, Comte wants to orient the will towards the superior reality of humanity, a subjective moral idea. For ‘Humanity breaks up first into Cities, then into Families, but never into individuals' (1851-4: 4, 31). Morality takes the individual into consideration; families and homelands are, nevertheless, still important to it as the necessary introduction to Humanity. In terms of its composition, the Great Being is defined as ‘the continuous totality of converging beings'. Comte envisages a future where positive morality determines the discipline of existence. His concept of altruism recalls the principle of friendship or philia, which Aristotle made the cement of the ancient cities. While earlier Comte assigned temporal power to the proletarians, he later entrusts it to those who favoured the ‘universal union'. From 1842, he foresees that the spiritual power has to be ‘the true philosophical class'; he therefore gives it the title of ‘Western Positive Committee' and already imagines it to be a ‘Positive Church'. Comte intends it to direct the intellectual and moral regeneration of modern societies, with the assistance of the proletariat, at least after the latter has ended the transitional dictatorship towards positivism. Just as with all women (who do not form a class), the proletariat is the servant of the spiritual power; it watches over the temporal power to see that it respects the general principles of the social regime. As for the positive economy, Comte hoped that it would be nothing other than the ‘universal and continuous systematization of human toil'. He wanted work to be systematized for the sake of future generations. Capitalization supported the sociocracy, which, according to the evidence of those who recognized its inner workings, involved the collaboration of the social classes based on the model of the functions and organs of the body. (Sociocracy was related to regulation, while sociolatry dealt with worship. Both were founded on sociology, which served as their dogma.) Comte's positivist economic theory was summed up in two laws: first, that each man can produce more than what he consumes, and second, that the products obtained can be preserved beyond the time required for their reproduction. The institution of capital is justified by the preponderance of human work over consumption. Comte's detractors, such as Herbert Marcuse, did not understand his view of the origin and social destination of capital funds. Yet Comte maintained that these capital funds made each active citizen the agent of all the others: each one had to function above all for others by applying the positivist motto ‘Live for others'. Others' obligations emanated naturally from the social consensus. Once the altruistic sentiments were recognized and generalized, Comte thought it possible to treat the three principal obligations - moral, judicial and civic - as one. But there was also an economic obligation to work, and to sustain the products of that work as long as possible; for the importance of solidarity among people would only become clear from the perspective of future generations. 7 The complete positivism Comte had persuaded his disciples that the active class should nourish the contemplative class. After 1852, thanks to an increase in the Positivist Subsidy, he was able to devote himself entirely to his writings and to represent the priesthood of the Religion of Humanity. He concentrated on asserting the ultimate importance of morality and politics, in this way inaugurating the ‘second part of the great revolution'. He affirmed the autonomy of the philosopher as well as that of the positivist movement. Since the appearance in July 1851 of the first volume of the Système de philosophie positive, Comte felt that he had completed the philosophical part of his work; he was now free to work on the religious part, which was basically a combination of morality and politics. The Système de philosophie positive was to conclude the French Revolution. Comte summed up his solution in the ideas ‘Order' and ‘Progress', which he combined in a unified and radical way. The positivist mission was to attain not a mixture but a ‘necessary harmony' between the retrogression of Comte's time and anarchy. Comte loudly claimed to have answered the needs of the people and satisfied the poor, at the same reassuring the rich. He recommended not intervening in the contemporary political scene, but contented himself with constructing a provisional programme which consisted mainly in the spiritual reorganization of the West, while denouncing the powerlessness and instability of the ‘incomplete positivists'. It was impossible to conceive of an isolated people, far from the great human fraternity. Spiritual unity had to make the totality of human affairs prevail over parties and frontiers. Social positivism (the new religion) had to realize and complete intellectual positivism (the new epistemology). The prestige of progress explained the success that intellectual positivism had obtained. Social positivism would be able to achieve its goals only by reconstructing the spiritual order. As an opponent of theoretical materialism, which privileged the cosmological sciences, Comte believed that it was necessary to ensure the preeminence of the human and social sciences - for him, sociology and abstract morality. In 1856, he called attention to the great trilogy that consisted of his three most important works: Cours de philosophie positive, Système de philosophie positive and Synthèse subjective. According to Comte, the reign of solidarity had arrived - that of individuals and of peoples. 8 Influence Comte's ideas were initially well received in England after the excellent review of the first two volumes of Cours de philosophie positive in the Edinburgh Review (1838). Later, John Stuart Mill confirmed his support in System of Logic (1843), in which he presents social statics as the science of the ‘coexistences of social phenomena' and social dynamics as that of their progressions. Mill saw in social statics a theory of the consensus between the different parts of the social organization, whereas social dynamics was a theory of society in its progressive movement; their combination led to a law of correspondence between the spontaneous stages and their simultaneous transformations, from which one could then discover the scientific law governing the development of humanity. Like Comte, Mill regarded the speculative faculties of human nature as the agents of social progress, and he also advocated the historical method (his ‘Inverse Deductive Method') in the social sciences. In politics, he favoured the separation of powers and the establishment of a consensus based on a common public doctrine. In 1841 he began a six-year correspondence with Comte with an enthusiastic letter, but continued it in opposition to him in three areas: psychology, political economy and feminine intelligence. In Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865), Mill categorically rejected the Religion of Humanity, though he still accepted Comte's method. Alexander Bain, the founder of the journal Mind, rallied, if not directly to Comtism, at least to the English positivist school. Like Comte, Bain (1855) connected his psychology to the spontaneous activity of the brain. Similarly, though he explicitly differentiated his own philosophy from that of Comte, Herbert Spencer, who wrote Social Statics (1851) on the basis of extreme individualism, then applied the doctrine of evolution to sociology, while at the same time rejecting Comte's conclusions. The English positivist Frederick Harrison, founder of The Positivist Review, was also the author of a Social Statics (1875). He engaged in a polemic with Spencer to force him to recognize the links between his philosophy and that of Comte. Spencer did at least admit that he owed the concept of social consensus to Comte. Other notable supporters are Richard Congreve (1818-99), who devoted himself to the propagation of English positivism, and Harriet Martineau, who edited a summary of Comte's philosophy, The Positive Philosophy (Comte 1830-42). In France, Comte drew support from certain workers, such as Fabien Magnin, the author of Études Sociales (Social Studies) (1913), but his main devotee was the academic Pierre Laffitte, who published numerous positivist texts. Many people who did not strictly adhere to positivism nevertheless came under Comte's influence: Claude Bernard advanced the discipline of experimental medicine and studied the internal environment of advanced living organisms; and Pierre Duhem became well-known for his work on the elements of a natural classification, the epistemological independence of the fundamental sciences, and the holistic thesis. On the other hand, many French thinkers were critical of Comte, notably Émile Meyerson. In general, Comte's positivism was received in two ways: some absorbed his central themes of the importance of scientific method in resolving social issues but rejected his religious movement; others were deeply impressed by his diagnosis of the crises afflicting modern society and were inspired by his vision for its redemption. In France, the former were led by Émile Littré, who was critical but friendly towards Comte's thought; the latter by Pierre Laffitte, a supporter of the positivist religion and from 1892 Professor of History of Science at the Collège de France. Two positivist reviews were published, La philosophie positive (1867-82) under the direction of Littré and G. Wyrouboff, and the Revue occidentale (1878-1914) created by Laffitte. The Revue positiviste internationale (1906-30) was founded later under the direction of Emile Corra. The religious aspect of Comte's positivism was developed by an English-born American, Henry Edger, who published The Positivist Calendar in 1856.