Development of Metaphysic.

negatives they had no value except in relation to the corresponding affirmatives, although in the first instance imagination was strong enough to give them the semblance of positive principles occupying the place of the beliefs they expelled. And it was just this temporary illusion which made them such powerful weapons of destruction. For the revolutionary passion can never be sustained by negations which it recognizes as such. It is impossible to march with enthusiasm to the attack upon the institutions of the past, without the conviction that there is something more to be gained than the destruction of those institutions.

The metaphysical philosophy, as the necessary forerunner of the philosophy of experience, gradually extended its destructive power over all branches of human knowledge. At first it laid its hand on the sciences that deal with inorganic nature, and of these, first of all on those that deal with the phenomena furthest from man, and least subject to his control. For man discovers that the phenomena of the heavens are not ruled by arbitrary will, long before he discerns the absence of caprice from the general course of nature. In like manner, he is sensible that

inorganic things have fixed and unchangeable relations, while as yet the spontaneity of animal life seems to be as unlimited as that which he attributes to his own will. And only last of all does it dawn upon him that his own life also is limited and controlled by something, which is neither his own will nor the will of a being like himself whom he can propitiate or persuadesomething which is both within and without him, to which he must conform himself, seeing it will not conform to him. The last substantiated abstraction, therefore, which is put in the place of the divine powers, is Nature. And Nature is only a name for the general course of things, though it is regarded by metaphysics as existing apart from and controlling them. But as Nature succeeds to the place of a God whom men were conceived to be bound to obey, but able arbitrarily to disobey, so it is represented as the source of a law distinct from the actual course of human life, and to which it does not necessarily conform. The law of nature, in this view, is a law written on man's heart, but not necessarily realized in his actions. In truth, however, it is but the negation of that order of social life which was based upon

Its power for de

the theological idea, though its negative character is necessarily hidden from those who believe in it. This becomes evident whenever we examine struction. the main articles contained in this supposed law of nature. For these are simply negations of different parts of that social order which was based upon theology. The first of these articles is the right of private judgment—that is, the right of every individual to emancipate himself from all spiritual authority, and to judge of everything for himself. This principle is merely

a sanction of the state of anarchy, which intervened between the decay of the old discipline and the formation of new spiritual ties." In other words, it is not a new principle of order, but the abstract expression of the ungoverned state of mere individual opinion, " for no association whatever, even of the smallest number of persons and for the most temporary objects, can subsist without some degree of intellectual and moral agreement between its members." In the next place, among the articles of the law of nature, stands the doctrine of equality, which has a meaning only as the negation of the old hierarchy, the old social and political order, but which, taken absolutely,

The Formulas of Anarchy.

is the negation of all order whatever.

17

For if

society is anything more than a collection of unrelated atoms, if it is an organic unity, it must have different organs for its different functions; and it is as impossible that these organs should all be equal, as that they should all be the same. This doctrine, therefore, is but the abstract proclamation of social anarchy. To these articles are commonly added the doctrines of national independence, and of the sovereignty of the people. The former is nothing more than the negation of that spiritual supremacy of the Church, which in the Middle Ages mediated between the nations of Europe and made them one community; but, taken absolutely, it would imply national isolation and international anarchy. The latter is the transference to the governed of that fiction of divine right which was formerly supposed to reside in the governor, and it has no meaning except as the negation of that fiction. For the people cannot rule themselves; and even to make them choose their ruler, that is, to make the inferior and less wise choose the superior and wiser, cannot be regarded as more than a provisional expedient for anarchic times.

B

Its weak. ness for construc

tion

It prepares the way for science

The articles of the law of nature, then, like all metaphysical principles, are merely principles of insurrection and revolt. They have no positive validity; for they are just the ultimate abstractions, or, so to speak, the speculative phantoms of the system which they destroy. As it is said that a man dies when he has seen his own ghost, so, according to Comte, the destroyer of theology is just the ghost of itself, raised by abstraction. But the ghost also vanishes when its victim is fairly buried, leaving the field to the growing strength of positive science.

Positive science, then, is the real cause of all intellectual progress, its advance constitutes the nisus formativus that is concealed beneath the surface struggle of theology and metaphysics. For even in the earliest theological era, there was a certain element of positive science, that is, of knowledge of the permanent relations of things. The most arbitrary will is not all arbitrary, but presupposes something of a fixed order without or within, and therefore the anthropomorphic analogies by which phenomena were interpreted, still left some space for the idea of law. And this space was continually being widened, at the