which may serve as a foundation for the rest. In this body the order of instructors could find their support (and by an order of instructors I mean naturally a priesthood and priests, and not, what seems to be offered in its place, professors and a professoriate), as, on the other hand, without the stimulating reaction of such an audience, they would want a solid basis as well as a sphere of activity." It would be an impertinence for any one who is not a member of the Positivist Church to say anything on the personal or semi-private questions, which are necessarily involved in such a division as this between those who are otherwise united. But there can be no intrusion in saying, that if Positivism is ever to become an effective Church, it must find some such direct way of addressing the people as Mr. Congreve suggests, without waiting for those who have time to be instructed in the principles of the six or seven sciences of the Positivist system; and Mr. Dix Hutton* has sufficiently shown that * I have to offer to Mr. Dix Hutton my best thanks for his courtesy in furnishing me with copies of the circulars and letters of himself, of Mr. Congreve, and of The Heart and the Head. 175 Comte himself would have approved of such a policy. "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty;" and it may be safely said that no great moral or spiritual movement will ever be accomplished, if its leaders wait till they have convinced the mass of the educated classes. The only question which suggests itself to one who has considered the difficulties of the "subjective synthesis" is, whether the appeal made to the heart would not necessarily contain elements which afterwards it would be impossible to justify to the head. For if it were so, "the old quarrel of the poets and the philosophers," of faith and reason, would repeat itself again in the Positivist Church, and it would not be less bitter from the fact that that Church was founded expressly with the design of putting an end to the quarrel altogether. and the Can there be a division of the intelligence against The heart the heart, which is not more properly described head. as division of the intelligence against itself? This is a question which is inevitably suggested M. Lafitte, on the subject of the division among the by the whole tenor of Comte's later works. In my final chapter I shall say something upon this question, and shall then try to show how Comte's defective answer to it naturally led to other defects in his view of the history of the past, especially of Christianity, and also in his view of the social ideal of the future. The Subjective Synthesis. 177 CHAPTER IV. COMTE'S VIEW OF THE RELATION OF THE INTELLECT TO THE HEART ITS EFFECT ON HIS CONCEPTION The necessity for unity in man's intellectual and moral lifeNature of the conflict between the intelligence and the heartIt is really a conflict of intelligence with itself—Criticism of Comte's doctrine that the intelligence must be subjected to the heart-Its effect upon his conception of history, especially of the history of Christianity—The two elements in Christianity, their conflict and reconciliation in its development—The negative tendencies of medieval Catholicism and the positive tendencies of the modern era-Comte's imperfect conception of the Reformation and the Revolution His restoration of the mediaval ideal-His general position as a Philosopher. IN the last chapter I considered the subjective synthesis of Comte, or in other words, his attempt to systematize human knowledge in relation to the moral life of man. For it is his view, as we have seen, that science can never yield its highest fruit to man unless it be systematized-i.e., M unless its different parts be connected together and put in their true place as parts of one whole. Scattered lights give no illumination; it is the esprit d'ensemble, the general idea in which our knowledge begins and ends, that ultimately determines the scientific value of each special branch of knowledge. But while synthesis is necessary, it is not necessary, according to Comte, that the synthesis should be objective. The error of mankind in the past has been that they supposed themselves able to ascertain the real or objective principle, which gives unity to the world, and able, therefore, to make their system of knowledge an ideal repetition of the system of things without them. Such a system, however, is entirely beyond our reach. The conditions of our lot, and the weakness of our intelligence, make it impossible for us to tell what is the real principle of unity in the world, or even whether such a principle exists. The attempts to discover it, made by Theology and Metaphysics, have been nothing more than elaborate anthropomorphisms, in which men gave to the unknown and unknowable reality a form which was borrowed from their own nature. They |