themselves. We must not, then, consider that uncertainty and vagueness in observation are proper to political subjects. It is only that the same imperfection which has had its day throughout the whole range of speculation is here more intense and protracted; and the same theory which shows how this must be the case gives us full assurance of a philosophical regeneration in this department of science analogous to that which has taken place in the rest, though by means of severer intellectual difficulty, and the embarrassment which may arise from collision with the predominant passions of men-a liability which cannot but stimulate the endeavors of real thinkers. THE RELATIVE SUPERSEDING THE ABSOLUTE If we contemplate the positive spirit in its relation to scientific conception rather than the mode of procedure, we shall find that this philosophy is distinguished from the theologico-metaphysical by its tendency to render relative the ideas which were at first absolute. This inevitable passage from the absolute to the relative is one of the most important philosophical results of each of the intellectual revolutions which has carried on every kind of speculation from the theological or metaphysical to the scientific state. In a scientific view this contrast between the relative and the absolute may be regarded as the most decisive manifestation of the antipathy between the modern philosophy and the ancient. All investigation into the nature of beings, and their first and final causes, must always be absolute; whereas the study of the laws of phenomena must be relative, since it supposes a continuous progress of speculation subject to the gradual improvement of observation, without the precise reality being ever fully disclosed so that the relative character of scientific conceptions is inseparable from the true idea of natural laws, just as the chimerical inclination for absolute knowledge accompanies every use of theological fictions and metaphysical entities. Now it is obvious that the absolute spirit characterizes social speculation now wherever it exists, as the different schools are all agreed in looking for an immutable political type, which makes no allowance for the regular modification of political conceptions according to the variable state of civilization. This absolute spirit, having prevailed through all social changes, and their corresponding philosophical divergences, is now so inherent in existing political science that it affords, amidst all its enormous evils, the only means of restraining individual eccentricities, and excluding the influx of arbitrarily variable opinions. Thus, such philosophers as have desired to emancipate themselves from this absolutism, without having risen to the conception of a positive social philosophy, have justly incurred the reproach of representing political ideas as uncertain and even arbitrary in their nature, because they have deprived them of whatever character of consistency they had without substituting any other. They have even cast a sort of discredit upon all philosophical enterprise in the direction of political science, which, losing its absolutism, seemed to lose its stability, and therefore its morality. A positive sociology, however, would put to flight all these natural though empirical fears; for all antecedent experience shows that in other departments of natural philosophy scientific ideas have not become arbitrary by becoming relative, but have, on the contrary, acquired a new consistence and stability by being implicated in a system of relations which is ever extending and strengthening, and more and more restraining all serious aberration. There is, therefore, no fear of falling into a dangerous skepticism by destroying the absolute spirit, if it is done in the natural course of passing on towards the positive state. Here, as elsewhere, it is characteristic of the positive philosophy to destroy no means of intellectual coördination without substituting one more effectual and more extended; and it is evident that this transition from the absolute to the relative offers the only existing means of attaining to political conceptions that can gradually secure a unanimous and permanent assent.1 1 It is in harmony with the positive spirit to begin by tracing the relation of cause and effect among the social phenomena of one's own time and place, leaving the task of finding principles of universal application, if there are any, for more advanced study, when historical investigation is brought to the aid of scientific analysis. — ED. PRESUMPTUOUS CHARACTER OF THE EXISTING POLITICAL SPIRIT The importance and soundness of these conditions are less conspicuous than they might be, on account of the too close connection which, in social science more than any other, still exists between theory and practice, in consequence of which all speculative and abstract appreciation, however supremely important, excites only a feeble interest and inadequate attention. To show how this confusion results from the imperfection of social science, as the most complex of all, we must look at the existing political spirit in relation to its general application, and not for the moment in relation to the science itself. In this view we see that the existing political spirit is marked by its disposition to exercise an illimitable action over the corresponding phenomena, as it was once supposed possible to do in other departments of philosophy. Men were long in learning that man's power of modifying phenomena can result only from his knowledge of their natural laws; and in the infancy of each science they believed themselves able to exert an unbounded influence over the phenomena of that science. As this happened precisely at the period when they had the least power over phenomena, from ignorance of their laws, they rested their confidence on expectations of aid from supernatural agents, or mysterious forces supposed to be inherent in all that they saw. The delusion was protracted and the growth of true science hindered in proportion by the increasing complexity of the descending sciences, as each order of phenomena exhibited less generality than the last and obscured the perception as to what the modifying power of man really is. Social phenomena are, of course, from their extreme complexity, the last to be freed from this pretension; but it is, therefore, only the more necessary to remember that the pretension existed with regard to all the rest, in their earliest stage, and to anticipate, therefore, that social science will, in its turn, be emancipated from the delusion. It still hangs about the class of intellectual and moral phenomena; but otherwise it is now confined to social subjects. There, amidst the dawning of a sounder philosophy, we see statesmen and politicians still supposing that social phenomena can be modified at will, the human race having, in their view, no spontaneous impulsion, but being always ready to yield to any influence of the legislator, spiritual or temporal, provided he is invested with a sufficient authority. We see the theological polity, as before, more consistent than the metaphysical, explaining the monstrous disproportion between slight causes and vast effects by regarding the legislator as merely the organ of a supernatural and absolute power; and again, we see the metaphysical school following the same course, merely substituting for Providence its unintelligible entities, and especially its grand entity, Nature, which comprehends all the rest, and is evidently only an abstract deterioration of the theological principle. Going further than the theological school in its disdain of the subjection of effects to causes, it escapes from difficulty by attributing observed events to chance, and sometimes, when that method is too obviously absurd, exaggerating ridiculously the influence of the individual mind upon the course of human affairs. The result is the same in both cases. It represents the social action of man to be indefinite and arbitrary, as was once thought in regard to biological, chemical, physical, and even astronomical phenomena, in the earlier stages of their respective sciences. It is easy to see that true political science would be unacceptable, because it must impose limits on political action, by dissipating forever the pretension of governing at will this class of phenomena, and withdrawing them from human or superhuman caprice. In close connection with the tendency to absolute conceptions, we must recognize in this delusion the chief intellectual cause of the social disturbance which now exists; for the human race finds itself delivered over, without logical protection, to the ill-regulated experimentation of the various political schools, each one of which strives to set up, for all future time, its own immutable type of government. We have seen what are the chaotic results of such a strife, and we shall find that there is no chance of order and agreement but in subjecting social phenomena, like all others, to invariable natural laws, which shall, as a whole, prescribe for each period, with entire certainty, the limits and character of political action, in other words, introducing into the study of social phenomena the same - positive spirit which has regenerated every other branch of human speculation. Such a procedure is the true scientific basis of human dignity, as the chief tendencies of man's nature thus acquire a solemn character of authority which must be always respected by rational legislation; whereas the existing belief in the indefinite power of political combinations, which seems at first to exalt the importance of man, issues in attributing to him a sort of social automatism passively directed by some supremacy of either Providence or the human ruler. I have said enough to show that the central difficulty in the task of regenerating political science is to rectify such an error of conception, at a time when our prevailing intellectual habits render it difficult to seize social conceptions in any other than their practical aspect, and when their scientific and, yet more, their logical relations are obscured by the prepossessions of the general mind. PREVISION OF SOCIAL Phenomena The last of the preliminary considerations that we have to review is that of the scientific prevision of phenomena, which, as the test of true science, includes all the rest. We have to contemplate social phenomena as susceptible of prevision, like all other classes, within the limits of exactness compatible with their higher complexity. Comprehending the three characteristics of political science which we have been examining, prevision of social phenomena supposes, first, that we have abandoned the region of metaphysical idealities to assume the ground of observed realities by a systematic subordination of imagination to observation; secondly, that political conceptions have ceased to be absolute, and have become relative to the variable state of civilization, so that theories, following the natural course of facts, may admit of our foreseeing them; and, thirdly, that permanent political action is limited by determinate laws, since, if social events were always exposed to disturbance by the accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine, no scientific prevision of them would be possible. Thus, we may concentrate the conditions of the spirit of positive social philosophy on this one great attribute of scientific |