Part 10 (1/2)
From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization and in our historical experience. This law is this: that each of our leading conceptions--each branch of our knowledge--pa.s.ses successively through three different theoretical conditions: the theological, or fict.i.tious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different and radically opposed: viz., the theological method, the metaphysical and the positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding; the third is its fixed and definite state. The second is merely a state of transition.
In order for a man who has reached the scientific stage in his intellectual development to make anything out of the reasonings of those who are still in the stage of theological childhood or in that of metaphysical adolescence, it is necessary for him to use their insubstantialities as symbols of his substantialities.
The only difference that I can see between a theologian and a metaphysician is that, whereas the former personifies a generality which is the creation of his imagination, calling it a G.o.d, the latter objectifies a particularity which is the creation of his imagination calling it an ent.i.ty; but all such personifications and objectifications (G.o.ds, things-in-themselves, vital ent.i.ties, souls) are alike fict.i.tious, because the childish theologians and metaphysicians proceed on the basis of philosophically a.s.sumed realities, not on scientifically established facts which pave the way on which an adult proceeds.
Comte a.n.a.lyzes the difference between the intellectuality of theological children, metaphysical youths and scientific adults as follows:
In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects--in short, absolute knowledge--supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings.
In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable ent.i.ties (that is, personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena.
What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a mere reference of each to its proper ent.i.ty.
In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws--that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.
There is no science which, having attained the positive stage, does not bear the marks of having pa.s.sed through the others. Some time since it was (whatever it might be now) composed, as we can now perceive, of metaphysical abstractions: and, further back in the course of time, it took its form from theological conceptions. Our most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of the two earlier periods through which they pa.s.sed.
The progress of the individual mind is not only an ill.u.s.tration, but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of departure of the individual and the race being the same, the phases of the mind of men correspond to the epochs of the mind of the race. How each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician in his youth and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who are up to their age can verify this for themselves.
According to the scientific cla.s.sification, there are only three kingdoms or states of life, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal.
The life of the vegetable kingdom has arisen out of the life of the mineral kingdom and is sustained by it.
The distinguished scientist, Professor Lowell, says, ”there is now no more reason to doubt that plants grew out of chemical affinity than to doubt that stones did,” and nearly all outstanding zoologists would say as much of animals.
Sir J. Burdon Sanderson, one of the most eminent among biologists, insists that ”in physiology the word life is understood to mean the chemical and physical activities of the parts of which the organism consists.” The renowned Sir Ray Lankester strenuously holds that ”zoology is the science which seeks to arrange and discuss the phenomena of animal life and form, as the outcome of the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry,” and goes so far as to say that he knows of no leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his ”Riddle of the Universe.”
There is no force that is not life, nor life which is not force; and there is no life or force, about which we know anything, without a body or chemical laboratory.
So far as is known, there is only one life--force. The difference between lives is a question of the organism, the laboratory, which gives embodiment to force.
The life that enables the wheels of a locomotive to go, the sap of a tree to flow, the heart of an animal to beat and the brain of a man to think is the same chemical potentiality differently organized.
During all historical time and over all the earth, under one name or another, the whole world has kept days of rejoicing for life, especially Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Easter.
Nothing is so wonderful as life and perhaps the greatest of its wonders is that all of it is of the same kind.
Everything and every being is alive with the same life. The Thanksgiving day sheaf of wheat, the Christmas day Son of Man and the Easter day Son of G.o.d (if there are conscious, personal G.o.ds and they have sons) are alive and their life is the same, the difference being wholly in the form and degree, not at all in kind.
A proof of the oneness and sameness of all life, notwithstanding its widely different forms and degrees, is the fact that a bar of iron, a stick of wood, a piece of flesh and a section of brain respond alike to the same electrical stimulus, and all may be poisoned or otherwise killed so that they will make no response to it. Perhaps even a more conclusive evidence is that the eggs (every form of both vegetable and animal life develops from an egg) of some animals rather high in the one tree of mundane life, which has a common root and a stump, but two stems, the vegetable and the animal, can be mechanically fertilized by chemical processes.
Even Sir Oliver Lodge, the most conspicuous among the comparatively few men of science who hold to the theory that life comes to the earth as vital ent.i.ties of celestial origin and destination, makes this fatal admission: ”There is plenty of physics and chemistry and mechanics about every vital action.” On the theory of traditional Christianity there was no physics, chemistry or mechanics connected with the vital actions which originally brought the universe and all that therein was, including the earth with its vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, into existence.
Every representative of each form of life in these kingdoms (in the vegetable: a gra.s.s blade, a wheat stalk, an oak tree; or in the animal: an insect, a horse, a man) is a chemical laboratory for the production, sustentation, advancement and procreation of a particular type of one universal life. These laboratories have all the potentialities of their respective lives within themselves,--no laboratory, no chemistry; no chemistry, no life.
What life is, both as to its manifestation and character, is determined by the form of organization through which force, all there is of life, becomes a particular and differentiated vital phenomenon. This is as true of states and churches as it is of trees and men, for a church or a state is a vital phenomenon as really so as a tree or a man.
The trouble with every reformatory socialism of modern times is that it undertakes the impossibility of changing the fruit of the capitalistic state into that of the communistic one, without changing the political organism; but to do that is as impossible as to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. Hence an uprooting and replanting are necessary (a revolution not a reformation) which will give the world a new tree of state.
Capitalism no longer grows the fruits (foods, clothes and houses) which are necessary to the sustenance of the world. Hence it enc.u.mbers the ground and must be dug up by the roots in order that a tree which is so organized that it will bear these necessities may be planted in its place.