Auguste Comte Quotes (1798-1857)

“[F]inding direct measurement so often impossible, we are compelled to devise means of doing it indirectly. Hence arose Mathematics.”

“Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?”

“The formation of the differential equations proper to the phenomena is, independent of their integration, a very important acquisition, on account of the approximations which mathematical analysis allows between questions, otherwise heterogeneous.”

“Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena. . . . but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation....”

“Every science may be exhibited under two methods or procedures, the Historical and the Dogmatic. ...The more discoveries are made, the greater becomes the labour of the historical method of study, and the more effectual the dogmatic, because the new conceptions bring forward the earlier ones in a fresh light. ...By the dogmatic method, therefore, must every advanced science be attained, with so much of the historical combined with it as is rendered necessary ...”

“The progress of the individual mind is not only an illustration, but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of departure of the individual and of the race being the same, the phases of the mind of a man correspond to the epochs of the mind of the race. Now, 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.”

“A new science must be pursued historically, the only thing to be done being to study in chronological order the different works which have contributed to the progress... But when such materials have become recast to form a general system, to meet the demand for a more natural logical order, it is because the science is too far advanced for the historical order to be practicable or suitable. ...By the dogmatic method ...must every advanced science be attained, with so much of the historical combined with it as is rendered necessary...”

“Chemistry... Without this new order of phenomena the most important operations of terrestrial nature would be incomprehensible to us; and there is no other class of phenomena so intimate and so complex. Inert bodies can never appear so nearly like vital ones as when they produce in each other those rapid and profound perturbations which characterize chemical effects. ...the spirit of all theological and metaphysical philosophy consists in conceiving of all phenomena as analogous to the only one which is known by immediate consciousness—Life: and we can easily understand that the primitive method of philosophizing must have exerted a more powerful and obstinate dominion over chemical phenomena than any other, in the inorganic world.—We must consider, too, that direct and spontaneous observation must have been applied in the first place only to very complicated phenomena, such as vegetable combustions, fermentations, etc., the analysis of which now requires all the resources of our science: and that the most important chemical phenomena are produced only in artificial circumstances, which were long in being devised, and very difficult at first to institute. ...we can hardly imagine the difficulty there must have been, in the infancy of chemistry, in creating suitable subjects for observation: and we can not suppose that the ancient investigators of nature could have had energy and perseverance to discover the principal phenomena of the science if they had not been constantly stimulated by the unbounded hopes arising from their chimerical notions of the constitution of matter.”

“All competent thinkers agree with Bacon that there can be no real knowledge except that which rests upon observed facts. This fundamental maxim is evidently indisputable if it is applied, as it ought to be, to the mature state of our intelligence. But, if we consider the origin of our knowledge, it is no less certain that the primitive human mind could not, and indeed ought not to, have thought in that way. For if, on the one hand, every Positive theory must necessarily be founded upon observations, it is, on the other hand, no less true that, in order to observe, our mind has need of some theory or other. If in contemplating phenomena we did not immediately connect them with principles, not only would it be impossible for us to combine these isolated observations, and therefore to derive profit from them, but we should even be entirely incapable of remembering facts, which would for the most remain unnoted by us. Thus there were two difficulties be overcome: the human mind had to observe in order to form real theories, and yet had to form theories of some sort before it could apply itself to a connected series of observations. The primitive human mind, therefore, found itself involved in a vicious circle, from which it would never have had any means of escaping, if a natural way of the difficulty had not fortunately found by the spontaneous development of Theological conceptions. ...chimerical hopes ..exaggerated ideas of man's importance in the universe to which the Theological Philosophy ...at the commencement, ...afforded an indispensable stimulus without the aid which we cannot, indeed, conceive how the primitive human mind would have been induced to undertake any arduous labours.”

“The scientific spirit must then lose its present tendency to speciality, and be impelled towards a logical generality; for all the branches of natural philosophy must furnish their contingent to the common doctrine; in order to which they must first be completely condensed and co-ordinated. When the savans have learned that active life requires the habitual and simultaneous use of the various positive ideas that each of them isolates from all the rest, they will perceive that their social ascendency supposes the prior generalization of their common conceptions, and consequently the entire philosophical reformation of their present practice. Even in the most advanced sciences... the scientific character at present fluctuates between the abstract expansion and the partial application, so as to be usually neither thoroughly speculative nor completely active; a consequence of the same defect of generality which rests the ultimate utility of the positive spirit on minor services, which are as special as the corresponding theoretical habits. But this view, which ought to have been long outgrown, is a mere hindrance in the way of the true conception,—that positive philosophy contemplates no other immediate application than the intellectual and moral direction of civilized society; a necessary application, presenting nothing that is incidental or desultory, and imparting the utmost generality, elevation, unity, and consistency, to the speculative character. Under such a homogeneousness of view and identity of aim, the various positive philosophers will naturally and gradually constitute a European body, in which the dissensions that now break up the scientific world into coteries will merge; and with the rivalries of struggling interests will cease the quarrels and coalitions which are the opprobrium of science in our day.”

“De Maistre has for me the peculiar property of helping me to estimate the philosophie capacity of people, by the repute in which they hold him.”

“May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest his only object, and allows himself no personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of his faculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted to when high purposes require it, but is it the ideal perfection of human existence?”

“The philosopher Comte has made the statement that chemistry is a non-mathematical science. He also told us that astronomy had reached a stage when further progress was impossible. These remarks, coming after Dalton's atomic theory, and just before Guldberg and Waage were to lay the foundations of chemical dynamics, Kirchhoff to discover the reversal of lines in the solar spectrum, serve but to emphasize the folly of having "recourse to farfetched and abstracted Ratiocination," and should teach us to be "very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty".”

“The only true and scientific method according to Comte is therefore the inductive method and science is only such as is based on experiment. Secondly, the aim and apex of science is the new science of the imaginary organism of humanity or of the super-organic being-humanity: this new imaginary science being sociology. From this view of science in general it appeared that all former knowledge was false, and the whole history of humanity's knowledge of itself fell into three, or really two, periods: # The theological and metaphysical periods, lasting from the commencement of the world until Comte # and the present period of true science — positivism — which began with Comte. This was all very nice; there was only one error, namely, that the whole edifice was built on the sand — on the arbitrary assertion that humanity is an organism. That assertion was arbitrary because we have no more right to acknowledge the existence of an organism of humanity not subject to observation than we have to acknowledge the existence of a triune God and similar theological propositions. That assertion was fallacious because to the conception of humanity, that is, of men, the definition of an organism was incorrectly affixed despite the fact that humanity lacks the essential sign of an organism, namely a centre of sensation and consciousness. We only call an elephant or a bacterium an 'organism' because, by analogy we attribute to those beings a similar unification of sensation and of consciousness to that we are conscious of in ourselves; but in human societies and in humanity this essential indication is lacking, and therefore, however many other indications we may detect that are common to humanity and to an organism, in the absence of that essential indication, the acknowledgement of humanity as an organism is incorrect. But despite the arbitrariness and incorrectness of its fundamental basis the positive philosophy was accepted most cordially by the so-called educated world, so important for that world was the justification this philosophy afforded to the existing order of things by regarding the present rule of violence among men as Just. What is remarkable in this connexion is that of Comte's works which consist of two parts — the positive philosophy and the positive politics — the learned world only accepted the first: the part which, on the new experimental basis, offered a justification for the existing evil of human societies; but the second part, dealing with the moral obligations of altruism resulting from acknowledging humanity as an organism, was considered not merely unimportant but even insignificant and unscientific.”

“Kierkegaard was interested in the development of the existent, individual, concrete human personality. Its chief Kierkegaardian stages are the esthetic, the moral, and the religious, and they form a striking contrast to Comte’s trio: the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. For one thing Kierkegaard’s highest stage of human existence is the religious, while Comte’s is the scientific; for another, the Kierkegaardian personality’s journey through its stages is absolutely free.”