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POSITIVISM: ITS POSITION,

AIMS, AND IDEALS

POSITIVISM: ITS POSITION,

AIMS, AND IDEALS

POSITIVISM is at once a philosophy, a polity, and a religion-all three harmonized by the idea of a supreme humanity, all three concentrated on the good and progress of humanity. This combination of man's whole thought, general activity, and profound feeling in one dominant synthesis is the strength of Positivism, and at the same time an impediment to its rapid growth. The very nature of the Positivist scheme excludes the idea of wholesale conversion to its system, or of any sudden increase of its adherents. No philosophy before, no polity, no religion was ever so weighted and conditioned. Each stood alone on its special merit. Positivism only has sought to blend into coherent unity the three great forces of human life.

In the whole history of the human mind, no philosophy ever came bound up with a complete scheme of social organization, and also with a complete scheme of religious observance. Again, the history of religion presents no instance of a

faith which was bound up with a vast scientific education, and also with a set of social institutions and political principles. Hitherto, all philosophies have been content to address man's reason and to deal with his knowledge. leaving politics, morality, industry, war, and worship open questions for other powers to decide. So, too, every religion has appealed directly to the emotions or the imagination, but has stood sublimely above terrestrial things and the passing cares of men. A mere philosophical idea, like evolution, can sweep across the trained world in a generation, and is accepted by the masses when men of learning are agreed. A practical movement, such as reform, self-government, socialism, or empire, catches hold of thousands by offering immediate material profit. Men of any creed, of any opinion, can join in the definite point. This has given vogue to so many systems of thought, so many political nostrums, such a variety of religious revivals. It has also been the cause of their ultimate failure, however great their temporary success. They have been one-sided, partial, mutually destructive. A religion which ignores science finds itself at last undermined and discredited by facts. A polity which has no root in history and in the science of human nature ends in confusion, like the Social Contract or the Rights of Man. And a philosophy which is too lofty to teach men how to live, or what to worship, is flung aside by the passions, emotions, interests of busy men.

Positivism insists that the cause of all these failures has been the attempt to treat human nature in sections and by special movements, whereas human nature is an organic whole and can only be treated as an organism of infinite cohesion. Positivism is the first attempt to appeal to human nature synthetically-that is, to regard man as equally a logical being, a practical being, and a religious being, so that his thought, his energy, his devotion may all coincide in the same object. The Christian preacher may cry aloud that this object is God and salvation. But when he is asked to explain the relation of salvation to conic sections or to home rule, his answers are vague. The agnostic philosopher, again, assures us that this centre of thought is evolution; but how the devout soul is to worship evolution, or how the workman is to better his lot by evolution, are problems which the agnostic philosopher finds troublesome and idle. The radical reformer insists on a brand-new set of institutions, and trusts that men's beliefs, habits, desires, yearnings, and religions will soon settle themselves. But this is the last thing they ever do. Hitherto all philosophies, all politics, all religions have sought to treat human nature as a quack who should treat a sick man on the assumption that he had no brain. or that his nerves were of steel, or that his stomach was to be ignored. They have had successes, as nostrums do have. The Positive synthesis, for the first time, provides the harmony for thought,

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