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bination of phenomena. But we see here the working of an incomplete
positivity, which feels the inanity of such systems, and yet dares not
surrender them. But besides that it is scarcely possible to employ a fic-
titious instrument as a reality without at times falling into the delusion
of its reality, what rational ground is there for proceeding in such a way,
when we have before us the procedure and achievements of astronomi-
cal science, for a pattern and a promise? These hypotheses explain noth-
ing. For instance, the expansion of bodies by heat is not explained,
that is, cleared up, by the notion of an imaginary fluid interposed be-
tween the molecules, which tends constantly to enlarge their intervals;
for we still have to learn how this supposed fluid came by its spontane-
ous elasticity, which is, if anything, more unintelligible than the primi-
tive fact. And so on, through the whole range. These hypotheses clear
away no difficulties, but only make new ones, while they divert our
attention from the true object of our inquiries. As for the plea that habit
has so taken hold of the minds of inquirers, that they would be adrift if
deprived of all their moorings at once, and that their language must be
superseded by a wholly new one. I think this kind of difficulty is very
much exaggerated. We have seen, within half a century, how often men
have contrived to pass from some physical systems to their opposites
without being much hindered by obstacles of language. There would be
scarcely more difficulty in casting aside futile hypotheses; and we might,
as we see by existing examples, gradually substitute the real and perma-
nent meaning of scientific terms for the fanciful and variable interpreta-
tion.
These fluids are nothing more than the old entities materialized.
Whichever way we second class look at it, what is heat apart from the
warm body, light apart from the luminous body, electricity apart from
the electric body? Are they not pure entities, like thought apart from the
thinking body, and digestion apart from the digesting body? Here we
have, instead of abstract beings, imaginary fluids deprived, by their
very definition, of all material qualities, so that we cannot even suppose
in them the limit of the most rarefied gas. If the descent of these from the
old entities be not recognized what filiation of ideas can ever be admit-
ted? The essential character of metaphysical conceptions is to attribute
to properties an existence separate from the substance which manifests
228/Auguste Comte
them. What does it matter whether we call these abstractions souls or
fluids? The origin is always the same; and it is connected with that
inquisition into the essence of things which always characterizes the
infancy of the human mind, occasioning, first, the conception of gods,
which grew into that of souls, which became in time imaginary fluids.
In all positive science, our understandings, unable to pass abruptly from
the metaphysical to the positive stage, have travelled through this tran-
sition state of development. Metaphysics itself is the transition stage
from theology to positive science; but a secondary transition is also
necessary, as we see by the fact; a transition from metaphysical to posi-
tive conceptions. The mathematicians and astronomers have attained
the positive basis. The physicists, the chemists, the physiologists, and
the social philosophers, are now in the last period of transition; the physi-
cal inquirers, ready to pass up to the level of the astronomers and geom-
eters, and all the others held back for a while by the complexity of their
respective subjects; as we shall see hereafter. This bastard positivism
was the way out of the old metaphysical condition, in which men would,
but for it, have been imprisoned to this day. Nascent science first
humoured the constitutional need, and then led us on by offering to our
minds, in the place of the old scholastic entities, new entities, more tan-
gible, which must by their nature introduce into our studies the contem-
plation of phenomena and their laws, restricting us to these more and
more. This seems to have been the important temporary use of this sys-
tem of hypotheses; to enable us to pass from the metaphysical to the
positive stage.
Astronomy has not been exempted from this transition state, any
more than the other sciences; but it was over so long ago that it is for-
gotten, so few are those who are interested in the history of philoso-
phy! If we look back to the action of the human mind in the seventeenth
century, we shall see how geometers and astronomers were preoccupied
with hypotheses of the kind we are considering. There is no better ex-
ample of them than that famous conception, the Vortices of Descartes;
for it presents clearly the three stages of existence common to them all;
the creation of the hypothesis, its temporary use, and its rejection when
its purpose is answered. These vortices, so ridiculed by men who be-
lieve in caloric, ether, and electric fluids, helped us to a sound philoso-
phy by introducing the idea of mechanism, where even Kepler had imag-
ined only the incomprehensible action of souls and genii. When the dis-
cussion had attained the firm ground of Celestial Mechanics, founded
Positive Philosophy/229
upon the Newtonian theory, the influence of the Cartesian hypothesis
ceased to be progressive, and became retrograde. To the last, the Carte-
sian philosophers insisted, in arguments as plausible as those of our
existing physicists, that it was impossible to philosophize without such
a hypothesis. They were answered in the only effectual way, by philoso-
phizing in another mode: and the vortices were heard of no more when
geometers and astronomers apprehended the true object of scientific
studies. The Cartesian hypothesis contributed to the education of the
human mind by leading it to see that we have nothing to do with the
primitive agents, or mode of production of phenomena, but only with
their laws. If, in the other sciences, we have, as their professors assert,
reached the stage of positivity, hypotheses like that of the vortices may
be dismissed, as no longer needed to bring us out of the metaphysical
state. As soon as they are needless, they become pernicious.
The transition has been obvious elsewhere than in astronomy. It has
taken place in the most advanced departments of Physics; and espe- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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