Authorities.—English Law: Balfour Browne and Allan,Compensation(2nd ed., London, 1903); Cripps,Compensation(5th edition, London, 1905); Hudson,Compensation(London, 1906); Boyle and Waghorn,Compensation(London, 1903); Lloyd,Compensation(6th ed. by Brooks, London, 1895); Clifford,Private Bill Legislation, London, 1885 (vol. i.), 1887 (vol. ii.)Scots Law: Deas,Law of Railways in Scotland(ed. by Ferguson; Edinburgh, 1897); Rankine,Law of Landownership(3rd ed., 1891).
Authorities.—English Law: Balfour Browne and Allan,Compensation(2nd ed., London, 1903); Cripps,Compensation(5th edition, London, 1905); Hudson,Compensation(London, 1906); Boyle and Waghorn,Compensation(London, 1903); Lloyd,Compensation(6th ed. by Brooks, London, 1895); Clifford,Private Bill Legislation, London, 1885 (vol. i.), 1887 (vol. ii.)Scots Law: Deas,Law of Railways in Scotland(ed. by Ferguson; Edinburgh, 1897); Rankine,Law of Landownership(3rd ed., 1891).
(A. W. R.)
COMPIÈGNE,a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Oise, 52 m. N.N.E. of Paris on the Northern railway between Paris and St Quentin. Pop. (1906) 14,052. The town, which is a favourite summer resort, stands on the north-west border of the forest of Compiègne and on the left bank of the Oise, less than 1 m. below its confluence with the Aisne. The river is crossed by a bridge built in the reign of Louis XV. The Rue Solférino, a continuation of the bridge ending at the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, is the busy street of the town; elsewhere, except on market days, the streets are quiet. The hôtel de ville, with a graceful façade surmounted by a lofty belfry, is in the late Gothic style of the early 16th century and was completed in modern times. Of the churches, St Antoine (13th and 16th centuries) with some fine Renaissance stained glass, and St Jacques (13th and 15th centuries), need alone be mentioned. The remains of the ancient abbey of St Corneille are used as a military storehouse. Compiègne, from a very early period until 1870, was the occasional residence of the French kings. Its palace, one of the most magnificent structures of its kind, was erected, chiefly by Louis XV. and Louis XVI., on the site of a château of King Charles V. of France. It now serves as an art museum. It has two façades, one overlooking the Place du Palais and the town, the other, more imposing, facing towards a fine park and the forest, which is chiefly of oak and beech and covers over 36,000 acres. Compiègne is the seat of a subprefect, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a communal college, library and hospital. The industries comprise boat-building, rope-making, steam-sawing, distilling and the manufacture of chocolate, machinery and sacks and coarse coverings, and at Margny, a suburb, there are manufactures of chemicals and felt hats. Asparagus is cultivated in the environs. There is considerable trade in timber and coal, chiefly river-borne.
Compiègne, or as it is called in the Latin chronicles, Compendium, seems originally to have been a hunting-lodge of the early Frankish kings. It was enriched by Charles the Bald with two castles, and a Benedictine abbey dedicated to Saint Corneille, the monks of which retained down to the 18th century the privilege of acting for three days as lords of Compiègne, with full power to release prisoners, condemn the guilty, and even inflict sentence of death. It was in Compiègne that King Louis I. the Debonair was deposed in 833; and at the siege of the town in 1430 Joan of Arc was taken prisoner by the English. A monument to her faces the hôtel de ville. In 1624 the town gave its name to a treaty of alliance concluded by Richelieu with the Dutch; and it was in the palace that Louis XV. gave welcome to Marie Antoinette, that Napoleon I. received Marie Louise of Austria, that Louis XVIII. entertained the emperor Alexander of Russia, and that Leopold I., king of the Belgians, was married to the princess Louise. In 1814 Compiègne offered a stubborn resistance to the Prussian troops. Under Napoleon III. it was the annual resort of the court during the hunting season. From 1870 to 1871 it was one of the headquarters of the German army.
COMPLEMENT(Lat.complementum, fromcomplere, to fill up), that which fills up or completes anything,e.g.the number of men necessary to man a ship. In geometry, the complement of an angle is the difference between the angle and a right angle; the complements of a parallelogram are formed by drawing parallel to adjacent sides of a parallelogram two lines intersecting on a diagonal; four parallelograms are thus formed, and the two not about the diagonal of the original parallelogram are the complements of the parallelogram. In analysis, a complementary function is a partial solution to a differential equation (q.v.); complementary operators are reciprocal or inverse operators,i.e.two operations A and B are complementary when both operating on the same figure or function leave it unchanged. A “complementary colour” is one which produces white when mixed with another (seeColour). In Spanish the wordcumplimentowas used in a particular sense of the fulfilment of the duties of polite behaviour and courtesy, and it came through the French and Italian forms into use in English, with a change in spelling to “compliment,” with the sense of an act of politeness, especially of a polite expression of praise, or of social regard and greetings. The word “comply,” meaning to act in accordance with wishes, orders or conditions, is also derived from the same origin, but in sense is connected with “ply” or “pliant,” from Lat.plicare, to bend, with the idea of subserviently yielding to the wishes of another.
COMPLUVIUM(from Lat.compluere, to flow together,i.e.in reference to the rain being collected and falling through), in architecture, the Latin term for the open space left in the roof of the atrium of a Roman house for lighting it and the rooms round (seeCavaedium).
COMPOSITAE,the name given to the largest natural order of flowering plants, containing about one-tenth of the whole number and characterized by the crowding of the flowers into heads. The order is cosmopolitan, and the plants show considerable variety in habit. The great majority, including most British representatives, are herbaceous, but in the warmer parts of the world shrubs and arborescent forms also occur; the latter are characteristic of the flora of oceanic islands. In herbaceous plants the leaves are often arranged in a rosette on a much shortened stem, as in dandelion, daisy and others; when the stem is elongated the leaves are generally alternate. The root is generally thickened, sometimes, as in dahlia, tuberous; root and stem contain oil passages, or, as in lettuce and dandelion, a milky white latex. The flowers are crowded in heads (capitula) which are surrounded by an involucre of green bracts,—these protect the head of flowers in the bud stage, performing the usual function of a calyx. The enlarged top of the axis, the receptacle, is flat, convex or conical, and the flowers open in centripetal succession. In many cases, as in the sunflower or daisy, the outer or ray-florets are larger and more conspicuous than the inner, or disk-florets; in other cases, as in dandelion, the florets are all alike. Ray-florets when present are usually pistillate, but neuter in some genera (asCentaurea); the disk-florets are hermaphrodite. The flower is epigynous; the calyx is sometimes absent, or is represented by a rim on the top of the ovary, or takes the form of hairs or bristles which enlarge in the fruiting stage to form the pappus by means of which the seed is dispersed. The corolla, of five united petals, is regular and tubular in shape as in the disk-florets, or irregular when it is either strap-shaped (ligulate), as in the ray-florets of daisy, &c., or all the florets of dandelion, or more rarely two-lipped. The five stamens are attached to the interior of the corolla-tube; the filaments are free; the anthers are joined (syngenesious) to form a tube round the single style, which ends in a pair of stigmas. The inferior ovary contains one ovule (attached to the base of the chamber), and ripens to form a dry one-seeded fruit; the seed is filled with the straight embryo.
Fig. 1.1. Flower head of Marigold.3. Head of fruits, nat. size.2. Same in vertical section.4. A single fruit.
The flower-heads are an admirable example of an adaptation for pollination by aid of insects. The crowding of the flowers in heads ensures the pollination of a large number as the result of a single insect visit. Honey is secreted at the base of the style, and is protected from rain or dew and the visits of short-lipped insects by the corolla-tube, the length of which iscorrelated with the length of proboscis of the visiting insect. When the flower opens, the two stigmas are pressed together below the tube formed by the anthers, the latter split on the inside, and the pollen fills the tube; the style gradually lengthens and carries the pollen out of the anther tube, and finally the stigmas spread and expose their receptive surface which has hitherto been hidden, the two being pressed together. Thus the life history of the flower falls into two stages, an earlier or male and a later or female. This favours cross-pollination as compared with self-pollination. In many cases there is a third stage, as in dandelion, where the stigmas finally curl back so that they touch any pollen grains which have been left on the style, thus ensuring self-pollination if cross-pollination has not been effected.
The devices for distribution of the fruit are very varied. Frequently there is a hairy or silky pappus forming a tuft of hairs, as in thistle or coltsfoot, or a parachute-like structure as in dandelion; these render the fruit sufficiently light to be carried by the wind. InBidensthe pappus consists of two or more stiff-barbed bristles which cause the fruit to cling to the coats of animals. Occasionally, as in sunflower or daisy, the fruits bear no special appendage and remain on the head until jerked off.
Compositae are generally considered to represent the most highly developed order of flowering plants. By the massing of the flowers in heads great economy is effected in the material required for one flower, as conspicuousness is ensured by the association; economy of time on the part of the pollinating insect is also effected, as a large number of flowers are visited at one time. The floral mechanism is both simple and effective, favouring cross-pollination, but ensuring self-pollination should that fail. The means of seed-distribution are also very effective.
A few members of the order are of economic value,e.g.Lactuca(lettuce;q.v.),Cichorium(chicory;q.v.),Cynara(artichoke and cardoon;q.v.),Helianthus(Jerusalem artichoke). Many are cultivated as garden or greenhouse plants, such asSolidago(golden rod),Ageratum, Aster (q.v.) (Michaelmas daisy),Helichrysum(everlasting),Zinnia, Rudbeckia, Helianthus(sunflower),Coreopsis, Dahlia (q.v.),Tagetes(French and African marigold),Gaillardia, Achillea(yarrow),Chrysanthemum, Pyrethrum(feverfew; now generally included underChrysanthemum),Tanacetum(tansy),Arnica, Doronicum, Cineraria Calendula(common marigold) (fig. 1),Echinops(globe thistle),Centaurea(cornflower) (fig. 2). Some are of medicinal value, such asAnthemis(chamomile),Artemisia(wormwood),Tussilago(coltsfoot),Arnica. Insect powder is prepared from species ofPyrethrum.
Fig. 3.—Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris).1. Disk-floret.3. Ray-floret.2. Same cut vertically.4. Fruit with pappus.
The order is divided into two suborders:—Tubuliflorae, characterized by absence of latex, and the florets of the disk being not ligulate, andLiguliflorae, characterized by presence of latex and all the florets being ligulate. The first suborder contains the majority of the genera, and is divided into a number of tribes, characterized by the form of the anthers and styles, the presence or absence of scales on the receptacle, and the similarity or otherwise of the florets of one and the same head. The order is well represented in Britain, in which forty-two genera are native. These include some of the commonest weeds, such as dandelion (Taraxacum Dens-leonis), daisy (Bellis perennis), groundsel (fig. 3) (Senecio vulgaris) and ragwort (S. Jacobaea); coltsfoot (Tussilago Farfara) is one of the earliest plants to flower, and other genera areChrysanthemum(ox-eye daisy and corn-marigold),Arctium(burdock),Centaurea(knapweed and cornflower),CarduusandCnicus(thistles),Hieracium(hawkweed),Sonchus(sow-thistle),Achillea(yarrow, or milfoil, and sneezewort),Eupatorium(hemp-agrimony),Gnaphalium(cudweed),Erigeron(fleabane),Solidago(golden-rod),Anthemis(may-weed and chamomile),Cichorium(chicory),Lapsana(nipplewort),Crepis(hawk’s-beard),Hypochaeris(cat’s-ear), andTragopogon(goat’s-beard).
COMPOSITE ORDER,in architecture, a compound of the Ionic and Corinthian orders (seeOrder), the chief characteristic of which is found in the capital (q.v.), where a double row of acanthus leaves, similar to those carved round the Corinthian capital, has been added under the Ionic volutes. The richer decoration of the Ionic capital had already been employed in those of the Erechtheum, where the necking was carved with the palmette or honeysuckle. Similar decorated Ionic capitals were found in the forum of Trajan. The earliest example of the Composite capital is found in the arch of Titus at Rome. The entablature was borrowed from that of the Corinthian order.
COMPOSITION(Lat.compositio, fromcomponere, to put together), the action of putting together and combining, and the product of such action. There are many applications of the word. In philology it is used of the putting together of two distinct words to form a single word; and in grammar, of the combination of words into sentences, and sentences into periods, and then applied to the result of such combination, and to the art of producing a work in prose or verse, or to the work itself. In music “composition” is used both of the art of combining musical sounds in accordance with the rules of musical form, and, more generally, of the whole art of creation or invention. The name “composer” is thus particularly applied to the musical creator in general. In the other fine arts the word ismore strictly used of the balanced arrangement of the parts of a picture, of a piece of sculpture or a building, so that they should form one harmonious whole. The word also means an agreement or an adjustment of differences between two or more parties, and is thus the best general term to describe the agreement, often called by the equivalent German word “Ausgleich,” between Austria and Hungary in 1867. A more particular use is the legal one, for an agreement by which a creditor agrees to take from his debtor a sum less than his debt in satisfaction of the whole (seeBankruptcy). In logic “composition” is the name given to a fallacy of equivocation, where what is true distributively of each member of a class is inferred to be true of the whole class collectively. The fallacy of “division” is the converse of this, where what is true of a term used collectively is inferred to be true of its several parts. A common source of these errors in reasoning is the confusion between the collective and distributive meanings of the word “all.” Composition, often shortened to “compo,” is the name given to many materials compounded of more than one substance, and is used in various trades and manufactures, as in building, for a mixture, such as stucco, cement and plaster, for covering walls, &c., often made to represent stone or marble; a similar moulded compound is employed to represent carved wood.
COMPOUND(from Lat.componere, to combine or put together), a combination of various elements, substances or ingredients, so as to form one composite whole. A “chemical compound” is a substance which can be resolved into simple constituents, as opposed to an element which cannot be so resolved (seeChemistry); a word is said to be a “compound” when it is made up of different words or parts of different words. The term is also used in an adjectival form with many applications; a “compound engine” is one where the expansion of the steam is effected in two or more stages (seeSteam-engine); in zoology, the “compound eye” possessed by insects and crustacea is one which is made up of severalocellior simple eyes, set together so that the whole has the appearance of being faceted (seeEye); in botany, the “compound leaf” has two or more separate blades on a common leaf-stalk; in surgery, in a “compound fracture” the skin is broken as well as the bone, and there is a communication between the two. There are many mathematical and arithmetical uses of the term, particularly of those forms of addition, multiplication, division and subtraction which deal with quantities of more than one denomination. Compound interest is interest paid upon interest, the accumulation of interest forming, as it were, a secondary principal. The verb “to compound” is used of the arrangement or settlement of differences, and especially of an agreement made to accept or to pay part of a debt in full discharge of the whole, and thus of the arrangement made by an insolvent debtor with his creditors (seeBankruptcy); similarly of the substitution of one payment for annual or other periodic payments,—thus subscriptions, university or other dues, &c., may be “compounded”; a particular instance of this is the system of “compounding” for rates, where the occupier of premises pays an increased rent, and the owner makes himself responsible for the payment of the rates. The householder who thus compounds with the owner of the premises he occupies is known as a “compound householder.” The payment of poor rate forming part of the qualification necessary for the parliamentary franchise in the United Kingdom, various statutes, leading up to the Compound Householders Act 1851, have enabled such occupiers to claim to be placed on the rate. In law, to compound a felony is to agree with the felon not to prosecute him for his crime, in return for valuable consideration, or, in the case of a theft, on return of the goods stolen. Such an agreement is a misdemeanour and is punishable with fine and imprisonment.
The name “compounders” was given during the reign of William III. of England to the members of a Jacobite faction, who were prepared to restore James II. to the throne, on the condition of an amnesty and an undertaking to preserve the constitution. Until 1853, in the university of Oxford, those possessing private incomes of a certain amount paid special dues for their degrees, and were known as Grand and Petty Compounders.
The corruption “compound” (from the Malaykampungorkampong, a quarter of a village) is the name applied to the enclosed ground, whether garden or waste, which surrounds an Anglo-Indian house. In India the European quarter, as a rule, is separate from the native quarter, and consists of a number of single houses, each standing in a compound, sometimes many acres in extent.
COMPOUND PIER,the architectural term given to a clustered column or pier which consists of a centre mass or newel, to which engaged or semi-detached shafts have been attached, in order to perform, or to suggest the performance of, certain definite structural objects, such as to carry arches of additional orders, or to support the transverse or diagonal ribs of a vault, or the tie beam of an important roof. In these cases, though performing different functions, the drums of the pier are often cut out of one stone. There are, however, cases where the shafts are detached from the pier and coupled to it by armulets at regular heights, as in the Early English period.
COMPRADOR(a Portuguese word used in the East, derived from the Lat.comparare, to procure), originally a native servant in European households in the East, but now the name given to the native managers in European business houses in China, and also to native contractors supplying ships in the Philippines and elsewhere in the East.
COMPRESSION,in astronomy, the deviation of a heavenly body from the spherical form, called also the “ellipticity.” It is numerically expressed by the ratio of the differences of the axes to the major axis of the spheroid. The compression or “flattening” of the earth is about 1/298, which means that the ratio of the equatorial to the polar axis is 298:297 (seeEarth, Figure of the). In engineering the term is applied to the arrangement by which the exhaust valve of a steam-engine is made to close, shutting a portion of the exhaust steam in the cylinder, before the stroke of the piston is quite complete. This steam being compressed as the stroke is completed, a cushion is formed against which the piston does work while its velocity is being rapidly reduced, and thus the stresses in the mechanism due to the inertia of the reciprocating parts are lessened. This compression, moreover, obviates the shock which would otherwise be caused by the admission of the fresh steam for the return stroke. In internal combustion engines it is a necessary condition of economy to compress the explosive mixture before it is ignited: in the Otto cycle, for instance, the second stroke of the piston effects the compression of the charge which has been drawn into the cylinder by the first forward stroke.
COMPROMISE(pronouncedcómprŏmize; through Fr. from Lat.compromittere), a term, meaning strictly a joint agreement, which has come to signify such a settlement as involves a mutual adjustment, with a surrender of part of each party’s claim. From the element of danger involved has arisen an invidious sense of the word, imputing discredit, so that being “compromised” commonly means injured in reputation.
COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850,in American history, a series of measures the object of which was the settlement of five questions in dispute between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States. Three of these questions grew out of the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of western territory as a result of the Mexican War. The settlers who had flocked to California after the discovery of gold in 1848 adopted an anti-slavery state constitution on the 13th of October 1849, and applied for admission into the Union. In the second place it was necessary to form a territorial government for the remainder of the territory acquired from Mexico, including that now occupied by Nevada and Utah, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. The fundamental issue was in regard to the admission of slavery into, or the exclusion of slavery from, this region. Thirdly, there was a dispute over the western boundary of Texas. Should the Rio Grande be the line of division north of Mexico, or should an arbitrary boundary be established farther to the eastward; in other words, should a considerable part ofthe new territory be certainly opened to slavery as a part of Texas, or possibly closed to it as a part of the organized territorial section? Underlying all of these issues was of course the great moral and political problem as to whether slavery was to be confined to the south-eastern section of the country or be permitted to spread to the Pacific. The two questions not growing out of the Mexican War were in regard to the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the passage of a new fugitive slave law.
Congress met on the 3rd of December 1849. Neither faction was strong enough in both houses to carry out its own programme, and it seemed for a time that nothing would be done. On the 29th of January 1850 Henry Clay presented the famous resolution which constituted the basis of the ultimate compromise. His idea was to combine the more conservative elements of both sections in favour of a settlement which would concede the Southern view on two questions, the Northern view on two, and balance the fifth. Daniel Webster supported the plan in his great speech of the 7th of March, although in doing so he alienated many of his former admirers. Opposed to the conservatives were the extremists of the North, led by William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase, and those of the South, led by Jefferson Davis. Most of the measures were rejected and the whole plan seemed likely to fail, when the situation was changed by the death of President Taylor and the accession of Millard Fillmore on the 9th of July 1850. The influence of the administration was now thrown in favour of the compromise. Under a tacit understanding of the moderates to vote together, five separate bills were passed, and were signed by the president between 9th and 20th September 1850. California was admitted as a free state, and the slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia; these were concessions to the North. New Mexico (then including the present Arizona) and Utah were organized without any prohibition of slavery (each being left free to decide for or against, on admission to statehood), and a rigid fugitive slave law was enacted; these were concessions to the South. Texas (q.v.) was compelled to give up much of the western land to which it had a good claim, and received in return $10,000,000.
This legislation had several important results. It helped to postpone secession and Civil War for a decade, during which time the North-West was growing more wealthy and more populous, and was being brought into closer relations with the North-East. It divided the Whigs into “Cotton Whigs” and “Conscience Whigs,” and in time led to the downfall of the party. In the third place, the rejection of the Wilmot Proviso and the acceptance (as regards New Mexico and Utah) of “Squatter Sovereignty” meant the adoption of a new principle in dealing with slavery in the territories, which, although it did not apply to the same territory, was antagonistic to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The sequel was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. Fourthly, the enforcement of the fugitive slave law aroused a feeling of bitterness in the North which helped eventually to bring on the war, and helped to make it, when it came, quite as much an anti-slavery crusade as a struggle for the preservation of the Union. Finally, although Clay for his support of the compromises and Seward and Chase for their opposition have gained in reputation, Webster has been selected as the special target for hostile criticism. The Compromise Measures are sometimes spoken of collectively as the Omnibus Bill, owing to their having been grouped originally—when first reported (May 8) to the Senate—into one bill.
The best account of the above Compromises is to be found in J. F. Rhodes,History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, vol. i. (New York, 1896).
The best account of the above Compromises is to be found in J. F. Rhodes,History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, vol. i. (New York, 1896).
(W. R. S.*)
COMPSA(mod.Conza), an ancient city of the Hirpini, near the sources of the Aufidus, on the boundary of Lucania and not far from that of Apulia, on a ridge 1998 ft. above sea-level. It was betrayed to Hannibal in 216B.C.after the defeat of Cannae, but recaptured two years later. It was probably occupied by Sulla in 89B.C., and was the scene of the death of T. Annius Milo in 48B.C.Most authorities (cf. Hülsen in Pauly-Wissowa,Realencyclopädie, Stuttgart, 1901, iv. 797) refer Caes.Bell. civ.iii. 22, and Plin.Hist. Nat.ii. 147, to this place, supposing the MSS. to be corrupt. The usual identification of the site of Milo’s death with Cassano on the Gulf of Taranto must therefore be rejected. In imperial times, as inscriptions show, it was amunicipium, but it lay far from any of the main high-roads. There are no important ancient remains.
COMPTON, HENRY(1632-1713), English divine, was the sixth and youngest son of the second earl of Northampton. He was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford, and then travelled in Europe. After the restoration of Charles II. he became cornet in a regiment of horse, but soon quitted the army for the church. After a further period of study at Cambridge and again at Oxford, he held various livings. He was made bishop of Oxford in 1674, and in the following year was translated to the see of London. He was also appointed a member of the Privy Council, and entrusted with the education of the two princesses—Mary and Anne. He showed a liberality most unusual at the time to Protestant dissenters, whom he wished to reunite with the established church. He held several conferences on the subject with the clergy of his diocese; and in the hope of influencing candid minds by means of the opinions of unbiassed foreigners, he obtained letters treating of the question (since printed at the end of Stillingfleet’sUnreasonableness of Separation) from Le Moyne; professor of divinity at Leiden, and the famous French Protestant divine, Jean Claude. But to Roman Catholicism he was strongly opposed. On the accession of James II. he consequently lost his seat in the council and his deanery in the Chapel Royal; and for his firmness in refusing to suspend John Sharp, rector of St Giles’s-in-the-Fields, whose anti-papal writings had rendered him obnoxious to the king, he was himself suspended. At the Revolution Compton embraced the cause of William and Mary; he performed the ceremony of their coronation; his old position was restored to him; and among other appointments, he was chosen as one of the commissioners for revising the liturgy. During the reign of Anne he remained a member of the privy council, and was one of the commissioners appointed to arrange the terms of the union of England and Scotland; but, to his bitter disappointment, his claims to the primacy were twice passed over. He died at Fulham on the 7th of July 1713. He had conspicuous defects both in spirit and intellect, but was benevolent and philanthropic. He was a successful botanist. He published, besides several theological works,A Translation from the Italian of the Life of Donna Olympia Maladichini, who governed the Church during the time of Pope Innocent X., which was from the year 1644 to 1655(1667), andA Translation from the French of the Jesuits’ Intrigues(1669).
COMPTROLLER,the title of an official whose business primarily was to examine and take charge of accounts, hence to direct or control,e.g.the English comptroller of the household, comptroller and auditor-general (head of the exchequer and audit department), comptroller-general of patents, &c., comptroller-general (head of the national debt office). On the other hand, the word is frequently speltcontroller, as in controller of the navy, controller or head of the stationery office. The word is used in the same sense in the United States, as comptroller of the treasury, an official who examines accounts and signs drafts, and comptroller of the currency, who administers the law relating to the national banks.
COMPURGATION(from Lat.compurgare, to purify completely), a mode of procedure formerly employed in ecclesiastical courts, and derived from the canon law (compurgatio canonica), by which a clerk who was accused of crime was required to make answers on the oath of himself and a certain number of other clerks (compurgators) who would swear to his character or innocence. The term is more especially applied to a somewhat similar procedure, the old Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon mode of trial by oath-taking or oath-helping (seeJury).
COMTE, AUGUSTE [ISIDORE AUGUSTE MARIE FRANÇOIS XAVIER](1798-1857), French Positive philosopher, was born on the 19th of January 1798 at Montpellier, where his father was a receiver-general of taxes for the district. He was sent for his earliest instruction to the school of the town, and in 1814was admitted to the École Polytechnique. His youth was marked by a constant willingness to rebel against merely official authority; to genuine excellence, whether moral or intellectual, he was always ready to pay unbounded deference. That strenuous application which was one of his most remarkable gifts in manhood showed itself in his youth, and his application was backed or inspired by superior intelligence and aptness. After he had been two years at the École Polytechnique he took a foremost part in a mutinous demonstration against one of the masters; the school was broken up, and Comte like the other scholars was sent home. To the great dissatisfaction of his parents, he resolved to return to Paris (1816), and to earn his living there by giving lessons in mathematics. Benjamin Franklin was the youth’s idol at this moment. “I seek to imitate the modern Socrates,” he wrote to a school friend, “not in talents, but in way of living. You know that at five-and-twenty he formed the design of becoming perfectly wise and that he fulfilled his design. I have dared to undertake the same thing, though I am not yet twenty.” Though Comte’s character and aims were as far removed as possible from Franklin’s type, neither Franklin nor any man that ever lived could surpass him in the heroic tenacity with which, in the face of a thousand obstacles, he pursued his own ideal of a vocation.
For a moment circumstances led him to think of seeking a career in America, but a friend who preceded him thither warned him of the purely practical spirit that prevailed in the new country. “If Lagrange were to come to the United States, he could only earn his livelihood by turning land surveyor.” So Comte remained in Paris, living as he best could on something less than £80 a year, and hoping, when he took the trouble to break his meditations upon greater things by hopes about himself, that he might by and by obtain an appointment as mathematical master in a school. A friend procured him a situation as tutor in the house of Casimir Périer. The salary was good, but the duties were too miscellaneous, and what was still worse, there was an end of the delicious liberty of the garret. After a short experience of three weeks Comte returned to neediness and contentment. He was not altogether without the young man’s appetite for pleasure; yet when he was only nineteen we find him wondering, amid the gaieties of the carnival of 1817, how a gavotte or a minuet could make people forget that thirty thousand human beings around them had barely a morsel to eat.
Towards 1818 Comte became associated as friend and disciple with Saint-Simon, who was destined to exercise a very decisive influence upon the turn of his speculation. In after years he so far forgot himself as to write of Saint-Simon as a depraved quack, and to deplore his connexion with him as purely mischievous. While the connexion lasted he thought very differently. Saint-Simon is described as the most estimable and lovable of men, and the most delightful in his relations; he is the worthiest of philosophers. Even at the very moment when Comte was congratulating himself on having thrown off the yoke, he honestly admits that Saint-Simon’s influence has been of powerful service in his philosophic education. “I certainly,” he writes to his most intimate friend, “am under great personal obligations to Saint-Simon; that is to say, he helped in a powerful degree to launch me in the philosophical direction that I have now definitely marked out for myself, and that I shall follow without looking back for the rest of my life.” Even if there were no such unmistakable expressions as these, the most cursory glance into Saint-Simon’s writings is enough to reveal the thread of connexion between the ingenious visionary and the systematic thinker. We see the debt, and we also see that when it is stated at the highest possible, nothing has really been taken either from Comte’s claims as a powerful original thinker, or from his immeasurable pre-eminence over Saint-Simon in intellectual grasp and vigour and coherence. As high a degree of originality may be shown in transformation as in invention, as Molière and Shakespeare have proved in the region of dramatic art. In philosophy the conditions are not different.Il faut prendre son bien où on le trouve.
It is no detriment to Comte’s fame that some of the ideas which he recombined and incorporated in a great philosophic structure had their origin in ideas that were produced almost at random in the incessant fermentation of Saint-Simon’s brain. Comte is in no true sense a follower of Saint-Simon, but it was undoubtedly Saint-Simon who launched him, to take Comte’s own word, by suggesting the two starting-points of what grew into the Comtist system—first, that political phenomena are as capable of being grouped under laws as other phenomena; and second, that the true destination of philosophy must be social, and the true object of the thinker must be the reorganization of the moral, religious and political systems. We can readily see what an impulse these far-reaching conceptions would give to Comte’s meditations. There were conceptions of less importance than these, in which it is impossible not to feel that it was Saint-Simon’s wrong or imperfect idea that put his young admirer on the track to a right and perfected idea. The subject is not worthy of further discussion. That Comte would have performed some great intellectual achievement, if Saint-Simon had never been born, is certain. It is hardly less certain that the great achievement which he did actually perform was originally set in motion by Saint-Simon’s conversation, though it was afterwards directly filiated with the fertile speculations of A. R. J. Turgot and Condorcet. Comte thought almost as meanly of Plato as he did of Saint-Simon, and he considered Aristotle the prince of all true thinkers; yet their vital difference about Ideas did not prevent Aristotle from calling Plato master.
After six years the differences between the old and the young philosopher grew too marked for friendship. Comte began to fret under Saint-Simon’s pretensions to be his director. Saint-Simon, on the other hand, perhaps began tofeeluncomfortably conscious of the superiority of his disciple. The occasion of the breach between them (1824) was an attempt on Saint-Simon’s part to print a production of Comte’s as if it were in some sort connected with Saint-Simon’s schemes of social reorganization. Not only was the breach not repaired, but long afterwards Comte, as we have said, with painful ungraciousness took to calling the encourager of his youth by very hard names.
In 1825 Comte married a Mdlle Caroline Massin. His marriage was one of those of which “magnanimity owes no account to prudence,” and it did not turn out prosperously. His family were strongly Catholic and royalist, andMarriage.they were outraged by his refusal to have the marriage performed other than civilly. They consented, however, to receive his wife, and the pair went on a visit to Montpellier. Madame Comte conceived a dislike to the circle she found there, and this was the too early beginning of disputes which lasted for the remainder of their union. In the year of his marriage we find Comte writing to the most intimate of his correspondents:—“I have nothing left but to concentrate my whole moral existence in my intellectual work, a precious but inadequate compensation; and so I must give up, if not the most dazzling, still the sweetest part of my happiness.” He tried to find pupils to board with him, but only one pupil came, and he was soon sent away for lack of companions. “I would rather spend an evening,” wrote the needy enthusiast, “in solving a difficult question, than in running after some empty-headed and consequential millionaire in search of a pupil.” A little money was earned by an occasional article inLe Producteur, in which he began to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing in his mind. He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was hoped would bring money as well as fame, and which were to be the first dogmatic exposition of the Positive Philosophy. A friend had said to him, “You talk too freely, your ideas are getting abroad, and other people use them without giving you the credit; put your ownership on record.” The lectures attracted hearers so eminent as Humboldt the cosmologist, Poinsot the geometer and Blainville the physiologist.
Unhappily, after the third lecture of the course, Comte had a severe attack of cerebral derangement, brought on by intense and prolonged meditation, acting on a system that was already irritated by the chagrin of domestic discomfort. He did not recover his health for more than a year, and as soon asconvalescence set in he was seized by so profound a melancholy at the disaster which had thus overtaken him, that he threw himselfSerious illness.into the Seine. Fortunately he was rescued, and the shock did not stay his return to mental soundness. One incident of this painful episode is worth mentioning. Lamennais, then in the height of his Catholic exaltation, persuaded Comte’s mother to insist on her son being married with the religious ceremony, and as the younger Madame Comte apparently did not resist, the rite was duly performed, in spite of the fact that Comte was at the time raving mad. Philosophic assailants of Comtism have not always resisted the temptation to recall the circumstance that its founder was once out of his mind. As has been justly said, if Newton once suffered a cerebral attack without forfeiting our veneration for thePrincipia, Comte may have suffered in the same way, and still not have forfeited our respect for Positive Philosophy and Positive Polity.
In 1828 the lectures were renewed, and in 1830 was published the first volume of theCourse of Positive Philosophy. The sketch and ground plan of this great undertaking had appeared in 1826. The sixth and last volume wasOfficial work.published in 1842. The twelve years covering the publication of the first of Comte’s two elaborate works were years of indefatigable toil, and they were the only portion of his life in which he enjoyed a certain measure, and that a very modest measure, of material prosperity. In 1833 he was appointed examiner of the boys who in the various provincial schools aspired to enter the École Polytechnique at Paris. This and two other engagements as a teacher of mathematics secured him an income of some £400 a year. He made M. Guizot, then Louis Philippe’s minister, the important proposal to establish a chair of general history of the sciences. If there are four chairs, he argued, devoted to the history of philosophy, that is to say, the minute study of all sorts of dreams and aberrations through the ages, surely there ought to be at least one to explain the formation and progress of our real knowledge? This wise suggestion, still unfulfilled, was at first welcomed, according to Comte’s own account, by Guizot’s philosophic instinct, and then repulsed by his “metaphysical rancour.”
Meanwhile Comte did his official work conscientiously, sorely as he grudged the time which it took from the execution of the great object of his thoughts. “I hardly know if even to you,” he writes to his wife, “I dare disclose the sweet and softened feeling that comes over me when I find a young man whose examination is thoroughly satisfactory. Yes, though you may smile, the emotion would easily stir me to tears if I were not carefully on my guard.” Such sympathy with youthful hope, in union with industry and intelligence, shows that Comte’s dry and austere manner veiled the fires of a generous social emotion. It was this which made him add to his labours the burden of delivering every year from 1831 to 1848 a course of gratuitous lectures on astronomy for a popular audience. The social feeling that inspired this disinterested act showed itself in other ways. He suffered imprisonment rather than serve in the national guard; his position was that though he would not take arms against the new monarchy of July, yet being a republican he would take no oath to defend it. The only amusement that Comte permitted himself was a visit to the opera. In his youth he had been a playgoer, but he shortly came to the conclusion that tragedy is a stilted and bombastic art, and after a time comedy interested him no more than tragedy. For the opera he had a genuine passion, which he gratified as often as he could, until his means became too narrow to afford even that single relaxation.
Of his manner and personal appearance we have the following account from one who was his pupil:—“Daily as the clock struck eight on the horologe of the Luxembourg, while the ringing hammer on the bell was yet audible, the door of my room opened, and there entered a man, short, rather stout, almost what one might call sleek, freshly shaven, without vestige of whisker or moustache. He was invariably dressed in a suit of the most spotless black, as if going to a dinner party; his white neck-cloth was fresh from the laundress’s hands, and his hat shining like a racer’s coat. He advanced to the arm-chair prepared for him in the centre of the writing-table, laid his hat on the left-hand corner; his snuff-box was deposited on the same side beside the quire of paper placed in readiness for his use, and dipping the pen twice into the ink-bottle, then bringing it to within an inch of his nose to make sure it was properly filled, he broke silence: ‘We have said that the chord AB,’ &c. For three-quarters of an hour he continued his demonstration, making short notes as he went on, to guide the listener in repeating the problem alone; then, taking up another cahier which lay beside him, he went over the written repetition of the former lesson. He explained, corrected or commented till the clock struck nine; then, with the little finger of the right hand brushing from his coat and waistcoat the shower of superfluous snuff which had fallen on them, he pocketed his snuff-box, and resuming his hat, he as silently as when he came in made his exit by the door which I rushed to open for him.”
In 1842, as we have said, the last volume of thePositive Philosophywas given to the public. Instead of that contentment which we like to picture as the reward of twelve years of meritorious toil devoted to the erection of aCompletion of “Positive Philosophy.”high philosophic edifice, Comte found himself in the midst of a very sea of small troubles, of that uncompensated kind that harass without elevating, and waste a man’s spirit without softening or enlarging it. First, the jar of temperament between Comte and his wife had become so unbearable that they separated (1842). We know too little of the facts to allot blame to either of them. In spite of one or two disadvantageous facts in her career, Madame Comte seems to have uniformly comported herself towards her husband with an honourable solicitude for his well-being. Comte made her an annual allowance, and for some years after the separation they corresponded on friendly terms. Next in the list of the vexations was a lawsuit with his publisher. The publisher had inserted in the sixth volume a protest against a certain footnote, in which Comte had used some hard words about Arago. Comte threw himself into the suit with an energy worthy of Voltaire and won it. Third, and worst of all, he had prefixed a preface to the sixth volume, in which he went out of his way to rouse the enmity of the men on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of examiner for the Polytechnic school. The result was that he lost the appointment, and with it one-half of his very modest income. This was the occasion of an episode, which is of more than merely personal interest.
Before 1842 Comte had been in correspondence with J. S. Mill, who had been greatly impressed by Comte’s philosophic ideas; Mill admits that his ownSystem of Logicowes many valuable thoughts to Comte, and that, in the portion of thatJ. S. Mill.work which treats of the logic of the moral sciences, a radical improvement in the conceptions of logical method was derived from thePositive Philosophy. Their correspondence, which was full and copious, turned principally upon the two great questions of the equality between men and women, and of the expediency and constitution of a sacerdotal or spiritual order. When Comte found himself straitened, he confided the entire circumstances to Mill. As might be supposed by those who know the affectionate anxiety with which Mill regarded the welfare of any one whom he believed to be doing good work in the world, he at once took pains to have Comte’s loss of income made up to him, until Comte should have had time to repair that loss by his own endeavour. Mill persuaded Grote, Molesworth, and Raikes Currie to advance the sum of £240. At the end of the year (1845) Comte had taken no steps to enable himself to dispense with the aid of the three Englishmen. Mill applied to them again, but with the exception of Grote, who sent a small sum, they gave Comte to understand that they expected him to earn his own living. Mill had suggested to Comte that he should write articles for the English periodicals, and expressed his own willingness to translate any such articles from the French. Comte at first fell in with the plan, but he speedily surprised and disconcerted Mill by boldly taking up the position of “high moralmagistrate,” and accusing the three defaulting contributors of a scandalous falling away from righteousness and a high mind. Mill was chilled by these pretensions; and the correspondence came to an end. There is something to be said for both sides. Comte, regarding himself as the promoter of a great scheme for the benefit of humanity, might reasonably look for the support of his friends in the fulfilment of his designs. But Mill and the others were fully justified in not aiding the propagation of a doctrine in which they might not wholly concur. Comte’s subsequent attitude of censorious condemnation put him entirely in the wrong.
From 1845 to 1848 Comte lived as best he could, as well as made his wife her allowance, on an income of £200 a year. His little account books of income and outlay, with every item entered down to a few hours before his death, are accurate and neat enough to have satisfied an ancient Roman householder. In 1848, through no fault of his own, his salary was reduced to £80. Littré and others, with Comte’s approval, published an appeal for subscriptions, and on the money thus contributed Comte subsisted for the remaining nine years of his life. By 1852 the subsidy produced as much as £200 a year. It is worth noticing that Mill was one of the subscribers, and that Littré continued his assistance after he had been driven from Comte’s society by his high pontifical airs. We are sorry not to be able to record any similar trait of magnanimity on Comte’s part. His character, admirable as it is for firmness, for intensity, for inexorable will, for iron devotion to what he thought the service of mankind, yet offers few of those softening qualities that make us love good men and pity bad ones.
It is best to think of him only as the intellectual worker, pursuing in uncomforted obscurity the laborious and absorbing task to which he had given up his whole life. His singularly conscientious fashion of elaborating hisLiterary method.ideas made the mental strain more intense than even so exhausting a work as the abstract exposition of the principles of positive science need have been. He did not write down a word until he had first composed the whole matter in his mind. When he had thoroughly meditated every sentence, he sat down to write, and then, such was the grip of his memory, the exact order of his thoughts came back to him as if without an effort, and he wrote down precisely what he had intended to write, without the aid of a note or a memorandum, and without check or pause. For example, he began and completed in about six weeks a chapter in thePositive Philosophy(vol. v. ch. 55) which would fill forty pages of this Encyclopaedia. When we reflect that the chapter is not narrative, but an abstract exposition of the guiding principles of the movements of several centuries, with many threads of complex thought running along side by side all through the speculation, then the circumstances under which it was reduced to literary form are really astonishing. It is hardly possible, however, to share the admiration expressed by some of Comte’s disciples for his style. We are not so unreasonable as to blame him for failing to make his pages picturesque or thrilling; we do not want sunsets and stars and roses and ecstasy; but there is a certain standard for the most serious and abstract subjects. When compared with such philosophic writing as Hume’s, Diderot’s, Berkeley’s, then Comte’s manner is heavy, laboured, monotonous, without relief and without light. There is now and then an energetic phrase, but as a whole the vocabulary is jejune; the sentences are overloaded; the pitch is flat. A scrupulous insistence on making his meaning clear led to an iteration of certain adjectives and adverbs, which at length deadened the effect beyond the endurance of all but the most resolute students. Only the interest of the matter prevents one from thinking of Rivarol’s ill-natured remark upon Condorcet, that he wrote with opium on a page of lead. The general effect is impressive, not by any virtues of style, for we do not discern one, but by reason of the magnitude and importance of the undertaking, and the visible conscientiousness and the grasp with which it is executed. It is by sheer strength of thought, by the vigorous perspicacity with which he strikes the lines of cleavage of his subject, that he makes his way into the mind of the reader; in the presence of gifts of this power we need not quarrel with an ungainly style.
Comte pursued one practice which ought to be mentioned in connexion with his personal history, the practice of what he stylehygiène cérébrale. After he had acquired what he considered to be a sufficient stock of material, andHygiène cérébrale.this happened before he had completed thePositive Philosophy, he abstained from reading newspapers, reviews, scientific transactions and everything else, except two or three poets (notably Dante) and theImitatio Christi. It is true that his friends kept him informed of what was going on in the scientific world. Still this partial divorce of himself from the record of the social and scientific activity of his time, though it may save a thinker from the deplorable evils of dispersion, moral and intellectual, accounts in no small measure for the exaggerated egoism, and the absence of all feeling for reality, which marked Comte’s later days.
In 1845 Comte made the acquaintance of Madame Clotilde de Vaux, a lady whose husband had been sent to the galleys for life. Very little is known about her qualities. She wrote a little piece which Comte rated so preposterouslyMadame de Vaux.as to talk about George Sand in the same sentence; it is in truth a flimsy performance, though it contains one or two gracious thoughts. There is true beauty in the saying—“It is unworthy of a noble nature to diffuse its pain.” Madame de Vaux’s letters speak well for her good sense and good feeling, and it would have been better for Comte’s later work if she had survived to exert a wholesome restraint on his exaltation. Their friendship had only lasted a year when she died (1846), but the period was long enough to give her memory a supreme ascendancy in Comte’s mind. Condillac, Joubert, Mill and other eminent men have shown what the intellectual ascendancy of a woman can be. Comte was as inconsolable after Madame de Vaux’s death as D’Alembert after the death of Mademoiselle L’Espinasse. Every Wednesday afternoon he made a reverential pilgrimage to her tomb, and three times every day he invoked her memory in words of passionate expansion. His disciples believe that in time the world will reverence Comte’s sentiment about Clotilde de Vaux, as it reveres Dante’s adoration of Beatrice—a parallel that Comte himself was the first to hit upon. Yet we cannot help feeling that it is a grotesque and unseemly anachronism to apply in grave prose, addressed to the whole world, those terms of saint and angel which are touching and in their place amid the trouble and passion of the great mystic poet. Whatever other gifts Comte may have had—and he had many of the rarest kind,—poetic imagination was not among them, any more than poetic or emotional expression was among them. His was one of those natures whose faculty of deep feeling is unhappily doomed to be inarticulate, and to pass away without the magic power of transmitting itself.
Comte lost no time, after the completion of hisCourse of Positive Philosophy, in proceeding with theSystem of Positive Polity, for which the earlier work was designed to be a foundation. The first volume was published inPositive Polity.1851, and the fourth and last in 1854. In 1848, when the political air was charged with stimulating elements, he founded the Positive Society, with the expectation that it might grow into a reunion as powerful over the new revolution as the Jacobin Club had been in the revolution of 1789. The hope was not fulfilled, but a certain number of philosophic disciples gathered round Comte, and eventually formed themselves, under the guidance of the new ideas of the latter half of his life, into a kind of church, for whose use was drawn up thePositivist Calendar(1849), in which the names of those who had advanced civilization replaced the titles of the saints. Gutenberg and Shakespeare were among the patrons of the thirteen months in this calendar. In the years 1849, 1850 and 1851 Comte gave three courses of lectures at the Palais Royal. They were gratuitous and popular, and in them he boldly advanced the whole of his doctrine, as well as the direct and immediate pretensions of himself and his system. The third course endedin the following uncompromising terms—“In the name of the Past and of the Future, the servants of Humanity—both its philosophical and its practical servants—come forward to claim as their due the general direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at length a real Providence in all departments,—moral, intellectual and material. Consequently they exclude once for all from political supremacy all the different servants of God—Catholic, Protestant or Deist—as being at once behindhand and a cause of disturbance.” A few weeks after this invitation, a very different person stepped forward to constitute himself a real Providence.
In 1852 Comte published theCatechism of Positivism. In the preface to it he took occasion to express his approval of Louis Napoleon’scoup d’étatof the 2nd of December,—“a fortunate crisis which has set aside the parliamentary system and instituted a dictatorial republic.” Whatever we may think of the political sagacity of such a judgment, it is due to Comte to say that he did not expect to see his dictatorial republic transformed into a dynastic empire, and, next, that he did expect from the Man of December freedom of the press and of public meeting. His later hero was the emperor Nicholas, “the only statesman in Christendom,”—as unlucky a judgment as that which placed Dr Francia in the Comtist Calendar.
In 1857 he was attacked by cancer, and died peaceably on the 5th of September of that year. The anniversary is celebrated by ceremonial gatherings of his French and EnglishDeath.followers, who then commemorate the name and the services of the founder of their religion. By his will he appointed thirteen executors who were to preserve his rooms at 10 rue Monsieur-le-Prince as the headquarters of the new religion of Humanity.
In proceeding to give an Outline of Comte’s system, we shall consider thePositive Polityas the more or less legitimate sequel of thePositive Philosophy, notwithstanding the deep gulf which so eminent a critic as J. S. MillComte’s philosophic consistency.insisted upon fixing between the earlier and the later work. There may be, as we think there is, the greatest difference in their value, and the temper is not the same, nor the method. But the two are quite capable of being regarded, and for the purposes of an account of Comte’s career ought to be regarded, as an integral whole. His letters when he was a young man of one-and-twenty, and before he had published a word, show how strongly present the social motive was in his mind, and in what little account he should hold his scientific works, if he did not perpetually think of their utility for the species. “I feel,” he wrote, “that such scientific reputation as I might acquire would give more value, more weight, more useful influence to my political sermons.” In 1822 he published aPlan of the Scientific Works necessary to reorganize Society.Early writing.In this he points out that modern society is passing through a great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing movements,—the first, a disorganizing movement owing to the break-up of old institutions and beliefs; the second, a movement towards a definite social state, in which all means of human prosperity will receive their most complete development and most direct application. How is this crisis to be dealt with? What are the undertakings necessary in order to pass successfully through it towards an organic state? The answer to this is that there are two series of works. The first is theoretic or spiritual, aiming at the development of a new principle of co-ordinating social relations, and the formation of the system of general ideas which are destined to guide society. The second work is practical or temporal; it settles the distribution of power, and the institutions that are most conformable to the spirit of the system which has previously been thought out in the course of the theoretic work. As the practical work depends on the conclusions of the theoretical, the latter must obviously come first in order of execution.
In 1826 this was pushed farther in a most remarkable piece calledConsiderations on the Spiritual Power—the main object of which is to demonstrate the necessity of instituting a spiritual power, distinct from the temporal power and independent of it. In examining the conditions of a spiritual power proper for modern times, he indicates in so many terms the presence in his mind of a direct analogy between his proposed spiritual power and the functions of the Catholic clergy at the time of its greatest vigour and most complete independence,—that is to say, from about the middle of the 11th century until towards the end of the 13th. He refers to de Maistre’s memorable book,Du Pape, as the most profound, accurate and methodical account of the old spiritual organization, and starts from that as the model to be adapted to the changed intellectual and social conditions of the modern time. In thePositive Philosophy, again (vol. v. p. 344), he distinctly says that Catholicism, reconstituted as a system on new intellectual foundations, would finally preside over the spiritual reorganization of modern society. Much else could be quoted to the same effect. If unity of career, then, means that Comte, from the beginning designed the institution of a spiritual power, and the systematic reorganization of life, it is difficult to deny him whatever credit that unity may be worth, and the credit is perhaps not particularly great. Even the readaptation of the Catholic system to a scientific doctrine was plainly in his mind thirty years before the final execution of thePositive Polity, though it is difficult to believe that he foresaw the religious mysticism in which the task was to land him. A great analysis was to precede a great synthesis, but it was the synthesis on which Comte’s vision was centred from the first. Let us first sketch the nature of the analysis. Society is to be reorganized on the base of knowledge. What is the sum and significance of knowledge? That is the question which Comte’s first master-work professes to answer.
ThePositive Philosophyopens with the statement of a certain law of which Comte was the discoverer, and which has always been treated both by disciples and dissidents as the key to his system. This is the Law of the Three States.Law of the Three States.It is as follows. Each of our leading conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different phases; there are three different ways in which the human mind explains phenomena, each way following the other in order. These three stages are the Theological, the Metaphysical and the Positive. Knowledge, or a branch of knowledge, is in the Theological state, when it supposes the phenomena under consideration to be due to immediate volition, either in the object or in some supernatural being. In the Metaphysical state, for volition is substituted abstract force residing in the object, yet existing independently of the object; the phenomena are viewed as if apart from the bodies manifesting them; and the properties of each substance have attributed to them an existence distinct from that substance. In the Positive state, inherent volition or external volition and inherent force or abstraction personified have both disappeared from men’s minds, and the explanation of a phenomenon means a reference of it, by way of succession or resemblance, to some other phenomenon,—means the establishment of a relation between the given fact and some more general fact. In the Theological and Metaphysical state men seek a cause or an essence; in the Positive they are content with a law. To borrow an illustration from an able English disciple of Comte:—“Take the phenomenon of the sleep produced by opium. The Arabs are content to attribute it to the ‘will of God.’ Molière’s medical student accounts for it by asoporific principlecontained in the opium. The modern physiologist knows that he cannot account for it at all. He can simply observe, analyse and experiment upon the phenomena attending the action of the drug, and classify it with other agents analogous in character.”—(Dr Bridges.)
The first and greatest aim of the Positive Philosophy is to advance the study of society into the third of the three stages,—to remove social phenomena from the sphere of theological and metaphysical conceptions, and to introduce among them the same scientific observation of their laws which has given us physics, chemistry, physiology. Social physics will consist of the conditions and relations of the facts of society, and will have two departments,—one, statical, containing the laws of order; the other dynamical, containing the laws of progress. Whilemen’s minds were in the theological state, political events, for example, were explained by the will of the gods, and political authority based on divine right. In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to retain our instance, political authority was based on the sovereignty of the people, and social facts were explained by the figment of a falling away from a state of nature. When the positive method has been finally extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these social facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old sense of the word, men will only examine the conditions of social existence. When that stage has been reached, not merely the greater part, but the whole, of our knowledge will be impressed with one character, the character, namely, of positivity or scientificalness; and all our conceptions in every part of knowledge will be thoroughly homogeneous. The gains of such a change are enormous. The new philosophical unity will now in its turn regenerate all the elements that went to its own formation. The mind will pursue knowledge without the wasteful jar and friction of conflicting methods and mutually hostile conceptions; education will be regenerated; and society will reorganize itself on the only possible solid base—a homogeneous philosophy.
ThePositive Philosophyhas another object besides the demonstration of the necessity and propriety of a science of society. This object is to show the sciences as branches from a single trunk,—is to give to science the ensembleClassification of sciences.or spirit or generality hitherto confined to philosophy, and to give to philosophy the rigour and solidity of science. Comte’s special object is a study of social physics, a science that before his advent was still to be formed; his second object is a review of the methods and leading generalities of all the positive sciences already formed, so that we may know both what system of inquiry to follow in our new science, and also where the new science will stand in relation to other knowledge.
The first step in this direction is to arrange scientific method and positive knowledge in order, and this brings us to another cardinal element in the Comtist system, the classification of the sciences. In the front of the inquiry lies one main division, that, namely, between speculative and practical knowledge. With the latter we have no concern. Speculative or theoretic knowledge is divided into abstract and concrete. The former is concerned with the laws that regulate phenomena in all conceivable cases: the latter is concerned with the application of these laws. Concrete science relates to objects or beings; abstract science to events. The former is particular or descriptive; the latter is general. Thus, physiology is an abstract science; but zoology is concrete. Chemistry is abstract; mineralogy is concrete. It is the method and knowledge of the abstract sciences that the Positive Philosophy has to reorganize in a great whole.
Comte’s principle of classification is that the dependence and order of scientific study follows the dependence of the phenomena. Thus, as has been said, it represents both the objective dependence of the phenomena and the subjective dependence of our means of knowing them. The more particular and complex phenomena depend upon the simpler and more general. The latter are the more easy to study. Therefore science will begin with those attributes of objects which are most general, and pass on gradually to other attributes that are combined in greater complexity. Thus, too, each science rests on the truths of the sciences that precede it, while it adds to them the truths by which it is itself constituted. Comte’s series or hierarchy is arranged as follows:— (1) Mathematics (that is, number, geometry, and mechanics), (2) Astronomy, (3) Physics, (4) Chemistry, (5) Biology, (6) Sociology. Each of the members of this series is one degree more special than the member before it, and depends upon the facts of all the members preceding it, and cannot be fully understood without them. It follows that the crowning science of the hierarchy, dealing with the phenomena of human society, will remain longest under the influence of theological dogmas and abstract figments, and will be the last to pass into the positive stage. You cannot discover the relations of the facts of human society without reference to the conditions of animal life; you cannot understand the conditions of animal life without the laws of chemistry; and so with the rest.
This arrangement of the sciences, and the Law of the Three States, are together explanatory of the course of human thought and knowledge. They are thus the double key of Comte’s systematization of the philosophy of all theThe double key of positive philosophy.sciences from mathematics to physiology, and his analysis of social evolution, which is the base of sociology. Each science contributes its philosophy. The co-ordination of all these partial philosophies produces the general Positive Philosophy. “Thousands had cultivated science, and with splendid success; not one had conceived the philosophy which the sciences when organized would naturally evolve. A few had seen the necessity of extending the scientific method to all inquiries, but no one had seen how this was to be effected.... The Positive Philosophy is novel as a philosophy, not as a collection of truths never before suspected. Its novelty is the organization of existing elements. Its very principle implies the absorption of all that great thinkers had achieved; while incorporating their results it extended their methods.... What tradition brought was the results; what Comte brought was the organization of these results. He always claimed to be the founder of the Positive Philosophy. That he had every right to such a title is demonstrable to all who distinguish between the positive sciences and the philosophy which co-ordinated the truths and methods of these sciences into a doctrine.”—G. H. Lewes.