stinct" in a sense which is not very clear and is throughout unscientific; for, according to modern researches,[1] we do "instinctively," i. e., unconsciously, that which previously we did knowingly, and thus to account for an "instinct" as a primum movens sounds somewhat like the "purgative force of the rhubarb"; secondly, that the distinction he makes between egoistic and altruistic instincts is superficial. From the subjective point of view, it is obvious that whether they act under the impulse of sexual attraction or under that of hunger, individuals aim merely at the satisfaction of physiological (egoistic) want; nor are their objective results so essentially different as Comte pretends; hunger as well as sexual attraction is able to lead men and animals—in some cases to struggle, in others to co-operation. And, if he did not exclude the social life of animals from the field of his humanitarian sociology, he might easily perceive that associations for food or for self-defense have generally a far more social character than primitive conjugal alliances for progeny.
Nevertheless, the greatest, perhaps the only valuable, service rendered by Comte to social science lay in the very clear distinction he made between the sociological and the biological domains, when he referred to sociology only such aggregation of individuals as is based on co-operation, conscious or unconscious, and abandoned groupings based on struggle to biology. Thus, I may say, he opened the door of true social science without himself entering its precincts, and, unfortunately, I must add, misleading his followers with his erroneous statements as to the unavoidable subjectivity of the methods of social knowledge. I insist upon that high service; that remarkable definition of the boundaries and of the object of sociology appears, so to say, drowned amid the numberless quaintnesses of his whole system, and none of his admirers, orthodox or schismatic, have ever cared so far as to disengage from his hardly readable volumes the few lines.
Owing to his restricted acknowledgment of the principle of the unity of Nature, Comte appears, at any rate, scarcely a precursor of the modern scientific evolutionism. Looking for a more complete and methodical compendium of that theory, we have to cross the Channel and to approach Herbert Spencer's "First Principles," and his many other valuable essays on ethical, political, and other sociological subjects. No mind could perceive more perspicuously than Herbert Spencer does the admirable unity of Nature, and no pen could describe it with half so much clearness and attraction as his. While the science of Comte, always behind his age, appears like a mosaic of six stray pieces—and the author takes painful heed to make us feel the gaps which he supposes really to exist between them—the science of Spencer on more than one point gets the start of the erudition of modern specialists, and is throughout livingly and harmoniously one, according to the unity of Nature.
- ↑ Romanes, various writings; also A. Herzen, "Studii fisiologici sopra la volontà."
