The ethics of positivism: a critical study

Part I

I. Recent scientific development of Positive doctrines, and the mental conditions which favored that development. Important part of Positivism in Ethics. The two conceptions of Liberty and Good.

II. The ideas of Experience and of Law in the Positive School ; Determinism and its origin.

m. Two extreme views in the question of Liberty ; and how the Positivists have assumed an intermediate position between those two views. Arguments by which the Positivists apply the method of Experience to the doctrine of "Will. Alexander Bain. The consequences of Positive Ethics in England.

IY. John S. Mill. His doctrines on voluntary action. Laws and necessity of voluntary action. Mill's views on human character. Contradictions.

Y. Criticism of previous doctrines ; their novelty ; the scope of the ideas of cause and force. Positivists admit interior observation, but have no definite conception of what it is. What their conception of interior observation is. Psychology assumes the character of a Natural History of the Mind in the English School.

YI. A judgment on the conclusions of the new phiiv

Synopsis of Contents _ losophers on the question of the Will. Their conclusions imply, by ultimate analysis, a tacit denial of conscience.

VII. Conclusion ; historical significance of Determinism ; the limits of human liberty.

Part II

I. The idea of the human act, as we form it from the analysis of free-will, gives us the moral end.

II. The theory of the end in ancient philosophy, in the Middle Ages and in contemporary English Schools. Definition of the school of Intuition and of Utilitarianism. The theory of absolute obligation opposed to Materialism and to Independent Morality. Inductive Morality of the Positivists. An observation of Lecky.

III. Historical notice of the progress of the doctrine of the good in England up to the latest form into which it has been put by Positivism • Hobbes, Cudworth, Clarke, Locke, Butler, Hutcheson ; the Scotch School.

IV. The Scotch prevail in the question of the origin and nature of disinterested feelings. Hume and Price.

V. The theory of association in relation to morality. Its development due to the need of opposing absolute morality by a vigorous method. The tradition of contemporary moral egotism to the age of improvement in the school of inductive morality ; Mandeville. Brown, Paley and Bentham. They carry Inductive Ethics to the degree of scientific maturity in which Positivism found it.

VI. Prevalence of Utilitarian morality in the English doctrines at present. The opposite school and its representatives. Fundamental principles of Utilitarianism and their progress up to the time of Mill. Objections to Utilitarianism. Utilitarian idea of Happiness.

VII-VIII. Examination of the philosophical process by which the Positive School believes it has laid new

Synopsis of Contents.

v foundations for the Utilitarian doctrine. A criticism of John S. Mill's Utilitarianism.

IX. The theory resting on the analysis and reduction of ethical phenomena examined in relation to the method of the philosophy of which it is a part, and in relation also to the general movement of scientific thought. Such a movement begins with Galileo and leads to the conception of the unity of phenomena.

X. Influence of the scientific movement on psychology. In England, after Bacon, there prevails analysis : in Germany, after Kant, reduction. The English psychologists pursue an intermediate path. They do not endeavor to reduce psychical activity to its organs, or psychology to physiology. They endeavor to reduce the various forms of psychical force between themselves, and all of these forms to one common source — feeling. Association referred to again as the fundamental law of English psychology. A demonstration of the progress of the idea of that law since the age of Hartley. James Mill, John S. Mill, Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer.

XII. Organism of English psychology.

XIII. The method of reduction and the doctrine of the end and of happiness as expounded in Utilitarianism.

XIV. Criticism of the theory of association.

XV. Effects of this criticism on the doctrine of the Good.

XVI. The ideas of the Just and of Absolute Morality.

XVII. Historical genesis of moral consciousness as explained by Positivism. Man and the Moral Sciences. by Aristide Gabelli.

XVIII. The question is asked whether such psychological analysis as exposed so far is enough to establish a new and real moral science. Herbert Spencer's objections to empirical Utilitarianism. Conclusion.

vi

Synopsis of Contents.

Part III

I. The Positive doctrines in France, in England and in Italy in the first half of this century.

II. Italian Positivism.

III. In the Course of Positive Philosophy, by Comte, and in the meetings of other Positivists in France, there is not a true morality. Morality cannot be desumed from Social feeling as it is understood by Comte. He makes it impossible to establish a science of character.

IV. An explanation of the reason why this work treats almost exclusively of the English doctrines.

V-VI. A general outline of the history of Criticism, from the Renaissance to Kant, is given in order to show its connection with the contemporary doctrines of Positivism. Conclusion that Comte, too, takes his starting-point in Kant ; but, as the disciple of French Sensualism and Materialism, he only finds in phenomena experimental and empirical elements, thus approaching Locke and Hume.

VII. Positivism results in two tendencies.

VIII. The importance that Positivists should become fully conscious of the past. Condition sine qua non of the progress of philosophy.

IX. Insufficient application in England of the experimental method since Bacon and Hobbes.

X. Summary. Criticism and Positivism in Science.

XI. Their consequences in public and private life«c

Author's Preface

Lsr introducing to the American public this book, which is published in English for the first time, principally through the kind initiative and intelligent cooperation of Miss Ida Lilian Olcott, I deem it necessary to refer to the occasion and time of its production, to its purpose and to the considerations which have led me to comply with the kind request of the translators, with the hope that their work would prove of some use and pleasure to the students of Philosophy.

Although the Ethics of Positivism 1 is one of those works which treat of questions of general scientific interest, there is a certain occasion for

viii Preface.

them, as it is seen from the form in which they are conceived, and from the motives which inspire them. It was originally published by installments during the years 1870 and 1871 in La Filosofia delle Scuole Ttaliane, a philosophical periodical founded by the illustrious philosopher Terenzio Mamiani. From the first I denominated my work a critical study, with the aim of defending, in the first place, the principles of Morality against the attacks of an empirical Utilitarianism. This I have endeavored to do without any theological postulate, but on what I conceive to be the grounds of absolute obligation, and showing, by a broad and impartial criticism of the opposite doctrines, that those of the above referred to school have not, as yet, proved that a system of morality can be established on scientific bases. In the second place, I wished to present to the Italian public a sufficiently exact account of the most important results which empirical Psychology had reached through the latest investigations of the facts of the moral world. It is clear that, in order that I might succeed in my double

Preface. ix

purpose, it was necessary that I should make the doctrines of the English experimental school the principal subject of my critical study. It is the only school in Europe which had previously, and at that time also, applied the principles of the scientific method to all the departments of Philosophy, and particularly to Psychology and Morality ; and freely following the traditions of Locke, Hume and Hartley, that school pursued a path which led it every day farther from the so-called Positive course of Auguste Comte. This profound difference of origin and direction, which distinguishes the doctrines of the French philosopher from those of John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer and other English psychologists was not for a long time sufficiently recognized in my country. When I wrote in the original the following pages, the doctrines of Positivism were hardly known here ; all that was heard of them being through the reports of the discussions which they were at that time exciting in France. There was not then in this country a school, properly so called, which professed x Preface.

them with unity of principles and convictions, or with a full comprehension of its own method.

In the name of Positivism was confounded, as there still is by many, different and even opposed philosophical directions, provided that there was implied in them the exclusion of old metaphysical notions ; no distinction being made between Materialism and the Empiricism of physiologists with whom Comte was in accord, and the doctrines of the English experimental school which refused, and still refuses, to be known as Positive. As I have remarked, the doctrines of this school were not well known in Italy at that time, so that confusion was inevitable. The majority of Italian readers were wanting in serious philosophical training, in that fine sense of modern scientific tendency which is necessary to properly comprehend the position, or, rather, the decided attitude, of the English school of experimentalists in the history of contemporary philosophy, in relation to the two extremes in Europe, of materialism on one hand, and metaphysical and theological dogmatism on the other.

One of the principal ends I had in view

Preface. xi

when I undertook to write this work was, therefore, to dissipate the strange confusion of criteria and conceptions which appeared to exist in the minds of Positivists, at least of those who called themselves such in Italy ; and, while I had to sincerely reject most of the doctrines of that school, I had to at once combat and represent them, so that they would be better understood and appreciated in Italy, at least in their most prominent features, in the spirit and depth of their method. I. wanted thus to put them before my countrymen in that true point of historical perspective to which they belong, distinguishing them more especially from the Empiricism of physiologists and from the Positive school as founded by Auguste Comte. While the above avowed purpose still makes my book, in one sense, opportune in Italy, I trust it will not make it appear altogether inopportune in America, where, I doubt not, a mere exposition of the Positive doctrines is no longer so necessary as it is in some other conntries.

The occasion and purpose of the book sugxii Preface.

gested its title. But I cannot but remark that the appellation of Positivism^ which I gave to the Philosophy which I then proposed to examine, was commented upon as inexact by the eminent writers who criticised the work in the leading reviews of both England and Germany. It is not necessary to say that such a philosophy I found represented principally by the English school, for I believe I have sufficiently shown it in the course of my discussion. I wish to refer to two of those critics, for whom I have a deep sense of gratitude. They are Mr. Herbert Spencer, who alluded to this book in the eighth chapter of his Study of Sociology ; and the distinguished author of the Methods of Ethics, Professor Sidgwick, who criticised it at length in the Academy for July 1, 1872. The remarks of the latter were at once favorable and truly severe, and I have not failed to profit by them, inasmuch as I have ratified with pleasure some errors into which I had fallen. I have not, however, changed the title of the book, in order that it might not lose any of the character of what I would

Preface. xiii

call local opportunity which it received from the occasion on which I wrote it, and from the special intellectual conditions of Italian readers, which it presupposed and on which it was intended to act. The term Positivism, with which I designated also the doctrines of the English experimental school, was then one of the terms most used in Italy to signify those doctrines. Although I admit that the word was misused in this sense, I accepted it provisionally, and only to make myself understood by those for whom the book was more especially intended; while it was my purpose, at the same time, to substitute a very clear and precise notion of the subject itself for the provisionally and inaccurate meaning of the word.

It seems to me to be necessary that I should reply briefly to the grave criticism which the authoritative author, to whom I have before alluded, published in the Academy of London. He imputes to me that I have been led to mistakes through the authority of Mr. Lecky, from whose fine History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne I quote a few words.

xiv Preface.

The blunder which the distinguished Professor believes I have made is that I have confounded "the egotistic and universalistic Hedonism under the common term of Utilitarianism," and in considering " the ethical controversy that extends from Socrates to the present time as a dialogue between two schools of thought, ' Intuitivists' and 'Utilitarians'"; which mistake, Professor Si dg wick says, has caused me to fall into the other error of considering "the difference between Epicurus, Hobbes and Helvetius, on the one hand, and Bentham and Comte, on the other, as quite secondary and subordinate." Now, to me, it seems that Professor Sidgwick has perhaps not sufficiently noticed how my polemic, as a whole, against Utilitarianism, and my exposition of the controversy on the moral question as it was agitated in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, make it clear that, in appreciating the respective value of the various doctrines and their historical relations, I follow — in conformity to the nature and to the principal aim of my work — an essentially theoretical mode of criticism, and that this con-

Preface. xv

sists, for me, in the impossibility of deducing the binding force of human acts from the conception of the useful or of happiness in any sense in which we may understand it ; for, such a conception, as Professor Sidgwick himself observes in his Methods of Ethics, can never be w T ell defined, and, besides, it expresses, in my opinion, the effect of moral action, and not its end or rule. From all this it is easy to see, I believe, that from the theoretical point of view, which I assumed, only two principles could appear to me originally distinct and irreducible, viz.: the principle of absolute obligation, and the opposite principle of relative or conditional obligation — the principle of happiness, of the useful, of interest, whether general or individual. The dualism of these principles, hence of the schools which represent them, does not appear in this work as a postulate w T hich I accept without control, or as if it was received by the authority of sentiment or opinion outside of science. For me it is rather the consequence of what I try to demonstrate throughout this discussion, in which the opposition between the principle xvi Preface.

of the absolute obligation and the principle of utility and happiness implies almost two contradictions, without the possibility of a middle term, so that the distinction between egotistic Hedonism and nniversalistic Hedonism should have appeared in it only as a subdivision of the second of those two principles. It certainly is a most important subdivision, but it is neither substantial nor original, inasmuch as I endeavor to show that, owing to the impossibility of well defining universal utility, and setting it down as a certain and obligatory rule of moral conduct, the only criterion by which the individual is naturally led to value the good of others can not be drawn from anything but his sentiment and idea of his own good and happiness. Thus I am of the opinion that the ultimate scientfic and practical consequences of the most refined Utilitarianism coincide with the consequences of a properly understood egotism. 1 The fact,

1 The reader is referred to a fine and strong argument "by M. L. Carrau against universalistic Hedonism, in the second of two articles devoted to a criticism of Prof. Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics in the Revue Philosop7dque y March and April, 1878.

Preface. xvii

then, that I have made the opposition, caused by the unquestionable progress of Utilitarian ethics since Bentham, a subordinate but not original distinction between egotistic Hedonism and universalistic Hedonism may be an object for discussion, but it seems to me that it should not be considered so much a positive error of fact as a confusion of unquestionable historical data. For the rest, how near those two principles are to each other, and how one is implied in the more or less immediate consequences of the other, is shown by the fact — as Professor Sidgwick himself notes in the first chapter of the fourth book of his Methods of Ethics — that although Mr. John S. Mill proposes to make a distinction between them, he does not succeed himself in avoiding the risk of confounding them. 1

I do not deny that it may be questioned

1 Apropos of this, Prof. Sidgwick himself, in alluding to my polemic against the Utilitarianism of Mr. Mill, writes : " Nor is his (Barzellotti's) assumption that il bene, deW indimduo is mossa inevitdbile delV utilismo unwarrantable as regards Mill, though it leaves Comte out of sight."

xviii Preface.

whether I have sufficiently distinguished historically the two opposed schools — the Egotistical and the Utilitarian— and clearly shown their ever-increasing process of differentiation since Bentham. That I have well understood, at least, the necessity of distinguishing them will clearly appear to those who may attentively peruse the last four chapters of Part II of this work. At any rate, I willingly acknowledge my gratitude to this eminent critic for having noted in the historical apercus of my book some mistakes in detail which I have hastened to ratify. I must also thank Professor Sidgwick for the kind terms in which he referred to the substance of my work, notwithstanding that he could not but partly approve of it. I may be excused, I presume, if I quote his words: "Our author's reading in English psychology has been considerable, and the general views and criticisms which he gives us are close and definite, and always instructive, even where they involve misapprehensions. Indeed, he seems to grasp more clearly and completely than most English antagonists the

Preface. xix

peculiar position of the Associationist psychology ; and he describes the distinctions and mutual relations of the different writers with much subtlety and delicacy of apprehension. And for the not unfrequent errors in detail, which I have to notice in this work, there are two kinds of excuse : Firstly, the disposition, at once excellence and defect of English philosophers, to sacrifice systematic coherence to fidelity of reflective observation, makes the historical study of them peculiarly complicated and perplexing ; and, secondly, such a historical study is at present in the most rudimentary and imperfect condition among ourselves."

To another criticism of his I think I can also reply. He says that when I affirm that no moral investigation, properly so called, can be based on the doctrines of Cornte, it clearly appears that my judgment rests "entirely on a priori arguments. And these arguments have much force; only they really tell against Comte's methodical consistency. A strictly 4 objective ' study of mankind as a collection xx Preface.

of organisms placed in certain temporal and spatial relations to each other, mutually dependent for their preservation, but occasionally acting on each other distinctively, affords no basis for any systematic direction of conduct. But Comte's objective psychology does not exclude notions whose content belongs entirely to introspective observation ; it only insists on employing them meritized, just as the unrefective mind furnishes them. And so his sociology deals throughout with facts not expressible in terms of matter and motion, facts that have indeed an objective aspect, but a very obscure one, and whose significance is entirely subjective : as, e. g., the law of the three stages of belief. Hence Comte's exclusion of empirical psychology does not prevent him from having a characteristic and coherent view of ethics ; it only gives his utilitarianism an unrefective, unanalytical stamp."

Now, it seems to me that the cogent reasoning of Prof. Sidgwick does not go so far as to disprove that, in denying the possibility and value of introspective observation, Comte

Preface. xxi

blocked the only way by which he might have been led to make of Morality, as he understood it, a true science that would regulate human conduct. What confirms me in this opinion is that the author of the Methods of Ethics agrees with me in recognizing the profound contradiction between the methodical, presupposed principles of the whole philosophical system of Comte and the conclusions to which he came with respect to disinterested morality, especially in his last works. If there is not reflection in the Comtean speculations, which is as much as to say, in this case, the scientific reflection of the mental process by which he reaches certain results, it is enough, it seems to me, to make such results non-scientific. If in the demonstration, which he claims to give, of the moral and social necessity which give us motives of disinterested and mutual love, the vivre pour autrui, there are elements and data which have for him no rational value, and to which reflection gives no validity, because they proceed from a kind of experience which it does not recognize, it is enough to vitiate throughout and in its form xxii Preface,

the whole demonstration ; in such a way, as Galileo said in his Saggiatore, that one contingent proposition mixed with others that are necessary is enough to make them all contiDgent. Incoherence and contradiction pervade the spirit of Positive morality when, from the fact, objectively observed, that human individuals act upon each other through their social relations, in virtue of certain impulses, Comte passes to the conclusion that they must consequently act so and so in virtue of one moral necessity. It is, nevertheless, the same contradiction in which the Utilitarians, or the followers of inductive morality, fall ; a contradiction which, in the case of Comte, is made even more serious through the unconscious, hence illegitimate, use which he makes of psychological observation. " Auguste Comte," says M. Terraz, in one of his notable studies on the Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century (Paris, 1877), " ne reconnait que des faits; il faudrait qu'il admit des principes absolus et rationels ; or, il n'admet, que des idees relatives et experimentales. II peut parler de ce qui est,

Preface

While I agreed with the English philosophers that dogmatical presumptions should be excluded from the province of philosophy, 1 could not, as I cannot now, agree with them as to the limits and results of the way in which they interpret the data of experience. The point of controversy was, therefore, on the methodical legitimacy of reducing, as they do, the elementary data of moral facts to one or more of the laws that are established by scientific observation. 1

1 Apropos of my criticism on Mill's reduction, Prof essor Sidgwick says : "He (Barzellotti) notices Mill's confuson of rational and emotional elements in moral action, or, more particularly, of the dutiful and sympathetic impulses which have a phenomenal distinctness undeniable on any system. And he argues effectively against the contemptuous treatment of the question of the objectivity of moral rules as belonging to transcendental metaphysics, and practically indifferent; whereas it is a fact of inner experience that on the belief in such objectivity depends the force of moral impulse to obey them, in so far as strictly moral."

xxiv Preface.

I cannot, for want of space, add any more than that I have not made any substantial changes in the American edition because I still hold the same views, and also because I am not aware that the views which I then criticised have since undergone any substantial modifications. For the rest, I hope that my work will not seem altogether inopportune in America, where it is, no doubt, realized that the vital questions of philosophy must be discussed on broad grounds and with impartiality, that the ideal of free institutions and the conditions most favorable to true human happiness may be permanently realized. My sincere desire of contributing somewhat to the promotion of philosophical studies, even outside of my own circle, is the chief motive which has prompted me to authorize this translation, the execution of which is due mainly to the interest kindly taken in my work by Miss Ida Lilian Olcott, to whom I feel very much indebted.

Giacomo Barzellotti.

Florence, May 10, 1878,

ETHICS OF POSITIVISM.

I

In" times of great renovations it often happens that the inevitable consequences of certain states of mind and principles appear unexpectedly, although they *were before ignored or misapprehended. As the subterraneous fire, making its way in every direction through the mountain -side, surprises the villages, which, being farthest from the summit, have perhaps not seen the burning lava for centuries, so the potent work of opinions and principles which prepare civil changes manifests itself in very different ways in the various orders of v thought and life./ 7

The speculative tendency of modern philosophical thought appears also in science, and the great problems of existence and understanding, which were declared insoluble by the Scotch, and afterward derided by Skepticism, are revived under another form in the Positive school, the doctrines of which present lately a very singular spectacle./ Ignored by most scientists before the age of Auguste Comte, these doctrines withstood the fervor of the French and German speculations which succeeded to Sensualism, and found in later times a more favorable condition for their propagation in the universal mental restlessness and weariness which so many systems resulting from criticism had brought about. Then, they who would not know of metaphysics, or, rather, of philosophy, and who sought, as it is now expressed, a sound knowledge of things without losing themselves in abstractions, assumed the name of Positivists. Retaining few and uncommon principles of formal logic, and taking the method of natural science as the standardmethod by which any inquiry should be carried on, this new school of thinkers omitted from their range of investigation any subject in the treatment of which something more than scientific instruments was to be used. There were then, as there are now, many who call themselves Positivists on the simple ground that they regard experimental research as implying the use, more or less accurate, of instruments and of the senses, and accept science as nothing more than an accumulation of facts.

Fortunately, men of such bent of mind do not exclusively constitute the Positive school of the present. The method suggested in the first, and exaggerated in the second, of the two principal works of Auguste Comte, has ever been the guiding principle in the development of Positivism. The doctrines of this school are now expounded by many able writers, generally with acumen arid minuteness of analysis, so that we see the speculations of their master gradually assume the character of an intrinsically scientific theory. Although the scientific spirit which pervades this school was one of its original characteristics, it is only of late that its effects have become manifest. In France, Littre and Taine have given more breadth to the doctrines of their teacher ; and in England, Mill, Bain, Spencer, Lewes and Buckle have added psychology to the new system of philosophy, a branch of science which Comte had excluded from it. They thus rescued it from the materialism of physiologists, putting in a partially independent form logic, morality, and the philosophy of history. The title of Positivist constantly lost some of its vulgar and anti-scientific character, and gradually there grew around, and ultimately within, the school itself, an atmosphere of speculation. The problems of the understanding, of perception, of God and of Good, which had been so zealously banished from the premises of the Positive method, had to be met finally as logical consequences of those very premises ; and in this way a certain mental condition of the times, alluded to before, became verified in Positivism. The eternal dialogue between conscience and being began anew in the mind of Hamlet.

An occasion that would proceed from the Very force of events and opinions was necessary, as usual, for this new philosophical tendency to come to light. / Auguste Comte's doctrine, as enunciated in his first work, was directed principally to the basis and to the laws of scientific method, and opposed especially the dogmatism of previous systems, by advocating the method of experience, and the careful investigation of facts. Such doctrine seemed, therefore, to many, to imply a formula easily applicable to any scientific faith.

The matter changed aspect when Positivism, self-confident and sure of the favor of the times, undertook to affirm all of its principles and deduce their consequences. At this point, the question, which so far had been one of method and within the limits of history, became suddenly a question of morality, politics and economy. Consistently with their premises, those who professed the principle of experience repudiated the theory of free-will and the imputableness of actions ; they made the principle of utility the standard of morality, in lieu of Law and Duty ; they changed the foundations of Right and Authority, and now promise to substitute other institutions for those that have hitherto governed our political and social relations, and would, besides, give us a new religion in place of Christianity.

In France, Germany, and Italy, the public press daily discuss these subjects, and numerous works on questions raised by the new philosophers are published ; but in England, and in America, the practical and social sense of the Anglo-Saxons has been more strongly aroused by the new doctrines, so that in those countries, where the Positivists may be more numerous than elsewhere, and are well supported in their opinions by able literary and scientific reviews, there are many contradictors of the new views, and not one number of these periodicals appears without containing extensive discussions on the most important ethical and political questions from opposite points of view. English Positivism is therefore the school in which the rational and scientific direction of the Positive mind is more clearly and vigorously defined. Germany, tired of affirming, is now waiting: but the publications of the history of the various schools, as well as the occasional appearance of some large work on philosophical topics, prove that the speculative work of the mind does not cease in that traditional land of metaphysics.