The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879Various
History
The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879
Various
Arts -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals
The modifications which Comte makes in this view of motive are
comparatively trifling. He does not, indeed, like Hume, call reason the
slave of the passions; rather he says that "_l'esprit doit être le
ministre du coeur, mais jamais son esclave_;" but this change of
language does not involve any important modification of Hume's theory.
The intelligence has to give to the heart all kinds of information about
the objects through which it may find satisfaction, but after all the
end itself has to be determined solely by feeling and desire. In Comte's
language the intellect is a "slave," when theology makes it acknowledge
the existence of supernatural beings who are agreeable to our desires,
but who have no reality as objects of experience; it is a "master," when
it pursues its inquiries into the phenomena of the objective world, at
the bidding of an errant curiosity, without reference to the well-being
of man; it is in its true place as a "servant" when it studies the
objective world freely, but only with reference to the end fixed for it
by the affections. "_L'univers doit être étudié non pour lui-même, mais
pour l'homme, ou plutôt pour l'humanité_;" and this, Comte thinks, will
not be done if the intelligence be left to itself, but only if it be
made subordinate to the heart. To say, therefore, that the intelligence
is not to be a slave but a servant, implies merely that it is to be left
free to collect information about the means of satisfying the desires,
without having its judgment anticipated by the imagination or the heart;
but that, on the other hand, it must keep strictly to its position as an
instrument to an end out of itself. For if it once emancipates itself
from the yoke of feeling, it soon becomes altogether lawless, and
disperses its efforts in every direction in the satisfaction of a vain
curiosity. The intelligence, as the scholastic theologians said, is in
itself, or when left to itself, a source of anarchy and confusion; it
must be, not indeed the _serva_, but the _ancilla fidei_, or it defeats
its own ends. The intellectual life, as such, is an unsocial, even a
selfish existence; for, as reason is guided by no definite objective aim
derived from itself, it must find its real motive in the satisfaction of
personal vanity and self-conceit, whenever it is not subjected to the
yoke of the altruistic affections.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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