The order of mankind as seen by Auguste Comte

therefore gives us, in descending order of generality and increasing order of complexity:1. Mathematics, 2. Astronomy, . Physics, . Chemistry, . Physiology, . Social Physics—later christened Sociology, . Ethics or Morals—added subsequently as the final science.

It is now possible to see how his thinking led him in the end back to religion—the Religion of Humanity, a religion without the supernatural—which Huxley jeered at as ‘Catholicism minus Christianity’

TWAW SPW

Comte saw, and it is one of his great values, that in society there operate the three factors which are distinguishable in the individual man—his willing, his thinking, and his feeling. This basic triunity has indeed been studied and systematized in philosophy from ancient India, through ancient Greece, and in Christianity. Comte’s own view was that if these principal functions of life can be attributed correctly and pursued consciously, the result would be a harmonious, healthy and creative life for society and for mankind as a whole. For he did take the unusual step of conceiving mankind as a whole, and really meant it literally and seriouslyas so few have done. His use of the word ‘organic’ shows how literally he meant it, even though the conception of ‘function’, sociologically speaking, was not so fully developed in Comte as it later became in Geddes and Ramiro de Maezti. From a fairly early stage in Comte’s work he insists that we must ‘prendre la direction organique’, and his ‘Grand Etre’ only gives difficulty to rationalistic followers of Positivism because his vision of it transcends the obviously observable phenomena of Man Present, to include simultaneously Man Future and Man Past. He points out that we the living are only a minority of Humanity. But it must be noted that he emphasizes that not everyone in human form is worthy to be considered as a member of Humanity. One of his definitions of ‘Le Grand Etre’ is:

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