CHAPTER XX - SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Summary

At the close of our wanderings, we propose to hold a stocktaking of the wisdom which we have picked up by the way. In other words, we shall run rapidly over the suggestions that have been brought before us, and try to estimate their value. We must note once again in how many voices and in how contradictory a fashion our teachers speak. Scientific sociology is still a hope rather than a fact; the “ethics of evolution” may mean any one of half-a-dozen or half-a-hundred things. The wisdom proffered to us is hydra-headed, it is million-tongued. But we must also try to decide, in general terms, what positive contribution to human guidance we may reasonably expect from “biological” inquiry. And we must look more closely at the definitions of evolution, especially at the question whether evolution is or is not identical in meaning with progress.

In Comte, the appeal to biology occupied a limited, almost a subordinate, position. Biology was the science next below sociology; it furnished the sociologist with suggestions; but decisive guidance was found in the wise man's inspection of human phenomena, or in his study of past history. We have seen, however, on how many distinct principles, and with how large an infusion of arbitrariness, Comte read off these lessons. In our opinion, such guidance as Comte yields was due to the working in him of the rational and moral nature of man.