实证主义哲学与英国思潮

1845年，孔德与克罗第尔·德沃夫人相爱了，这段爱情让孔德觉得情感的力量要大于理智，他由此推理出人们要想得到救赎只能借助于另一种全新的宗教的结论。而恰好孔德的实证论的思想与当时英国的思潮相符合，因此孔德和斯宾塞两人所提出的实证主义思想反倒在英国获得了更多的拥护者。

Herbert Spencer

I. Comte and Darwin

There was a certain dogmatic intellectualism about this positivism which perhaps reflected the disillusioned and isolated philosopher. When, in 1845, Mme. Clotilde de Vaux (whose husband was spending his life in jail) took charge of Comte's heart, his affection for her warmed and colored his thought, and led to a reaction in which he placed feeling above intelligence as a reforming force, and concluded that the world could be redeemed only by a new religion, whose function it should be to nourish and strengthen the feeble altruism of human nature by exalting Humanity as the object of a ceremonial worship. Comte spent his old age devising for this Religion of Humanity an intricate system of priesthood, sacraments, prayers, and discipline; and proposed a new calendar in which the names of pagan deities and medieval saints should be replaced by the heroes of human progress. As a wit put it, Comte offered the world all of Catholicism except Christianity.

The positivist movement fell in with the flow of English thought, which took its spirit from a life of industry and trade, and looked up to matters of fact with a certain reverence. The Baconian tradition had turned thought in the direction of things, mind in the direction of matter; the materialism of Hobbes, the sensationalism of Locke, the scepticism of Hume, the utilitarianism of Bentham, were so many variations on the theme of a practical and busy life. Berkeley was an Irish discord in this domestic symphony. Hegel laughed at the English habit of honoring physical and chemical equipment with the name of "philosophical instruments"; but such a term came naturally to men who agreed with Comte and Spencer in defining philosophy as a generalization of the results of all the sciences. So it was that the positivist movement found more adherents in England than in the land of its birth; adherents perhaps not so fervent as the generous Littré, but endowed with that English tenacity which kept John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and Frederick Harrison (1831–1923) faithful all their lives to Comte's philosophy, while their English caution kept them aloof from his ceremonious religion.

▍语言点

dogmatic: adj. 独断的

intellectualism: n. 唯理智论

disillusion: vt. 使幻灭

isolate: vt. 使心静

reaction: n. 反向作用

redeem: vt. 救赎

nourish: vt. 滋养

strengthen: vt. 加强

feeble: adj. 微弱的

altruism: n. 利他主义

exalt: vt. 褒扬

devise: vt. 设计

intricate: adj. 复杂的

priesthood: n. 祭司

sacrament: n. 圣餐

prayer: n. 祷告

discipline: n. 戒律

calendar: n. 日历

wit: n. 智者

Catholicism: n. 天主教

materialism: n. 唯物主义

sensationalism: n. 感觉论

scepticism: n. 怀疑论

utilitarianism: n. 功利主义

keep...aloof from: 离……远一点

fervent (正确读音为：/ˈfɜːvənt/)