familiarity with Mr. Spencer's works, ought to have saved from such misunderstanding.1 It seems to us worth while to remove and to destroy it now, when, for the first time, an important work of Mr. Spencer is about appearing in our language.

"What Comte meditated," says Mr. Spencer, "is a systematic classification of our knowledge, that may serve in the interpretation of classes of phenomena that have not been studied in a scientific manner; a lofty idea, worthy of encouragement and praise. He has revived the conception of Bacon, already well calculated to astonish us at an epoch when knowledge was so little advanced, as it contemplated nothing less than an organization of the sciences in a vast system, in which social science should appear as a branch of the tree of Nature. In the place of a vague, indefinite conception, Comte has given a definite, carefullystudied conception of the world; in his work he has displayed a reach, a fertility, and an originality of mind truly great, as well as a rare power of generalization: setting aside all question of truth, his system of positive philosophy is an immense progress. But, after paying Comte a just tribute of admiration for his ideas, and for the efforts he has made in elaborating them, the question remains as to his success. They who think that he has reorganized method and knowledge, and who accept his reorganization, deserve really the name of his disciples; but they who do not accept this reorganization ought not to bear it. If one does not admit Comte's peculiar doctrines, he is his adversary; he finds himself in just the situation he would if Comte had never written. They who reject his reorganization of scientific doctrine, and adhere to the doctrine itself as it was before Comte, profess in common with him opinions that the past has bequeathed to the present; but this adhesion should not be reckoned in favor of the doc

1 M. Langel, Revue des Deux Mondes, February 15, 1864.

trines peculiar to Comte. Such is the position of the main body of savants: this is my position."

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Comte, moreover, did not make the pretensions that certain of his disciples put forward. He acknowledged that the positive method in philosophy had been developing for ages, and was an inheritance common to all men of science. The principles that compose this common heritage, the rela tivity of knowledge and its corollary, the principle that forbids recourse to metaphysical entities for the explanation of phenomena, finally, the fixedness of the laws of Nature, Comte did nothing to add to the weight of these. He availed himself of them, but, simply by interdicting all subjective analysis of thought, he has put himself in opposition to their clear demonstration. We shall not examine all the points of disagreement; we will merely pause to touch on the three principles-the dynamic law of sociology, the encyclopedic hierarchy, or classification of the sciences, and the constitution of human society.

'Herbert Spencer, "Reasons for dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte."

CHAPTER VII.

COMTE'S FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES.

THE variations of human opinion, says Comte, can never have been purely arbitrary. They obey a law that causes every theoretical conception to pass through three successive stages: the first, by a pure mental fiction, gives to the absolute cause of events concrete forms-this is the theological stage; the second gives to the same absolute cause an abstract and purely ideal form-this is the metaphysical stage; finally, the third abandons "the search after the origin and destiny of the universe," the knowl edge of the "interior causes of phenomena," and devotes itself merely to discovery of "their effective laws, that is to say, their relations of succession and similitude ❞—this is the positive or real stage. The stage adopted at first in the general system of explanation, has gone on from concentration to concentration, and has reached "the highest perfection it is susceptible of when it has substituted the providential action of a single being for the varied play of the numerous independent divinities that had been imagined in primitive times." The second stage, the metaphysical, which closely follows the first, substituting for a deity a creation of reason, pursues in its turn the same path toward unity, and arrives at perfection when all the unities are combined in one unity, Nature, a grand

entity, "regarded as the only source of all phenomena." The third stage, the positive, in which the mind confines its search to the marks of relations, traces facts to more general facts, whereof they are but particular cases, these to others more general still, so that "its perfection, toward which it tends incessantly, although quite probably it will never reach it, would consist in the power to represent the different observable phenomena as particular cases under a single general fact, like that of gravitation, for example."

Such is the law of the three stages destined to play in the system of Comte a part of the first order, since, by assigning a definite limit to the progress of human thought, it lays a basis for the practical construction of ultimate society. This law determines the principle of the classification of sciences, which furnishes a career for education, in which "what has hitherto been accomplished blindly will be done henceforth scientifically." Although Comte shows us the application of the three methods in philosophy, the characteristics whereof are, he says, essentially different and even radically opposite, he sees, at bottom, in the metaphysical method nothing more than a general modification of the theological method, very suitable as an intermediate step between the two extreme stages, and as conducting, "by insensible degrees, to the positive philosophy, . . . a powerful instrument for breaking up theological conceptions, a clever device for concealing their absence a while by vague, illusory conceptions, but incapable of organizing the domain of metaphysics, or of stemming the tide of the positive philosophy." There are, then, but two methods fundamentally and essentially opposed-the theological and the positive; the human mind passes from the first to the second, whatever accidents may befall on the passage; it must begin with the first and end with the second, abandoning the first as radically incapable

of bestowing on man the power of modifying the environment in which he is placed.

Of all the contributions that Comte has made from his private store to the common fund, none has called forth more lively protests than the dynamic law of social organization, as well from theologians and pure metaphysicians as from the representatives of a school in other respects. closely allied to positivism-the critical school, namelyall of whom refuse to allow the march of humanity, which they think indeterminate, to be compressed within the lines of any strict law whatever. Comte was well aware that this law needed explanation; that it would never acquire the scientific authority he wished to give it so long as it expressed only a simple general fact. He perceived the necessity of characterizing the different general motives taken up in the exact knowledge of human nature, which have made, now inevitable, now indispensable, that necessary succession of social phenomena, regarded in the direct light of intellectual evolution, which essentially controls their principal march. The different scientific processes, that serve definitely to confirm an empirical truth, were too well known to the man who had traced the philosophy of the positive sciences to justify him in thinking he had done enough in announcing a simple historical generalization. This sort of induction, he knew and said, needed, in order to become unexceptionable, the control of the "eminent faculty," by which we conceive, "a priori, all the fundamental relations of phenomena, independently of their direct investigation, according to indispensable bases furnished in advance by the biological theory of man. Independently of secondary causes, the movement that proceeds in accordance with the dynamic law, recognizes two universal causes, "the natural conditions of the human organization, and those of the medium wherein it has its development." But these two causes are ever at work, and, if