[Footnote 52: Ibid., p. 210.]
"M. Comte," says M. Littré, "made it a duty to speak in public without any reticence, to deduce his positive truths, and to confront them with the conceptions of Theology and of Metaphysics. . . . 'Religiosity' is in his eyes not only a weakness, but an avowal of want of power." [Footnote 53]
[Footnote 53: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littré, pp. 198-255.]
"The 'positive state' is that state of the mind in which it conceives that phenomena are governed by constant laws, from which prayer and adoration can demand nothing, but to which intelligence and science may address their demands; so that, by familiarizing himself with those laws more and more, and by conforming to them more and more, man acquires an ever-growing empire over nature and over himself, which empire is the sum of all civilization. The 'theological state,' on the contrary, is that state of the mind which conceives that phenomena are the results of volition, or, if the social development has arrived at Monotheism, that they are the results of a single, all-wise, and all-powerful will. This providence, essentially collective where Polytheism is supposed, essentially single in the case of Monotheism, governs the world, dispenses its good and its evil, lays its finger upon human events, and regards the destiny of each individual man. Such is the contrast between the two doctrines. … Profiting by the instruction of the illustrious De Maistre, our French priests at last comprehended that ultramontanism was the only logical consequence deducible from their essential principles. The more the positive school defines the real character of its progress, the more must we see this retrograde concentration also develop itself; which will involve at some later epoch Deists themselves, as Positivism proceeds to gain complete ascendancy; an ascendancy, in other respects, far more likely to be furthered than retarded by such coordination of its adversaries, for this will tend to give at last to the struggles of philosophy a decisive character; but the Positivists will alone succeed in prevailing (at least as far as speculative doctrines are concerned) over the coalition of all the philosophical forces of the ancient school, whether metaphysical or theological." [Footnote 54]
[Footnote 54: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littré, pp. 370, 434. ]
M. Comte had even more aversion for Metaphysics than for Theology. He took particular offense at the contemporary spiritualistic school, and the scientific psychology of MM. Royer, Collard, Maine de Biran, Cousin, and Jouffroy.
"In no view," said he, "is there any room for this illusory psychology; this final transformation of a theology, which men strive, nowadays, so idly to reanimate; for—without troubling itself either with the physiological study of our intellectual organs, or with the observation of those rational processes, which in effect direct our different scientific researches—Psychology pretends to arrive at the discovery of the fundamental laws of the human mind by contemplating that very mind—that is to say, by making complete abstraction both of causes and of effects." [Footnote 55]
[Footnote 55: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Auguste Comte, vol. i, p. 34.]