Even while absolutely rejecting Theology, M. Comte treated it with more esteem than Metaphysics.
"We are," he said, "too disposed, nowadays, to ignore the immense benefits due to religious influence. The positive philosophy, however paradoxical it may be to claim for it such a peculiarity, is virtually the only philosophy capable of worthily appreciating all the participation of the spirit of religion in the whole grand development of humanity. Is it not directly evident that, as by an invincible organic necessity, moral efforts have almost always to combat to some degree or other the most energetic impulses of our nature; the theological spirit was imperatively called upon to furnish to social discipline that general basis which was quite indispensable at a time when human foresight, whether of men in masses or of men as individuals, was certainly far too limited to offer any sufficient point d'appui to influences purely rational?"
… "When the positive philosophy shall have acquired that character of universality which it is still without, it will be capable of replacing entirely, with all its native superiority, that theological philosophy and that metaphysical philosophy of which this universality is in these days the sole real peculiarity, and which, deprived of this motive for preference, will have for our successors nothing but an historical existence." [Footnote 56]
[Footnote 56: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Comte, vol. v, p. 73; vol. i, p. 23.]
I do not pause to notice in how many respects this language is superficial, confused, and incoherent. I only draw attention to the fundamental idea which it manifests—matter, the forces of matter, and its laws; these are the sole objects of human knowledge, the sole domain of the human mind. Aware of, and embarrassed by the objections which the idea has from the beginning of time excited, M. Littré has striven to rid himself of them by an admission, sincere no doubt, like everything that he thinks, and everything that he says, but full in its turn of confusion and incoherence.
"The positive philosophy," says he, "is at once a system which comprehends all that is known of the world of man and of society, and also a general method, containing in itself all the ways by which men have come to learn all these things. What is beyond, whether, materially speaking, that space without limit, or intellectually that concatenation of never-ending causes, all this is absolutely inaccessible to the human mind. By inaccessible is not meant null or non-existent. Immensity in matter, as in intellect, is connected by a close band with what we know, and it is only by such an alliance that it becomes an idea positive in itself, and of the same order; what I mean is, that by so touching and bordering what we know, immensity appears under the double character of reality and of inaccessibility. It is an ocean which dashes upon our shores, and for which we have nor bark nor sail, but the clear vision of which is as salutary as it is formidable." [Footnote 57]
[Footnote 57: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littré, p. 519.]