Now, up to the present time, the positive mode of thought has not shown itself in a position to respond to this demand. It has only produced individual sciences. Positive Science has been “special” and fragmentary, always attached to the investigation of a more or less restricted group of phenomena. With a laudable prudence, which has made her strength, she has applied herself solely to works of analysis and partial synthesis. She has never ventured upon a synthesis of the whole of the real within our reach. Until now theologies and metaphysics alone have made the effort, and this office is, still to-day, the chief reason of their existence, this office must be fulfilled. The human mind is carried, by a spontaneous and necessary movement, towards the point of view of the universal. Sooner than leave the philosophical problems without an answer, it would remain attached indefinitely to the solutions, chimerical as they are, which the theologies and metaphysics offer him. In short, in the present state of things, the positive mind is “real” but “special.” The theologico-metaphysical mind is “universal” but “fictitious.” We can neither sacrifice the “reality” of science, nor the “universality” of philosophy. Which is the way out of this difficulty?
Three solutions alone are conceivable:
1. To find a reconciliation which will make it possible for the two modes of thought to coexist without contradiction:
2. To re-establish unity by making the theologico-metaphysical method universal:
3. To re-establish unity by making the positive method universal:
II.
The first solution at first sight appears to be the most acceptable. Why should not the positive investigation of the divers orders of natural phenomena be reconciled with a theological or metaphysical conception of the universe? Nothing prevents one from conceiving the phenomena as governed by invariable laws, and from seeking at the same time, by another method, for the reason which renders nature in general intelligible. Positive science liberated at last from theology and metaphysics, would assure them of the independence which she claims for herself. Thus, with growing precision would be fixed the boundaries on the one hand of the domain proper of positive science, and on the other that of the speculation which goes beyond experience.
This reconciliation, says Comte, has for a long time been considered legitimate, because for a long time it was indispensable. Up to the present time Theology and Metaphysics have been the only comprehensive conceptions of the world which the human mind has formed. They have fulfilled a necessary function. Moreover, without them positive science could neither have originated nor have been developed. But, as she is their heiress, she is also their antagonist. Her progress necessarily involves their downfall. The parallel history of religions and metaphysical dogmas on the one hand and of positive knowledge on the other shows that the conciliation between them has never been a lasting one.
Not that the antagonism between the two modes of thought can be solved by a supreme dialectical struggle in which the theological and metaphysical dogmas would be worsted. It is not thus that dogmas come to an end. They disappear, according to Comte’s striking expression, by desuetude, as is the case with forsaken methods. As a matter of fact, have they not been as methods for the human mind, which sought within a single point of view to embrace the universality of things before they had been sufficiently studied? Man demanded from his imagination at first sight an absolute knowledge of the real, which reason could only give him at a later stage, on a very modest scale, entirely relative and after the patient labour of the sciences. But by degrees, as he has advanced in the positive study of phenomena, he has forsaken the theological and metaphysical “explanations.” Without relinquishing altogether the search after causes, he has taken the habit of relegating them to more and more remote regions. Already, in what concerns phenomena whose concept has reached a positive stage we can very well do without any assumption of causes. It suffices for us to represent these phenomena to ourselves as subject to laws. When all the phenomena of all orders are habitually conceived in this way, when the idea of their laws, whatever they may be, will have become equally familiar to us, the metaphysical mode of thought will have disappeared.
In a word, as soon as the whole of science shall have become positive, philosophy will necessarily be positive also: For we only have at our disposal one point of view concerning things. All our real knowledge bears upon phenomena and their laws. If, therefore, considered one by one, all the orders of phenomena are conceived according to the positive mode of thought, how could it be that considered together, and in their totality, they should be conceived according to a mode of thought completely different, and even inconsistent with the former one?