The passage from theological to positive philosophy is never suddenly accomplished. Their opposition is too sharply defined, and our intelligence does not lend itself to such an abrupt change. The metaphysical state serves as a transition. This state is distinguished from the two others, in that it has no principle proper which defines it. Theological philosophy is sufficient to itself. It forms a harmonious whole, at least so long as the germ of positiveness which it contains has not yet revealed its activity. In the same way, the positive state will be perfectly homogeneous. On the contrary, the metaphysical state is only described by a mixture of the two others. “The metaphysical conceptions,” wrote Comte in 1825, “proceed at the same time from theology and physics, or rather are only the former modified by the latter.”[18] Under ever varying and progressively attenuated forms, metaphysics procure the indispensable conciliation in order that the theological and positive philosophies may coexist in men’s minds, so long as the latter is not perfectly worked out. Under cover of metaphysical hypotheses, the scientific method has been able to push its conquests, without greatly alarming the defenders of theological philosophy. Thus metaphysical speculation has a very active critical quality. It has not slightly contributed to the decomposition of the ancient system of beliefs. In this sense, Comte regards the French philosophers of the XVIII. century, for the most part, as excellent representatives of the metaphysical spirit.
Nevertheless, if we must refer this intermediate stage to one of the two extremes, Comte does not hesitate to approximate it to the theological stage. As a matter of fact, metaphysical philosophy substitutes entities to will, and Nature to the Creator, but with a very analogous function. It supplies, at bottom, the same “explanation” of the real, although weakened by a stronger and stronger sense of the need of natural laws. This equivocal method preserves theology, “while destroying its principal mental consistency.” It denies the consequences in the name of the principles. Moreover, it offers no guarantee against an offensive return of theological conceptions, so long as they have not been replaced by positive notions. In the final conflict between the theological spirit, and the positive spirit, the metaphysicians will probably be seen, with the Deists, involved in a retrograde concentration.”[19] “Positive philosophy,” says Comte, “has neither historical nor dogmatic solidarity with this negative philosophy, and can only contemplate it as a final preparatory transformation of theological philosophy.”[20]
Thus the metaphysical stage is never other than an unstable compromise. It only lasts on condition that it changes continually. In default of a principle of its own, metaphysical philosophy is purely critical in character. As a fact, there are but two philosophies, that is to say two methods, two organic modes of thought. Only theological philosophy and positive philosophy allow the mind to construct a logical and harmonious system of ideas, the basis of a morality and of a religion. The theological spirit is “ideal in its advance, absolute in its conception, arbitrary in its application.” The positive spirit substitutes the method of observation to that of imagination, relative notions to absolute notions. It does not flatter itself with unlimited dominion over the phenomena of nature; it knows that its power is measured by its knowledge. The intellectual history of humanity shows by what stages it has passed from the former mode of thought to the latter.
III.
Comte regards the law of the three stages as demonstrated. “Seventeen years of continuous meditation on this great subject,” he writes in 1839, “discussed under all its aspects, and subjected to all possible tests, authorise me to affirm beforehand, without the slightest scientific hesitation, that we shall always see confirmed this historical proposition, which now seems to me as fully demonstrated as any of the general facts actually admitted in the other parts of natural philosophy.”[21] It could only be doubted if we found any branch of our knowledge which had gone back from the metaphysical to the theological state, or from the positive state to either of the two preceding states. But this case has never presented itself. The theoretical demonstration of the law has established that it could not present itself.
Indeed this demonstration has shown that the successive advance through the three stages, in invariable order, was the necessary form of progress of the human mind in the knowledge of phenomena. It is founded upon the nature of the mind. In Comte’s thought, the law of the three states could therefore have been equally called psychological or historical.
But we are not here concerned with introspective Psychology, which uses self-consciousness as a means of investigation. Comte does not recognize any scientific value in this method.[22] He even denies its possibility. Moreover the observation of a subject by himself, were it possible, would be of no help in the present case. For it would only reveal to him the present state of his individual intellect, and not the law of the evolution of the human mind. For this law to become manifest, we must consider not the individual, but the species. Giving up a fruitless effort at self-contemplation in its activity, the intellect must grasp the law of its successive phases in the progress of what it has produced. The philosophical history of our beliefs, of our conceptions, and of our systems: such is the consciousness which the human intellect can have of itself. There only, the philosopher sees the faculties of which this intellect contained the germ coming into play by turns, to reach a “durable harmony.” Then, once discovered, the law of the three States helps us to understand the intellectual evolution of each individual, and the study of the individual then furnishes us with a supplementary verification of the law. But, by itself, this study of the individual could not have established it. Whatever utility I may have often derived from the consideration of the individual, says Comte, it is evidently to the direct study of the species that I owed, not only the fundamental thought in my theory, but afterwards its specific development.
The law of the three States is then the general formula of the progress of the human intellect, considered not in an individual subject, but in the universal subject, which is humanity.
It is indeed also the “universal subject” that Kant has studied in his Critic of Pure Reason. But Kant’s method is altogether abstract and metaphysical, the universal subject of which he seeks the laws is a human mind “in itself,” considered in its essence. Comte, on the contrary, represents the universal subject as a concrete unity, which realized itself in time. For him, the study of the mental functions characteristic of man only becomes positive when it is carried out from an historical and sociological point of view. That is why the discovery of the law of the three States is an event of capital importance. It inaugurates the positive science of humanity, which was an indispensable condition for positive philosophy to be established. It marks the time when, all phenomena being henceforth studied after the same method, the “perfect logical coherence” is definitely assured. This law of social dynamics is the corner-stone of the whole positive system.