"In the metaphysic state, which is, in its essence, a modification of the former, the supernatural agents are displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena—whose explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its corresponding entity.
"At last, in the positive state the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the search after the origin and destination of the universe, and the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is to say, their invariable relations of succession and of similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established between the various individual phenomena and certain general facts, the number of which the progress of science tends continually to diminish.
"The theologic system has reached the highest state of perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted the providential action of one only being for the capricious agency of the numerous independent divinities who had previously been imagined. In like manner, the last term of the metaphysic system consists in conceiving, instead of the different special entities, one great general entity, nature, considered as the only source of all phenomena. The perfection of the positive system, towards which it unceasingly tends, though it is not probable it can ever attain to it, would be the ability to represent all observable phenomena as particular cases of some one general fact; such, for instance, as that of gravitation."—Vol. I. p. 5.
After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought whatever, he proceeds thus:—
"It is easily conceivable that our understanding, compelled to proceed by degrees almost imperceptible, could not pass abruptly, and without an intermediate stage, from the theologic to the positive philosophy. Theology and physics are so profoundly incompatible, their conceptions have a character so radically opposed, that before renouncing the one to employ exclusively the other, the mind must make use of intermediate conceptions of a bastard character, fit, for that very reason, gradually to operate the transition. Such is the natural destination of metaphysical conceptions; they have no other real utility. By substituting, in the study of phenomena, for supernatural directive agency an inseparable entity residing in things, (although this be conceived at first merely as an emanation from the former,) man habituates himself, by degrees, to consider only the facts themselves, the notion of these metaphysical agents being gradually subtilized, till they are no longer in the eyes of men of intelligence any thing but the names of abstractions. It is impossible to conceive by what other process our understanding could pass from considerations purely supernatural, to considerations purely natural, from the theologic to the positive régime."—P. 13.
We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition that theology is not the last, as well as the first, of our forms of thought—against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work, made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject, though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with this protest, and with adding—as a fact of experience, which, in estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted on—that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident. Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great article of religion—that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times, men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their inductive labours by assigning that unity and correlation which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read thought in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.
Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration of the new law. That there is, in the statement here made of the course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a law—a scientific law—which from its nature admits of no exception; at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger commixtures than this, they should "mutually exclude each other"—that, in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and proportions, both theologic and positive.
What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the succession of these several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here called the positive method of thought is not equally spontaneous to the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified, or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have been a portion of his experience entertained merely as experience. The very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?
Or does M. Comte mean this only—which we presume to be the case—that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity? If so, what necessity for this metaphysic apparatus for the sole purpose of transition? If each of these great modes, the positive and theological, has its independent source, and is equally spontaneous—if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though in different stages of development, the function attributed to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it; there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of a law of succession in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of invariable sequence, between the phenomena?
Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are not equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition, it would follow—since the mind, or organization, of man remains from age to age the same in its fundamental powers—that, at this very time, no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic. Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a theology of the rudest description—a result certainly not contemplated by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they are equally spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed to the metaphysic of effectuating a transition between them? And how can we describe that as a scientific law in which there is confessedly no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or laws, capable of explaining it.