When I wrote the Level Plan for Church Union, I believed that the coming together of the churches would prove to be a blessing to the world, but I am now persuaded that it would be a curse, because the league of churches would co-operate with the league of nations in its robbing and enslaving schemes, the churches doing the lying and the nations the coercing.
We are living in the age of scientism and, in the case of its true sons and daughters, only scientifically demonstrated facts count in any argumentation.
From the scientific point of view it is seen that there is but one universal Kingdom of Life, Nature. This kingdom may be divided into three, perhaps four, states constituting the United States of Life: the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human.
Beginning with the highest, each of these states, except the lowest, is dependent upon the next lower. The only independent autonomous state in the kingdom is the mineral. This is the greatest both as to its extent and importance. It is the common source of every supply of all the states of life, and the seat of each of their governments.
All theologians and some metaphysicians postulate a fifth state of life, the divine, placing it above the rest as their source.
Comte, who preceded Marx as a social philosopher, and who is the founder of modern socialism of the reformatory type, as Marx is of the revolutionary one, had this to say about the theologians, metaphysicians and scientists, and he was right:
From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization and in our historical experience. This law is this: that each of our leading conceptions—each branch of our knowledge—passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different and radically opposed: viz., the theological method, the metaphysical and the positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding; the third is its fixed and definite state. The second is merely a state of transition.
In order for a man who has reached the scientific stage in his intellectual development to make anything out of the reasonings of those who are still in the stage of theological childhood or in that of metaphysical adolescence, it is necessary for him to use their insubstantialities as symbols of his substantialities.
The only difference that I can see between a theologian and a metaphysician is that, whereas the former personifies a generality which is the creation of his imagination, calling it a god, the latter objectifies a particularity which is the creation of his imagination calling it an entity; but all such personifications and objectifications (gods, things-in-themselves, vital entities, souls) are alike fictitious, because the childish theologians and metaphysicians proceed on the basis of philosophically assumed realities, not on scientifically established facts which pave the way on which an adult proceeds.
Comte analyzes the difference between the intellectuality of theological children, metaphysical youths and scientific adults as follows: