scientific thinker, and even to leave the essential principles, out of which his religion came, obscure and unintelligible. His undoubted influence lies in certain great conceptions, with which he has enriched and illuminated the modern mind. He has, as we think, mistaken the universality and exaggerated the value of these conceptions; but the persistence, and even the extravagance, with which he has enforced them, have been in some respects of genuine benefit both to the cause of science1 and of religion.

I. Starting from the great law of evolution with which he opens the 'Cours de Philosophie Positive,' Comte's philosophy branches into three leading conceptions, under which all that is distinctive in his thought and work as a philosopher may be summed up. These are his method, his classification of the sciences, and his sociological doctrine; and with a brief review of these, we shall lead up to a criticism of his system. Already in his announcement of his initial principle or law of evolution, which he regarded as his great discovery, he begs the whole question in his own favour against previous systems of thought. All our conceptions, he says,—every branch of knowledge, passes through the theological and metaphysical stage towards the Positive, which is final and exclusive of the others. In other words, theology merges into metaphysics, and metaphysics gives way to science. This he proclaims as a universal law, and this is the sum and substance of his general doctrine; but we shall be in a better position for seeing its full

1 This was recognised in the first elaborate notice of M. Comte's 'Philosophie Positive' which appeared in this country (Edin. Rev., Aug. 1838) -a paper understood to be from the pen of Sir David Brewster.

meaning, and critically examining it, when we have passed in review his method and the great hierarchy of the sciences to the exposition of which his chief work is devoted.

The Positive method is the basis of the Positive philosophy; and it is peculiarly necessary to distinguish it from this philosophy, because there is a sense in which the method is universally accredited and accepted. What is this method? It is nothing more nor less than the application of the principle that in the study of nature we are concerned merely with the facts before us and the relations which connect those facts with one another. We have nothing to do with the supposed essence or hidden nature of the facts. Their absolute character, cause, or purpose is beyond our scrutiny. The science of any order of phenomena has nothing to do with the origin or ultimate explanation of the phenomena, but simply with their observed properties and the laws or order of sequence. according to which these properties are formed and subsist. Facts, and the invariable laws which govern them, are, in other words, the pursuit, and the only legitimate pursuit, of science.

This is the method of Positive inquiry now universally recognised in every department of science, although as yet imperfectly carried out in some. It was formally announced by Bacon, and is commonly associated with his name, although in truth it was but imperfectly understood and applied by that great teacher of Method.1 It received a definite impulse from the

1 The scientific or inductive method is so commonly associated with Bacon as to be often styled "Baconian"; but, on the one hand, Bacon neither discovered the method, which, in its fundamental principle that

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speculations of Hume, who, carrying to their legiti mate conclusions the philosophy of his day, showed that we could get nothing from nature, or sense-experience, but ideas of coexistence and succession-or, in other words, of facts, and the sequences which connect them; and who attempted to prove that this was equally true of the world of mind as of matter. From the one realm as well as the other he cast out all ideas of substance and cause, and left nothing but phenomena and their relations of association. Hume is therefore the principal precursor of Comte, as he himself acknowledges. He anticipated to the full the fundamental principle of the Comtean philosophy. He did more than this. For he saw clearly the use that could be made of it polemically; the sceptical or negative bearings of the principle are equally to be found in his writings. So far, therefore, there is nothing original in Positivism. The Scottish sceptic had already anticipated the nature of its attacks against theological philosophy.

But while Comte cannot claim any originality for his method, or even the anti-theological application all science must be based on an adequate observation of facts, is at least as old as Aristotle even in its formal statement; and, on the other hand, he had, as has been frequently pointed out, so imperfect a conception of the development of the principle which rigorously confines all investigation to facts and their relations, that he specially aimed, by experiment, to trace under the scholastic name of "Forms," the primary essences or causes of phenomena. What Bacon really did was to give, by his powerful genius and imperial sweep of thought, an unprecedented impulse to the great scientific conception of interpreting nature rather than imposing means upon it. And his services in this respect have been so transcendent as to entitle him along with Descartes to be considered the father of modern philosophy. In this respect Comte expressly owns his obligation to both of them as well as to Leibniz, but still more to Hume, as we have mentioned in the text.

1 Cat, Pos., Preface, p. vii. Compare translation.

which he makes of it, he deserves great merit for the luminous consistency with which he has applied it to all natural phenomena, and so expelled from the domain of science many vague and mystical hypotheses which lingered in his time, and even still linger. He has shown, for example, in relation to gravity, chem-: ical affinity, and the phenomena of heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, how purely arbitrary and supposititious are the "principles" or "hidden forces". which have been associated with these phenomena, and under which even men of science are still prone to conceive them. Gravity is nothing in itself. It is an invariable numerical relation betwixt the celestial masses and the various particles of matter, and nothing more. Chemical affinity is nothing but a relation of a similar character subsisting betwixt certain substances. It has no existence apart from these substances, and no determining influence over them. It is simply an expression denoting that in given circumstances given relations will always be found to arise in particular phenomena. All the old ideas of "fluids" and "ethers," as a groundwork or substratum or vehicle of physical phenomena, are equally illusory. They are not in the facts; they are hypotheses added to the facts, in their character incapable of verification, and, instead of enlightening thought or serving to explain nature, in themselves requiring explanation. The well-known "vital principle," which has so long played a part in physiological science, disappears under the same rigorous application of modern induction. It is, no less than the preceding "entities," a pure hypothesis, misleading because diverting attention from the facts, and starting a de

lusive play of conjecture, rather than a true path of discovery. All such imaginary "entities" never help -on the contrary, they greatly encumber-the progress of science.

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Comte did well in expelling all such hypotheses from the scientific domain. He not only took up the Baconian method, but he purified and extended it. He has at once given it a wider application than any previous thinker, and far more clearly understood its import. The very exaggeration and exclusiveness with which he has used it has served to bring out more precisely its true meaning. Facts and the connections of these facts-in Positivist language, phenomena and their laws-constitute the sum of knowledge to be derived from the physical method of inquiry. Wherever we penetrate we find that natural phenomena are linked together in endless sequence; there is no jar to the harmony of their movement; there are no disconnected threads in the vast work of material succession. doubtedly the more universal recognition of a reign of order everywhere has been greatly due to the Comtean type of thought. So far the Positivist method has vindicated itself thoroughly to the higher intelligence. Comte glories in this, and rushes to the conclusion that beyond the natural order there is nothing. That he is wrong in this we shall endeavour to prove. But what we wish to point out in the meantime is, that on his basis he is far more consistent than many who virtually occupy the same position; for he plainly implies not only that we know nothing except phenomena and their relations-facts particular or general-but that the Positivist philosopher should in consequence discharge from his language not only such abstract enti