MODERN BIOLOGY 443 



a universal knowledge, whereby all the problems of life would be solved, 

 not only the theoretically scientific, but also, and above all, the social and 

 political. The first concept of this system was drawn up in the form of private 

 lectures, to which he succeeded in attracting a large number of listeners; 

 then during the period 1830-4^ he worked out his famous Cours de philosophie 

 positive in six large volumes. His method of working was peculiar to him- 

 self; trusting to his phenomenal memory, he had recourse to no literature 

 of any kind when at work, and he used to write down the contents of a 

 whole volume at a time without corrections, after having worked out in his 

 head the gist of what he was going to write. It is natural that in such cir- 

 cumstances his work should be full of inaccuracies in matters of fact as well 

 as of stylistic redundancies. In several cultural circles the influence of the 

 work has been deep; in view of the important part that biology plays in it, 

 it is worth giving a summary of the book here, all the more so as it had its 

 effect on the biological theories of the succeeding era. 



Comte s positive philosophy 

 It is a "positive philosophy" that Comte desires to create; by "philosophy" 

 he means, as did Aristotk; whom he greatly admired, a knowledge of the 

 whole of existence; by "positive" he means "/<« 77ieme chose que reel et utile.'' 

 This "real and useful" knowledge he will substitute for the theological 

 and metaphysical, which he considers to have predominated during previous 

 epochs. He finds the essence of existence to be in the development that has 

 always taken, and is still taking, place; in this instance he paved the way 

 for the explanation of life that has governed human culture since his time. 

 In contrast to so many later positivist thinkers, however, he does not look 

 for this development in nature — it is characteristic that geology does not 

 interest him at all — but in human life. In the history of human thought 

 three successive phases have followed one another: the theological, in which 

 it was believed that personal divine powers were the cause of all that hap- 

 pened; the metaphysical, when for these were substituted impersonal forces; 

 and the positivist, in which men no longer ruminate over the causes of all 

 that takes place, but are content to establish facts and determine their 

 course. The theological stage culminated in the Catholicism of the Middle 

 Ages, for which Comte, in spite of all, expresses great sympathy. As the 

 founders of positivism he cites Bacon and Galileo, whose explanation of 

 nature should, in his opinion, be applied to all phenomena. The middle 

 phase, the metaphysical, is, in his view, the worst of all; it is the belief of 

 the idealistic philosophy in spiritual reality, beginning with Descartes and 

 ending with the romantic philosophy, that is sharply, and for the most part 

 justly, criticized. Instead, his explanation of nature is the same as Galileo's — 

 that it is not possible to find out what the forces of nature are, but only how 

 they operate. In this he is undeniably right; his weakness, on the other hand, 



