47° Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



Positivism depends, prior to its completion by his discovery. The 

 dissipation of this chain of reasoning by the demonstration that there 

 is no special reason to expect finality in Comte abolishes the a priori 

 argument in favour of Positivism, and facilitates its submission 

 to a scrutiny which Comte sometimes seems to deprecate, or rather 

 to forbid. 



Mill criticised Comte because he had no method of proof. 

 Comte was quite awaxe that he had no abstract methodology, and 

 indeed he maintains that none is needed. " The study of methods," 

 he says, "is inseparable from that of doctrines."' (Pol.. IV., ::oo.) 

 We need not discuss the proper method of methodology. ]hit 

 whether Comte was right in this respect or not, he was certainly 

 deficient in regard tO' methodology itself. He leaves his readers in 

 doubt whether he is dealing with History or Ethics, and never makes 

 definite the .subject which he is studying in sociology. In fact, he is 

 not positivistic enough. It has been i)()inted out that he assigns no 

 reason for incorporating in the final conception of Humanit\ only 

 the good elements. (Caird, Social Philosophy of Comte. 98.) The 

 same inconclusiveness shews itself throughoait his treatment of the 

 mind. He did not treat of methodolog), and he and his followers 

 may defend this. He did not treat of P.sNchology, and his disciples 

 say it is a branch of biology (Lewes), or a new concrete science 

 coming under the abstract science of biology (Littre). The 

 same holds of language, of grammar, and of all the sciences of the 

 mind. But in such detailed treatment of the ideological sciences, 

 ideology itself is left unplaced. It may be true that he that planted 

 the ear shall hear, but we have not accounted for hearing when we 

 have described the physiology of the ear. Now, it is impossible to 

 regard sociology as a physical science separate from biology, and if 

 it is treated separately because it is ideological, Comte has erred 

 both in not doing so and in omitting other ideological sciences. 

 Either sociology is a concrete science under the abstract science of 

 Biology, or there are other sciences which Comte fails tr> account 

 for, and a gulf between the sciences which breaks his synthe.sis into- 

 two-. The plain fact is that Comte was extremely ignorant of mental 

 science, and was never thoroughly awake tO' its problems. His men- 

 tion of "the illustrious Kant'' clearly shews that he had neither 

 studied noi" understood him (Phil., VI., 619, cf. Caird, op. cit. 104), 

 and in his review of his predecessors in the science of sociology 

 he only mentions Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Condorcet. (Phil., 

 IV., ch. 47.) His ignorance of philosophy naturally resulted in 

 superficiality in dealing with problems of the mind. For iiistance, 

 lie is never tired of declaiming against the conception of (^ausation 

 (e.g., Phil., VI., 603), but he is quite content to account for it by 

 itself, that is, by supposing that the whole race, at a certain stage of its 

 development, ascribes to- inanimate things the causative power which 

 maji has himself. Had Comte not despised abstract methodology 

 he might have stopped to define the subject which sociology 

 examines, and have started sociology on the proper track as a science 

 essentially mental. Even if it should eventually prove ix)ssible to 



