OF SOCIETY. 483 



On the other side Comte desired to lay bare and 

 apply the approved logic of the exact and natural 

 sciences, and to use it for the solution of practical 

 problems which his master Saint-Simon and some of 

 his disciples had attempted to solve by hasty generalisa- 

 tions. Neither the work of Hegel nor that of Comte, 

 neither the logic of the idea nor that of science was so 

 easily grasped as these two leaders of thought might 

 perhaps imagine ; but they have respectively defined 

 problems which have not ceased to occupy the attention 

 of critics and analysts ever since. Unconscious, perhaps, 

 of the difficulty which equally besets both these tasks 

 when treated in a purely theoretical manner, they never- 

 theless both resorted to an empirical method which was 

 easier and certainly more interesting, namely, the his- 

 torical method. Both founded a philosophy of history. 



A study of history was, in both cases, to define as 

 well as to exemplify the main principle or fundamental 

 truth which each of these two thinkers respectively 

 wished to establish ; and accordingly the two chief 

 works in which they embodied their main thesis are, to 

 a large extent, historical. The result is more definite 

 in Comte's work than it is in that of Hegel. Comte's 43. 



' Law of 



main idea is that expressed in the celebrated ' Law of t* e Th r 



States. ' 



the Three States,' 1 which in his earlier treatise he ex- 



1 The 'Law of the Three States,' 

 which Comte repeats endlessly 

 throughout his writings, has been 

 traced to other thinkers before him, 

 and similarly the dialectical formula 

 of Hegel thesis, antithesis, and 

 synthesis has been traced back to 

 the writings of Fichte. So far as 

 Comte is concerned, there is an in- 

 teresting and instructive passage in 



Ravaisson's 'Rapport' (p. 54 sqq.), 

 frequently quoted already. He 

 traces it to Burdin, a medical friend 

 of Saint-Simon's, who in 1813, in a 

 conversation reported by the latter, 

 remarked that all sciences had 

 begun by being conjectural, and 

 that they must end by being posi- 

 tive ; adding that some sciences 

 arrive earlier at this stage than 



