680 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Philosophy of the Sciences and " The Philosophy of 

 History." Though some chapters of the ' Philosophic 

 Positive ' will probably retain an important place in 

 philosophical literature as being of lasting value, Comte 

 was primarily, as little as Francis Bacon, a scientific 

 thinker ; his was not exclusively a philosophy of science. 

 Scientific thought was for him merely a method, not an 



52. object in itself; it was a method by which the great 

 *im. social problems created by the French Eevolution were 



to be brought nearer to solution. 



I stated above that Comte was not led to philo- 

 sophical speculation by a religious interest. This is 

 correct only if we limit the religious interest to that 

 problem which, as we have seen, interested the leaders 

 of philosophical thought in Germany during the classical 

 age of German poetry and speculation : the seventy 

 years from 1770 to 1840. I defined it there as the 

 problem of the relation of knowledge to faith, which 

 was gradually transformed into the question of belief 



53. and unbelief. This problem did not trouble the mind 



His religious 



interest. of Comte, but if we take a different view of the religious 

 problem and identify it with the question of the moral 

 order and spiritual government of human society, then 

 we must admit that this was exactly the problem which 

 presented itself to Comte's mind at a very early period 

 of his life; and this in consequence of the anarchy 

 which prevailed in his country as a consequence of the 

 great Eevolution. In fact, it was the problem which 

 the Eevolution had set before the age as its most 

 important task. 



We may at once contrast this with the historical 



