120 REASONS FOE DISSENTING FEOM COMTE. 



panella, Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, Kant. And Sir William 

 Hamilton, in his &quot;Philosophy of the Unconditioned,&quot; first 

 published in 1829, has given a scientific demonstration of this 

 belief. Receiving it in common with other thinkers, from 

 preceding thinkers, M. Comte has not, to my knowledge, 

 advanced this belief. Nor indeed could he advance it, for 

 the reason already given he denies the possibility of that 

 analysis of thought which discloses the relativity of all 

 cognition. 



M . Comte reprobates the interpretation of different classes 

 of phenomena by assigning metaphysical entities as their 

 causes ; and I coincide in the opinion that the assumption 

 of such separate entities, though convenient, if not indeed 

 necessary, for purposes of thought, is, scientifically con 

 sidered, illegitimate. This opinion is, in fact, a corollary 

 from the last ; and must stand or fall with it. But like the 

 last it has been held with more or less consistency for gene 

 rations. M. Comte himself quotes Newton s favorite saying 

 &quot; ! Physics, beware of Metaphysics !&quot; Neither to this 

 doctrine, any more than to the preceding doctrines, has M. 

 Comte given a firmer basis. He has simply re- asserted it ; 

 and it w r as out of the question for him to do more. In this 

 case, as in the others, his denial of subjective psychology 

 debarred him from proving that these metaphysical entities are 

 mere symbolic conceptions which do not admit of verification. 



Lastly, M. Comte believes in invariable natural laws 

 absolute uniformities of relation among phenomena. But 

 very many before him have believed in them too. Long 

 familiar even beyond the bounds of the scientific world, the 

 proposition that there is an unchanging order in things, has, 

 within the scientific world, held, for generations, the position 

 of an established postulate : by some men of science recog 

 nized only as holding of inorganic phenomena ; but recog 

 nized by other men of science, as universal. And M. Comte, 

 accepting this doctrine from the past, has left it substantially 



