Comte's Positive Philosophy. 135 



apparently maintaining the relativity not only of 

 all knowledge, but of all existence likewise. Not 

 so M. Comte, who ever implicitly recognizes the 

 existence of noumena, while insisting upon their 

 eternal banishment to the realm of the Unknow- 

 able. We should strive, therefore, not to ascer- 

 tain the causes of phenomena, either primary or 

 final, but only to formulate the laws of their co- 

 existence and sequence. With the study of phe- 

 nomena as causes, i. e. as invariable antecedents 

 of other phenomena, M. Comte has never, as it 

 has been foolishly asserted, found fault. His phi- 

 losophy is entirely concerned with the investiga- 

 tion of these, in distinction from noumenal causes, 

 the origin of phenomena, and the end for which 

 they exist. Of this bridge of Time, which man 

 and Nature alike are traversing, he forbids us to 

 strain our vision in vain efforts to discern the be- 

 ginning and the end, immersed as they both are 

 in the utter darkness of eternity. 



But though M. Comte did not originate the 

 doctrine of the relativity of all knowledge, and 

 though while ignoring psychologic research he 

 can in no wise prove it, he has yet, as Mr. Mill 

 observes, made it in a great measure his own doc- 

 trine by his method of treating it. The first dis- 

 tinctive feature of his philosophy is the assertion 



