HISTORICAL METHOD. 643 



But whatever decision competent judges may pronounce on the results 

 arrived at by any individual inquirer, the method now characterized is that 

 by which the derivative laws of social order and of social progress must 

 be sought. By its aid we may hereafter succeed not only in looking far 

 forward into the future history of the human race, but in determining what 

 artificial means may be used, and to what extent, to accelerate the natural 

 progress in so far as it is beneficial; to compensate for whatever may be 

 its inherent inconveniences or disadvantages; and to guard against the 

 dangers or accidents to which our species is exposed from the necessary 

 incidents of its progression. Such practical instructions, founded on the 

 highest branch of speculative sociology, will form the noblest and most 

 beneficial portion of the Political Art. 



That of this science and art even the foundations are but begiiming to 

 be laid, is sufficiently evident. But the superior minds are fairly turning 

 themselves toward thgt object. It has become the aim of really scientific 

 thinkers to connect by theories the facts of universal history : it is acknowl- 

 edged to be one of the requisites of a general system of social doctrine, 

 that it should explain, so far as the data exist, the main facts of history; 

 and a Philosophy of History is generally admitted to be at once the verifi- 

 cation, and the initial form, of the Philosophy of the Progress of Society. 



If tlie endeavors now making in all the more cultivated nations, and be- 

 ginning to be made even in England (usually the last to enter into the gen- 

 eral movement of the European mind) for the construction of a Philosophy 

 of History, shall be directed and controlled by those views of the nature of 

 sociological evidence which I have (very briefly and imperfectly) attempt- 

 ed to characterize ; they can not fail to give birth to a sociological system 

 widely removed from the vague and conjectural character of all former at- 

 tempts, and worthy to take its place, at last, among the sciences. When 

 this time shall come, no important branch of human affairs will be any 

 longer abandoned to empiricism and unscientific surmise : the circle of hu- 

 man knowledge will be complete, and it can only thereafter receive further 

 enlargement by perpetual expansion from within. 



produce events by special intei-positions. Originally all natural events were ascribed to such 

 interpositions. At present every educated person rejects this explanation in regard to all 

 classes of ])henomena of which the laws have been fully ascertained ; though some have not 

 yet reached the point of referring all phenomena to the idea of Law, but believe that rain and 

 sunshine, famine and pestilence, victory and defeat, death and life, are issues which the Cre- 

 ator does not leave to the operation of his general laws, but reserves to be decided by express 

 acts of volition. M. Comte's theory is the negation of this doctrine. 



Dr. Wheweli equally misunderstands M. Comte's doctrine respecting the second or meta- 

 physical stage of speculation. M. Comte did not mean that "discussions concerning ideas" 

 are limited to an eai-ly stage of inquiry, and cease when science enters into the positive stage. 

 (Philosophic of Discovery, pp. 226 et seq.) In all M. Comte's speculations as much stress is 

 laid on the process of clearing up our conceptions as on the ascertainment of facts. When 

 M. Comte speaks of the metaphysical stage of speculation, he means the stage in which men 

 speak of "Nature" and other abstractions as if tliey were active forces, producing effects; 

 when Nature is said to do this, or forbid that; when Nature's horror of a vacuum. Nature's 

 non-admission of a break, Nature's vis medicatrix, were offered as explanations of phenome- 

 na ; when the qualities of things were mistaken for real entities dwelling in the things ; when 

 the phenomena of living bodies were thought to be accounted for by being referred to a "vi- 

 tal force ;" when, in short, the abstract names of phenomena were mistaken for the causes of 

 their existence. In this sense of the word it can not be reasonably denied that the meta- 

 physical explanation of phenomena, equally with the theological, gives way before the ad- 

 vance of real science. 



That the final, or positive stage, as conceived by M. Comte, has been equally misunderstood, 

 and that, notwithstanding some expressions open to just criticism, M. Comte never dreamed 

 of denying the legitimacy of inquiry into all causes which are accessible to human investiga- 

 tion, I have pointed out in a former place. 



