SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



ground for accusing it — as represented by Mr. 

 Mill and M. Littre — of inconsistency in its 

 adherence to the scientific method for which the 

 doctrine of relativity supplies the justification. 

 Since Bacon's time there have been few thinkers 

 who have insisted more strenuously than Comte 

 upon the necessity of distinguishing between 

 legitimate and illegitimate hypotheses, or who 

 have more clearly prescribed the conditions 

 under which alone can any given hypothesis 

 be regarded as legitimate. Unfortunately, by a 

 strange and ironical fate, the writer who con- 

 tributed so much toward the establishment of 

 sound methods of philosophizing lived to be- 

 come a proficient in the subjective method, a 

 pitiless scorner of crucial experiments, and a 

 weaver of vagaries which might well be matched 

 with those above cited from Plato and Hegel. 

 The historical importance of this phenomenon 

 is great enough to justify us in treating it at 

 some length. 



Though in Comte's earlier works a some- 

 what obtuse sense of the requirements of veri- 

 fication is now and then to be noticed ; and 

 though there is a tendency, which visibly in- 

 creases toward the end of the " Philosophic 

 Positive," to substitute intensely dogmatic ex 

 cathedra dicta in the place of arguments ; yet 

 the necessity for strict obedience to the objec- 

 tive method is nowhere explicitly denied. It 



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