COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



The subjective method says that verification is 

 not necessary ; the objective method says that 

 verification is necessary ; and yet we are told 

 that the two are not " radically irreconcilable " ! 

 It is proposed to " regenerate " the subjective 

 method : yet there is no way of regenerating it 

 save by forcing it to verify its premises and 

 conclusions ; and when this is done, it ceases 

 to be the subjective and becomes the objective 

 method. But Comte thinks this is not neces- 

 sary ; the subjective method may be used pro- 

 vided it be employed only upon scientific ques- 

 tions, only in ascertaining the laws of pheno- 

 mena. That is to say, as long as you confine 

 yourself to scientific questions, and leave theo- 

 logy and metaphysics alone, you may imagine 

 some plausible hypothesis and then reason away 

 until you have worked out a whole theory of 

 natural phenomena, never stopping to observe 

 or experiment, but dogmatically proclaiming 

 your conclusions as infallible because they seem 

 to flow logically from the premises ! Can it be 

 that we are here listening to the man who spent 

 one half of his life in investigating the history 

 of science, — the man whose labours did so 

 much toward renovating inductive logic ? The 

 whole history of science proclairfis the utter 

 absurdity of the position taken by Comte. The 

 subjective method has been employed, from the 

 earliest times, upon purely scientific questions 

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