SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



scientific propriety as to apply his method of 

 fluxions to the solution of physiological or ethi- 

 cal problems, much discredit would have at- 

 tached to Newton, but none to the method of 

 fluxions. Succeeding inquirers would have criti- 

 cised him in the light of his own principles, and 

 would have felt obliged to mourn the decadence 

 of his godlike intellect, but the question would 

 have been mainly a personal one, afl^ecting in no 

 way our estimate of the Newtonian mathematics. 

 In like manner, when we characterize Comte's 

 later speculations as vagaries hardly compatible 

 with sanity, we cast no discredit upon the Posi- 

 tive Philosophy, since our whole argument im- 

 plies that these speculations were conducted in 

 utter disregard of those canons of research which 

 it is the chief glory of the Positive Philosophy 

 to have instituted. It is one of Comte's most 

 legitimate claims to immortal remembrance that, 

 with greater authority and far wider scientific re- 

 sources than Bacon, he succeeded in introducing 

 the objective method into departments of re- 

 search where previously metaphysical interpre- 

 tations had reigned supreme and unquestioned. 

 For this he must ever be regarded as one of the 

 worthiest among the " servants and interpreters 

 of Nature." And it is mainly because of his pre- 

 eminence as an inaugurator of scientific method 

 that it has become customary to identify with 

 Positivism every philosophy which, like the sys- 

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