ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND COSMISM 



in order to ascertain how far Comte understood 

 that character. 



Upon this point, as upon many others, Comte 

 has left on record assertions which, if literally 

 interpreted, simply cancel each other. At the be- 

 ginning of the " Philosophic Positive," he tells 

 us that " the mind employs successively in each 

 of its researches three methods of philosophiz- 

 ing, of which the character is essentially different 

 and even radically opposed — first the theolo- 

 gical method, then the metaphysical, lastly the 

 positive. The theological system arrives at the 

 highest perfection of which it is susceptible, 

 when it has substituted the providential action 

 of a single Being for the capricious play of the 

 innumerable independent deities which were 

 primitively imagined. Likewise the perfection 

 of the metaphysical system consists in con- 

 ceiving, instead of many particular entities, one 

 grand entity. Nature, as the source of all phe- 

 nomena. Finally the perfection of the positive 

 system would be to represent all observable phe- 

 nomena as particular cases of a single general 

 fact." And hence, says Comte, " these three 

 general systems of conceptions concerning the 

 ensemble of phenomena mutually exclude each 

 other." Now Comte elsewhere maintains that, 

 so far from mutually excluding each other, the 

 three methods of philosophizing have coexisted 

 with each other since the dawn of speculation ; 

 251 



