COSMISM AND POSITIVISM 



sics. Had Comte ever understood this doc- 

 trine, he would neither have sought to impose 

 upon us a phenomenal God, in the form of 

 idealized Humanity, nor would he have virtu- 

 ally abandoned his original Positivism in the 

 wild attempt to " regenerate " the subjective 

 method. All these things show that Comte 

 never really fathomed the distinction between 

 metaphysics and science ; and as the final out- 

 come of all this complicated misconception, we 

 find him, in his famous " Law of the Three 

 Stages," setting forth as the goal of all specula- 

 tive progress a state or habitude of mind which 

 never has existed and which never can exist. 

 Herein the antagonism between Cosmism and 

 Positivism becomes so fundamental as to out- 

 weigh all minor points of agreement, even were 

 the points of agreement ten times as numerous 

 as they are. For since we deny that the Posi- 

 tive mode of philosophizing, implying the re- 

 cognition of nothing beyond the contents of 

 observed facts, is a practicable mode at all, it is 

 clear that we cannot, save by the utter distor- 

 tion and perversion of human speech, be classi- 

 fied as Positivists. 



Casting aside, then, our third and fourth car- 

 dinal propositions, temporarily assumed for the 

 purpose of emphasizing this rejection of them, 

 we may briefly restate as follows the fundamen- 

 tal issue between Cosmism and Positivism. 



vol. n 1 1 3 



