COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



lacunae in a theorem which professes to be the 

 fundamental law of social progress. 



But this formula, as it stands, is not the 

 whole of Comte*s fundamental law of history. 

 With the advance from theological, through 

 metaphysical, to positive conceptions of the 

 world, Comte couples an advance from military 

 to industrial life, through an ill-defined inter- 

 mediate stage — inserted, doubtless, to complete 

 the threefold parallelism — which he calls the 

 " legal " stage. Thoroughly to explain what he 

 means by this " legal *' stage of society would 

 require more detail than I can here well indulge 

 in. We must be content with observing that he 

 means to designate that epoch, which indeed we 

 have not yet left behind us, in which parliamen- 

 tary legislation is thought competent to renovate 

 society artificially, — in which it is supposed 

 that legislatures can make men rich by giving 

 them paper money, intellectual by patronizing 

 literature, temperate by closing dram-shops. As 

 this phase of opinion was very conspicuous in 

 the eighteenth century, coupled with metaphy- 

 sical systems of political ethics deduced from 

 revolutionary theories of the " inherent rights 

 of man," Comte links this whole set of doctrines 

 together, and makes a so-called metaphysico- 

 legal stage in social progress. But I cannot 

 think this a happy generalization. This " legal '* 

 stage is, at the best, a phase of intellectual de- 



2S'^ 



