170 COSMIC I'll ILOSOPHT. [vs.*. 



each other. At the beginning of the " Philosophic Positive," 

 he tells us that " the mind employs successively in each of its 

 researches three methods of philosophizing, of which the 

 character is essentially different and even radically opposed 

 — first the theological method, then the metaphysical, lastly 

 the positive. The theological system arrives at the highest per- 

 fection 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 primi- 

 tively imagined. Likewise the perfection of the metaphysical 

 system consists in conceiving, instead of many particular 

 entities, one grand entity, Nature, as the source of all pheno- 

 mena. Finally the perfection of the positive system would 

 be to represent all observable phenomena as paiticular 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 co- 

 existed with each other since the dawn of speculation ; and 

 that, in particular, the metaphysical method is merely a 

 modification of the theological method. 



The truth is, however, that the so-called "Law of the 

 Three Stages" was an empirical generalization from the facts of 

 history, and that, with his customary indifference to psycho- 

 logical interpretations, Comte did not concern himself with 

 the character of the mental processes involved in the 

 speculative progression which he sought to formulate. What 

 Comte really saw was, that men, when they first began to 

 speculate upon the phenomena of nature, imagined behind 

 every phenomenon, save possibly a few of the most familiar 

 ones, an impelling will, like the human will ; that, as the 

 anthropomorphic character of this conception slowly faded 

 away, it left the conception of a hiddeii Power or powers, to 

 ascertain the nature of which was long supposed to be the 



