16 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PARTI 



what students call the positive religions of the world, 

 claiming, many or most of them, to come by revela- 

 tion. These had played their part in promoting 

 human or social well-being during the theological 

 stage of history, but they were long ago effete ; the 

 metaphysical stage had superseded them, and it in 

 turn was now yielding to the final or positive stage 

 of knowledge. The other three authorities are all 

 metaphysical, and on that ground are disowned by 

 Comte ; metaphysics proper, the introspective method 

 in psychology, and intuition. As it happened, these 

 various alleged authorities had presented themselves 

 in alliance to confront the assaults of modern Agnos- 

 ticism ; and, as Comte believes, they had all been 

 overthrown. The third, the introspective method in 

 psychology, is perhaps not strictly an alleged guide 

 to conduct ; but it stands in very close alliance with 

 the fourth. If simple interrogation of consciousness 

 teaches us truth in one great department of knowledge, 



Jen simple interrogation of the voice of conscience 

 ay well be expected to teach us duty, and guide us 

 fely in action. .''Comte, a more thorough-going 

 ipiricist and phenomenalist than his English col- 

 igues, the Mills and Spencers, is resolved to have 

 nothing to do with the psychology of introspection. 

 Psychology is either a department of physiology, 

 phrenology perhaps; or, as he says in his later 

 treatise, sociology is the true psychology, i.e. soci- 

 ology gives us the one true doctrine of man. On 

 the other hand, it was the earlier treatise which 

 offered us sociology in lieu of ethics, which, as we 

 may say, carried its aversion to intuitionalism so far 

 as to blot out of being the science which intuitional- 



