686 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES, 



positive science — each of these has been a primary agent in making 

 society what it was at each successive period, while society was but 

 secondarily instrumental in making them, each of them (so far as causes 

 can be assigned for its existence) being mainly an emanation not from 

 the practical life of the period, but from the state of belief and thought 

 during some time previous. The weakness of the speculative pro- 

 pensity has not, therefore, prevented the progress of speculation from 

 governing that 'of society at large ; it has only, and too often, prevented 

 progress altogether, where the intellectual progression has come to an 

 early stand for want of sufficiently favorable circumstances. 



From this accumulated evidence, we are justified in concluding, that 

 the order of human progi'ession in all respects will be a corollary dedu- 

 cible from the order of progression in the intellectual convictions of 

 mankind, that is, from the law of the successive transformations of 

 religion and science. The question remains, whether this law can be 

 determined ; at first from history as an empirical law, then converted 

 into a scientific theorem by deducing it d priori from the principles of 

 human nature. As the progress of knowledge and the changes in the 

 opinions of mankind are very slow, and manifest themselves in a well- 

 defined manner only at long intervals ; it cannot be expected that the 

 general order of sequence should be discoverable from the examination 

 of less than a very considerable part of the duration of the social 

 progress. It is necessary to take into consideration the whole of past 

 time, from the first recorded condition of the human race ; and it is 

 probable that all the terms of the series already past were indispensable 

 to the operation ; that the memorable phenomena of the last generation, 

 and even those of the present, were necessary to manifest the law, and 

 that consequently the Science of History has only become possible in 

 cur own time. 



§ S. The investigation which I have thus endeavored to characterize, 

 has been systematically attempted, up to the present time, by M, Comte 

 alone. It is not here that a critical examination can be undertaken or 

 the results of his labors; which besides are as yet, comparatively speak- 

 ing, only in their commencement. But his works are the only source 

 to which the reader can resort for practical exemplification of the study 

 of social phenomena on the true principles of the Historical Method. 

 Of that method I do not hesitate to pronounce them a model; what is 

 the value of his conclusions is another question, and one on which this 

 is not the place to decide. 



I cannot, however, omit to mention one important generalization, 

 which he regards as the fundamental law of the progress of human 

 knowledge. Speculation he conceives to have, on every subject of 

 human inquiry, three successive stages ; in the first of which it tends 

 to explain the phenomena by supernatural agencies, in the second by 

 metaphysical abstractions, and in the third or final state confines itself 

 to ascertaining their laws of succession and similitude. This general- 

 ization appears to me to have that high degree of scientific evidence, 

 which is derived from the concurrence of the indications of history 

 with the probabilities derived from the constitution of the human mind. 

 Nor could it be easily conceived, from the mere enunciation of such a 

 proposition, what a flood of light it lets in upon the whole course ot 

 nistory ; when its consequences are traced, by connecting with each of 



