AUGUSTE COMTE 1 7 



social physics or sociology, forms the climax of all the sciences 

 which he arranges in a hierarchy based on filiation, 1 increasing 

 complexity, 2 decreasing perfection in the sense of quantitative 

 exactitude, 3 and on the order of development of the sciences to 

 that condition which might be termed positive. This classifica- 

 tion, repudiated by Spencer, has been adopted with some modi- 

 fications and explanations by Mill, Ward, 4 Giddings, De Greef and 

 many others. 



This law of the three stages was incorporated into Mill's 

 logical doctrine as the " inverse deductive method." 6 It assumes 

 that the general human mind has developed the same as the 

 individual mind. Experience showed Comte that the child is 

 imaginative with a personal-causal explanation of phenomena 

 whereas the adult, at least the one schooled in the scientific 

 method, interprets phenomena by reference to natural laws. 6 

 The period of youth had been with Comte a transition period, a 

 period of storm and stress, of intellectual and moral anarchy and 

 this he saw was characteristic of youth. Comte found stages of 

 civilization that corresponded to these periods; primitive 

 societies imaginative with a personal explanation of phenomena, 

 the five nations of western Europe in the centuries just preceding 

 his time corresponding to the anarchic stage of youth, and the era 

 dawning with its emphasis on law like unto the mature mind of 

 cultured man.' He shows also that each science in its develop- 

 ment has passed through these stages. 



One other item is worthy of consideration before passing to the 

 discussion of his specific social doctrines, — his conception of law. 

 In this he seems to have followed Hume. Not only does he repu- 

 diate the effort to discover the final cause of change, but it would 

 seem that he fails to recognize, also, efficient cause in the system 

 itself. He seeks only laws of similitude and succession among 

 phenomena. 8 The former make possible his scheme of logical 



1 Positive Philosophy, i, p. 28; cf. Ward, Pure Sociology, ch. V. 



2 Positive Philosophy, i, ch. II. 4 Pure Sociology, pp. 65 f. 



3 Ibid., i, pp. 29, 223. B Whittaker, Comte and Mill, p. 23. 



6 Positive Philosophy, i, p. 3. 



7 Ibid., ii, chs. VII-XI. Levy-Bruhl, op. cit., p. 364. 



8 Positive Philosophy, i, pp. 5, 12, 217, 221, 225 f., 515. 



