16 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
struction.! In his earlier investigations he seems to have sought 
a principle of unity in social phenomena as all-comprehensive as 
the law of gravitation in physics? but he failed and later repu- 
diated the idea insisting only on unity of thought,? unity of feel- 
ing,‘ unity of purpose * and unity of method.® 
Comte’s philosophy of history of which he makes large use as a 
support to his social philosophy is based primarily on the law of 
the three stages,’ but in a lesser degree on the phenomenalism 
of Hume and some of the French materialists, on Pascal’s fiction 
of all humanity from earliest times to the present conceived as a 
living, learning personality, on Condorcet’s device of consider- 
ing all nations and peoples as forming one society,°and on Hobbes’ 
conception of humanity as a gigantic organism.” It is thus 
largely deductive, logical and abstract rather than inductive and 
scientific, although Comte advocates the scientific methods of 
observation, experiment and comparison supplemented by the 
historic, with the expression of hope of large future contributions 
from biology. He combines the deductive and inductive 
methods most ingeniously yet not in a way to satisfy the de- 
mands of science today. Indeed he is accused by Barth of dis- 
torting facts to fit his theory.” 
The law of the three stages, suggested by Turgot and Saint- 
Simon, becomes fundamental with Comte. He makes use of it to 
prove that the time is ripe for a reorganization of society based on 
science; that this science of social phenomena which he calls 
1 Positive Philosophy, i, ch. I; ii, pp. 51, 157 f£., 495-497. Barth, op. cit., p. 26; 
A General View, pp. 23, 79 £.; cf., however, his emphasis on “ heart ” and “ love ” 
in his Polity. 
2 Positive Philosophy, i, pp. 3, 16; cf. Lévy-Briihl, op. cit., pp. 378, 379. 
3 Positive Philosophy, ii, pp. 504, 511, 521. 4 A General View, p. 13. 
5 Positive Philosophy, ii, pp. 498, 521; A General View, p. 26. 
& Positive Philosophy, i, p. 17. 
7 Tbid., i, ch. I; ii, pp. 158 ff. Cf. Flint, op. cit., i, pp. 267 f. 
8 Positive Philosophy, ii, pp. 54, 95; A General View, p. 372. This figure was 
used by Perrault, Fontennelle, Abbé de St. Pierre, as well as by Saint-Simon and 
Littré-Flint, History of the Philosophy of History, pp. 213 f. 
9 Positive Philosophy, ii, pp. 58, 83. 10 Tbid., ii, p. 509. 
u Jbid., ii, pp. 96 ff. 
2 Barth, op. cit., p. 26; cf. Mill, op. cit., p. 60; Mackintosh, From Comte to 
Benjamin Kidd, p. 41. 
