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i88i.] An Estimate of Auguste Comte . 
impulse to every science, and been of the greatest value to 
every inquirer. 
To ascertain how far Comte can be pronounced successful 
in the execution of his task, we must examine his three 
guiding conceptions : — 
He regarded “ all the sciences, physical and social, as 
branches of one Science, to be investigated on one and the 
same method.” The originality of this conception is not 
very apparent. • For a couple of centuries the current of 
thought had been decidedly moving in that direction ; but 
no one, as far as I am aware, had previously formulated the 
idea with Comte’s distinctness. 
The second fundamental conception is proposed as the 
supreme law of human development “ There are but three 
phases of intellectual evolution, for the individual as well as 
for the mass — the theological (supernatural, or, as I should 
prefer to say, the personifying), the metaphysical, and the 
positive.” In the first of these stages man seeks the ulti- 
mate and final causes of everything. It supposes all sur- 
rounding objects animated or sentient. It is curious, I 
remark, in passing, how this ascription of life and conscious- 
ness to all matter is again creeping in among men of high 
intelligence. In the metaphysical phase phenomena are 
referred to abstractions or entities, and in the positive phase 
the mind confines itself to a quest into the laws of pheno- 
mena, superadding nothing to what is observed, and dismissing 
causes and entities as beyond human scope. 
It cannot be denied that numbers of instances can be 
found which seem to agree beautifully with this law. The 
explosive gas which in our days sometimes shatters a mine, 
and buries the unfortunate workmen, was in former ages an 
angry demon, a gnome, or cobold, jealous of human intrusion 
into his treasure-houses. The faCt that the ordinary pressure 
of the atmosphere counterbalances a column of 32 feet of 
water, and no more, was at one time explained by the diCtum 
that Nature abhorred a vacuum for the first 32 feet, but not 
beyond. But on a careful analysis of the rise and progress 
of Science we do not find these stages as above indicated. 
Liebig was unable to trace them in the history of chemistry. 
If we refer to the earliest known documents concerning that 
science, such as the “ Book of the Balance of Wisdom,”* 
we shall find the records of calm, experimental inquiry, dis- 
tinctly “ positive ” in its spirit, and free from anything 
mystical or fantastic. The strange superstitions and delu- 
* Journal of Science, 1876, p. 494. 
