Many had perceived before M. Comte that
neither of these modes of explanation was final: the warfare against
both of them could scarcely be carried on more vigorously than it
already was, early in the seventeenth century, by Hobbes. Nor is it
unknown to any one who has followed the history of the various physical
sciences, that the positive explanation of facts has substituted itself,
step by step, for the theological and metaphysical, as the progress of
inquiry brought to light an increasing number of the invariable laws of
phaenomena. In these respects M. Comte has not originated anything, but
has taken his place in a fight long since engaged, and on the side
already in the main victorious. The generalization which belongs to
himself, and in which he had not, to the best of our knowledge, been at
all anticipated, is, that every distinct class of human conceptions
passes through all these stages, beginning with the theological, and
proceeding through the metaphysical to the positive: the metaphysical
being a mere state of transition, but an indispensable one, from the
theological mode of thought to the positive, which is destined finally
to prevail, by the universal recognition that all phaemomena without
exception are governed by invariable laws, with which no volitions,
either natural or supernatural, interfere.
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