The most complex of all sciences, the Social, had not, he maintained,
become positive at all, but was the subject of an ever-renewed and
barren contest between the theological and the metaphysical modes of
thought. To make this highest of the sciences positive, and thereby
complete the positive character of all human speculations, was the
principal aim of his labours, and he believed himself to have
accomplished it in the last three volumes of his Treatise. But the term
Positive is not, any more than Metaphysical, always used by M. Comte in
the same meaning. There never can have been a period in any science when
it was not in some degree positive, since it always professed to draw
conclusions from experience and observation. M. Comte would have been
the last to deny that previous to his own speculations, the world
possessed a multitude of truths, of greater or less certainty, on social
subjects, the evidence of which was obtained by inductive or deductive
processes from observed sequences of phaenomena. Nor could it be denied
that the best writers on subjects upon which so many men of the highest
mental capacity had employed their powers, had accepted as thoroughly
the positive point of view, and rejected the theological and
metaphysical as decidedly, as M.
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