[9] It is probable, therefore, that M.
Comte's determined abstinence from the word and the idea of Cause, had
much to do with his inability to conceive an Inductive Logic, by
diverting his attention from the only basis upon which it could be
founded.
We are afraid it must also be said, though shown only by slight
indications in his fundamental work, and coming out in full evidence
only in his later writings--that M. Comte, at bottom, was not so
solicitous about completeness of proof as becomes a positive
philosopher, and that the unimpeachable objectivity, as he would have
called it, of a conception--its exact correspondence to the realities of
outward fact--was not, with him, an indispensable condition of adopting
it, if it was subjectively useful, by affording facilities to the mind
for grouping phaenomena. This appears very curiously in his chapters on
the philosophy of Chemistry. He recommends, as a judicious use of "the
degree of liberty left to our intelligence by the end and purpose of
positive science," that we should accept as a convenient generalization
the doctrine that all chemical composition is between two elements only;
that every substance which our analysis decomposes, let us say into four
elements, has for its immediate constituents two hypothetical
substances, each compounded of two simpler ones.
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