After this summary view of M. Comte's conception of Positive Philosophy,
it remains to give some account of his more special and equally
ambitious attempt to create the Science of Sociology, or, as he
expresses it, to elevate the study of social phaenomena to the positive
state.
He regarded all who profess any political opinions as hitherto divided
between the adherents of the theological and those of the metaphysical
mode of thought: the former deducing all their doctrines from divine
ordinances, the latter from abstractions. This assertion, however,
cannot be intended in the same sense as when the terms are applied to
the sciences of inorganic nature; for it is impossible that acts
evidently proceeding from the human will could be ascribed to the agency
(at least immediate) of either divinities or abstractions. No one ever
regarded himself or his fellow-man as a mere piece of machinery worked
by a god, or as the abode of an entity which was the true author of what
the man himself appeared to do. True, it was believed that the gods, or
God, could move or change human wills, as well as control their
consequences, and prayers were offered to them accordingly, rather as
able to overrule the spontaneous course of things, than as at each
instant carrying it on.
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