When these opinions began to be out of date, a rival theory presented
itself to take their place. There were, in truth, many such theories,
and to some of them the term metaphysical, in M. Comte's sense, cannot
justly be applied. All theories in which the ultimate standard of
institutions and rules of action was the happiness of mankind, and
observation and experience the guides (and some such there have been in
all periods of free speculation), are entitled to the name Positive,
whatever, in other respects, their imperfections may be. But these were
a small minority. M. Comte was right in affirming that the prevailing
schools of moral and political speculation, when not theological, have
been metaphysical. They affirmed that moral rules, and even political
institutions, were not means to an end, the general good, but
corollaries evolved from the conception of Natural Rights. This was
especially the case in all the countries in which the ideas of
publicists were the offspring of the Roman Law. The legislators of
opinion on these subjects, when not theologians, were lawyers: and the
Continental lawyers followed the Roman jurists, who followed the Greek
metaphysicians, in acknowledging as the ultimate source of right and
wrong in morals, and consequently in institutions, the imaginary law of
the imaginary being Nature.
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