Auguste Comte and Positivism | Page 3

knowledge of their sequences, and not upon any notion we may
have formed respecting their origin or inmost nature. We foresee a fact
or event by means of facts which are signs of it, because experience has
shown them to be its antecedents. We bring about any fact, other than
our own muscular contractions, by means of some fact which
experience has shown to be followed by it. All foresight, therefore, and
all intelligent action, have only been possible in proportion as men have
successfully attempted to ascertain the successions of phaenomena.
Neither foreknowledge, nor the knowledge which is practical power,
can be acquired by any other means.
The conviction, however, that knowledge of the successions and
co-existences of phaenomena is the sole knowledge accessible to us,
could not be arrived at in a very early stage of the progress of thought.
Men have not even now left off hoping for other knowledge, nor
believing that they have attained it; and that, when attained, it is, in
some undefinable manner, greatly more precious than mere knowledge
of sequences and co-existences. The true doctrine was not seen in its
full clearness even by Bacon, though it is the result to which all his
speculations tend: still less by Descartes. It was, however, correctly
apprehended by Newton.[1]
But it was probably first conceived in its entire generality by Hume,
who carries it a step further than Comte, maintaining not merely that
the only causes of phaenomena which can be known to us are other
phaenomena, their invariable antecedents, but that there is no other
kind of causes: cause, as he interprets it, means the invariable
antecedent. This is the only part of Hume's doctrine which was
contested by his great adversary, Kant; who, maintaining as strenuously
as Comte that we know nothing of Things in themselves, of Noumena,
of real Substances and real Causes, yet peremptorily asserted their
existence. But neither does Comte question this: on the contrary, all his
language implies it. Among the direct successors of Hume, the writer
who has best stated and defended Comte's fundamental doctrine is Dr
Thomas Brown. The doctrine and spirit of Brown's philosophy are

entirely Positivist, and no better introduction to Positivism than the
early part of his Lectures has yet been produced. Of living thinkers we
do not speak; but the same great truth formed the groundwork of all the
speculative philosophy of Bentham, and pre-eminently of James Mill:
and Sir William Hamilton's famous doctrine of the Relativity of human
knowledge has guided many to it, though we cannot credit Sir William
Hamilton himself with having understood the principle, or been willing
to assent to it if he had.
The foundation of M. Comte's philosophy is thus in no way peculiar to
him, but the general property of the age, however far as yet from being
universally accepted even by thoughtful minds.
The philosophy called Positive is not a recent invention of M. Comte,
but a simple adherence to the traditions of all the great scientific minds
whose discoveries have made the human race what it is. M. Comte has
never presented it in any other light. But he has made the doctrine his
own by his manner of treating it. To know rightly what a thing is, we
require to know, with equal distinctness, what it is not. To enter into the
real character of any mode of thought, we must understand what other
modes of thought compete with it. M. Comte has taken care that we
should do so. The modes of philosophizing which, according to him,
dispute ascendancy with the Positive, are two in number, both of them
anterior to it in date; the Theological, and the Metaphysical.
We use the words Theological, Metaphysical, and Positive, because
they are chosen by M. Comte as a vehicle for M. Comte's ideas. Any
philosopher whose thoughts another person undertakes to set forth, has
a right to require that it should be done by means of his own
nomenclature. They are not, however, the terms we should ourselves
choose. In all languages, but especially in English, they excite ideas
other than those intended. The words Positive and Positivism, in the
meaning assigned to them, are ill fitted to take, root in English soil;
while Metaphysical suggests, and suggested even to M. Comte, much
that in no way deserves to be included in his denunciation. The term
Theological is less wide of the mark, though the use of it as a term of
condemnation implies, as we shall see, a greater reach of negation than

need be included in the Positive creed. Instead of the Theological we
should prefer to speak of the Personal, or Volitional explanation of
nature; instead of Metaphysical, the Abstractional or Ontological: and
the meaning of Positive would be less ambiguously expressed