Auguste Comte and Positivism | Page 3

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 in the objective aspect by Phaenomenal, in the
subjective by