Auguste Comte and Positivism | Page 4

Experiential. But M. Comte's opinions are best stated in his own
phraseology; several of them, indeed, can scarcely be presented in some of their bearings
without it.
The Theological, which is the original and spontaneous form of thought, regards the facts
of the universe as governed not by invariable laws of sequence, but by single and direct
volitions of beings, real or imaginary, possessed of life and intelligence. In the infantile
state of reason and experience, individual objects are looked upon as animated. The next
step is the conception of invisible beings, each of whom superintends and governs an
entire class of objects or events. The last merges this multitude of divinities in a single
God, who made the whole universe in the beginning, and guides and carries on its
phaenomena by his continued action, or, as others think, only modifies them from time to
time by special interferences.
The mode of thought which M. Comte terms Metaphysical, accounts for phaenomena by

ascribing them, not to volitions either sublunary or celestial, but to realized abstractions.
In this stage it is no longer a god that causes and directs each of the various agencies of
nature: it is a power, or a force, or an occult quality, considered as real existences,
inherent in but distinct from the concrete bodies in which they reside, and which they in a
manner animate. Instead of Dryads presiding over trees, producing and regulating their
phaenomena, every plant or animal has now a Vegetative Soul, the [Greek: Threptikè
phygè] of Aristotle. At a later period the Vegetative Soul has become a Plastic Force, and
still later, a Vital Principle. Objects now do all that they do because it is their Essence to
do so, or by reason of an inherent Virtue. Phaenomena are accounted for by supposed
tendencies and propensities of the abstraction Nature; which, though regarded as
impersonal, is figured as acting on a sort of motives, and in a manner more or less
analogous to that of conscious beings. Aristotle affirms a tendency of nature towards the
best, which helps him to a theory of many natural phaenomena. The rise of water in a
pump is attributed to Nature's horror of a vacuum. The fall of heavy bodies, and the
ascent of flame and smoke, are construed as attempts of each to get to its natural place.
Many important consequences are deduced from the doctrine that Nature has no breaks
(non habet saltum). In medicine the curative force (vis medicatrix) of Nature furnishes
the explanation of the reparative processes which modern physiologists refer each to its
own particular agencies and laws.
Examples are not necessary to prove to those who are acquainted with the past phases of
human thought, how great a place both the theological and the metaphysical
interpretations of phaenomena have historically occupied, as well in the speculations of
thinkers as in the familiar conceptions of the multitude. Many had perceived before M.
Comte that neither of these modes of explanation was final: the warfare against both of
them could scarcely be carried on more vigorously than it already was, early in the
seventeenth century, by Hobbes. Nor is it unknown to any one who has followed the
history of the various physical sciences, that the positive explanation of facts has
substituted itself, step by step, for the theological and metaphysical, as the progress of
inquiry brought to light an increasing number of the invariable laws of phaenomena. In
these respects M. Comte has not originated anything, but has taken his place in a fight
long since engaged, and on the side already in the main victorious. The generalization
which belongs to himself, and in which he had not, to the best of our knowledge, been at
all anticipated, is, that every distinct class of human conceptions passes through all these
stages, beginning with the theological, and proceeding through the metaphysical to the
positive: the metaphysical being a mere state of transition, but an indispensable one, from
the theological mode of thought to the positive, which is destined finally to prevail, by
the universal recognition that all phaemomena without exception are governed by
invariable laws, with which no volitions, either natural or supernatural, interfere. This
general theorem is completed by the addition, that the theological mode of thought has
three stages, Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism: the successive transitions being
prepared, and indeed caused, by the gradual uprising of the two rival modes of thought,
the metaphysical and the positive, and in their turn preparing the way for the ascendancy
of these; first and temporarily of the metaphysical, finally of the positive.
This generalization is the most fundamental of the doctrines which originated with M.
Comte; and the survey of history, which occupies the two largest volumes of the six

composing his work, is a