The order of mankind as seen by Auguste Comte

fundamental Law, to which the mind is subjected by an invariable necessity. The truth of this Law can, I think, be demonstrated both by reasoned proofs furnished by a knowledge of our mental organisation, and by historical verification due to an attentive study of the past. This Law consists in the fact that each of our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes in succession through three different theoretical states, the Theological or fictitious state, the Metaphysical or abstract state, and the Scientific or positive state. In other words, the human mind—by its very nature—makes use successively in each of its researches of three methods of philosophizing, whose characters are essentially different, and radically opposed to each other. We have first the Theological method, then the Metaphysical method, and finally the Positive method. Hence there are three kinds of philosophy or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which are mutually alates of each other. The first is the necessary starting-point of human intelligence: the third represents its fixed and definite state: the second is only destined to serve as a transitional method’.

That is the bald first statement of the Law—many pages are devoted to expanding and illustrating it. The criticism by Solovyovy, ifI put it very briefly not to say crudely, is that Comte had no feeling for Theology and did not understand Metaphysics, so that to interpret his Law as a succession, according to which Theology and Metaphysics had become obsolete, was to talk nonsense, for in fact they co-exist with Science, but in different spheres. If, however, we apply the three stages to modes of explaining observed phenomena, the statement is correct and is a clear summary of the advent of scientific method as called for by Francis Bacon who (was an acknowledged predecessor of both Comte and Saint-Simon).

As to the question whether Comte is properly speaking a philosopher at all, we may perhaps accept his own definition:

‘regret to have been obliged to employ, for want of another,

a we like philosophy, which has been so improperly used in a multitude of different meanings. But the qualifying adjective positive appears to me clearly to prevent any misconception, at all events on the part of those who know its proper meaning. I

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