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this possibility." From this he infers that our experience must be regulated by our conceptions.

10. This view of the nature of knowledge soon superseded entirely the doctrines of the Sensational School among the metaphysicians of Germany. These philosophers did not gradually modify and reject the dogmas of Locke and Condillac, as was done in England and France"; nor did they endeavour to ascertain the extent of the empire of Ideas by a careful survey of its several provinces, as we have been doing in this series of works. The German metaphysicians saw at once that Ideas and Things, the Subjective and the Objective elements of our knowledge, were, by Kant's system, brought into opposition and correlation, as equally real and equally indispensable. Seeing this, they rushed at once to the highest and most difficult problem of philosophy, to determine what this correlation is;-to discover how Ideas and Things are at the same time opposite and identical;-how the world, while it is distinct from and independent of us, is yet, as an object of our knowledge, governed by the conditions of our thoughts. The attempts to solve this problem, taken in the widest sense, including the forms which it assumes in Morals, Politics, the Arts, and Religion, as well as in the Material Sciences, have, since that time, occupied the most profound speculators of Germany; and have given rise to a number of systems, which, rapidly succeeding each other, have, each in its day, been looked upon as a complete solution of the problem. To trace the characters of these various systems, does not belong to the business of the present chapter: my task is ended when I have shown, as I have now done, how the progress of thought in the philosophical world, followed from the earliest up to the present time, has

12 The sensational system never acquired in Germany the ascendancy which it obtained in England and France; but I am compelled here to

pass over the history of philosophy in Germany, except so far as it affects ourselves.

led to that recognition of the co-existence and joint necessity of the two opposite elements of our knowledge; and when I have pointed out processes adapted to the extension of our knowledge, which a true view of its nature has suggested or may suggest.

The latter portion of this task occupies the third book of the Novum Organon Renovatum. With regard to the recent succession of German systems of philosophy, I shall add something in a subsequent chapter: and I shall also venture to trace further than I have yet done, the bearing of the philosophy of science upon the theological view of the universe and the moral and religious condition of man.

CHAPTER XXI.

FURTHER ADVANCE OF THE SENSATIONAL SCHOOL. M. AUGUSTE COMTE.

I

SHALL now take the liberty of noticing the views published by a contemporary writer; not that it forms part of my design to offer any criticism upon the writings of all those who have treated of those subjects on which we are now employed; but because we can more distinctly in this manner point out the contrasts and ultimate tendencies of the several systems of opinion which have come under our survey: and since from among these systems we have endeavoured to extract and secure the portion of truth which remains in each, and to reject the rest, we are led to point out the errors on which our attention is thus fixed, in recent as well as older writers.

M. Auguste Comte published in 1830 the first, and in 1835 the second volume of his Cours de Philosophie Positive; of which the aim is not much different from that of the present work, since as he states (p. viii.) such a title as the Philosophy of the Sciences would describe a part of his object, and would be inappropriate only by excluding that portion (not yet published) which refers to speculations concerning social relations.

1. M. Comte on Three States of Science.-By employing the term Philosophie Positive, he wishes to distinguish the philosophy involved in the present state of our sciences from the previous forms of human knowledge. For according to him, each branch of knowledge passes, in the course of man's history, through three different states; it is first theological, then metaphysical, then positive. By the latter term

Q

he implies a state which includes nothing but general representations of facts;-phenomena arranged according to relations of succession and resemblance. This

positive philosophy" rejects all inquiry after causes, which inquiry he holds to be void of sense' and inaccessible. All such conceptions belong to the "metaphysical" state of science which deals with abstract forces, real entities, and the like. Still more completely does he reject, as altogether antiquated and absurd, the "theological" view of phenomena. Indeed he conceives that any one's own consciousness of what passes within himself is sufficient to convince him of the truth of the law of the three phases through which knowledge must pass. "Does not each of us," he says, "in contemplating his own history, recollect that he has been successively a theologian in his infancy, a metaphysician in his youth, and a physicist in his ripe age? This may easily be verified for all men who are up to the level of their time."

It is plain from such statements, and from the whole course of his work, that M. Comte holds, in their most rigorous form, the doctrines to which the speculations of Locke and his successors led; and which tended, as we have seen, to the exclusion of all ideas except those of number and resemblance. As M. Comte refuses to admit into his philosophy the fundamental idea of Cause, he of course excludes most of the other ideas, which are, as we endeavoured to show, the foundations of science; such as the ideas of Media by which secondary qualities are made known to us; the ideas of Chemical Attraction, of Polar Forces, and the like. He would reduce all science to the mere expression of laws of phenomena, expressed in formulæ of space, time, and number; and would condemn as unmeaning, and as belonging to an obsolete state of science, all endeavours to determine the causes of phenomena, or even to refer them to any of the other ideas just mentioned.

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2. M. Comte rejects the Search of Causes. In a previous work I have shown, I trust decisively, that it is the genuine office of science to inquire into the causes as well as the laws of phenomena; that such an inquiry cannot be avoided; and that it has been the source of almost all the science we possess. I need not here repeat the arguments there urged; but I may make a remark or two upon M. Comte's hypothesis, that all science is first "metaphysical" and then "positive;" since it is in virtue of this hypothesis that he rejects the investigation of causes, as worthy only of the infancy of science. All discussions concerning ideas, M. Comte would condemn as "metaphysical," and would consider as mere preludes to positive philosophy. Now I venture to assert, on the contrary, that discussions concerning ideas, and real discoveries, have in every science gone hand in hand. There is no science in which the pretended order of things can be pointed out. There is no science in which the discoveries of the laws of phenomena, when once begun, have been carried on independently of discussions concerning ideas. There is no science in which the expression of the laws of phenomena can at this time dispense with ideas which have acquired their place in science in virtue of metaphysical considerations. There is no science in which the most active disquisitions concerning ideas did not come after, not before, the first discovery of laws of phenomena. In Astronomy, the discovery of the phenomenal laws of the epicyclical motions of the heavens led to assumptions of the metaphysical principle of · equable circular motions: Kepler's discoveries would never have been made but for his metaphysical notions. These discoveries of the laws of phenomena did not lead immediately to Newton's theory, because a century of metaphysical discussions was requisite as a preparation. Newton then discovered, not merely a law of phenomena, but a cause; and therefore he was the

3 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. xi. c. vii.

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