What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the succession of these several stages or modes of thinking?  Does he mean that what is here called the positive method of thought is not equally spontaneous to the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its development?  Hardly so.  The predominance of the positive method, or its complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and an existence independent of the theological.  No barbarian ever deified, or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have been a portion of his experience entertained merely as experience.  The very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy.  If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour.  The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?

Or does M. Comte mean this only—­which we presume to be the case—­that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity?  If so, what necessity for this metaphysic apparatus for the sole purpose of transition?  If each of these great modes, the positive and theological, has its independent source, and is equally spontaneous—­if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though in different stages of development, the function attributed to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it; there is no transition for it to operate.  And what can be said of a law of succession in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of invariable sequence, between the phenomena?

Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable.  If he intends that his two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are not equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition, it would follow—­since the mind, or organization, of man remains from age to age the same in its fundamental powers—­that, at this very time, no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic.  Truth must be expounded through a course of errors.  Science must be eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a theology of the rudest description—­a result certainly not contemplated by M. Comte.  If, on the other hand, he intends that they are equally spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and “indispensable” part ascribed to the metaphysic of effectuating a transition between them?  And how can we describe that as a scientific law in which there is confessedly no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established?  The statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or laws, capable of explaining it.