ridicule those who attempt to refer all tissues to a “tissu generateur,” formed by “le chimerique et inintelligible assemblage d’une sorte de monades organiques, qui seraient des lors les vrais elements primordiaux de tout corps vivant;"[17] and who finally tells us, that all the objections against a linear arrangement of the species of living beings are in their essence foolish, and that the order of the animal series is “necessarily linear,"[18] when the exact contrary is one of the best-established and the most important truths of zoology.  Appeal to mathematicians, astronomers, physicists,[19] chemists, biologists, about the “Philosophie Positive,” and they all, with one consent, begin to make protestation that, whatever M. Comte’s other merits, he has shed no light upon the philosophy of their particular studies.

To be just, however, it must be admitted that even M. Comte’s most ardent disciples are content to be judiciously silent about his knowledge or appreciation of the sciences themselves, and prefer to base their master’s claims to scientific authority upon his “law of the three states,” and his “classification of the sciences.”  But here, also, I must join issue with them as completely as others—­notably Mr. Herbert Spencer—­have done before me.  A critical examination of what M. Comte has to say about the “law of the three states” brings out nothing but a series of more or less contradictory statements of an imperfectly apprehended truth; and his “classification of the sciences,” whether regarded historically or logically, is, in my judgment, absolutely worthless.

Let us consider the law of “the three states” as it is put before us in the opening of the first Lecon of the “Philosophie Positive:”—­

“En etudiant ainsi le developpement total de l’intelligence humaine dans ses diverses spheres d’activite, depuis son premier essor le plus simple jusqu’a nos jours, je crois avoir decouvert une grande loi fondamentale, a laquelle il est assujetti par une necessite invariable, et qui me semble pouvoir etre solidement etablie, soit sur les preuves rationelles fournies par la connaissance de notre organisation, soit sur les verifications historiques resultant d’un examen attentif du passe.  Cette loi consiste en ce que chacune de nos conceptions principales, chaque branche de nos connaissances, passe successivement par trois etats theoriques differents; l’etat theologique, ou fictif; l’etat metaphysique, ou abstrait; l’etat scientifique, ou positif.  En d’autres termes, l’esprit humain, par sa nature, emploie successivement dans chacune de ses recherches trois methodes de philosopher, dont le caractere est essentiellement different et meme radicalement oppose; d’abord la methode theologique, ensuite la methode metaphysique, et enfin la methode positive.  De la, trois sortes de philosophie, ou de systemes generaux de conceptions sur l’ensemble des phenomenes qui s’excluent mutuellement; la premiere est le point de depart necessaire de l’intelligence humaine; la troisieme, son etat fixe et definitif; la seconde est uniquement destinee a servir de transition."[20]

Nothing can be more precise than these statements, which may be put into the following propositions:—­