The Positive philosophy, so called because it wishes to have done with chimeras, was founded in France, a few years ago, by Auguste Comte.  M. Littre is at present one of its principal representatives.  This writer, says M. Sainte-Beuve, is one of those who are endeavoring “to set humanity free from illusions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions, from deceitful idols and powers."[45] Let us say the same thing in simpler terms:  M. Littre professes the doctrines of a school which ignores the Creator in nature, and Providence in history.  To ascertain phenomena, and acquaint ourselves with the law which governs them, such, say the positivists, is the limit of all our knowledge.  As for the origin of things and their destination, that is an affair of individual fancy.  “Each one may be allowed to represent such matters to himself as he likes; there is nothing to hinder the man who finds a pleasure in doing so from dreaming upon that past and that future."[46]

“In spite of some appearances to the contrary,” says M. Littre, “the positive philosophy does not accept atheism."[47] Why?  Because atheism pretends to give an explanation of the universe, and that after a fashion is still theology.  Minds “veritably emancipated” profess to know nothing whatever on questions which go beyond actual experience.  They do not deny God, they eliminate Him from the thoughts.  The attempt is a bold one, but it fails; men do not succeed in emancipating themselves from the laws of reason.  The very writer whom I have just quoted is himself a proof of this, for he absolutely proscribes every statement of a metaphysical nature, and then, three pages farther on, in the very treatise in which he makes this proscription, he speaks of the “eternal motive powers of a boundless universe."[48] Boundless! eternal!  What thoughts are these?  Behold the instincts of the reason coming to light! behold all the divine attributes appearing!  Adoration is withdrawn from God, and it is given to the universe at large.  What is it which, in the universe regarded as a whole, will become the direct object of worship?  Another positivist, M. de Lombrail, will tell us, in a work reviewed by Auguste Comte:  “Man,” he says, “has always adored humanity.”  Here, we learn, is the true foundation of all religions, and the brief summary of their history.  This humanity-god has been long adored under a veil which disguised it from the eyes of its worshippers; but the time is come when the sage ought to recognize the object of his worship and give it its true name.[49]

The positivist school, then, professes a complete scepticism with regard to whatever is not included in the domain of experience.  But its foot slips, and it falls into the negation of God, from which it rises again by means of a humanitarian atheism.  All these marks are met with again in the works of the critical school.