. thus long prevented its universal acceptance amidst the overwhelming evidence of law afforded by the fulfilment of rational human prevision; and now, the nascent discovery of sociological laws will extinguish all remaining opposition by withdrawing its last province from theological explanation, and uniting it with the rest of the empire of human knowledge. While completing and consolidating the great mental revolution begun by the preceding sciences, this sociological recognition of laws perfects the conception of law in all the other provinces, by securing to them that independence in the case of each science which they could not obtain under the supremacy of the mathematical spirit; for, instead of being regarded as an indirect consequence, in the later sciences, of their action in the earlier, and as even growing weaker and more remote, they are suddenly reinforced in importance and dignity by being found in full action in a region inaccessible to mathematical conceptions. The sense of the presence of invariable laws, which first arose in the mathematical province, is fully matured and developed in high sociological speculation, by which it is carried on to universality. As to the scientific nature of these laws, our ignorance of anything beyond phenomena compels us to make a distinction which does not at all interfere with our power of prevision under any laws, but which divides them into two classes, for practical use. Our positive method of connecting phenomena is by one or other of two relations,that of similitude or that of succession,-the mere fact of such resemblance or succession being all that we can pretend to know; and all that we need to know; for this perception comprehends all knowledge, which consists in elucidating something by something else,-in now explaining and now foreseeing certain phenomena by means of the resemblance or sequence of other phenomena. Such prevision applies to past, present, and future alike, consisting as it does simply in knowing events in virtue of their relations, and not by direct observation. This general distinction between the laws of resemblance and those of succession has been employed in this work in the equivalent form of the statical and dynamical study of subjects,that is, the study of their existence first, and then of their DISTINCTIONS AMONG LAWS. 365 action. This distinction is not due to mathematics, in the geometrical part of which it cannot exist. It only begins to be possible in the mechanical portion of mathematics; manifests its character when the study of living bodies is arrived at, and organization and life are separately considered; and finally, is completely established in sociological science, where it attains its full practical use in its correspondence with the ideas of order and of progress. Logically considered, these laws offer one more distinction, according as their source is experimental or logical. The force and dignity of the laws are in no way affected by the different degrees of credit attached to the modes of ascertaining them. And it is usually a mistake to assign different degrees of credit to two modes of ascertainment which are necessary to each other, and each preferable in some portion or other of the field of knowledge. What the one finds, the other confirms and elucidates; what the one indicates, the other searches for and finds. The positive system requires, on the whole, that deduction should. be preferred for special researches, and induction reserved for fundamental laws. The different sciences present varying facilities for the application of the two methods, of which I will only briefly say that they go far to compensate each other. Sociology, for instance, might seem to be too complex for the deductive method, and, at the same time less adapted to the inductive than the simpler sciences which admit of the broadest extension of positive argumentation: yet, through the dependence of the more complex sciences on the simpler, the latter yield à priori considerations to the former, which actually render the greater number of fundamental ideas deductive, which would be inductive in sciences that are more independent. Another consideration is that the more recent sciences, which are the more complex, have the advantage of being born at a more advanced stage of the human mind, when mental habits are improved by a stronger prevalence of the philosophical spirit. Thus, if a comparison were fairly established between the first and last terms of the scale of sciences, I will venture to say, that sociological science, though only established by this book, already rivals mathematical science itself, not in precision and fecundity,. but in positivity and rationality. It is more completely emancipated from metaphysical influence; and it is so interconnected as to issue in unity, as I have shown by deducing from a single law the general explanation of each of the successive phases of the human evolution. There is nothing comparable to this in the whole range of the anterior sciences, except the perfect systematization achieved by Lagrange in his theory of equilibrium and motion, with regard to a subject inuch less difficult and much better prepared and this proves the natural aptitude of sociology for a more complete co-ordination, notwithstanding its recency and complexity, in virtue simply of its natural position at the close of the encyclopædical scale. thod. the These considerations point out to us the Logical me- correlative characters which distinguish the positive method of philosophizing, logical and the scientific. The first consists in the preponderance of observation over imagination, contrary to the earliest mode of proceeding. We have no longer anything to fear from theological appeals to the imagination: but the metaphysical procedure, which follows neither fictions nor facts, but its own train of entities, is still too attractive to minds which are not sufficiently established in positive practices. It is still necessary to point out that laws are the true subject of investigation, and that the function of imagination in philosophizing is to create or perfect the means of connection between established facts, but not, in any case, to meddle with the point of departure or the direction of the inquiry. Even in the à priori mode of proceeding, the general considerations which direct the case have been derived from observation in the science concerned or in some other. To see in order to foresee is the business of science: to foresee everything without having seen anything is only an absurd metaphysical Utopia, which still obtains too much favour. The scientific view which corresponds with this logical one Scientific me- is, that the positive philosophy substitutes the relative for the absolute in the study of qualities. Every inquiry for causes and modes of production involves the tendency to absolute notions; and the tendency therefore existed throughout the theological and thod. THE LOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS. 367 metaphysical periods. The greatest of modern metaphysicians, Kant, deserves immortal honour for being the first to attempt an escape from the absolute in philosophy, by his conception of a double reality, at once objective and. subjective; an effort which shows a just sense of sound philosophy. Placed as he was, however, between the Cartesian philosophy behind and the positive philosophy in its completion before him, he could not give a truly relative character to his view; and his successors lapsed into the absolute tendencies which he had restrained for a time. Now that the scientific evolution comprehends social speculations, nothing can stop the decay of the absolute philosophy. Inorganic science, presenting the external world, where Man appears only as a spectator of phenomena independent of him, shows that all ideas in that sphere are essentially relative, as I have before remarked, especially with regard to Weight, for one instance. Biology confirms the testimony by showing, with regard to individual Man, that the mental operations, regarded as vital phenomena, are subject, like all other human phenomena, to the fundamental relation between the organism and its medium, the dualism of which constitutes life, in every sense. Thus, all our knowledge is necessarily relative, on the one hand, to the medium, in as far as it is capable of acting on us, and on the other to the organism, in as far as it is susceptible of that action; so that the inertia of the one or the insensibility of the other at once destroys the continuous reciprocity on which every genuine idea depends. This is especially noticeable in instances in which the communication is of a single kind, as in astronomical philosophy, where ideas cease in the case of dark stars or of blind men. All our speculations, as well as all other phenomena of life, are deeply affected by the external constitution which regulates the mode of action, and the internal constitution which determines its personal result, without our being able in any case to assign their respective influences to each class of conditions thus generating our impressions and our ideas. Kant attained to a very imperfect equivalent of this biological conception: but, if it could have been better accomplished, it would have been radically defective, because it relates only to the individual mind; a point of view much too remote from philosophical reality to occasion any decisive revolution. The only natural and sound view was obviously one which should present a dynamical estimate of collective human intelligence, through its whole course of development. This is at length done by the creation of Sociology, on which the entire elimination of the absolute in philosophy now depends. By it, biology is rendered complete and fertile; showing that in the great elementary dualism between the mind and the medium, the first is subjected also to successive phases; and especially disclosing the law of this spontaneous ⚫evolution. Thus the statical view showed us merely that our conceptions would be modified if our organization changed, no less than by a change in the medium: but, as the organic change is purely fictitious, we did not get rid of the absolute, as the unchangeableness seemed to remain. But our dynamical theory, on the contrary, considers prominently the gradual development of the intellectual evolution of humanity, which takes place without any transformation of the organism, the continuous influence of which could not have been left out of the inquiry but by the vicious freedom of abstraction that characterizes metaphysical study. This last effort alone, therefore, is thoroughly effectual in destroying the absolute philosophy: and if it were possible that I could be mistaken as to the true law of human development, the only inference would be that we must find a better sociological doctrine; and I should still have constituted the only method that could lead to positive knowledge of the human mind, regarded henceforth in the whole of its necessary conditions. Mental immuta bility being thus discarded, the relative philosophy is directly established: for we have been thus led to conceive of successive theories as accelerated approximations towards a reality which can never be rigorously estimated,—the best theory being, at any time, that which best represents the aggregate of corresponding observations, according to the natural course so well understood by scientific minds; ⚫ to which sociological philosophy adds a complete generalization, and thenceforth a dogmatic sanction. Stability of opinions. If there should be any fear for the stability of opinions, under this view, it is enough to |