adopted by some of the young and active minds of the present times. The French even deny him the merit of originality, and repudiate his system, probably because they know more of the man than we do. But we shall leave M. Pasteur to discuss it: "The fundamental principle of Auguste Comte is to set aside all metaphysical inquiry into first and final causes, to reduce all ideas and all theories to fact, and to restrict the character of certainty to experimental demonstration. His system includes a classification of the sciences, and a pretended law of history expressed by the assertion that the conceptions of the human mind pass successively through three states—the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific or positive.
"M. Littré was full of praises of this system and of its author. In his eyes Auguste Comte was a man destined to hold a great place in posterity, and the positive philosophy was one of those products of a century or more which change the level of human thought. If he had been asked what he esteemed most in the laborious efforts of his life, Littré would doubtless have replied that it was his sincere and persevering apostolate of positivism. It is not uncommon to find the most learned of men deluded as to their own chief merits. I confess, therefore, that I have formed an estimate of the work of Auguste Comte differing widely from that of M. Littré. The causes of this divergence are the result of the very nature of the inquiries which occupied his life and of those which have exclusively occupied mine.
"The labors of M. Littré were directed to researches in history, language, and scientific and literary erudition. The subject of these studies lies entirely in facts belonging to the past, to which nothing can be added, from which nothing can be subtracted. The method of observation to be followed in them can seldom lead to strict demonstrations. Scientific experiment, on the contrary, admits no others.
"The experimentalist in the conquest of nature is continually opposed to facts not yet manifest, and which exist in the potential rudiments of natural laws. The unknown, within the limits of the possible, and not of the past, is his domain; and to explore it he employs that marvelous experimental method, of which it may be said with truth, not that it suffices for all things, but that it rarely deceives those who use it aright. The mistake of Auguste Comte and M. Littré was to confound this method with the simple method of observation. Unused to experimental philosophy, they use the word 'experience' in its ordinary signification, which is by no means its meaning in scientific language. The daily tasks of the man of science lead him to seek the idea of progress in an idea of invention. I find no invention in positivism. The mere gradation of the human intellect and the classification of the sciences have no claim to the title."
M. Littré found a certain repose of mind in the absolute denial by the positivists of all metaphysical truth. He was, in fact, what is now
