The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte Author:Auguste Comte Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FOURTH BENEFIT. 13 theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. Any one of these 1 might alone secure some sort of social order ; but while the three J co... more »-exist, it is impossible for us to understand one another upon any essential point whatever. If this is true, we have only to ascertain- which of the philosophies must, in the nature of things, prevail; and, this ascertained, every man, whatever may have been his former views, cannot but concur in its triumph. The problem once recognized cannot remain long unsolved ; for all considerations whatever point to the Positive Philosophy as the one destined to prevail. It alone has been advancing during a course of centuries, throughout which the others have been declining. The fact is incontestable. Some may deplore it, but none can destroy it, nor therefore neglect it but under penalty of being betrayed by illusory speculations. Tin's general revolution of the human mind is nearly accomplished. We have only to complete the Positive Philosophy by bringing Social phenomena within its comprehension, and afterwards consolidating the whole into one body of homogeneous doctrine. The marked preference which almost all minds, from the highest to the commonest, accord to positive knowledge over vague and mystical conceptions, is a pledge of what the reception of this philosophy will be when it has acquired the only quality that it now wants—a character of due generality. When it has become complete, its supremacy will take place spontaneously, and will re-estab]jfilLorderJihroughout society. There is, at present, no' conflict but between the theological and the metaphysical philosophies. They are contending for the task of reorganizing society but it is a work too mighty for either of them. The positive philosophy has hitherto interven...« less