more inconsistent and futile expedient could not be imagined. By having recourse to it they have exposed themselves to the charge of the crassest ignorance of what is meant by a law of nature. A law which does not apply to a class of phenomena is surely not the law of these phenomena; and even a so-called law, which only sometimes or in part applies to a class of phenomena, can surely be no true law. The most elementary notion of a law of nature is a rule without exceptions-a uniformity of connection among coexistent or successive facts. And yet Comte, although maintaining his law of the three states, three mutually exclusive phases of thought, to be the law of historical evolution, an invariable and necessary law, can write thus:

"Properly speaking, the theological philosophy, even in the earliest infancy of the individual and society, has never been strictly universal. That is, the simplest and commonest facts in all classes of phenomena have always been supposed subject to natural laws, and not ascribed to the arbitrary will of supernatural agents. The illustrious Adam Smith has, for example, made the very felicitous remark, that there was to be found in no age or country a god of weight. And even in more complicated cases the presence of law may be recognised whenever the phenomena are so elementary and familiar that the perfect invariability of their relationships of occurrence cannot fail to strike even the least educated observer. As to things moral and social, which some would foolishly exclude from the sphere of positive philosophy, there has necessarily always been a belief in natural laws with regard to the simpler phenomena of daily life-a belief implied in the conduct of the ordinary affairs of existence, since all foresight would be impossible on the supposition that every incident was due to supernatural agency, and in that case prayer would be the only conceivable means of influencing the course of human actions. It is even noticeable that the principle of the theological philosophy itself lies in the transference to the phenomena of external nature of the first beginnings of the laws of human action; and thus the germ of the positive philosophy is at least as primitive as that of the theological philosophy itself, though it could not expand till a much later time. This idea is very important to the perfect rationality of our sociological theory; because, as human life can never present any real creation, but only a gradual evolution, the final spread of the positive spirit would be scientifically incomprehensible, if we could not trace its rudiments from the very beginning." 1

1 Phil. Pos., iv. 491.

I consider these remarks excellent, but excellent as a proof that there is no such law as the so-called law of three states. If they be true, as I have no doubt they are, it cannot possibly be in any recognised or proper sense of the term the law, the fundamental law of history; it can at the most be only the law of some historical phenomena which Comte should have carefully discriminated from other phenomena, in order not to impose on himself and his readers a secondary and special in place of a primary and general law. If true, he was logically bound entirely to recast his statement of his supposed law, and to acknowledge that, if a law at all, it was by no means one so important as he had at first imagined. He failed to take this course, and involved himself, in consequence, in obvious selfcontradictions on which I need not insist, as they have been clearly pointed out by many of his critics.1

II.

Auguste Comte left behind him a school of disciples who accepted his system in its entirety,-its philosophy, polity, and religion. The head of this school, the immediate successor of Comte, and the present pontiff of "the religion of humanity," is M. Pierre Laffitte. He is a learned man, well acquainted with the sciences in favour among positivists, and intimately conversant with the doctrine in which he believes that social salvation can alone be found. He has earnestly laboured to propagate the creed and realise the aims of his master. He has written some works which expound and so far supplement and develop the historical theories of Comte, but which do not substantially add to them. A mere reference to these works will, I think, be sufficient.2

1 See Prof. Shield's 'Philosophia Ultima,' vol. i., pt. ii., ch. ii., pp. 287-314; Prof. Caird's 'Social Philosophy of Comte,' &c.

2 'Cours philosophique sur l'histoire générale de l'humanité,' 1859; 'Les grands types de l'humanité,' 1874-75; 'Considérations générales sur l'ensemble de la civilisation chinoise,' 1861; and the outlines of his lectures on "the third philosophy" in the 'Rev. Occid.' for 1886 and 1887. The 'Revue Occidentale,' the official organ of the positivist priesthood, is a bi-monthly publication, and has appeared since May 1878. A chair of General History of the Sciences has been created for M. Laffitte at the "Collége de France."

There is, further, an extreme positivist party, a so-called "party of strict observance." In the eyes of its members M. Laffitte is deficient in zeal, orthodoxy, and priestliness. They accept Comte's wildest absurdities as precious certainties, and would rigidly obey all his injunctions. They are, besides, very irascible, and much given to impute bad motives to those whose faith does not coincide with their own. Drs Audiffrent, Robinet, and Sémérie are representatives of the French section of these positivist puritans. The way in which they assailed those who stated and proved the harmless and easily verifiable historical fact that Comte's "law of the three states not an altogether original discovery, is too characteristic of their party.

Far the most eminent of Comte's disciples in France was the late Emile Littré (1801-1881). By the orthodox positivists he was fanatically hated, and, no doubt conscientiously, habitually calumniated. What unprejudiced persons could only have ascribed to his love of truth, they unhesitatingly attributed to hatred of Comte. He seems to me to have shown himself as loyal to Comte as loyalty to conscience would allow him to be. He did more than all the orthodox positivists combined have done to recommend and diffuse what was true or plausible in the doctrine of Comte. A wonderful amount of admirable work was accomplished by this modest, indefatigable, most virtuous, and highly gifted man. Much of it, and the best part of it, however, owed little or nothing to Comte, although he himself thought otherwise. His philosophy only was derived from Comte. And that as a general doctrine I require neither to expound nor criticise.1 But I must, of course, consider the account which he gives of "the law of the three states," and his attempt to improve on it.

He at first accepted it just as it had been presented by Comte. But in his Paroles de philosophie positive,' published in 1859, he maintained that, although it must be held to be a

1 For a masterly exposition and criticism of it, see Caro's 'M. Littré et le Positivisme,' 1883. The positivism of Littré had for its literary organ 'La Philosophie Positive,' a review founded in 1867, and which appeared until the close of 1883. Among its most active contributors were, besides Littré, Wyrouboff, Robin, Naquet, De Roberty, &c.

true law, the discovery of which had founded sociology, it was only an empirical law, a mere general statement of historical fact; and accordingly, he proposed to substitute for it a law of four states, as at once of a deeper and more comprehensive character, as inclusive of Comte's law, and entitled, in consequence of explaining the development of humanity by the development of the individual mind, to the designation of rational. In his much more important work, 'Auguste Comte,' published four years later, he confessed to have discovered in the interval that a law very similar to that which he had proposed had been enunciated by Saint-Simon so far back as 1808. Still maintaining, however, the great importance and substantial originality of his own conception, he not only adhered to his criticism of the Comtian law, but greatly extended it. He denied that that law applied to the development of industry, morality, or art; and affirmed that it held true only of the development of science. "This criticism," he says, "I uphold; however, I wish not to be misunderstood and supposed to reject the law of the three states. I do not reject it, I restrict it. So long as we keep within the scientific order, and consider the conception of the world as at first theological, then metaphysical, and finally, positive, the law of the three states retains all its validity for the guidance of historical speculations. . . . But all that is in history is not confined within the scientific order. M. Comte, who has somewhere said that we must suppose some notions to have been always neither theological nor metaphysical, has indicated the germ, I shall not say of my objection, but of my restriction. In fact, the law of the three states applies neither to the industrial development, nor to the moral development, nor to the æsthetic development." The law which Littré imagined to comprehend and supplement that of Comte, he stated thus: It seems to me that history is divisible into four fundamental ages: the most ancient is that in which humanity is under the preponderating sway of its wants and appetites; the next, or age of religions, is that in which the development of the moral nature produces civil and religious creations; the third, or age of art, is that in which the sense of the beautiful, become in its 'Auguste Comte,' pp. 49, 50.

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turn, capable of gratification, gives rise to æsthetic constructions and poems; finally, the fourth age, or age of science, is that in which reason, ceasing to be exclusively exercised in the accomplishment of the three foregoing functions, works for itself and proceeds in the search after abstract truth."

I much prefer Comte's law of the three states to the one thus formulated by Littré. Certainly the latter is remarkably similar to that which Saint-Simon had laid down half a century earlier, when he maintained that the development, both of the race and of the individual, might be divided into four stages-viz., 1st, Infancy, characterised by delight in construction and handiwork; 2d, Puberty, characterised by artistic aspirations; 3d, Manhood, characterised by military ambition; and 4th, Age, characterised by the love of science. Of course, Littré has endeavoured to show that his law is much superior to that proposed by Saint-Simon. It seems to me that there is very little to choose between them; and, indeed, that both are so bad that it would be mere labour lost to try to ascertain which is best or worst. Every so-called law which represents the elements of consciousness as taking what is colloquially called turn about in ruling the historical evolution, one element being the superior principle in one age of the world, and another in another, is utterly unsatisfactory. And the reason of this is that all such laws implicitly contradict the truth which Comte had the wisdom to lay down as the very corner-stone of his historical philosophy.

Believing as he did the continuous homogeneousness of the collective movement of humanity to be an indispensable presupposition to the construction of a philosophy of history, he could not have failed to be astounded at any one who denied it fancying he nevertheless accepted his philosophy of history on the whole. Such is, however, the position taken up by Littré, when he maintains that the law of the three states regulates only the intellectual, or, as he generally calls it, the scientific development; and that expressly on the ground that the industrial, moral, and æsthetic developments are separate from, and antecedent to, the intellectual development, instead of being, as Comte so strongly insisted, dependent on, correspondent to, and contemporaneous with it. Comte had