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: CHAPTER III THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY The result of Comte's development so far was to turn him away for several years from schemes of direct social reconstruction. This he had decided, as against the Saint-Simonians, was premature, till a philosophy, itself scientific, had been founded on the positive sciences. He had already in his mind the scheme of such a new theoretical construction, and was able to draw up the plan of a ' Course of Positive Philosophy' in 1826. The 'fundamental work' in which it was embodied—the Cours de Philosophic Positive, in six volumes—occupied in actual publication the twelve years from 1830 to 1842. At the end of the last volume he declared himself at length ready to set to work on the elaboration of the social doctrine adumbrated in the early treatises. This he completed in the later Systeme de Politique Positive, which must be reserved for another chapter. By ' positive philosophy' we are to understand a philosophy not only founded on the sciences, but in its whole substance consisting of their higher generalisations. The structure is thus homogeneous, but there is no thought of deducing all scientific laws from some single law or principle. Such a deduction is admitted to be impossible. Each science has methods and laws peculiar to itself. The abstract sciences form a hierarchy, beginning with Mathematics, which is fundamental as method and also as doctrine, being itself one of the sciences of phenomena. Beginning with Calculus (in the most general sense), it proceeds through Geometry to Eational Mechanics. Next come the sciences of inorganic nature—Astronomy, Terrestrial Physics, and Chemistry. Above these are the sciences of the organic group—Biology (ending with Cerebral Physiology) and Sociology. On these six abstract sciences depend the...