Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, pp. 137-140.

The quotations in this paragraph are from a paper written by the author, and published in a periodical in 1834.

Cours de Philosophie Positive, iv., 325-29.

Since reprinted entire in Dissertations and Discussions, as the concluding paper of the first volume.

Written and first published in 1840.

This great generalization is often unfavorably criticised (as by Dr. Whewell, for instance) under a misapprehension of its real import. The doctrine, that the theological explanation of phenomena belongs only to the infancy of our knowledge of them, ought not to be construed as if it was equivalent to the assertion, that mankind, as their knowledge advances, will necessarily cease to believe in any kind of theology. This was M. Comte’s opinion; but it is by no means implied in his fundamental theorem. All that is implied is, that in an advanced state of human knowledge, no other Ruler of the World will be acknowledged than one who rules by universal laws, and does not at all, or does not unless in very peculiar cases, produce events by special interpositions. Originally all natural events were ascribed to such interpositions. At present every educated person rejects this explanation in regard to all classes of phenomena of which the laws have been fully ascertained; though some have not yet reached the point of referring all phenomena to the idea of Law, but believe that rain and sunshine, famine and pestilence, victory and defeat, death and life, are issues which the Creator does not leave to the operation of his general laws, but reserves to be decided by express acts of volition. M. Comte’s theory is the negation of this doctrine. Dr. Whewell equally misunderstands M.