ependence,--that is to
say, from about the middle of the 11th century until towards the end of
the 13th. He refers to de Maistre's memorable book, _Du Pape_, as the
most profound, accurate and methodical account of the old spiritual
organization, and starts from that as the model to be adapted to the
changed intellectual and social conditions of the modern time. In the
_Positive Philosophy_, again (vol. v. p. 344), he distinctly says that
Catholicism, reconstituted as a system on new intellectual foundations,
would finally preside over the spiritual reorganization of modern
society. Much else could be quoted to the same effect. If unity of
career, then, means that Comte, from the beginning designed the
institution of a spiritual power, and the systematic reorganization of
life, it is difficult to deny him whatever credit that unity may be
worth, and the credit is perhaps not particularly great. Even the
readaptation of the Catholic system to a scientific doctrine was plainly
in his mind thirty years before the final execution of the _Positive
Polity_, though it is difficult to believe that he foresaw the religious
mysticism in which the task was to land him. A great analysis was to
precede a great synthesis, but it was the synthesis on which Comte's
vision was centred from the first. Let us first sketch the nature of the
analysis. Society is to be reorganized on the base of knowledge. What is
the sum and significance of knowledge? That is the question which
Comte's first master-work professes to answer.

Law of the Three States.

The _Positive Philosophy_ opens with the statement of a certain law of
which Comte was the discoverer, and which has always been treated both
by disciples and dissidents as the key to his system. This is the Law of
the Three States. It is as follows. Each of our leading conceptions,
each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three
different phases; there are three different ways in which the human mind
explains phenomena, each way following the other in order. These three
stages are the Theological, the Metaphysical and the Positive.
Knowledge, or a branch of knowledge, is in the Theological state, when
it supposes the phenomena under consideration to be due to immediate
volition, either in the object or in some supernatural being. In the
Metaphysical state, for volition is substituted abstract force residing
in the object, yet existing independently of the object; the pheno