of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially
different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic
method, then the metaphysical, and last the positive method.
Hence three distinct philosophies, or general systems of
conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which mutually
exclude each other; the first is the necessary starting-point
of the human intelligence; the third is its fixed and definite
state; the second is destined to serve the purpose only of
transition.

"In the _theologic_ state, the human mind, directing its
researches to the intimate nature of things, the first causes
and the final causes of all those effects which arrest its
attention, in a word, towards an absolute knowledge of things,
represents to itself the phenomena as produced by the direct
and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less
numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the
apparent anomalies of the universe.

"In the _metaphysic_ state, which is, in its essence, a
modification of the former, the supernatural agents are
displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified
abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of
engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena--whose
explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its
corresponding entity.

"At last, in the _positive_ state the human mind, recognizing
the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the
search after the origin and destination of the universe, and
the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach
itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of
ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is
to say, their invariable relations of succession and of
similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real
terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established
between the various individual phenomena and certain general
facts, the number of which the progress of science tends
continually to diminish.

"The _theologic_ system has reached the highest state of
perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted
the providential action of one only being for the capricious
agency of the numerous independent divinities who ha