c_ apparatus for the
sole purpose of _transition_? If each of these great modes, the positive
and theological, has its independent source, and is equally
spontaneous--if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though
in different stages of development, the function attributed to the
metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it;
there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of _a law
of succession_ in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of
invariable sequence, between the phenomena?

Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his
two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between
which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are _not_
equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature
precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition,
it would follow--since the mind, or _organization_, of man remains from
age to age the same in its fundamental powers--that, at this very time,
no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of
knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic.
Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be
eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a
theology of the rudest description--a result certainly not contemplated
by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they _are_ equally
spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we
repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed
to the _metaphysic_ of effectuating a transition between them? And how
can we describe that as a scientific _law_ in which there is confessedly
no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The
statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or
laws, capable of explaining it.

Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in
a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps,
concluded that this author could not have here required their assent,
strictly speaking, to a _law_, but that he used the term vaguely, as
many writers have done--meaning nothing more by it than a course of
events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this
impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth
contained in it than to cavil at the form of the sta