ss would be more rapid.

Human progress is directed by the reason, and the history of the
progress of society is largely the history of the human mind in its
progress through its three stages--the theological, metaphysical, and
positive. The necessity of these stages can be shown.

At first man knows nothing but himself, and it was inevitable that he
should explain things as produced by a being like himself. The
theological philosophy gave a basis for observation by its hypotheses
that phenomena were products of actions like human acts, and that all
bodies had life like human life, and that there was an invisible world
with invisible agents. These hypotheses were not only intellectually
necessary; they were also morally necessary, for they gave man
confidence to act, and hope that he could modify anything unsatisfactory
in the universe by appeals to its maker. Not only did the theological
philosophy sustain man's courage, and kindle his hope, and increase his
sense of power, but it gave an intellectual unanimity of great social
and political value; and, producing a special speculative class, made
the first effective division between things of matter and things of
mind. Except for the theological speculative class, man might have
remained merely a superior monkey.

Still, the theological philosophy was obviously only temporary, and
could not satisfy the needs of more highly developed intelligence, and
it soon came into conflict with positive philosophy. Indeed, at all
times there had been glimmerings of positive belief, for at all times
the simplest phenomena had been considered subject to natural laws, and
all had been compelled to act in everyday affairs on the assumption of
the invariability of natural law. The positive philosophy, therefore,
was inevitable from the first, and its open antagonism to the
theological philosophy was merely a question of time.

Between the theological and positive philosophy naturally and
necessarily has intervened the metaphysical, which has substituted
entities for a deity. This philosophy has never had the social power or
the consistency of the theological philosophy; its entities have been
mere abstractions. It has and has had such political power simply
because so elusive.

Material progress has gone through similar stages. The primitive
tendency of mankind was to a military life. At first the military life
afforded man, apart from cannibalism, the easy means of making a living;