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 reorganised 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.

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 phenomena are viewed as if apart from the bodies
manifesting them; and the properties of each substance have attributed
to them an existence distinct from that substance. In the Positive
state inherent volition or external volition and inherent force or
abstraction personified have both disappeared from men's minds, and
the explanation of a phenomenon means a reference of it, by way of
succession or resemblance, to some other phenomenon,--means the
establishment of a relation between the given fact and some more
general fact. In the Theological and Metaphysical state men seek a
cause or an essence; in the Positive they are content with a law. To
borrow an illustration from an able English disciple of Comte:--'Take
the phenomenon of the sleep produced by opium. The Arabs are content
to attribute it to the "will of God." Moliere's medical student
accounts for it by a _soporific principle_ contained in the opium. The
modern physiologist knows that he cannot account for it at all. He can
simply observe, analyse, and experiment upon the phenomena attending
the action of the drug, and classify it with other agents analogous in
character' (_Dr. Bridges_).

The first and gr