gence, wliich is due to his better pliysical organization. According to Comte, the whole human race, and every individual man, passes through three distinct stages, which he calls the theological, the met- aphysical, and the positive. During the first stage all events are referred to supernatural causes. In the first part of this stage of their progress, men were fetich- worshippers ; then they gradually became polytheists, and monotheists. This he endeavors to prove historically in regard to the Greeks, the Romans, and the inhabi- tants of western Europe. As men outgrew the fetich age, so they outgi-ew the polytheistic and monotheistic forms of belief. That is, they ceased to refer phenomena to the agency of supernatural beings.
During the metaphysical stage, phenomena are referred to un- seen causes, to occult powers, or forces, that is, to something which the senses cannot detect. This also has passed away, and men have come to recognize the great fact that there are no spiritual agencies in the universe, no efficient causes, nothing but events to be arranged according to the laws of sequence and resemblance. The order of events is invariable and necessary. What it has been in the past, it will be in the future. As this is the law of the de- velopment of the race collectively, so it is of the individual man. Every one, in his progress from infancy to manhood, passes through these several stages, the theological, the metaphysical, and the pos- itive. We first believe in supernatural agencies (witches, ghosts, souls, angels, etC;) ; then in occult causes ; then only in facts dis- cerned by the senses. The history of the race and the experience of the individual man are thus made the broad and sure foundation of the Positive Philosophy.
Remarks.
1. Considering that the advocates of this philosophy are a mere handful ; considering that nine hundred and ninety-nine millions of the thousand millions of our race still believe in God, it is a rather violent assumption that mankind have reached the stage of Positivism. It may be readily admitted that the progress of science ind of Christianity has banished alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and necromancy from enlightened portions of our race, but it has had a scarcely discernible effect in banishing belief in mind as distinct from matter, or in efficient causes, or in God. Admitting, there- fore, the principle of the argument to be correct, the conclusion arrived at is contradicted by facts.
2. The principle itself, however, is a groundless assumption.