UNIT 7 SAQ 7.5 AP European History - Withrow

"In order to explain properly the true nature and peculiar character of the positive philosophy, it is indispensable that we should first take a brief survey of the progressive growth of the human mind as whole; for no idea can be properly understood apart from its history... Each branch of our knowledge passes in succession through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictious state, the metaphysical or abstract state, and the scientific or positive state....

In the theological state, the human mind directs its researches mainly toward the inner nature of beings.

.. It therefore represents these phenomena as being produced by the direct and continuous action of more or less numerous supernatural agents....

In the metaphysical state, which is in reality only a simple general modification of the first state, the supernatural agents are replaced by abstract forces, real entities, or personified abstractions inherent in the different beings of the world...

Finally, in the positive state, the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute truth, gives up the search after the origin and hidden causes of the universe and a knowledge of the final causes of phenomena. It endeavors now only to discover, by a well-combined use of reasoning and observation, the actual laws of phenomena-that is to say, their invariable relations of succession and likeness. The explanation of facts, thus reduced to its real terms, consists henceforth only in the connection established between different particular phenomena and some general facts, the number of which the progress of science tends more and more to diminish."