Comte's philosophy of the sciences : being an exposition of the principles of the Cours de philosophie positive of Auguste Comte / by G.H. Lewes.

  • Lewes, George Henry, 1817-1878.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Comte's philosophy of the sciences : being an exposition of the principles of the Cours de philosophie positive of Auguste Comte / by G.H. Lewes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    his anger he storms, shouts, destroys: what, then, is thunder but the anger of some mighty invisible being . Moreover, man knows that if his enemy °d'ei ,a present it will assuage his anger, and, therefoie, 1 is but natural he should believe the offended tliunderer will also be appeased by some offering. As soon as another conception of the nature of thunder has been elaborated by observation and study of its phenomena, the supposed deity vanishes, and, with it, all the false concep ions 1 originated, till, at last, Science takes a rod, and chaws the terrible lightning from the heavens, rendering it so harmless that it will not tear away a spider s web But long centuries of patient observation and impa- tient guessing, controlled by logic, were necessary before such changes coidd take place. The development of Philosophy, like the development of organic He, ha been through the slow additions of thousands upo thousands of years; for Humanity is a growth as our globe is, and the laws of its growth are still to be ^ One of the great fundamental laws has been dis- covered by Auguste Comte. Before Proceeding o expound it, however, it may not be out of place to inquire whether any law of intellectual evolution can b regarded as a fitting, exponent of the evolution of Humanity,—in other words, whether the various con- S^ns of social existence are dependent on, or cor- respond with, conditions of scientific devdopm^t - This has been so luminously stated by John Stuart^lili, in the sixth book of his Logic, that I shall borrow the ^^I^order^o obtain better empirical laws, we must not rest satisfied with noting the program. clmnjges which manifest themselves m the separate society and in which nothmg is indicated but the lcia C oAhe fragments of the effect to corresponding tion ot the n & necessary to combine the fragments of tliecause. It is nece_bd.iv uu