mena
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 greatest aim of the Positive Philosophy is to advance the
study of society into the third of the three stages,--to remove social
phenomena from the sphere of theological and metaphysical conceptions,
and to introduce among them the same scientific observation of their
laws which has given us physics, chemistry, physiology. Social physics
will consist of the conditions and relations of the facts of society,
and will have two departments,--one, statical, containing the laws of
order; the other dynamical, containing the laws of progress. While
men's minds were in the theological state, political events, for
example, were explained by the will of the gods, and political authority
based on divine right. In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to
retain our instance, political authority was based on the sovereignty of
the people, and social facts were explained by the figment of a falling
away from a state of nature. When the positive method has been finally
extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these
social facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into
relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old
sense of the word, men will only examine the conditions of social
existence. When that stage has been reached, no