as a moral, intellectual, and
social being.

But, while M. Comte is so far in the right, we often, as already
intimated, find him using the name metaphysical to denote certain
practical conclusions, instead of a particular kind of theoretical
premises. Whatever goes by the different names of the revolutionary, the
radical, the democratic, the liberal, the free-thinking, the sceptical,
or the negative and critical school or party in religion, politics, or
philosophy, all passes with him under the designation of metaphysical,
and whatever he has to say about it forms part of his description of the
metaphysical school of social science. He passes in review, one after
another, what he deems the leading doctrines of the revolutionary school
of politics, and dismisses them all as mere instruments of attack upon
the old social system, with no permanent validity as social truth.

He assigns only this humble rank to the first of all the articles of the
liberal creed, "the absolute right of free examination, or the dogma of
unlimited liberty of conscience." As far as this doctrine only means
that opinions, and their expression, should be exempt from _legal_
restraint, either in the form of prevention or of penalty, M. Comte is a
firm adherent of it: but the _moral_ right of every human being, however
ill-prepared by the necessary instruction and discipline, to erect
himself into a judge of the most intricate as well as the most important
questions that can occupy the human intellect, he resolutely denies.
"There is no liberty of conscience," he said in an early work, "in
astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physiology, in the sense
that every one would think it absurd not to accept in confidence the
principles established in those sciences by the competent persons. If it
is otherwise in politics, the reason is merely because, the old
doctrines having gone by and the new ones not being yet formed, there
are not properly, during the interval, any established opinions." When
first mankind outgrew the old doctrines, an appeal from doctors and
teachers to the outside public was inevitable and indispensable, since
without the toleration and encouragement of discussion and criticism
from all quarters, it would have been impossible for any new doctrines
to grow up. But in itself, the practice of carrying the questions which
more than all others require special knowledge and preparation, before
the incompetent tribunal of common