[3] _Cf_. Livre III., _Science_, chap, i., on “Method in General”; chap, ii., on The Experimental Method in Physiology,” pp. 213-279.
We have, in our Introductory Chapter, reckoned Auguste Comte among the influential antecedents of our period. Here, in approaching the study of the problem of science, we may note that the tendency towards the strictly scientific attitude, and to the promotion of the scientific _spirit_ in general, was partly due to the influence of his positivism. Comte’s intended Religion of Humanity failed, his system of positive philosophy has been neglected, but the SPIRIT which he inculcated has abided and has borne fruit. We would be wrong, however, if we attributed much to Comte as the originator of that spirit. His positive philosophy, although it greatly stimulated and strengthened the positive attitude adopted by the natural sciences, was itself in large measure inspired by and based upon these sciences. Consequently much of Comte’s glory was a reflected light, his thought was a challenge to the old spiritualism, an assertion of the rights of the sciences to proclaim their existence and to demand serious consideration.
Although he succeeded in calling the attention of philosophy to the natural sciences, yet owing to the mere fact that he based himself on the sciences of his day much of his thought has become obsolete by the progress and extension of those very sciences themselves. He tended, with a curious dogmatism, to assign limits to the sciences by keeping them in separate compartments and in general by desiring knowledge to be limited to human needs. Although there is important truth in his doctrine of discontinuity or irreducible differences, the subsequent development of the natural sciences has cleared away many barriers which he imagined to be impassable. There still are, and may always be, gaps in our knowledge of the progress from inorganic to organic, from the living creature to self-conscious personality, but we have a greater conception of the unity of Nature than had Comte. Many new ideas and discoveries have transformed science since his day, particularly the doctrines dealing with heat as a form of motion, with light, electricity, and the radio-activity of matter, the structure of the atom, and the inter-relation of physics and chemistry.